Emigrant School | Colta.ru

The full -scale war of Russia with Ukraine seriously changed the Russian cultural landscape: the intellectual and art communities were confronted with a choice - to continue to work in the conditions of actually military censorship in the Russian Federation or go on exile. It is already obvious that the departure of cultural figures from Russia after February 24, 2022 became the most significant in scale after the emigration of the civil war, exceeding the volume of the second and third waves of the “cultural” emigration. Under these conditions, the editorial office of Kolita considered it necessary to give the floor to those who continued the work within the country. Today we publish the texts of authors living outside the Russian Federation and reflecting their experience.

1

I left Russia in March 1992 to study thanks to the support of the conductor Mikhail Yurovsky, according to whose recommendation I received a five years of study in Germany. From 1992 to 2003, I studied and built my career exclusively in Europe. Since 2005, when a new discourse of modern music began to take shape in Russia, and interest in it grew with it, gradually I began to work in Russia. In 2006, I had the first major order in my homeland - for the territory "Territory" festival just founded by Theodor Kurentzis and Kirill Serebrennikov. My projects in Russia arose thanks to the enthusiasm of my two colleagues - Boris Filanovsky, who built a whole system of concerts, contests and lectures, and Dmitry Kurlandsky around the Artist Institute in St. Petersburg, who set himself the task of attracting colleagues who left for work in Russia and did everything to overcome the departure between colleagues in metropolis and emigrants.

From 2011 to 2015, I worked in Russia as a curator, first of all, I was engaged in the direction of the “Music” of the Platform project with Serebrennikov and the small festival “Difficulties of translation” in the Club “Workshop”. Actually, the culmination of my Russian career can be considered 2012, when the premiere of the opera Francis was held in parallel with the “platform” at the Bolshoi Theater. Since the cultural life in Russia was increasingly controlled by the state, and I was not very restrained in the comments on domestic and foreign policy, since 2015 curatorial projects in Russia have stopped offering, on the other hand, current orders in Germany required more and more attention, so I increasingly came to Russia for certain executions and master classes, and for personal reasons. At the same time, it was clear that no matter how the state was trying, the culture managed to maintain some autonomy. Large private funds appeared that supported modern music, and at the same time, lower -scale projects began to develop in new unusual spaces, modern music went to galleries and theaters. Until the very beginning of the war with Ukraine, art remained in Russia a zone of relative freedom, but the main motivation to work in Russia for me was a sense of long -term investment in the future and the possibility of influence on the context. The feeling of interaction with smart, courageous, enthusiastic people determined my perception of Russia at this time. In parallel with this, I had more and more work in Europe, I wrote for ensembles and orchestras, finally a really large project arose-opera on the texts of Svetlana Aleksievich in the Stuttgart Opera, which premiered before Lokdown in February 2020. It was normal for me to live between Russia and Germany and feel in both countries at home.

A separate stage in the understanding of the country in which I was born became several theatrical projects that we implemented with Marat Gatsalov in Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk and Perm. When you work in the theater, you need to live in the same city for several weeks and find a common language with people that you have never seen before. You are imbued with the atmosphere of the city and begin to love its local characteristics, landscape, features of local speech and toponymy. This experience helped me get rid of some common ideas, according to which life in Russia is divided into metropolitan luxury and devastation in the field. Everywhere I met smart, active, independent and interesting people. I especially fell in love with Perm, where the memory of the cultural revolution was still alive and attention and interest in complex art were preserved. I saw in these cities a lot of interesting bottom initiatives and understood that if you can’t press the province from the center, it could bloom much more and surprise many people.

At the same time, the development of the political situation in Russia did not cause me much optimism. Since 2019, censorship has intensified, and the state began to try to drive artists into reconstructed Soviet institutions like the composers Union. The ultimate goal was clear - to put artists in total material and ideological dependence on the state. At first, this caused only a grin, the rhiza of cultural life in Russia was so rich and complex that even with a great desire the state could not forbid anyone, colleagues immediately offered the work that fell into disgrace. But the pressure increased all the time. And simultaneously with the pressure of independent artists, they increasingly tried to buy, distributing generous state aids and involving in different pseudo -naval projects. Cases of raider seizure by the state of independent formats have become more frequent-for example, a state festival with the name and design of the once existing independent could suddenly appear. In December 2021, this happened with the Festival of Alternative, once founded by Alexei Lyubimov. Or entire theater festivals were canceled by a call from the FSB, referring to the covid rules (Remput, Perm) or sent their leadership to prison under a far -fetched pretext (“Access point”, Petersburg). The Kiriyenko administration built a clear and understandable narrative of modern, but safe art, devoid of political reflection, which, on the contrary, was subjected to severe censorship.

