ART DISSOLVED INTO LIFE

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The music of the Russian composer Alexander Bakshi is constantly heard in the largest concert halls and at festivals in America and Europe, performed by outstanding musicians - Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica orchestra, a percussion ensemble ...

The music of the Russian composer Alexander Bakshi is constantly heard in the largest concert halls and festivals in America and Europe, performed by outstanding musicians - Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica orchestra, the Percussion De Strasbourg percussion ensemble, the Paragon chamber ensemble from Scotland, Gil Morgenstern and the US National Symphony Orchestra, Russian musicians Tatyana Grindenko and the ensemble "Academy of Early Music" Alexei Lyubimov, Mark Pekarsky and his ensemble of percussion instruments.

Alexander Bakshi also works a lot in the theater in collaboration with famous directors. So, the musical mystery "Polyphony of the World" for 90 participants from different countries (World Theater Olympiad in Moscow, 2001) was staged by him together with outstanding Russian masters - director Kama Ginkas and artist Sergei Barkhin. The play "From the Red Book" (International Sound Theater Festival, 2003) is the result of collaboration with director and artist of the theater "Shadow" Ilya Epelbaum and pianist Alexei Lyubimov. “Number in the hotel of the city NN” (TsIM), “Transformation” (TsIM together with the Satyricon Theatre), “Still Van Gogh” (Theatre-studio n / r O. Tabakov), “Overcoat” (“Contemporary”) were released Alexander Bakshi in collaboration with director Valery Fokin.

Like any artist, Alexander Bakshi reflects on the fate of art, he has his own concept of the development of art forms today.

Many people say that we live at the end of a certain cultural era.

- At the beginning of a new one, I would say so. The end of the old cultural era occurred in the 70s and 80s of the last century. Now I can firmly say that new principles have been formed.

Can you define these principles?

“First of all, the traditional for classical music, from Gluck to Penderecki, the space within the stage, the plane conditional space of art, has collapsed. When you sit in a concert hall, afraid to move, and listen to the revelations of a genius. Here, between the public and the listener, there is an invisible fourth wall.

At first, rock broke that wall between the musicians and the audience. At a rock concert, only security forces keep the crowd from mingling with the performers. Rock is no longer a monologue of a genius addressed to a silent audience. This is where the idea of ​​collective teamwork came from. By the end of the century, the Surround principle appeared, when the sound surrounds the audience from all sides. This is how the space of immersion appeared.

Actually, the same thing happened in all areas of culture. Have you noticed that the idea of ​​art as a "framed object" is gone? And that is why the work of actual artists excites much less than the work of designers - cars, telephones, umbrellas ... Futurists dreamed of art dissolved in life. Here we have survived.

The second principle on which classical art rested and without which it was impossible is the principle of correspondence between music and stage action. In classical opera, if there is a battle scene, then the music should be battle. If love, then accordingly lyrical. The same principle worked in the drama theater and in the cinema. And at the end of the 20th century, a strange phenomenon arose - a discrepancy. Music is about one thing, and the spectacle is about another. Even in the most mediocre Hollywood detectives, people are killed not under the ominous rustle of double basses, but under the gentle chime of bells.

Take any clip. In the spectacular series of songs about how Masha loves Pasha, there can be anything, with the exception of Masha and Pasha. We have become completely different people. We have learned to perceive parallel streams of information.

Consider, for example, the Zingaro Theatre. Under the "Symphony of Psalms" by Stravinsky, the art of horse dressage is demonstrated. And there are two parallel semantic series, which we calmly perceive. It doesn't annoy us. The ability to perceive two different streams of information has changed the principles of dramaturgy. Now the story is told to us not by the writer - the author of the play, but by several voices at the same time - by the artist, composer, architect, writer, choreographer ... This is polyphony, semantic polyphony.

- Polyphony, as I understand it, is your cardinal idea? And we saw this idea embodied in a very interesting, unusual performance "Polyphony of the World"?

