Detail
In short, our idea was to divide one year according to a formal proportional principle borrowed from Helmholtz’s wave theory and to hold performative events with arbitrary content on the key dates. We called the whole thing Bubble Opera: opera as a work that inflates, or that “takes you for a ride.” The main event was supposed to conclude the series. We wanted to suspend an enormous sounding heap of rubbish from a crane and hire one hundred refugees living in a camp in the neighbouring forest to play sticks with strings. The post-conceptual principle of the work included formal shifters, instrumental operators to which we gave the names of the leaders of the USSR and Russia, beginning with Brezhnev.
Artists built a hybrid installation in the hall, ironically reflecting what was happening in the ZKM from the point of view of who Anton and Marika were at that time — real illegals and hobos: on one side of a specially erected wall, they created an empty, abandoned conference space with an incomprehensible “educational” video, a showcase with wooden objects named “Fids” and lone tribune with a microphone. All this was supposed to be drowned in cognitive sfumato and puzzled the passing museum visitors.
On the other side of the wall, with a considerable portion of irony, artists arranged the typical backstage with a refrigerator, kitchen, sofa, and TV set. The public meeting took place directly backstage in an almost cozy home atmosphere. The event was successful. It allowed M&A to declare themselves there and get acquainted with some important people and technical workers (which is sometimes more essential). Need to add that Marika and Anton lived right in this colossal building: setting up a tent on one of the distant flights of stairs at night, going to wash in a shared shower in the morning, eating at museum party subs, collecting bottles over there, and cooked on a pocket gas stove.
Authorial Comment
After the project's completion, we buried all materials of the Opera and documentation in the field near Moscow. Because we were leaving Russia and just there was simply nowhere to leave them.