Post-structuralist Fun Pack

“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

-James Joyce, Ulysses

Yesterday is History, ’Tis so far away— Yesterday is Poetry—’Tis Philosophy— Yesterday is mystery—Where it is Today While we shrewdly speculate, Flutter both away

-Emily Dickinson

A dense and intricate Soviet history is at the root of two works—“Organ of Memory” and “Icons”—by visual artist/curator/researcher Egor Rogalev. Like mist rising from a bog, Soviet history emanates effortlessly from his work and it is clear that the consciousness of whoever made these works was steeped in a specific form of Soviet historicity.

This essay will deal primarily with “Organ of Memory” (2019, ГЦСИ, National Centre for Contemporary Art Moscow), a performance which references the massive Stalinist political repressions of 1937-38, specifically the “Leningrad Deaf-Mute Affair" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_1cu5Tuyd0 ). On August 1937, the NKVD (Soviet secret police) detained 55 members of the deaf-mute amateur theater studio on charges of forming a terrorist organization; most were later executed or sent to the gulag. Coincidentally, the arrest took place during the rehearsal of a play based on the socialist realist novel How the Steel Was Tempered (1936) by Nikolai Ostrovsky.

Formally austere and intense, the multi-layered performance “Organ of Memory” consists of 5 people “reading out” passages of How the Steel was Tempered by using sign language for the deaf. (Though it is not made explicit in the performance, the people doing sign language were actually deaf-mute people, including Gennady Tikhenko, Pavel Rodionov, Valentina Vanilova, Viktor Lungu, and Tatyana Napalkina, Antonina Pichugina, Alexey Rayev, and Alyona Molosnova). Dressed elegantly in all black against an all-black background, there is an urgency to their frenetic gesticulations and demonstrative facial expressions, coupled with the wildly fluctuating sounds emitted by the theremin. The theremin is a musical instrument invented in post-revolutionary Russia in 1937 by Leon Theremin; paradoxically, an instrument in which there is no element of touch. Instead, the movement of one’s hands in proximity of two metal rods—which are actually antennas surrounded by an electromagnetic field—creates the sound. Speaking of the theremin, Stephen Montague describes:

“Part of the interest was its unusual sound (like a musical saw mated with a light soprano), but its most dramatic feature was that the performer never actually touched the instrument. He or she simply waved graceful hands near the two antennae (one set vertically, the other looped horizontally) to coax out seamless, mellifluous melodies. The proximity of the right hand to the vertical antenna changed the ultrasonic electromagnetic field, thus changing the pitch over about a six-octave range. The left hand (or sometimes a foot pedal) controlled the volume.” (1)

The theremin is considered the first truly responsive electronic instrument, based on a broad category of techniques called “electric field sensing.” (2) In “Organ of Memory,” the sign language interpreters stand in proximity of a theremin, resulting in what might be characterized as “sonic scribbles” or a sound similar to when a walkie talkie fails to connect – a type of sonic static.

There is an inventive disjunction in Organ of Memory’s use of the theremin. Normally, the theremin calls upon those who play it to enact meticulous closing and opening movements of the fingers of the right hand in conjunction with the the right wrist, with vibrato produced by tremulous movements of the hand from right to left. But “Organ of Memory” jettisons all the precise niceties of how to “play” the theremin. It is a detournement of the theremin, whereby the theremin is no longer a musical instrument, but instead is repurposed as a sonic chalkboard upon which the sign language performers appear to be wildly scribbling—with gesture. It is almost as if the theremin has been hijacked into a makeshift DIY radio transistor of gesture-controlled sound interaction, marked by a quintessentially modernist predilection for intentionally failing to produce intelligible communication (at least, not intelligible for hearing people, but intelligible for the deaf, as we shall later learn of the hardware processing of the theremin sounds).

