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A triangular conversation between Andrei Andrianov, Oleg Soulimenko and
Jack Hauser.
Part of a performance at Tanzquartier Wien in the
framework of Correspondances, June 2,
2007.
Transcribed by David Ender.
Hauser: People say that the sun rises in the east and sinks in the west, everywhere. Is that right?
Soulimenko: I think it’s opposite now. Now everything goes more from west to east – ideas and lifestyle. I was quite surprised, like when you go to Russia ... everybody talks about the east, the Russian Soul. But after Perestroika, everybody wanted to do it in the European style.
Hauser: And the sun?
Soulimenko: I think it’s against nature.
Andrianov: Ideas go around against nature, in the opposite direction of the sun.
Soulimenko: In Russia there was a time when they tried to change the direction of a river.
Andrianov: A huge project where they wanted to change the direction of the main Siberian rivers. I don’t know for what purpose.
Soulimenko: They wanted to build power stations there.
Hauser: So it was only for economic reasons.
Andrianov: Now that I think about it, I cannot understand their motivation. How is it possible to do?
Hauser: But it didn’t work.
Soulimenko: It didn’t work. I think it worked for about three or four years, and then after some machinery broke it turned back again.
Hauser: We are working with powers which we do not really understand, like gravity. We use gravity every day, but we still don’t know where this power comes from.
Andrianov: A miracle. This also was a big scandal after a while. This information was open, and people said that they actually wanted to destroy our country. Some people said it was connected with the freemasons, that they wanted to destroy Russia. Then there came up a society called Memory – meaning memory of the great history of Russia –, and they said it was a provocation by freemasons. This was just before Perestorika.
***
Soulimenko: Today there was an interesting topic in this performance by the woman from Croatia. About laziness in the east.
Andrianov: Art and laziness. She said that real artists must be lazy. Western artists are not lazy. They are always busy and doing something. But eastern people can be real artists because they are so lazy.
Hauser: Do you agree?
Andrianov: Partly. The idea is interesting, it gives some impulse.
Soulimenko: Why is it interesting? Do you have the feeling that you can do good art if you’re lazy?
Andrianov: You now, it’s like a working concept. Maybe you don’t believe it, but it gives you some energy. When you think about this, artists are lazy and they can do something which you don’t really expect. Something unpredictable.
Hauser: Lazy is always suspicious.
Soulimenko: Well, Andrei, the last time I saw you was three or five years ago. You changed. Before you worked more with the concept of laziness, but now you don’t. I don’t see your interest in laziness any more. You’re more organised, you have more discipline, you can also work with other people more easily. And I also find this change in the east. For instance, there’s a big difference between Moscow and St. Peterburg. Artists in Moscow are very very busy, they work hard. And in St. Peterburg they mostly stay with the old ways: they suffer, they mustn’t have money, they should stay with art, do everything easy, not relate with society so much. So it’s a very peripheral feeling. When you go to a gallery, nothing moves there, nothing really surprises you anymore. But still people have the feeling they are artists. It’s more a style of living.
Andrianov: I think that my laziness changed because of a lot of professional work. At the theatre I always had to concentrate on some task ...
Soulimenko: Life pressure? It’s not so easy now to live with little money. Do you feel this has an influence?
Andrianov: Yes. Before it was much easier to live from nothing. You could live without too much effort or discipline. Continue somehow. But now it’s not possible anymore. Everybody has to think about how to earn money for living. Find a situation where they will be noticed. If you do nothing now you won’t be noticed, and then you’re lost. Even in Moscow.
Soulimenko: Lost in society. So you’re more dependent on society than before. But how else? For me it’s also interesting how I can live. The outsider, out of social context – I don’t know if that’s possible.
Andrianov: Go to a monastery?
Hauser: For me these are two different things. When you say that you’re more organised now, that you have more money, make a living out of your profession. The other thing is that you want to be part of the society.
Andrianov: That’s right. But society also pushes you.
Soulimenko: A lot of my friends in Moscow want to be part of society on the one hand. If they are performers or dancers, they want to perform at festivals, but they don’t want to sell themselves. They want to stay authentic. But actually there’s not so much room now for this, for performing for people. They still want an audience, but the structure is different now.