- Yes. Monologic art is dead. Instead of one leading voice, many other equal voices emerged. Authorial art has been replaced by collaborative art. I don't understand when people talk about modern dramaturgy when they mean plays. A play, by definition, cannot be modern dramaturgy. Because the idea of ​​the play is to express everything through the text, and today this already ceases to work.

For me, modern dramaturgy is Martaller's play “The Beautiful Miller's Girl” after Schubert. Here the plot is born from the conflict between the spectacular sequence and the music. Or performances by Goebbels. He has just the least text, but there is music, video, scenography, light, and there is the simultaneous and parallel existence of different arts. And when they tell me that a play where everyone swears is modern dramaturgy, I find it funny. I don't think this is drama at all. Modern dramaturgy is a different way of telling stories. It seems to me that we are moving towards syncretism.

Another thing has appeared in contemporary art that was not in the classics. Dialogue with other cultures. Classical European culture does not know dialogue. It is all monologue and Eurocentric. Everything outside this cultural environment is outskirts, exotic. European culture was convinced that it was culture. By the way, both the great culture of China and the great culture of India were classified as underdeveloped.

And in the 20th century, a real dialogue of cultures appeared in jazz for the first time, black African rhythms penetrated into Western music. And I am convinced that racial equality became possible after jazz appeared.

In the last thirty or forty years, cultural geography has begun to approach real physical geography. Some other pattern is starting to emerge that didn't exist before. After all, classical art is authoritarian. It builds a model - "genius and the crowd." From authorship to authoritarianism is one step that humanity has taken during one 19th century. And it is no coincidence for me that Stanislavsky was only a few years older than Lenin. And Meyerhold - Stalin. The model of the director's theater, which was built by Stanislavsky and Meyerhold, does not coincide by chance with the model of an authoritarian state.

— Do you mean to say that the model of the director's theater is as outdated today as the model of the authoritarian state?

- The director's theater in the form in which we know it, of course, is dead. Now there is a mystery theater. It seems to me that we are moving towards a syncretic theater, towards a mystery.

“Many people talk about mystery. In particular, such a famous director as Anatoly Vasiliev. But I think that everyone understands mystery in their own way.

- Maybe yes. But if we talk about medieval mysteries, then they were played by the whole city. The mysteries were based on the Bible and all the townspeople participated in them. Mystery is an action that is not directed from the stage to the hall, but unites both participants and spectators. It deals with the vertical, that is, with God, with higher and lower forces. Angels, devils, and people act in it.

Today I feel a terrible longing for such a theatre. The theater that will unite everyone. It will not be designed for any one group of viewers, as is the case now. After all, we have art for intellectuals, pop music for the underdeveloped, art for grandmothers, and so on. Mystery, by its very definition, cannot be elitist theatre. This is a theater, as I said, designed for everyone.

We yearn for the myth. It is no coincidence that today there are groups of people who play Tolkien. There are whole games of Tolkienists. This has been happening in Moscow for many years. People gather in parks, on the streets. Thousands of people maintain gaming relationships over the years. The success of the Harry Potter book is no coincidence. Harry Potter is also played by children and adults.

- All these mass draws are very reminiscent of medieval carnivals. But in Russia there is no such carnival tradition. It survived only in Europe. In what forms do you see mystery performances? In the form of street theater?

- Maybe street. I dream of a theater that is designed for everyone: for children, adults, smart, stupid, middle managers, hairdressers ... There is something that unites us all. And these are some cultural myths in which we live. In any case, I feel that there is a metaphysical order for such art. Only under the new art one cannot understand the avant-garde that has died. From this already turns back.

All "isms" remained the property of the twentieth century. Any art that ends in "ism" makes me allergic and distrustful. Avant-gardism, minimalism, postmodernism. I can't hear it. This is all from communism, fascism. Pseudo-scientific terms. The new art will not be associated with any "isms".