«The Piece as a Passage»
On the Parisian World Premiere of Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU Project
How do you produce a piece which, at the moment of its release, consists of 13 feature films, which at the same time only represent a single facet of a larger artistic project that was connected to a three-year installation by an artistic gated community on the outskirts of Kharkiv, and with its own internet portal, publication and merchandising series. IlyaKhrzhanovsky’s DAU project was initially a unique social experiment whose »by-product” is approximately 700 hours of film material. In essence, Kharkiv served as a location for an experimental society whose members led their lives under the conditions of the Soviet Union between 1938 and 1968 – they actually were and are renowned mathematicians, theologians and artists who lived, researched and practiced their occupations alongside laborers, security guards and street cleaners. They did so in a collective journey through time that took them through three decades of painstakingly reproduced Soviet history – from the great terror during the world war and the subsequent thaw.
Originally, Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky wanted to film the life of Russian physician Lew Landau (also called Dau) – the only Soviet Nobel Prize winner – based on a screenplay by Vladimir Sorokin. He had a scientific »institute” built in Kharkiv that was based on the one Landau once actually worked at. This set became a living space situated between social reality and aesthetic fiction for the up to 400 casted »inhabitants” and their international star guests. Soon, the filming began to be freely improvised based on circumstances orchestrated by the director, all within this imposing set the size of two football fields. From 2008 to 2011, head camera operator Jürgen Jürges wandered around the set with a single 36 mm camera filming everything that took place in front of him, without repeating a single take.
This social experimental backdrop is significant for the world premiere of this work at the beginning of this year in Paris because here, too, it is not only a series of films being shown, but a kind of special zone in the center of the French capital city is once again being created that is not entered like a cinema or a theatre but as if it were a different country. Therefore, instead of purchasing tickets for DAU in Paris, the guests were issued VISAS.
A parallel reality had been created behind the wall of the shooting location with its own rules, language typical of the respective Soviet era being played out, own newspapers, radio programs and an own science research institute, and the same was to take place in Paris. This took place in two buildings, the Theatre de la Ville and Theatre Chatelet, as well as the DAU outpost at the Centre Pompidou, though at a smaller scale than originally foreseen. Only friends of the artists were invited on the opening day; however, the installations were not yet completed and the Theatre Chatelet continued to be closed to the public for almost a week. Nonetheless, each day offered more and more of the originally planned program: concerts, the DAU films, lectures by international academics, shamanistic sessions, contributions from artists including Brian Eno, Teodor Currentzis and Sasha Waltz. Visitors moved around in a complete artistic environment that seemed to be immersed in a dark atmosphere, surrounded by security guards, as alien as a sectarian regime that concurrently presented artistic pieces and living conditions of great intensity and intelligence.
On the set in Kharkiv, people spent weeks and months in meticulously custom-fit replicas of historical clothing; they were given appropriate haircuts, Soviet passports and rubles, followed Soviet-style eating habits, adhered to antiquated diction and grew accustomed to the presence of an own secret security service. Over the almost three years of filming, the team surrounding Khrszhanovsky created a system of artificially maintained Soviet normality. All of this led to the people – under the intellectual, emotional and social rules of the time –suddenly doing things that fell under their own current, spontaneous behavior that was prescribed by no one but that could leave behind familiar boundaries at any time and reflect intensively. The behavior at this location was fulfilled by a peculiar tension, since on the one hand this was all only »theater”, yet at the same time it was never just a rehearsal, never just pretend play. In theory, a kind of paradise could have been created on the set – privileged and talented people were allowed to do whatever they wanted here. Yet the circumstances weren’tright. For Khrzhanovsky, everything on this set was »theater”, behind the scenes as much as in them, and the script of the events was not dialogical but a scripted space within which the episodes situationally wrote »themselves”; here everything simultaneously transformed itself into the raw material of the film. During the process the participants also spent weeks going about their daily routines without being observed by the camera. Filming took place when the interpersonal or narrative relationships between the inhabitants had »matured”. What came out of the »few” – no less than 187 in fact – shooting days is best expressed in the title of a series of essays by Dmitry Kaledin that was published in Paris in the DAU bulletin: »Historyteaches that it teaches us nothing”.
The presentation in its realization in Paris was far removed from this radicality. Yet something similar was intended, just the other way round. Now the cinematic work scripted the surrounding world of the two theaters from the cellar to the roof. At the Centre Pompidou and Theatre de la Ville there were reconstructions of the film sets, »mannequins” stood and sat in the halls, on the chairs and railings – dolls that served as lifelike doubles of the film characters who in turn appeared as real persons in their former costumes. The visitors thus entered into the phantasm of a dusky, supervised world, with Russian food and vodka made of tinware and never clear on what was going to happen next. But also the scientific and, if you like, spiritual operations of the institute were resumed in Paris and could be experienced in lectures, ritual encounters and laboratory experiments.
