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(E-E) Ev.g.e.n.i.j ..K.o.z.l.o.v Berlin |
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home // E-E // biographie // art // eros // Leningrad 80s // Valentin Kozlov // 2 x 3m // events // sitemap // kontakt /
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(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov: Leningrad 80s • No.115 >>
Letter H (October 1985) – New Composers Comic art Letter H is dated 22 October 1985, that is, approximately a year after Letter G. Judging by Catherine Mannick’s answers, there must have been about three letters in between these two. The letter starts with Kozlov’s birthday wishes, and the painted picture on the cover of the double card is his birthday present:
Kozlov shot “this funny picture” during an afternoon he spent with some friends, among them New Composers Valery Alakhov and Igor Verichev (Новые композиторы Валерий Алахов, Игорь Веричев), two musicians experimenting with sound collages, sampling popular Soviet melodies and speech fragments – film music, dialogues of animated movies, educational radio programmes, technical instructions, theatre rehearsals and more more >>. Today, the New Composers are considered as the first Russian “industrial avant-garde” group.
The company of friends went to Hare Island, a small island in the Neva river with a popular city beach, best known for the Peter and Paul Fortress constructed by Peter the Great. There they visited Trubetskoy Bastion, formerly a political prison and a museum since 1924. In the original picture, before it was painted, Alakhov and Verichev can be seen standing behind a guard sitting on a bench – a museum mannequin wearing a historical military costume.[1]
However, the New Composers didn’t respect those universal museum rules that prohibit touching any exhibits: to the left, another dummy is standing face against wall, obviously shifted from his previous position. Pictures from the same film show Alakhov and Verichev dragging the two dummies around, lifting them up and putting them down.
It was Kozlov who animated the musicians to create unusual poses and gestures, hoping that these interactions with his camera would stimulate his art more >>. In this way, he turned a simple nonsensical game into a performance and “harvested” the results to create painted pictures, small and large collages or paintings.[2] Another painted picture from the same photo shoot made it to his album “It’s the Fashion”, where he assembled about forty painted photographs from 1984 to 1990 more >>.
For his present in Letter G, Kozlov printed only the picture’s central part, without the wall and floor surrounding the figures, and repainted it in his comic-graffiti-style typical for the period from 1985-1987. Without a thorough knowledge of his photo-archive, it is impossible to identify the original picture or even the “real” persons it presents.
Surrounding the figures are a number of comic and graffiti features that can also be seen in Kozlov’s larger works from the same period, for instance, a grim moon, a rocket, several plus-minus signs, stars, and the letters УРА (hurrah).[3] It is also one of the first works where Kozlov introduced the subject of USA-CCCP more >>. The standing, now winged dummy, whose head resembles that of a snowman, is holding a small flag with the inscription CCCP on top and USA below. He keeps it behind his back, at the height of his derriere, which might not be the noblest place to present such a flag. Due to numerous motion lines and emanata proper to sequential art – lines and hatches visualising emotion when applied to characters more >> – the static composition has become dynamic. The New Composers are engaged in a heated discussion. Alakhov now has his left arm lifted up, shaking his fist at Verichev. Verichev, decorated with several medals on his shirt, sends back a fierce look. The focus of the composition is on the military guard’s bewildered gaze. He is wearing headphones connected to a small cassette player applied to his chest.[4] Perhaps he is listening to the New Composers’ strange and ultramodern music. Other interesting details are a large dagger tucked under his belt, the tattoos of sexy women emerging from his military boots, and, on his right underarm, five watches that are doubtlessly war trophies. Thus, in Kozlov’s list – sport, space, militarisation, the animal world and these not unhappy guys – only two subject matters remain to be determined, sport and the animal world. It takes some time to discover sport: at the bottom of the composition is a naked couple playing tennis. Regarding the animal world, there is a tiny little dog (or so it seems) at the feet of a sunbathing lady, next to the right border. There is indeed life in this picture – in Kozlov’s own words: This is the inner world I have displayed. The New Composers Around that time and apparently on Timur Novikov’s initiative, the attribute new appears with several newly established Leningrad groups or activities – New Artists, New Theatre, New Composers. Like several of his fellow artists, Kozlov was involved in most new activities in one way or another, since the line-up of the groups’ members partly overlapped – except that in those times, the New Composers were strictly a duo.[5] In Kozlov’s pictures of two New Theatre performances from 1985, Anna Karenina more >> and The Ballet of the Three Inseparable Ones more >>, the New Composers can be seen with a cassette deck and other equipment, contributing with pre-recorded music. One such print entered Catherine Mannick’s archive, together with another two from the Anna Karenina performance (see Letter F more >>). Judging by Mannick’s comment in Letter 30, which crossed with Letter H, Kozlov had sent these Anna Karenina pictures a little earlier. In letter 30, Mannick wrote, “I always read with great interest about the New Artists and what’s ‘going on’ with them in Leningrad – your photographs really struck me.”
