A collaborative project: Maria Morina, Marina Karpova
and Ekaterina Sokolovskaya
2020-2021

OPERA-INSTALLATION (30’), SCULPTURE GROUP
(FOAM, PLASTIC, SILICONE, CONCRETE)

Simple Songs is the first joint work by three authors: Marina 
Karpova (music, Maria Morina (libretto), and Katerina 
Sokolovskaya (sculptural group). The installation, where 
visitors are invited to listen to an opera, consists of five 
tactile sculptures on which people can make themselves 
comfortable by sitting, lying, rocking, etc. The sculptures’ 
delicate colors and smooth surface create a temptingly relaxed 
environment, whereas the opera is a rather complex medium for 
perception. The starting point for the project was a reflection 
on several levels of communication: the work was realized in 
the space of music, where lies are impossible, and in the 
space of language, where consciousness needs to separate 
meaning from “noise” and recognize manipulation.

The libretto, which is performed by a soprano, a baritone, 
and a countertenor to the accompaniment of clarinet, flute, 
viola, and cello, is based on a documentary poetry text, 
created by editing quotations from found documents (the 
sources are listed on the back of the printed libretto). 
These include scientific articles and essays about COVID-19, 
official speeches by the President of Russia and his 
representatives, poetry by the head of Roscosmos Dmitry 
Rogozin, and random messages on social networks about 
coronavirus and its treatment, vaccinations, conspiracy 
theories around the pandemic, the 75th anniversary of Victory 
Day, amendments to the Constitution, the physical and 
emotional labor of women, etc. The leitmotif for 
understanding this semantic collage composed of phrases 
taken out of context and often rendered meaningless is a 
quote from the President’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov: 
“We can see that the process of improvement is consistently 
ongoing, the cementing process necessary for the full and 
irreversible strengthening of the state.”

Overcoming aesthetic closedness thanks to the declared 
belonging of speech, the complexly structured subject of 
docupoetry accomplishes the ethical translation of the 
document- evidence by absorbing its discursive subjects 
into the orbit of its influence1. It is symptomatic that 
the first docupoetry wave, brought about by the “pressure 
of reality” occurred during the Great Depression in the 
USA in the 1920s and 1930s. Today’s historical analogue 
of the Great Depression is the year 2020, when Simple 
Songs was conceived and when, according to the authors, 
“we faced something total,” something that “buzzed with 
the membranes of social networks, flooded with the smell 
of bleach in the stairwells, and adhered at the cellular 
level, bypassing consciousness.” In an attempt to describe 
common experience, Simple Songs poetically transposes 
documentary evidence, which may in future form the material 
for a judicial inquiry.

Text by Ekaterina Lazareva, 
Curator at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Part of the communication within this installation takes 
place in the space of music, where false statements are 
impossible; the rest takes place in the space of language 
and forms, where the consciousness needs to separate meaning 
from noise and recognize manipulation. The libretto that 
underlies the work is created in the genre of documentary 
poetry and is composed of quotations from private and 
public messages, as well as verbs used by the president 
in addresses to the people; verbs produced by the virus in 
relation to the cell; and verbs describing the daily physical 
and emotional labor of women. The structure of this eclectic 
score references compositional techniques from the Middle 
Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque and musical minimalism, 
and engages the technique of artistic melodeclamation.

Within the installation, musical patterns take sculptural 
form, which immerses visitors in a type of listening that 
is close to meditative or religious practices. The sculptures 
involved in the installation have a pleasant surface to the 
touch, on which guests can sit while listening to the opera, 
can lie, sway and crawl on it.

https://youtu.be/wOVrObbFug8