One might note that the theremin and the subject of this performance (i.e. the 55 deaf mutes who were persecuted in Leningrad in 1937) are two elements that are the obverse or mirror opposites of one another. For deaf-mutes for whom the ability to hear and to see has been robbed, touch becomes crucial and is elevated to sensorial primacy. Meanwhile, the theremin has the unique distinction of being one of the few instruments in which touch has been completely excised and there exists no tactile feedback.

Paradoxically however, in this particular performance, the repurposed theremin does indeed acquire a tactile aspect, as the sounds emitted by the theremin emit are then “hardware processed” into vibration. The progression at the root of this performance is as follows: a text in the Russian language is then transformed into gestures and hand-signs; the gestures then cause sound to be emitted by the theremin, which in turn transforms these sounds into vibration. From written language, to sign language, to hand gestures, to sound emitted by the theremin (caused by the hand gestures), to those sounds hardware-processed into vibration—this concatenation is emblematic of the plasticity and malleability of language:

* * *

In art critic Lera Kononchuk’s in-depth commentary on “Organ of Memory” (for the Russian online contemporary art and culture platform “Syg.ma”, Kononchuk summarizes the work as “Vibration as weapon.” She explains:

“Thus, in Egor Rogalev's performance, the sounds of the theremin are translated into oscillations thanks to hardware processing, symbolically crystallizing the gradual accumulation of experience of encountering repressive regimes.” (3)

Later Kononchuk concludes:

“In Egor's work, the event, which weaves the present on an interstitial level, takes on a more explicit, distinct character of a synesthetic, transtemporal, and, most importantly, intersubjective process that resists the politics of silence, concealment, and suppression. Vibration is used by Rogalev as a weapon that establishes new connections between bodies in the space-time they share, and thus models the desire and possibility of imagining a common future.” (4)

Coincidentally, three weeks before I saw Rogalev’s performance (on Youtube), I happened to re-read Steve Goodman’s provocative tome: Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. Like Kononchuk’s analysis of vibration (in relation to Rogalev’s work), Goodman moves beyond anthropocentric conceptualizations of sound into a larger environmental field of vibration. Sonic Warfare is an overridingly pessimistic, dystopian prognosis of the “creeping colonization” of vibration and sound by various nefarious forces. The 291 page book is a discursive hand grenade. It reads almost like a catalogue, traipsing through everything from how the military harnesses weaponry and torture devices as a form of social control, to sonic strategies of mood modulation through muzak and sonic branding, to the “carceral archipelago of […] the distributed system of audiospecular enclosures.” (5) Goodman references a device called the Squark Box, a sonic weapon used by the British military during past conflicts with Northern Ireland, which “emitted two ultrasonic frequencies that together produced a third infrasonic frequency that was intolerable to the human ear, producing giddiness, nausea, or fainting” (6). Then we have “the vortex ring generator,” a sonic weapon used by the U.S military designed to “target individuals with a series of flash, impact, and concussion pulses at frequencies near the resonance of human body parts, forcing evacuation from the zone of disturbance, fighting social turbulence with air turbulence.“ (7) One example that Goodman neglected to mention was the GLI-F4, a sound grenade used by the French police against Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protesters in 2018-19, which releases CS gas at 165 decibels, thereby making a deafening sound equivalent to the sound of a 747 jet aircraft taking off https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenade_GLI-F4. (During the Saint Soline eco-protests in March 2023, the use of GLI-F4 by the French police caused peoples ears to bleed). (8) Goodman also discusses how the Israeli Defense Force—not to be outdone by other imperialist brethren—have a sound weapon called “The Scream” which targets a specific frequency toward the inner ear. Goodman describes the Scream:

“Protestors covered their ears and grabbed their heads, overcome by dizziness and nausea, after the vehicle-mounted device began sending out bursts of audible, but not loud, sound at intervals of about seconds. An Associated Press photographer at the scene said that even after he covered his ears, he continued to hear the sound ringing in his head.” (9)