Khrzhanovsky originally wanted to build a bridge to connect the two buildings in order for visitors never to come into contact with the outside world during their visit to the DAU and instead to always remain in the imago of the project space. The Parisian authorities did not grant them permission to do so. A further unfortunate setback at the Paris production was that the DAU device that was to assist the guests in navigating their way through the venues was not operational. This meant that the idea of offering individually curated travel routes through the DAU space based on the responses to the questions posed in the visa application could not be implemented. Nonetheless, a DAU special zone was also able to be created in Paris whose experiential spaces stood quietly side by side, creating something like a large beehive of experimental cells, constantly in motion, filled with their own themes, artistic practices and interests.
Vladimir Yermolenko described the social life of the DAU zone in Kharkiv in the DAU Magazine as an atmosphere of »collective hypnosis” that was created on the set by the aesthetic circumstances – the meticulously reconstructed look of the Soviet period being portrayed created not only a form but also revived a mentality that deeply penetrated the sentiment evoking daily life that had been artificially set up. Anyone who had spent some time living on this set probably didn’t just say »no” when one day the camera was in the room.
The project was, so it seemed to me, as much human experimentation experiment as it was aesthetic experiment. You see people doing whatever they could do of their own free will within the confines of a subtle system of encouragement and fear. Three years are a long time. The DAU institute not only housed various research laboratories for experiments, it was a laboratory in and of itself. It was a laboratory for the long-term traumatic effects of the Soviet era. According to Susan Buck-Morrs in her book »Dreamworld and Catastrophe”, the dream of the people’s sovereignty led to two world wars and revolutionary terror in both the east and the west; the dream of prospering industry lead to the exploitation of human labor and natural resources in unimaginable dimensions and the dream of a genuine folk culture, in short, led to the aesthetization of a violent modernity and the stupefaction of the victims.
For Khrzhanovsky, the trauma associated with this is not only reflected in the souls of those born later but also in their physiognomies. For the mass scenes, his team searched among thousands of Ukrainians for faces and bodies which the director felt still today bear the marks of the terror of the 1930s and the postwar period. The real, wrote Robert Bresson in his Notes on Cinematography, is not dramatic. The drama will emerge from a certain sequence of non- dramatic elements. This is why Khrzhanovsky had hundreds of set inhabitants live together for weeks and months, at times for years, with the aim of creating that »real” from which the dramatic would then emerge. He systematically turned his institute in Kharkiv into a social reactor in which the traumas, the utopias, the borderline and the fantastic of a different, eastern modernity that ran parallel and at eye level with its western counterpart, could literally be worked through one more time. No matter how you might judge the Parisian premiere of DAU, its megalomania and its failure on the opening day, you couldn’t help but leave the tour with the impression of a work that, like the artificial ruins of the Romantic period, made the shininess of an ambition tangible.
The high façade windows of the Theatre de la Ville – which the artists had covered with mirror foil – seemed from a distance as if the fillings of the arches led out in the open. In fact, however, a carefully sealed world, a purification castle, existed behind the facades. Inside, supervising staff directed each visitor by means of a headset, each one touring the project space alone and in a different direction. On my tour, I experienced a rehearsal with Teodor Currentzis; sitting next to me was Brian Eno, who was to perform a piece together with Currentzis and his orchestra three days later. Currentzis worked with a flutist on a tiny passage of a piece by Tchaikovsky, singing repeatedly to show her how he wanted her to emphasize the notes. She repeated the passage and, after a few long minutes, he had the orchestra chime in with its grand sound. The past four days at these rehearsals had changed his work as a musician, whispered Brian Eno. Wasn’t it a bit over the top, I asked myself. But this is what those surrounding Currentzis and Khrzhanovsky all say. Much mention is made of transformation, of groundbreaking experiences. Both are visionary and authoritarian artists who have created their own production worlds in which they establish their own rules that lead to a way of experiencing work that is so life enriching.
For Khrzhanovsky, his films are a means unto themselves, not the result of his work. The tremendous effort that goes into DAU experience worlds with their cinemas, laboratories, shamanistic sessions, artistic rituals and gastronomic facilities as they were created in Paris and are still planned for other cities can hardly be explained in any other way. Khrzhanovsky probably thinks his films are the ayahuasca of art: strong drugs that not only take you on a journey but are actually mind-altering. Hence the idea of the listener boxes in which staff with mental health training – in Paris a crew of casted priests, social workers and hospice staff –talk with the guests about their impressions upon viewing the films. It was originally intended to record these conversations with DAU devices with the goal of being able to view oneself as a stranger in a film. Once consent had been given, this film was to be stored in the large DAU archive, feeding the artist’s work and blurring the boundaries between production and reception, art and life.