The culmination of this policy was pricked up events like a Russian creative week and a bonus of the same name, in which modern artists were assigned the role of a decorative ornament in the general picture of the country's bright future. It is clear that the power and diversity of Russian cultural life was not exhausted by this decorative facade and in many areas - before the start of the war and even after its beginning - there was a place for political reflection and even protest statements, but the development vector was obvious.

I realized that my whole life in Russia should now be built so that at any moment it would be possible to just come with a suitcase to the airport and fly away - which, in fact, happened on February 25, 2022. The most gloomy time seemed to me the last months before the start of a full -scale war, when the pressure on the artists and at the same time attempt to bribe them by the state reached the climax. I understood that the war would begin soon and that in the next, 2022, my life and all my friends would change irreparably. Every day I read the news about building troops on the border with Ukraine and the joyless forecasts of analysts. This painful inevitability of evil acted on the nerves. Memorial was closed in Moscow, on one of the last days of his work, I went there to the presentation of the Berlin writer Katya Petrovskaya and wrote down the video with his friends in defense of this institution. Simultaneously with the closure of the "Memorial", the "GESS-2" was opened. The opening was given by New Zealand oysters with black caviar, and the Icelandic conceptualist Ragnar Kyartansson, the main resident of the new museum, stood in socks in a chair and sang in the "Moscow Regions" in Icelandic. Kyartansson shot in Moscow the first hundred episodes of Santa Barbara with Russian actors-in the museum booklet this was described as a decolonization project. Already in early February, I met an employee of the GEC-2, who was already in whose difficult, say, the task was to check the original Santa Barbara script for compliance with Russian law. And the girl complained to comply with the legislation, it was very difficult - there there is continuous homosexuality, propaganda of suicide, and besides, everyone is regularly in a coma.

2

At the end of January 2022, I sat in a Berlin bar with a friend from Kyiv named Victor and another friend who worked in large American media. “Tomorrow we are evacuating our office from Kyiv to Lviv along with all banks and embassies,” my American friend said. The war, he added, will begin at the end of the second decade of February, at the latest at the beginning of the third decade, after Putin returns from Beijing. Until February 10, you can still go to Russia, he said, and after the 14th-it is better not to. And the war to last, he completed his forecast, there will be three days, to which the Kiev friend Victor said vigorously and said that Ukrainians would fight and three days would not be limited. After this conversation, I called my daughter to Kyiv and asked to leave the country. She objected that she had business left until February 14, and in general, she wanted to go to the Carpathians to the weekend. On February 14, most European airlines interrupted the air traffic with Ukraine.

3

I calculated the days, trying to understand whether I had the last window left when I could go to Moscow on business. I had to write music for a large performance in Contemporary, the first edition of the Turbin Days. After the outbreak of war, this project was canceled by itself - in Moscow it became impossible to staging a play about the defense of Kyiv, which at that moment took place almost on the air. And in Kyiv itself, this play also lost its relevance a little, let's not forget who defends Kyiv in it and from whom. I had almost canceled the trip when I found out that the Stuttgart opera paid me a ticket from Moscow to Stuttgart on March 3, 2022. So in the evening of February 23, I was in St. Petersburg. I did not like the atmosphere in the city right away, first of all I saw a fight in the subway. Boris Grebenshchikov, who had a concert that day, later said in one interview that he felt on February 23 in St. Petersburg, as in Munich of the 39th. I don’t know if such a comparison is legitimate, but there was something heavy and sinister in the air. Before going to bed, I again talked with my daughter in Kyiv and found out that the runways of Ukrainian airports was burned with tractors to prevent the landing of the Russian landing. Early in the morning, with her family and a cat, she drove by car towards Vinnitsa, and a week later - further to Lviv.