In Goodman’s account, perhaps the only antidote or counterforce to the malevolent or predatory co-option of vibration and sound (whether by military urbanism, corporate branding, etc.) is Afrofuturism’s dancehall and reggae music. In describing certain aspects of this largely Caribbean music, Goodman says:

“[…] intense vibrational environments are enacted, producing an ecology of affects in which bodies and technologies, all functioning as transducers of energy and movement from one mode to another, are submerged. Consistent with a conception of the affective body as resonance chamber, Julian Henriques has explored the functioning of what he terms sonic dominance within the sound system session.” (10)

Also noteworthy is Goodman’s exploration of the work of Mark Bain, a “vibration artist” whose work “draws attention to the primacy of vibration in any discussion of sound, affect, and power.” (11) In Bain’s installation “The Live Room,” he attaches oscillators to buildings to make them resonate. According to Bain, the enveloping sounds “create a vibrational topology or ‘connective tissue’ between one building and another and the bodies in attendance.”(12)

But I only bring up Goodman as a counterpoint to Kononchuk, to illustrate a striking contrast between the two. While the phrase “vibration as weapon” is a concept that is central to both Steve Goodman’s book and to Kononchuk’s analysis of “Organ of Memory,” the constituencies who Kononchuk and Goodman imagine as the wielders of this weapon are diametrically opposed.

The last sentence of Kononchuk’s essay exemplifies an affirmative, optimistic view of vibration’s potential as social salve, a social glue or sociopolitical bandage between different people, a possible catalyst for social change and a model for imagining a common future (indeed, Kononchuk exemplifies a sweeping utopianism when it comes to vibration). Meanwhile, Goodman’s grim prognosis is that almost every aspect of sound/vibration has already been co-opted by viral capitalism’s audiospecular enclosures, or the “ubiquitous, responsive, predatory, branding environments using digitally modeled, contagious, mutating sonic phenomena in the programming of autonomous ambiences of consumption”(13); amongst multiple other nefarious forces (such as the military-industrial complex). Kononchuk’s “vibration as weapon” statement at the end of her essay implies she believes in the possibility of (for lack of better words) a “virgin sound”—a sound that has not yet been co-opted or invaded by the full-spectrum dominance of multidimensional synesthetic branding, brandscapes, earworms, and other multifarious forms of virulent capitalism’s non-lethal sonic warfare. In this sense, she advocates for a counter-hegemonic form of vibration, and not one that (as Goodman gives us copious examples of) has been captured, engineered, manipulated, and commodified by capitalism or weaponized and rendered predatory by the military.

* * *

Yet perhaps the most intriguing element of the piece is that as the sign language interpreters are performing the novel with sign language, Rogalev delivers a charged manifesto-like spoken monologue (in Russian), which opens with him saying:

“I hope that all of us realize that historical experience tends to repeat itself if not properly elaborated. And what is happening in our country right now, at this particular moment in history, is very alarming. I think that many people know about the detention of political activists by the security services, the torture they are subjected to, and the criminal cases fabricated in the regime of truth.”

He goes on to lament the Leningrad deaf-mute case as “horrifying, terrifying and absurd in its horror, part of Stalin's repression, of politics” and elucidates the performance’s connection to How the Steel Was Tempered. He explains:

“In this case, reading a novel, in the continuation of two musical instruments, transforms the signs in oscillations and vibrations, which are going to be added to the story, thanks to the sensory understanding of the intonation and synthesis of the language. The sound produced by the theremin is put through hardware processing and will therefore be accessible to hearing impaired viewers.”

The last third of his monologue is nothing less than an exhortation. Referring to the experience of people with disabilities, Rogalev says:

“Rather, it is a very important opportunity to touch with the intensity of life experience, which we, in modern technological reality, gradually lose, thanks to the fact that this reality creates passive modes of receiving information and imposes passive work attention, which drives us slowly and slowly into apathy and melancholia. On the contrary, for people with peculiarities [translation: “physical disabilities”], attaining knowledge of the world and interacting with it is always an active process that requires real effort. If we want to conceive of other relationships, other ways of communication and regain this intensity of experiencing life, it requires exactly the same real effort from each of us. In general, I believe that interaction without exclusion, based on extreme openness, is the model of a communist society that really works.

