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Oh Jordan

WALL LIBRETTO is a sound installation and performance by Mariana Savchenko based on the documented texts from the Wall Evidence open archive. With the help of the text-to-song technology, the artist has turned the inscriptions left by the russian army in Ukrainian settlements, into a “libretto”. The sung texts are interwoven into the music of Tchaikovsky's opera Mazepa based on Pushkin's poem Poltava, thus creating a new dimension of meanings carried by the “russian world”.

On February 24, 2022, russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, occupying territories in the East, North, and South of the country. With the liberation of the occupied territories by the Ukrainian army, we saw not only devastation, murdered and tortured civilians of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kherson, and Kharkiv regions but also traces of the presence of the occupiers, including inscriptions on the walls in the middle of destroyed and looted settlements.

Since April 2022, the team of the cultural institution Mizhvukhamy has been collecting inscriptions of the russian military on the territory of Ukraine. Their work resulted in the Wall Evidence project, an open archive of russian inscriptions which is replenished with each de-occupied settlement and currently contains more than five hundred “messages”. The content of these inscriptions varies from the marking of the territory on the infrastructure captured by russian soldiers to frankly cynical, aggressive, and contemptuous threats towards Ukrainians, numerous slogans and quotations of russian and Soviet propaganda, as well as apologies for their actions.

The integration of the wall inscriptions of the russian occupiers in the context of the opera Mazepa is a metaphorical reminder of centuries of russian colonization of Ukrainian land, cultural expansion, erasure and denial of Ukrainian national identity, distortion of history, and imposition of imperial chauvinistic values of the so-called “brotherly nation”, for whom Ukrainians have always been “Little russians”.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky is one of the most recognizable brands of russian classical music, with the name of which russian cultural figures shield themselves from the crimes of the Putin regime. After the full-scale invasion of the russian federation, the issue of abolishing russian cultural symbols and the importance of highlighting Ukrainian art worldwide became acute topic in Ukrainian society. In particular, the leading institution of higher musical education, the National Music Academy of Ukraine, still bears the name of the composer Tchaikovsky, and the renaming of the conservatory is the basis for ongoing debates between the artistic community, civil society, and the authorities.

The figure of Ivan Mazepa is widely known precisely through the prism of russian historiography, where he is interpreted as a traitor to Tsar Peter I in the Great Northern War with the Swedish Empire, and his name is still anathematized by the russian Orthodox Church. For Ukrainians, hetman Mazepa is a patriot who acted in the interests of the Hetmanate, and an outstanding patron of Ukrainian culture and education.

Accompanied by the sounds of the opera Mazepa mixed with the voiced “wall libretto” of the russian invasion of Ukraine, the artist have created a live performance, painting her own body and the glass walls of the installation art space with traumatic traces of the “russian world”, which I want to get rid of forever.

Opera recording used in the sound installation is accessed via the Internet Archive digital library: “Mazeppa” (1949), conductor Vasiliy Nebolsin, USSR Bolshoy Theatre Orchestra and Chorus.

Performance was created by Mariana Savchenko on February 25, 2024 in New Taipei, Qiaotou art space, provided by STUPIN studio art platform. 
Guest artist: Chi Chen Wu
Photo: Wu Hsiang Hao
Performance documentary by Karen Chen:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qb_MooaAh7E&feature=youtu.be

Wall Evidence archive: https://wallevidence.mizhvukhamy.com

WALL LIBRETTO

Prelude № 7 "Mirage"

While we cannot see small nanoscopic objects like proteins or other molecules that make up virtually all living matter including our cells, tissues, as well as pathogens such as viruses, our computational algorithm allows us to make its material manifestation audible.  This piece is a musical representation of the amino acid sequence and structure of the spike protein of the pathogen of COVID-19, 2019-nCoV (protein data bank identifier 6VSB [1]). 

MUSICAL DECEIT

A virus’ genome hijacks the host cell’s protein manufacturing machinery, and forces it to replicate the viral genome and produce viral proteins to make new viruses from it.  This musical art teaches us something about the fine line between beauty of life and death as an opposite pole.  As you listen to the protein you will find that the intricate design results in incredibly interesting and actually pleasing, relaxing sounds. This doesn’t really convey the deadly impacts this particularly protein is having on the world. This aspect of the music shows the deceiving nature of the virus, how it hijacks our body to replicate, and hurt us along the way. So, the music is a metaphor for this nature of the virus to deceive the host and exploit it for its own multiplication. 

HOW IT IS DONE: 

What you hear is a multi-layered algorithmic composition featuring both the vibrational spectrum of the entire protein (expressed in sound and rhythmic elements), the sequence and folding of amino acids that compose the virus spike structure, as well as interwoven melodies - forming counterpoint music - reflecting the complex hierarchical intersecting geometry of the protein [2].

Scientific references:

[1] Wrapp et al., "Cryo-EM structure of the 2019-nCoV spike in the prefusion conformation," Science, 2020, DOI: 10.1126/science.abb2507

[2] Buehler et al., "A Self-Consistent Sonification Method to Translate Amino Acid Sequences into Musical Compositions and Application in Protein Design Using Artificial Intelligence," ACS Nano, 2019, DOI: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b02180

Viral counterpoint of the coronavirus spike protein (2019-nCoV)

Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (2019-nCoV)

瑪驪雅蒳 (MǍLÍYǍNÀ)
Mariana Savchenko is a sound artist, music producer and sinologist, originally from Kyiv, Ukraine.

WALL LIBRETTO

瑪驪雅蒳

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