4

After reading the 24th news in the morning, the first thing I bought for Aeroflot miles a ticket for the penultimate flight of Petersburg-Berlin on the morning of February 25. Then I called the editorial office of the German magazine Van Magazin and said that I would gather the stitches of Russian musicians against the war. Many wrote-from the 92-year-old conductor Leo Marquis to very young colleagues. It was a week of anti -war letters: from the Union of Winemakers to the Union of Clows - everyone spoke out against the war. The largest anti -war appeal, written, seems to be Lev Ponomarev, collected a million two hundred and eighty -three thousand signatures. Today they rarely remember this. Then I went to the city. People withdrew money from foreign exchange bills, a gloomy excitement reigned. I cut my hair and went by taxi to the Radio House, where I had a rehearsal of a small play. Several familiar musicians with the same exclamation “fucked” rushed towards me, everyone was extremely depressed. The sounds of my own music reassured me somewhat, I went out to take a walk through the caravan along Rubinstein, remembering all the details of my beloved city, after which I spent the whole evening with friends who went to a demonstration to the living room, said goodbye to Petersburg and flew away to Berlin.

5

From the first days of the war, I felt great support from German colleagues, musicians, my publisher. In the staging of my opera on Aleksievich in Stuttgart, the main party was performed by the main part of the main part of the main part, the main Ukrainian singer living in Switzerland, renewed after a covid pause. After the performance, we talked all evening, without restraining emotions, and agreed to continue to work together. And before the start of the performance, the director of the opera Viktor Shoner, we went on stage and uttered a small speech in German and Ukrainian, which I once taught in the second and third grade when I lived with my grandmother in Yevpatoria. The meaning of the speech was that a couple of years ago, when we released the performance, the books of Aleksievich seemed to be some incredible exaggeration, condensing, manipulation. And now they do not seem anymore.

On March 15, returning from Klagenfurt, where I had a small lecture, I called a friend and colleague M. to Kyiv. M. was sitting on the balcony in his apartment on the left bank of the Dnieper and watched on the air defense horizon knocking down Russian missiles. He said that more than bombing, he was strained by the inability to work in a martial law, and therefore sometimes he and his friends give underground concerts - bypassing the commandant’s commandant. He also said that every day he was called orchestras and ensembles from Europe and ask for scores. “Where they used to be,” M. thoughtfully commented on the actions of European institutions.

6

Many of my colleagues said that at the beginning of the war they could not work because of a stupor and depression. It was the work that saved me. Fortunately, not one of my projects in Europe has abolished, moreover, new ones appeared. The need to write and withstand deadlines, and re -organize her life in new financial circumstances kept me in good shape.

As for Russian projects, I didn’t even need to cancel anything, because most of the things invented before the war were simply impossible in military censorship. Somewhere, as in the "Days of the Turbins", the plot was banned, somewhere-the author (playwright Mikhail Durnenkov after the wish of the defeat of the Russian army on his Facebook was first banned in Russia, then, for diversity, in Lithuania). In addition, since March 2022, most European publishing houses, and mine, also stopped supplying notes in the Russian Federation, which, on the one hand, saved me from moral dilemmas, but on the other hand, sharply limited the potential opportunities for cooperation with friends and colleagues, in whose position I was sure and who were dearly dear to me. It became clear that we live in the new world of conventions and restrictions and asking about their expediency is useless. At the same time, from German, and not only, colleagues and musicians, I received full support. Friends constantly asked if I had money, work and whether they can help with something.

7

My musician friends began to move to Berlin, first from Ukraine-we, together with German friends, found different scholarships and residence, and some simply settled with friends, and then from Russia. The most quickly reacted to the war the theater, the most sensitive type of art. Almost all the key figures of the Russian theater scene in two months moved from Russia to Berlin and walked around the city to varying degrees of confusion. With rare exceptions, no one was waiting for them and did not meet. Those who remained in Russia were completely isolate, regardless of their beliefs and an articulated civil position. The director Zhenya Berkovich, who remained in Russia because of the two adopted daughters, first abolished the tour of her small private theater in Lithuania, and then the tour of the Finist Yasny Falcon, planned as part of the Radar Ost festival in Berlin for February 2023. “Well, you understand,” the Berlin Theater official told me when Berkovich was arrested a year later, “I could not release her in the same festival with Ukrainians.”