In Letter H, Kozlov discusses a different aspect of his artistic relationship with the New Composers: the release of a record for which he contributed the cover. It was his second design for an LP cover after KINO’s Nachalnik Kamchatki (The Head of Kamchatka) the previous year (see Letter H more >>). But this time, he expected his concept to materialise on a real vinyl cover, and not just as a simplified version for an “underground” reel-to-reel production. It was actually a joint project of the New Composers with Sergey Kuryokhin (Сергей Курёхин, Sergei Kurekhin), a Leningrad-based free jazz musician and composer and one of the leading figures of Leningrad’s “unofficial” cultural scene more >>. Kuryokhin also involved saxophonist Igor Butman. Kuryokhin had already gained some popularity in the West among free jazz circles, and in the spring or summer of 1985, a BBC team came to Leningrad to (illegally) film a documentary about him. Possibly, this visit sparked off the project, because the works for the cover started around the same time. Colin Fallows, who managed Ark Records, a small Liverpool label for avant-garde music, stepped in later, after having watched “Comrades. All that Jazz”, which was broadcast on TV in December 1985. When Fallows contacted Kuryokhin, the visual and sound material for Insect Culture was already completed. He decided to produce it on ARK Records, where it was released in 1987. To design the cover, Evgenij Kozlov organised a photo shoot with Kuryokhin and the New Composers in Leningrad’s central shopping mall “Passage”. For this purpose, he borrowed a medium format camera; sixteen negatives and ten vintage prints have remained in his archive more >>. Another vintage print from Valery Alakhov’s collection is at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Russia, while two painted prints are in The Pete Fulwell archive, Liverpool John Moores University. (Pete Fulwell was Fallows’ ARK Records partner, which makes it very likely that the two painted photos were among those ten Kozlov gave Kuryokhin for the album cover.) Although the project was initiated by Kuryokhin, Kozlov doesn’t mention him in his letter – most probably because to him, Kuryokhin was an acquaintance, not a close friend like Valery Alakhov or Igor Verichev:
Kuryokhin’s and Butman’s (secret) live-recording was mixed with the New Composers’ tracks at Leningrad’s House of Radio in 1985 more >>. How, when, and to whom the tapes were smuggled to England remains an open question. Likewise, who conceived of “Insect Culture” for the title Popular Mechanics Insect Culture. can no longer be ascertained; possibly Kuryokhin himself.
The name Popular Mechanics is a translation of Kuryokhin’s brand Pop Mekhanika (Поп механика) – loud, chaotic and entertaining performances with numerous rock and folk musicians and sometimes animals on stage. Although only four musicians took part in Insect Culture, it left an indelible impression on British music critic Jonh Wilde:
Kozlov wrote that he suggested ten painted photos for the cover, but the album was released with an unpainted print. The following is a quote from an article I published in 2018:
The picture displays a striking depth perspective of the shopping mall which the artist enhanced further with geometric patterns and grids. He drew them with a scalpel or sharp pencil into the moist emulsion of the negative while processing the film. In the print, these scratches appear as black lines and dots, while the white spots next to them result from pieces of clotted emulsion. Kozlov normally applied this method to selected 35 mm negatives, which are really tiny, but he had become a virtuoso with this technique – a sgraffito technique in the proper sense of the word. He often used such “sgraffito” prints to repaint the motifs, integrating the hatches into colourful compositions. It would be quite interesting to look at those ten painted photos from the Insect Culture photo shoot, but their whereabouts remain unknown. When Kozlov wrote of the New Composers “I love those who engage in something”, he meant it – they are actually featured in many of his works from the 1980s and occasionally even later. The most important works are two large full-body portraits from 1989 forming a diptych, “Igor, Peace Between Us? – Peace? No Way.” and “Valera. The Soul Present Within Things.” A closer looks at these paintings reveals remarkable parallels with two large icons of the Apostles Peter and Paul by Andrey Rublev and, possibly Daniil Chyorniy from the 15th century, especially with respect to their format, the low line of the horizon, and the postures of the figures portrayed more >>. With perestroika, the New Composers were able to establish international contacts, for instance with Brian Eno, who later became a guest musician for the album “Smart” from 1999 – at the time, New Composers had already turned to ambient music.