Maybe not everyone is ready to perceive and hear this word now, because in the history of our country communism is associated with tragic events, including those that became the basis for this work. But as an artist, I don't really care. I don't care at all. Nothing in principle, much less about the use of the word. And, of course, I don't mean the communism that was, but the communism that might be, which is an opportunity to think of other forms of social life and ways of interaction based on equality and openness.”

Rogalev attempts to destabilizes a hierarchy: instead of the able-bodied on top and the disabled below, Rogalev characterizes the disabled’s physical deficiency as an asset. For example, in the case of the deaf-mute, their blindness and deafness makes it such that their efforts at communication will never descend into the automatized or by-rote; communication for them always entails an active, conscious effort. In this way they are advantaged over those without physical disabilities, whose consciousness (Rogalev proselytizes) has become automatized, desensitized and soporific—they are asleep. Whether this is a romanticization of disability is a question for another day. But it is fair to say it is a sublimation of disability: he is taking something which is known to have dismal, humiliating, and traumatic aspects—physical disability—and “sublimating” the source of the trauma to actually be a strength or an asset. In a wily move, the disabled are mobilized as a polemical device to assail or to deliver a scathing critique of our current day consciousness (or lack thereof). It is tantamount to saying, “The current state of our (i.e. able-bodied people’s) consciousness is so stupefied and numb, that even this entity which normative society dismisses as deficient and disadvantaged—the physically disabled—represent something for us to aspire to, because at least they have not been anesthetized as the able-bodied have.”

The reference to the novel How the Steel Was Tempered as the basis of the sign language performance is another disability “trope” within “Organ of Memory.” How the Steel Was Tempered is a two-part 460 page novel by Nikolai Ostrovsky about a character named Pavel Korchagin who, in 1916, begins as a feisty and restless 14 year old kicked out of his school (for delinquency) and sent to be a dishwasher in a restaurant (in Russia). It is not long before he finds himself swept up in the historical events of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, becomes a “true believer” in the Bolshevik party, and over the course of several years eventually rises up within the ranks of the Bolshevik bureaucracy (part of the “First Komsomol generation”) only to have his body deteriorate at age 22 due to a torrent of ailments and injuries. As Jonathan Platt describes the character of Pavel Korchagin in his lecture, “Utopianism and Disability: From Spontaneity to Consciousness”:

“He is put through tremendous physical pain, physical suffering and physical obstacles. Korchagin dies nine times. In the novel, he gets shot, even shot in the head. At one point he gets typhoid fever and gradually loses all his physical abilities.(14)

A spinal cord injury leads eventually to total paralysis for Korchagin, later accompanied by the onset of blindness. I found that there was tension in Ostrovsky’s novel between parts that were spontaneous and credible and that one could believe could happen (for example, when Pavel steals his neighbor’s rifle, or when his brother Artem and his comrades have a group discussion before deciding whether to hijack a train) versus parts of the novel that felt contrived, prescriptive, or artificially “tacked on” (in order to conform to the Party line). In this latter category, I would include the dumping of Tanya (in order to make the point that the party’s priorities trumps those of the individual) (Book I) or the unilaterally pejorative account of Trotsky-ites (Book II), or Artem’s much too literary speech when he asks to join the party after Lenin dies (Book II). But for the purposes of understanding “Organ of Memory,” we can say How the Steel Was Tempered acts as a synecdoche for disability.