8

On March 22, in the Berlin Hotel Ritz-Carleton, at the presentation of the German author’s music awards of the German copyright society of the minist of culture, Claudia Roth, paying tribute to the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people, expressed support and opposition Russians, summarizing: “There will be no keanceeling in my house.” I went up to her and thanked her for her speech, and after a couple of hours I found an invitation to the chancellram to meet with European writers in my mailbox. The Chancellor’s office struck me with gigantic dimensions, he resembled the team center of some villain of James Bond films. During the discussion, the famous German prose writer Daniel Kelman, speaking of intellectuals who left Russia after the outbreak of war, reminded those present of the fate of Feikhtwanger, who, after his flight from fascist Germany, was first interned to the camp as a German. “Let's not repeat the mistakes of the Second World War,” he said. After the debate, we discussed the situation with one of the deputy Frau companies. It was clear that a wave of educated, talented, motivated people from Russia poured into Europe and that Germany had no ideas at all, how to react to this. As I later found out, it was at this meeting with the Chancellor that the idea of ​​humanitarian visas for Russians sounded for the first time.

“They all the time demand that I forbid someone,” said Ms. Roth. - And I can’t even ban the concert for May 9, this is not included in the circle of my tasks. In fact, it would be nice to invite Pussy Rait here, to invite to the chancleramt, ”added Frau Mineriner.

On a huge wall right next to the balcony, where we talked, portraits of all German leaders hung, starting with Adenauer. Right opposite us, a huge portrait of Gerhard Schroeder of the work of Jorg Immandorf was hung with gold. A few pink pastys peered out from behind his shoulder. Another silhouette of a hunched over -paste, symbolizing the artist himself, was decorated with the right corner. “We are sitting and thinking what to do with it now,” the assistant minister said, catching my gaze.

9

Many emigrants who have long left, who have still felt very confident in the European context, and the meaning of life has finally appeared with the war. They always said and warned for a long time, and they understood everything back in 1988, unlike those who left later, and accused those who left the war on the war with the regime and privileges. Against the backdrop of horror and numbness of the first weeks of the war, half -forgotten figures appeared in the media space, which had long lost contact with Russia, and sometimes with reality. All these Sysoi Paphtyvichi and McDonalds Karlovichi, of which there were no heard about for a long time, with the beginning of the war were wildly revived and at first timidly, and then more and more confidently began to get used to the role of leaders of opinions.

Both people who had left for a long time, and the newly resettled a rather naive consideration arose that their departure should somehow be labeled, identify a distance with Russia and declare to the whole world a break with the past, so that, God forbid, someone does not identify them with Russia.

In addition to the obvious uselessness of this strategy - those who wanted to see the Putin regime and the hidden or obvious imperialists in newly arrived beneficiaries, it was impossible to change the optics, and those who were able to distinguish the Putinist from an independent artist or opposition, did not need symbolic actions - it gave rise to an avalanche of awkward gestures. People changed their names, switched on social networks to English, wrapped in any reason in yellow-blue banners with a message to the Russian ship. All these gestures of demonstrative solidarity, at first completely understandable, soon became even in many of my Ukrainian friends and colleagues to cause some awkwardness.

It is clear that in addition to symbolic gestures, there was also active help. Once, at the Berlin’s main station, I met a famous St. Petersburg art critic K., who systematically, a shift for a shift received refugees from Ukraine at a temporary accommodation point. Five trains came from Poland a day, each of them had 300-400 refugees. Volunteers worked for days, burned out. Then there were fewer refugees, but the volunteers did not decrease work. Many of my friends collected money for generators and evacuation and sanitary machines, placed Ukrainian refugees at home, or helped them overcome the horrors of the German bureaucracy.

10

On April 20, 2022, the artist Vadim Zakharov, who left Russia in 1989, came out in front of the closed Russian pavilion in Venice with the poster I Protest Geinst Russia's Propaganda and Russian Invasion Which Led to ukine <...> I am ...> I am Standing Here in Front of Russian Pavillion Against the War and Against Russian Government's Cultural Ties ” [∗] . The artist really represented Russia in Biennal in Venice in 2013, but it is clear that his personal ties with Russian cultural institutions, and even more so with the Russian government, had long been rudimentary.

