I Heard About It 
(2022)
Pavlo Grazhdanskij and Marina Karpova
17:02
Sound from public videos (stereo, mono)
Language: Ukranian, Russian

“I heard about it” is dedicated to the research of the media space 
after the Russian invasion of Ukraine from February 24, 2022. Dealing 
with representation as a state, following the changes of the documentary, 
and analyzing fragments as separate: evidence and out/information, we 
tried to assemble our experience from this process.

The situation of the first days of the war, in which a huge amount of 
visual materials were published, has changed a lot. The concentrated 
homogeneity of the news spectrum, from missiles hitting hospitals and 
residences, to torn off body parts, casual shooting episodes, footage 
from body cameras and surveillance from the air, is realized with a 
delay under military censorship. The space of evidence has been 
transformed, having lost temporal and sequential connections, gradually 
replacing the image as a form of message. 
Already after a month of the war, information began to come in the form 
of a retelling, text, or a caption to a blurred video image, in which 
sound remained the only form of a document.

The highly moderated media space, although it does not explicitly 
require it, nevertheless works with the imagination. We are listening 
to video recordings, but they only confirm the audio experience as an 
event and state. There is a restless intensity in its materiality, 
a body that can be spoken, an echo of fallen metal, someone screaming 
in the distance in the middle of the night.

<https://tentativetransmits.com/Audio-1>

First movement of the Mass of Notre Dame by Guillaume de Machaux
Mass - the main genre of medieval church music - spiritual chants 
performed during worship. Mass "Notre Dame" by Guillaume de Machaux 
(1300-1377) is the first author's mass recorded on the full text of 
the ordinary. The reconstruction experience that the musicians undertake 
in this project is unusual: the vocal parts are performed on a flute, 
two guitars and a cello. As a result, the text is erased in the Mass, 
the solidity of the work breaks up into small particles, the sound 
is delayed, as in the Notre Dame Cathedral with its unique acoustics.

Performers: 
Andrey Popovsky – guitar
Denis Sorokin – guitar
Marina Karpova – cello
Ignat Khlobystin – flute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qut6qIgUPVY

Photo: Alexey Schevtsov

Hydrofeminist walk near the Karpovka River (2021)

The sound walk by the river is an important practice of articulating 
what the invisible body of the current is, the subtle activity beneath 
the surface of the water. This is a rhetorical statement of the question: 
is it possible through hearing to cause the realization that we, like 
the river, consist of water, and how strongly we can be connected 
with it? After all, water connects all bodies with each other due to 
its cyclic movement, transgressing, overcoming the geopolitical 
boundaries of territories and penetrating both human and non-human 
organisms. The creators of the walk were inspired by the texts of 
the scientist and water researcher Astrida Neimanis, author of the 
book “Hydrofeminism, or Becoming the Body of Water”, fragments of 
her texts will be heard during the walk.

Presenters:
Daria Boldyreva
Marina Karpova

Hydrofeminismis a knowledge that unites everything that exists on 
earth, since life came out of the water. Hydrofeminism is solidarity 
between water creatures, which are people, including water spaces - 
rivers, lakes, seas, oceans. Hydrofeminism is about caring for bodies 
of water. Water is transnational and transmaterial, and hydrofeminism 
teaches us that we are involved in the water cycle and should not 
remain indifferent to the environmental problems of society. Water 
flows through bodies, nature, things and unites us. You take a sip of 
water, and the water taken from outside gets back into the world through 
you: water is transcorporeal. The event takes place as part of the 
Walking Laboratory, which opens the public program of the new 
St. Petersburg initiative Assembly. The general theme of the program - 
"Factor of Evolution" refers to the famous text of the Russian 
revolutionary and scientist Pyotr Kropotkin, in which a revision 
of the theory of evolution was made through the study and analysis 
of symbiotic types of coexistence in various biological communities, 
ranging from simple life forms to humans.

photo: Ksenia Bondarenko

John Cage - Child of Tree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M7eKSaHo48

St. Petersburg, Kunsthalle nummer sieben 03X2021 John Cage - Child of Tree (excerpt) Performers: Marina Karpova and Daria Boldyreva