* * *

Finally, I conclude by explaining my title “Post-Soviet Intermedia.” I will drastically shift gears now to explain that “Intermedia” is a term first coined by New York City Fluxus artist Dick Higgins in 1966 to refer to work that did not fall precisely in one media or another; that fell in between mediums. Higgins argued that the ready-made was an intermedia object:

“The ready-made or found object, in a sense an intermedium since it was not intended to conform to the pure medium, usually suggests this, and therefore suggests a location in the field between the general area of art media and those of life media.” (15)

Higgins also declared the “happening” as an intermedia: “an uncharted land between collage, music and the theater. It is not governed by rules; each work determines its own medium and form according to its needs. The concept itself is better understood by what it is not, rather than what it is.”(16)

Higgins then notes that the term "inter-media" first appeared in the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1812 referring to “works which fall conceptually between media that are already known.” Higgins elucidates how intermedia is not simply the side-by side juxtaposition of different mediums’ elements (i.e. a visual element juxtaposed next to a sculptural element juxtaposed next to a poetry element juxtaposed next to a theater element). But instead, it is the conceptual fusing of these elements altogether (as in the case of concrete poetry, which fuses the visual and the literary).

Now perhaps it may seem wildly anachronistic to disinter this word from the 1960’s. After all, we have long been in a post-medium (even post-studio) condition whereby it no longer seems necessary to point out a work is “in-between mediums,” when traditional demarcations of mediums have long since broken down (in contemporary art).

And yet, I’m not an age-ist. I don’t believe in discarding or dismissing a theory or idea, simply because it’s “old”—particularly if that idea still has usefulness. For example, at University of California Berkeley, a class is being taught this year (2024) in the Slavic Studies Department called “The Intermedial Avant-Garde: Thinking Aesthetics and Politics Across Media” https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2024-summer-slavic-r5b-002-lec-002 It describes, ”Taking examples from cinema, photography, sound, visual arts, and their cross-pollinations, we will consider how radical artists from the Soviet Union, socialist Yugoslavia, and the contemporary Global left have thought about and developed different revolutionary, anti-capitalist, and anti-colonial media aesthetics.”

I thought “intermedia” was a very apt term to describe “Organ of Memory— it was both a performance, a sound art piece, a public “reading” of a novel (at least in sign language), a manifesto (Rogalev’s speech), and a historical commentary. These elements were not presented one by one as if in a salad bowl (where all the components retain their original forms, but are simply juxtaposed side-by-side)—but instead, these elements are conceptually fused together.

Even Rogalev’s spoken manifesto had an intermedia quality: it began as denunciation of the current political climate in Russia. It then turned to a technical explanation of how the theremin used in his performance was hardware processed so that its emissions would be perceivable as vibrations for the hearing-impaired. It then turned into an impassioned call-to-action that people discard their passivity and become more sensitized and aware. There was no formal division between these three very different elements, but instead they were conceptually fused together.

Furthermore, if the definition of “intermedia” is something “in-between mediums”, then “Organ of Memory” qualifies, because it was not a “performance” in the classical sense (with a director telling actors what to do on stage). Instead, the people doing sign language were actually deaf-mute people. As such, it occupies a cross-pollinated hybrid space between a performance and a real-life demonstration of an alternative language system by those for whom it is a native tongue.

In the coming months, I will write further essays on the work of various visual artists (whether from Russia, the former Yugoslavia, Ukraine, or elsewhere in the former Eastern Bloc) who I see as having an “intermedia” quality to their work.

I had the opportunity to speak to the artist and ask him some questions about the work:

INTERVIEW WITH EGOR ROGALEV:

Andrea Liu: You mentioned how the 5 sign language interpreters in your performance were more like your collaborators, because you did not give them strict directions on what to do in the performance. You also remarked how because they were deaf, you communicated with them in meetings (to prepare the performance itself) mostly through writing. Can you say a little bit more about this?