Andrianov: Another thing is that it’s also connected with the situation in performance. How people work with presence. I understand that it’s very popular now to stay on the stage and do nothing. Not move, not dance – this has become a very important idea.
Hauser: Is it fancy?
Soulimenko: I don’t think it’s fancy, just a popular idea in certain fields.
Andrianov: For me this is somehow connected with the social situation. Can you do nothing, really be lazy, do nothing, and just be present? But also the situation pushes you, and time is going on anyway. You’re getting older, you’re ageing. Even if you do nothing, you’re just ageing, and finally you die. Not caring about time, not caring about anything, not about your situation in society ... Before, that was easier for me. Time is changing.
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Andrianov: In the end, you yourself create your pressure.
Soulimenko: But I think it doesn’t just come from inside. It also reflects what comes from outside.
Hauser: Of course, if society wasn’t like this, it might be different. The sideways of the road are not so easy to walk anymore like they were in the seventies. The mainstream really is very successful. Even in the most experimental work, or in the diverse music styles everything is already so ... I’m really questioning it. Is it my age or am I really sensing something which for me is quite an unhealthy situation?
Andrianov: For me it’s also a question of motivation. What is the motivation of people when they are doing some kind of art performances? What is my motivation? I cannot answer this question. Maybe it’s different for everybody, maybe not. Maybe there’s two or three main ideas why people are doing this. But I think the motive of action is one of the main questions.
Soulimenko: I see no other motivation than money for survival now. The economical motivation has become very strong in everything, even in social context, and I don’t see another resource. But I don’t feel bad about this, you know. For our generation in Russia money never was the main issue. But now it moves art.
Andrianov: It sounds somehow pornographic, but what can we do? This is pure money. But it’s a personal question for every artist, I think. Then it becomes interesting. You see this person answering this question, this one, this one, then it creates a kind of field. But what else? What I saw before, in the seventies and eighties in the Soviet Union, the motive of what we were doing was not the main issue, but now there is a big confusion.
Soulimenko: It was not so present in the Soviet Union because it was not so easy to get money.
Andrianov: In the SU, theatre stars had a completely different life from normal persons, normal society. They could travel, they could go to Europe, they had money, were very well known. Millions of people knew them. The theatre was kind of a substitute for religion.
Hauser: Aristocracy.
Andrianov: Yes, art aristocracy.
Hauser: What was your motivation to start performing?
Andrianov: Let me remember ... I think it was quite a romantic idea. First I was captivated by the image of dance movements, the image of those people who were like stars for me. They were like rock music stars, breaking all borders. They were breaking my picture of the world, doing something which was not in the mainstream of Soviet culture. Then I decided that this was what I really wanted to do. I wanted to be like them. To be free from this image of the kolkhoz. I wanted to be like a hippie.
Soulimenko: At the time it was like a grey mass of people, and you wanted to find your identity, to be an individual. So people found a personality where they could go – they tried to be like hippies, to be more outsiders, or they tried it with art, to become special. It was an unconscious decision why I started doing those things. But in the first three or four years I felt very special – like you understand something which other people don’t understand. I remember going on stage and feeling „I’m special, not part of this grey mass ...“
Andrianov: Especially when one is young this gives one some kind of energy. Like drugs.
Hauser: You mean: My father drank vodka, I’m doing dance!
Andrianov: My father and my grandfather were scientists. Now I understand that they had a fantastic life, they were really interesting people.
Soulimenko: But you didn’t want to enter this fantastic life.
Andrianov: No, I didn’t. I wanted to do something else. When I finished my education there was already emptiness around. No reason to do any scientific research, no reason to do anything, just stagnation. Brezhnev. And then Brezhnev died. That was okay, Brezhnev dead, all finished, you can do whatever you want. Andropov, then another one, then another one, then Gorbatchev, finally Jelzin ... Everything open, you can travel. I think we were lucky because we caught this moment when they opened the borders. Also, European countries were very open for such crazy guys like us!
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