Two days later, the famous Ukrainian-Israeli artist Zoya Cherkasskoy responded to this gesture on a parody post on her Facebook:

“I, an Israeli artist, have been living in Israel all my life in Russia, I have never been in Russia, and with a risk to life I renounce cooperation with the cultural institutions of Russia because I can’t be silent and then I was not silent! And everyone who reads this post is collaborators and quilted jackets! ”

Later, the same Zakharov called in an interview with Andrei Arkhangelsk Russian art to a creative pause.

“Maybe you should think and be silent - what did we do wrong? .. Maybe now is it not the time to artists headlong to participate in all these vernissages? And the writers may shut up for at least a year? .. Russian culture should learn to be silent. But I'm talking about creative silence, and not about civil silence. "

A similar look, it seems to me, sins false innocence, because it implies the attitude to art classes, as a hobby, as to something that can be done, but you can do not. Or, if we admit that art is still a profession, the proposal of “shut up” involves a ban on a profession on a national basis-an idea that is difficult to justify any good goal. Of course, in democratic systems for supporting art, there is concern for equal access to the opportunity to speak out among a variety of artists. But as if the democratic system in which we live, I care about quotas and a proportional representation for all participants in the art process, it is impossible to support some artists to the detriment of others. The very thought that someone in art can occupy someone's place or that this place can be given up to someone is deeply naive. As the outstanding Ukrainian multiplier Alexander Tatarsky, author of the “plasticine raven” said in one of the early interviews: “Art is not a single machine.” The evolution of each artist is the result of interaction with the context, sometimes favorable, and sometimes not. Someone else can not go for you or, speaking metaphorically, doing art, you do not play a monopoly, you cannot transfer the chips of other players to the position in which you are, and you yourself cannot take a nobody position. Each artist presents first of all himself, and the elements of the culture that formed it may be present in his works, but may not. Or there may be several of these crops, as, for example, with Cheslav Milos, Bruno Schulz, Ilya Kabakov or Igor Stravinsky. Therefore, most likely, it should not be silent not Russian culture, no matter what we understand by this extremely blurred concept, but commentators who unite artists on a national basis and distribute advice to them.

11

The war destroyed social networks. The very idea of ​​the friendlies, in which the events and experiences of people from different points of the globe are brought together, turned out to be crushed by the war. When we see notes of a person hiding from shelling in the basement, and nearby - a man sitting in a bar or on the beach, any reader has a feeling of tangible, visible injustice. A sense of injustice gives rise to anger, anger is accumulated with dozens of reposts. So shitstorm occurs. There were people generating shitstorm and gliding like surfer on the wave of their initiated popular anger. Social networks turned into a rage car. The fear of Shitsttorm began to determine many decisions not only in cultural policy, but also in foreign policy. At the same time, one should not forget that shitstorm, in fact, is not a tool of democracy. He has neither a goal nor legal framework - he is self -sufficient. Any network dispute, like a village, pulls a train of dirt and senseless generalization, any virtual indignation that began with the best intentions, alas, there are always their beneficiaries.

To understand in which world I live, I began to read books about the end of the Second World War. One of the books that help me survive this year was Deutschlandbericht [German report] of the famous German playwright Karl Tsukmeier. Tsukmeyer emigrated from Europe in 1939, became a US citizen and returned to Germany immediately after the war as a consultant to the American military administration. Deutschlandbericht is a report written in 1946 on the instructions of the Ministry of Defense of the United States of America. Describing the post -war denazification, Tsukmeier writes:

“Among the witnesses of the accused [in relations with the Nazis. - S.N.] You can observe protectionism, nesting and intimidation. Among the witnesses of the accusation, malicious self -interest prevails. Currently, the prosecution has neither time nor funds for a full -fledged investigation, there are not enough staff. ”

Another quote, and also about denazification:

“In Austria, in early 1946, the next sad joke was told. A certain master comes to the police and says: “Hello, I would like to register.” Police: “Yes, of course, what happened?” Man: “The fact is that I am a Nazi.” Police: “Well, man, you had to come and a year and a half ago.” Man: “A year and a half ago, I was not a Nazis yet ...”. ”