Khrzhanovsky had turned the film set in Kharkiv into a prison, says Vladimir Azhippo, one of his most important protagonists, and this is evoked at the Theatre de la Ville. The theater, which had been gutted down to a concrete skeleton on account of the ongoing construction works, looked like a submarine bunker; Russian prison food was served on tinware at the bar. The check-in, the required surrendering of mobile phones and bags, the metal detectors and the omnipresence of security staff created a strange tension that can only occur when one no longer feels safe and – following a strange psychological logic – the oppressive circumstances lead to an urgent desire for freedom. None of the guests were free here. But perhaps also strangely stimulated? Khrzhanovsky had transformed the two theater buildings into a philosophical-metaphorical architecture. The building is portrayed as an organism with its own cycles of meaning and knowledge on small blackboards. The level with the large cinema, which was located on an arena of bare concrete steps, was titled »FUTURE”. From the upper rows you looked down onto the gutted stage area. A large screen floated freely in the space, with the abyss of the dismantled orchestra pit and trapdoor stretching under it. »GODS” was written on the wall there, with other terms written on the levels above that categorized the rooms there into a larger theme. The two central stairwells, that connected the different event levels like blood vessels, were called »BODY” and »BRAIN”. The basement level with the open archive containing uncut raw material was titled »HISTORY” and a small screening room »INHERITING”. Guests were led through these environments like a freemason temple and here, too, the ritual determined the path and not the visitors themselves. DAU, and this became evident on the failed premiere day, is intended as a passage, to create a bridge that enables an experience that is not only about consumption but, well, hard to say: dedication, encounter, experience? In the theater, DAU as a piece became a space again, just like the space became a piece in Kharkiv.
In the Theatre Chatelet, too, I saw maxims over the following days such as »UTOPIA” and»SEX” as the floor level’s theme, which Russian art works partly illustrated, and that were presented as precious loans at the Centre Pompidou in the middle of the DAU environment. Greeting the visitors between the metal detectors in the lower foyer and the archaic light columns in the DAU design was Yuri Avvakumov’s »Mausolée en os”, which was constructed out of hundreds of dominoes. Visitors reported that a piece by Philippe Parreno could be viewed, and others spoke of performances by Marina Abramovic, all taking place in the completely gutted theater building. In the backstage area, one level had been painted completely red especially for DAU and for months had already housed the project’s art department, production management and synchronization studio. The production spaces were– similar to the previous Berlin-based DAU project preparation period – outfitted with historic furniture, art works and Soviet devotional objects, which resulted in a morbid set atmosphere here, too. The inventory of the famed porn shop on Rosa Luxemburg Strasse, which Khrzhanovsky had purchased after the shop went bankrupt in order to outfit his Berlin office, made a reappearance here. Following the breakdown of the Berlin project, the artists decided to protest against the behavior of the Berlin officials by painting grey the entire bottom half of the red rooms in Paris, including the pictures and furniture – even the colorful mural paintings that six Russian artists had spent weeks completing in the Chatelet’s grand salon in order to commemorate the grand tradition of the Ballets Russes at this establishment.
Even if the conditions in Paris remained unfavorable and the limits of the production’smanageable workload became very obvious, the DAU project can still be considered a milestone and an artwork of a new type. It would be impossible to stage Khrzhanovsky’swork in a conventional theater or cinema, and it certainly is more than simply a social practice. It is purgatory: it aims to be a dark purification experience with art as its means of expression – a strange human transformation experiment that dissolves the boundaries between life and work, production and consumption. It has more in common with the spirit of the inventions of Silicon Valley than with the objects of art history, and has more in common with real-life clubs guarded by bouncers than with theater itself – something new takes place in precisely this bandwidth of immersiveness that cannot be grasped if the individual elements of this social reactor are sent back to their classical places of representation with the argument that films belong in cinemas and performances in theaters. At DAU nothing is represented anymore; instead, a world is built, a test society. It is hard to decide what is fake and what is real, what is historical and what is contemporary, what is voluntary and what is brought about by hidden manipulations. The DAU project thus comes across as morally ambiguous; as a participant I am entangled in dilemmas that can be felt all the time in the real world that are triggered by Cambridge Analytics and Russian trolls, fake palaces and shamans, and the shameless deterioration of nature and emotions. DAU creates a world that is systematically deprived of its solid ground. In this Tsarist empire of total art, everyone falls into the frenzy of their own faith.