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beware! beware! anthropocene is on air is a new work by Russian artist Ivan Kurbakov presented for the first time in the digital space of OTO SOUND MUSEUM. On the occasion of the KLANG MOOR SCHOPFE festival (Gais, CH), Zaira Oram invited the artists Ivan Kurbakov and Axel Crettenand to realize a site specific installation inside one of the wooden farm houses located in the countryside of the village in Appenzell, where the festival takes place. In this context, the two authors have been developing a common project entitled DOOM DOOM DOOM (notes from the planetary garden) dedicated to the natural frame and the old structure that will host the installation from 31 August to 10 September 2023.
Listenable on the OTO SOUND MUSEUM digital platform, Ivan Kurbakov's sound piece beware! beware! anthropocene is on air is a spontaneous evolution of the dense sound research that accompanied the conception of the installation in the small rural house. For this composition, the artist asked several people of different ages to freely recite book titles from the library dedicated to the theme of the end of the world and the apocalypse conceived by Axel Crettenand. The reading – imagined and developed through a collaborative practice by both artists questioning the environmental problem and human knowledge – is introduced by a composition based on Samuel Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” and concluded by one based on a poem "Darkness" of Lord Byron. Both poems were published in 1816, the so-called year without a summer because of the deadly consequences of the eruption in Indonesia. The voices are finally elaborated into multi-layered compositions with sounds/field recordings of several natural phenomena such as erupting volcanoes, melting glaciers and storms collected by the artist. The words, rasped and spoken by the present generation, become a call and testimony of reactions-emotions that transpire through the use of voice. Like a beacon in the dark that intermittently illuminates, the voices of beware! beware! anthropocene is on air allow feelings of failure and hope to shine through.
Voice performers
Ouverture (kubla khan) - Keshav "Kuku" Kunal
part 1 - Leila Alieva
part 2 - Gleb Kochetkoff
part 3 - Nu Simakina
part 4 - Alexey Kokhanov
part 5 - Lena Goutkine and Martin Gius
darkness - Keshav "Kuku" Kenal
part 6 - Nina Nachkebia
Ivan Kurbakov
(b. 1989, Moscow) is currently based in Tbilisi, Georgia. He studied creative writing at the Literature Institute of Moscow and film directing at the Moscow School of New Cinema from which he graduated in 2016 with the film «Pleroma».
Ivan Kurbakov has been active as a solo musician and sound-artist since 2010. A number of tapes and CDs under the name mpala garoo and Ian Kubra were published between 2010 and 2020 on labels such as Sweat Lodge Guru (USA), Digitalis (USA), Aguirre Records (Belgium) and Shimmering moods records (Netherlands). In 2020 Kurbakov co-founded an art magazine dedicated to the symbiosis of arts with which he became a laureate of Garage.Digital 2021 program.
Screenings, exhibitions and performances were held at Madame Claude (2010, mpala garoo), FIDMarseille 2017 («Pleroma»), Iragui Gallery («9 paintings vaya adelante», 2020, Fabula Gallery («Mirrored music», 2019), Solyanka Gallery («Compositional map for a singing way», 2019), New Space of Nations Theatre (video installation «Things and directions», 2017), Platforms Athens, Electrotheatre, Gallery of Experimental sound and others.
In 2021 he made the documentary film Umbilical cord, an introduction interviewing young Russian teenagers about the pandemic and the possible futures. Currently working on a full-length feature of the above mentioned film.
Listenable on the OTO SOUND MUSEUM digital platform, Ivan Kurbakov's sound piece beware! beware! anthropocene is on air is a spontaneous evolution of the dense sound research that accompanied the conception of the installation in the small rural house. For this composition, the artist asked several people of different ages to freely recite book titles from the library dedicated to the theme of the end of the world and the apocalypse conceived by Axel Crettenand. The reading – imagined and developed through a collaborative practice by both artists questioning the environmental problem and human knowledge – is introduced by a composition based on Samuel Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” and concluded by one based on a poem "Darkness" of Lord Byron. Both poems were published in 1816, the so-called year without a summer because of the deadly consequences of the eruption in Indonesia. The voices are finally elaborated into multi-layered compositions with sounds/field recordings of several natural phenomena such as erupting volcanoes, melting glaciers and storms collected by the artist. The words, rasped and spoken by the present generation, become a call and testimony of reactions-emotions that transpire through the use of voice. Like a beacon in the dark that intermittently illuminates, the voices of beware! beware! anthropocene is on air allow feelings of failure and hope to shine through.
Voice performers
Ouverture (kubla khan) - Keshav "Kuku" Kunal
part 1 - Leila Alieva
part 2 - Gleb Kochetkoff
part 3 - Nu Simakina
part 4 - Alexey Kokhanov
part 5 - Lena Goutkine and Martin Gius
darkness - Keshav "Kuku" Kenal
part 6 - Nina Nachkebia
Ivan Kurbakov
(b. 1989, Moscow) is currently based in Tbilisi, Georgia. He studied creative writing at the Literature Institute of Moscow and film directing at the Moscow School of New Cinema from which he graduated in 2016 with the film «Pleroma».
Ivan Kurbakov has been active as a solo musician and sound-artist since 2010. A number of tapes and CDs under the name mpala garoo and Ian Kubra were published between 2010 and 2020 on labels such as Sweat Lodge Guru (USA), Digitalis (USA), Aguirre Records (Belgium) and Shimmering moods records (Netherlands). In 2020 Kurbakov co-founded an art magazine dedicated to the symbiosis of arts with which he became a laureate of Garage.Digital 2021 program.
Screenings, exhibitions and performances were held at Madame Claude (2010, mpala garoo), FIDMarseille 2017 («Pleroma»), Iragui Gallery («9 paintings vaya adelante», 2020, Fabula Gallery («Mirrored music», 2019), Solyanka Gallery («Compositional map for a singing way», 2019), New Space of Nations Theatre (video installation «Things and directions», 2017), Platforms Athens, Electrotheatre, Gallery of Experimental sound and others.
In 2021 he made the documentary film Umbilical cord, an introduction interviewing young Russian teenagers about the pandemic and the possible futures. Currently working on a full-length feature of the above mentioned film.
29th August – 31st October 2023
OTO SOUND MUSEUM constitutes an archive of sound works. The recognition and conservation of works of intangible nature is one of the missions that characterized the museum since its foundation. The presentation of soundscapes in the museum marks their entry into the collection, conceived as archive for consultation available to anyone interested.
beware! beware! anthropocene is on air, 2023
Ivan Kurbakov (1989, RU)
Listen in headphones,
possibly while you are in motion!
possibly while you are in motion!
00:00 / 54m 28s, sound
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