12

Not so long ago, I thought about what the music of Messiana, written in the prisoner of war camp, and the things of the military period of Karl Amadeus Hartman, the main internal emigrant of the German musical scene prohibited by the Nazis and after the war founded the Musica Viva concert series, one of the most important musical institutions in Germany. I came to the conclusion that the music written in isolation under the English bombs in Munich and the music written in the camp in Bautzen have some elusive similarity, namely, its restrained character, steming from the impossibility of authors to influence their fate. All year I found the features of this stoic restraint and the protest expression directed inside in the best samples of music that came to me from Russia. Perhaps I can say that I really loved this music. It is clear that we are only talking about two or three authors, for a long time, but in the conditions of war and censorships that suddenly rose to a very high level of reflection and understanding of what was happening and were able to translate this reflection into sound. I saw photos of home exhibitions and events in small galleries, articulating shock from the war and the experience of war crimes. I read very powerful poems, for one of the poems - Dima Gerchikov, who struck me deeply, I even wrote a small vocal thing.

I am convinced that in the post -war reality, this attempt to analyze a disaster made by artists both inside and from the outside of Russia will be appreciated. The sadness, however, is that information about any artistic gesture requires curatorial attention, amplification, support, analysis. Moscow conceptualism, born in no less sinister conditions, owes the worldwide glory to the philosopher and art historian Boris Groys. Whether the artists who managed to create a reflective, epic, protest art in Russia will someday have its own Grois, which could convey their statement to the world today-it can only be guessed.

13

“Everyone fucked, but everything is different,” Lev Iosifovich Marquis woefully summed up the current state of minds during our only short meeting in August 2022 in The Hague. Incredibly vital in his 92 years, this amazing person, the founder of Amsterdam Sinfonietta supported many colleagues and friends with his life and wisdom. Each of us had dozens of funny and encouraging messages from him, he sent records of rare performance, funny photos, just stickers and was always ready for a restrained and meaningful dialogue. He was endlessly curious and until the end of his life loved to read unfamiliar scores, preferring visual impressions of the auditory - from old age his right ear transmitted a signal of tone higher than the left to the brain, which is why any music became politicalnaired. Lev Iosifovich spent a huge part of his life in Georgia and complained that he would never see his beloved country again. “For starters,” he said, breaking his hands, “I just won’t endure all these stairs and climbs in Tbilisi.”

Most of his comments on the current situation broke off in the inevitable - "I will say nothing." This is “silent” - against the backdrop of an endless revealing eloquence that determined the information background of the last year - it was the main lesson I received in a year, and indeed, inevitable non -perch, not in creativity, but in a discussion field, has become the norm for many people who are experiencing pain, but not ready to fight with network demons for every comma.

In the Hague, Lev Iosifovich lived on Malakkastraat Street. He called his place of residence familiar - Malakhovka. Sometimes he posted fantasy photos “from Malakhovka” - mountains, meadows and waterfalls. Probably, now in his heavenly malakhovka he looks at us, nonsense, and regrets the time that we spend on nonsense.

Against the backdrop of universal bitterness and loss of meanings, Lev Iosifovich and several more people of his generation, such as Nuria Schenberg or Helmut Lahenmann, gave me lessons of restraint and interaction with the rigid reality in which we found ourselves. In the ideal world, in his heavenly Malakhovka, he, who left Russia back in 1981, could open something like the courses of noble girls for unfortunate and lost emigrants, something like a network of network and ordinary communication. It would be a school of emigrants where people would be taught some alphabetical truths.

That gloating is not good.

That identity is not a product and not a privilege.

That the place of residence does not make us morally, and even more smarter.

That everyone will have to talk to each other when the war is over.

That this emigration may not be the last.

That we are all mortal.

When I grow up, I would like to learn something from Lev Iosifovich and his peers. In the meantime, it remains only, following him, to be silent and observe the development of events.

[∗] “I protest against Russian propaganda and Russian invasion, which led to war in Ukraine. <...> I speak here, before the Pavilion of Russia, against the war and against the cultural ties of the Russian government. "