Choiring. Vocal performance

A vocal performance as part of the exhibition When Gondola Engines Were Taken to Bits.

This is a collective ritual of mourning as a new form of solidarity where the viewer can choose the role of participant or observer. “Khorevaniye” (“Choir-ning”) is a neologism that combines the Russian words for “chorus” and “mourning”. The performance gives space to feelings that have been excluded from the pure positive orientation of modern social life, where traditional collective rituals — religious, folk and historical — are less and less present. The authors of the vocal performance propose the reinstatement of mourning in the public space as a ritual practice.

The artists use lamentation as a way of breaking rules and transcending the boundaries between personal and rational. Performers and the viewer are transported to another level of experience. The voice passes from one participant to another, while the overall sound continues uninterrupted, gradually intertwining into a single broad canvas of collective lamentation.

Quotes from Oksana Timofeeva’s book How to Love a Homeland are used in the performance. The authors would like to thank Keti Chukhrov, Svetlana Adoniova, Alexei Yurchak and Madina Tlostanova for their texts which inspired the team during the creation of the performance.

Choiring, 2021

Anna Semenova-Ganz, Maria Markina

Sound artist: Varvara Pavlova (Lisokot)
Visual artist: Anna Braude
Artists: Taras Burnashev, Elena Drozdova, Ekaterina Kuznetsova, Zarina Makasheva, Maria Markina, Denis Okhotnikov, Nyu Simakina, Polina Talalaeva, Anna Ustyakina

Commissioned by V-A- C Foundation