But before that, they had some techno dance hits. “Sputnik of Life” from 1990, recorded in England and again released by Ark Records, is said to have it made to the British dance charts.[6] Starting in the early 1990s, Valery Alakhov collaborated with Bob Stoute (Rotterdam) under the name “Magnit”, and in 1992 Stoute released “Tanz. Tanzevat”, sung, or rather, spoken by Katya Galitzine, whose voice was recorded in London. The song was later re-released in Russia in a slightly different version as a New Composers song. External link >>. It was the beginning of Stoute’s and Alakhov’s long-lasting Magnit project External link >>. “Tanz. Tanzevat” has also appeared in Kozlov's work. In 2017, Kozlov and I edited TANZPOL. FONTANKA 145, his documentary from 1990 / 1991 on Leningrad's legendary art squat located at Fontanka emb., 145. We used the early version of “Tanz. Tanzevat” for the first part of the video which shows the artist painting and dancing simultaneously more >>. In recent years, a number of the New Composers’ old songs have been remastered and sometimes remixed to be released on vinyl records as collectibles. This led to another alliance of sound and visual art. For the cover of START (2015), an album based on tapes from a home recording of the New Composers with three KINO members, Kozlov designed the five letters START and placed them below his painting “Love for the Cosmos” from 1990. The painting from his New Classicals cycle displays five figures, and the artist thus established a numeric relation among the musicians, the album title, and the artwork.
The revival of the 1980s also had an effect on Kozlov’s photo shoot from 1985. In 2022, Kozlov’s pictures for Insect Culture regained visibility when the New Composers released Imenno Segodnya Imenno Seychas on CD, followed by a vinyl record in 2023 External link >>. The album is a compilation of songs that gained the New Composers a reputation as innovators – those characteristic electronic “speech loop” compositions made up from discarded tape material from Leningrad’s Maly Drama Theatre, where Verichev had been working as a sound engineer since 1983 more >>.
On the front and back covers of Imenno Segodnya Imenno Seychas are two pictures of Valery Alakhov and Igor Verichev standing on top of a roof, each picture with a different background. The one from the cover is an upward view against the sky, while the one from the back cover offers a front view with the skyline of Leningrad. Both pictures were overpainted by Alakhov and Verichev in the mid-eighties. Inside, the LP displays more (unpainted) pictures from the same series.
The original overpainted vintage prints are exceptionally large, especially the one used for the front cover, which was printed in a 113 x 99 format. This made it easy to add decorative ornaments and to colour Kozlov’s scratched lines and dots. Verichev is also a painter, and in the 1980s, developed his own bright comic style, both laconic and ornamental. In Kozlov’s picture, Verichev’s angular and parallel lines, but most of all the dotted and rod-shaped rainbow “sprinkles”, give the black and white composition its distinctive look. Hannelore Fobo, 28 May 2023
[1] Trubetskoy Bastion is now the central part of the State Museum of the History of Saint Petersburg. The museum’s website demonstrates that such mannequins are still in use today and presents some colour reproductions of a dummy External link >>. [2] An encounter that yielded particularly rich results was a meeting with the New Composers, Timur Novikov and their Dutch friend Johan, which happened around the same time (“Timur on Horseback”) more >>. [3] Thus, a chain of plus-minus signs and a rocket is in “Ya-Ya” from late 1985, a large work on paper first exhibited a the Leningrad Rock Club, while a grim moon and stars are in an untitled work with a German text from 1985 or 1986 more >>. [4] In the Soviet Union, these cassette players – also known under Sony‘s brand Walkman, or simply as “player” in Russian – were “deficit”, hard-to-get items. [5] The lifespan of these groups varied. The New Artists existed between 1982 and 1989, while the New Theatre lasted for no more than two years, 1985 (or perhaps the end of 1984) to 1986. The New Composers are still active today, although to a lesser degree, and their music has changed. [6] В 1990 году музыканты отправились в Англию, где с помощью продюсера Пита Фулвэта записали сингл The Sputnik Of Life. Она вошла в британские танцевальные чарты в октябре 1990 года. / In 1990 the musicians went to England, where with the help of producer Pete Fulvet [sic; Pete Fulwell] they recorded the single The Sputnik Of Life. It entered the British dance charts in October 1990 External link >>.
see also (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, Catherine Mannick, and Hannelore Fobo papers, 1979-2022 (inclusive) Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Special Collection Harvard University >> |
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Published 13 June 2023 |
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home // E-E // biographie // art // eros // Leningrad 80s // Valentin Kozlov // 2 x 3m // events // sitemap // kontakt /
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