Egor Rogalev: For me personally, the value of the performance itself has a lot to do with the process of working on it. It could not take place without the efforts of other people involved in it - especially the participants from the deaf-mute community who also take part in various amateur sign-language theatrical projects. That's why it's important for me to include the names of each of them, every time I talk about performance. And since the performance had no prior script and no rehearsals in the usual sense, I consider these people primarily as co-participants rather than actors or performers. Our 2 preliminary meetings can be described as sound checks, during which we together with Andrei Smirnov from the Theremin center and the participants checked how purity reduction and feedback works. I will talk more about this in the answer to the next question. The role of Andrey Smirnov in the technical realization of the performance I would like to single out separately and express my gratitude to him. A very important role in the realization of the performance was also played by Gennady Tikhenko, a disability activist who wrote several texts dedicated to the Leningrad deaf-mute cause. Thanks to him, I managed to find other participants for whom this traumatic event was also very important and for whom they really wanted to take part in speaking out about it. All of the preparatory meetings except the last one really took place without an interpreter and we had to use different ways of communication: lip-reading, writing on paper and so on. And a huge part of that was what I call the escalation of empathy.

Andrea Liu: As mentioned, the sounds made by the sign language interpreters gesticulating in front of the theremin were then “hardware processed” into vibrations (vibrations which you say were perceived more acutely by the deaf signers in the performance than hearing people). Can you explain how the theremin sounds were “hardware processed” into vibration? What did this entail? What were the final vibrations like? (Could they be felt in the entire room?) Were they noiseless or could you hear the vibrations?

Egor Rogalev: Theremin usually sounds pretty high pitched. In the essay, you point out that Theremin is an instrument that lacks tactile feedback, which is totally right. And initially, Andrei Smirnov and I had the technical challenge of transforming its sound for deaf-blind participants during the reading of the novel in order to provide this tactile feedback. For the reason that normal audio feedback is not available to them. This was realized by lowering one channel of sound to low-frequency vibrations that could be perceived not only by the ear, but also by the body, tactilely. Unfortunately the performance documentation doesn't convey it fully, but those vibrations filled the space and literally made it shake and tremble. But they could also be heard in the form of a low-high hum accompanying the usual, high pitched sound of the termenvox (theremin).

Andrea Liu: Your work has a high level of historical and cultural referentiality (in “Organ of Memory,” references include the “Leningrad Deaf Mute Affair” and How the Steel Was Tempered). Elsewhere for example, in one of your collages (not discussed in this essay), an image of a ballet dancer in the collage is a reference to how when President Yeltsin unleashed army tanks to fire on the Russian Parliament in 1993, the Russian State TV news switched to dead air and only showed the image of a ballet dancer. Do you think that a viewer who is not privy to these very precise historical references (in “Organ of Memory”) can still grasp (or engage with) the work?

Egor Rogalev: I think that, among other things, it's a great opportunity for the viewer to explore that context, dive into it in order to discover something new and important. That is, in a sense, to turn into an active researcher instead of a passive consumer of artistic products. I am grateful to some artists and certain artworks, that a similar transformation happened to me at some point. Although I need to mention that art is not sufficient for that alone. Also, I'm sure that many images (both auditory and visual) can end up outranking the context within which they were produced and by which they were conditioned. This means that they can refer to something important outside of the context in which they originated. And the image of a ballerina that you mentioned can be a perfect example of this, in my opinion.

Andrea Liu: In the panel you participated in called “The Art of Social Awkwardness” with Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi, Oskana Moroz, moderated by Polina Kolozaridi in 2020 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuxUv0MxcxI ), you stated in your presentation that, “Art itself, at least for me, is an experimental ground for trying and testing new languages and ways of expression and communication, which also proposes a constant transformation and reconfiguration of subjectivity”.

This struck me as a very optimistic view of art’s potential, perhaps echoing Kononchuk’s sweeping utopianism (about vibration as a catalyst for social change) in the roundtable. I myself am probably more aligned with a different person in your roundtable, Nikolai Smirnov—and his pessimism about art’s impotence. In the Syg.ma roundtable about your work, he comments:

“No one in the audience is going to learn or invent a new world language like the Gordin brothers' AO, everyone sits on chairs and consumes an emphasized spectacular spectacle. Contemporary art remains art in its production of the sensual form of familiar formats, and I'm not sure that's its strongest point.”

Akin to Nikolay Smirnov’s comments, I am more one to decry art’s impotence and its empty self-perpetuation (not referring to your piece)—than to ever make lofty claims about art’s ability to impact human subjectivity (for example: https://aup.e-flux.com/project/andrea-liu-top-ten-words-i-am-sick-of-seeing-on-artists-statements/ ). Where does your optimism about art come from? Egor Rogalev: First of all, I think many of those in the audience would disagree with Nikolay Smirnov that what happened can be described as a “spectacular spectacle”. Second, it seems to me rather absurd to deny that art participates in the formation of human subjectivity, since simply we've all been shaped in some way by books we've read, movies, visual art and theater pieces we've seen. And it's also hard to dismiss that every interesting artist or writer always develops his own language. Of course I can understand the frustration with a modern art system permeated with conformity, commodification and opportunism. But that inevitably raises a counter question: Isn’t it cynical to continue to participate in what, in the absence of any optimism, can be perceived as the accumulation and redistribution of symbolic and physical capital? I am glad that not all artists and cultural workers are infected with this pessimism and helplessness. And honestly, I don't see how one can engage in culture and art without the hope of their positive implementation and the possibility of transforming the existing institutional system. Andrea Liu: Speaking of Nikolay Smirnov’s comments, in reading the Syg.ma discussion around “Organ of Memory” (with commentary from Lera Kononchuk, Gennady Tikhenko, Nikolai Smirnov & Egor Sofronov), I was struck by how theoretically ambitious it was, with references from Brian Massumi to Hakim Bey to Derrida to Bernard Stigler to Paul B. Preciado to Kant (amongst many others). By contrast, for example, in New York, in an art journal like Artforum, typically perhaps 70% of an essay describes the work, maybe 20% is historical references, and at the end if you are lucky maybe 10% “theory” is sprinkled on top). But in the Syg.ma article, theory was really at the heart of how the 4 commentators conceived of your piece.

Also, I envied how much freedom they had (to not have to stick to any particular structure). For example, in Nikolai Smirnov’s response, he starts out with almost literary criticism of a book called Country of Anarchy, which then launches into philosophizing about utopia, which then leads to him giving historical commentary on the Russian avante garde. In an essay of 6 paragraphs, it is not until the 5th paragraph that he even mentions your work, “Organ of Memory.”

Thank you for answering my questions!

Footnotes:

(1)Stephen Montague, “Rediscovering Leon Theremin,” Tempo, New Series, No. 177 (June, 1991), 18.

(2) Joseph A. Paradiso and Neil Gershenfeld, “Musical Applications of Electric Field Sensing,” Computer Music Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), 71.

(3) Egor Rogalev with participation of Lera Kononchuk, Gennady Tikhenko, Nikolai Smirnov and Egor Sofronov. “Вибрация как оружие,” Syg.ma, August 4, 2019, https://syg.ma/@sygma/vibratsiia-kak-oruzhiie.

(4) Steve Goodman, Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. (Cambridge, MA: 2012), 35.

(5) Ibid, 21-22.

(6) Ibid, 109.

(7) « Sainte-Soline: Le Recit de notre reporter face aux mensonges du gouvernement » Blast, Le souffle de l’info, filmed March 25, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87iB6gnttAw

(8) Steve Goodman, Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (Cambridge, MA: 2012), 21.

(9) Ibid, 27.

(10) Ibid, 76.

(11) Ibid, 77.

(12) Ibid, xix.

(13) “Утопизм ограничения способностей: от стихийности к сознательности“ (Utopianism and Disability: From Spontaneity to Consciousness), Jonathan Platt, Around Art, filmed March 19, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUfKVcSFmR0

(14) Dick Higgins, “intermedia,” Leonardo, Vol 34, No 1 (2001), 49-50.

(15) Ibid, 51.