The Ways of Freedom: Experimental Music in Leningrad/St. Petersburg, 1980-1996

该项目旨在通过跟随即兴演奏者、作曲家和前卫钢琴家Sergei Kurekhin及其圈子的职业生涯，探索晚期和后苏联即兴音乐的文化和（生物）政治意义。1981年，库列欣发行了他的第一张个人专辑《自由之路》（The Ways of Freedom），成为列宁格勒/圣彼得堡非正式音乐文化的关键人物。直到1996年去世。库列欣最为人所知的身份是“流行力学”，这是一个自发的乐团，以其荒谬的戏剧、不断变化的成员和在一次演出中变换风格而闻名；融合了高雅与庸俗、旧与新，在一个不拘一格的拼贴中强调了“介于两者之间”的流行力学代表了20世纪80年代列宁格勒现场的大量即兴演奏者，因为他们中的许多人曾经是乐团的一部分。此外，Kurekhin作品的时间跨度提供了一个完美的视角，通过它可以更好地理解改革期间和苏联解体后的文化生产——这一时期很少受到关注（Etkind 2014）。研究库列欣的生活环境，可以让我们对苏联的衰落有新的认识，并阐明随后发生的文化转变。在唯一一篇讨论库列欣的文化产出（关于他个人与新闻媒体的接触）的文章中，尤尔恰克写道，库列欣“非凡的艺术项目的历史和分析仍在等待作者”（2011:311）——这是我想填补的空白。库列欣在音乐学领域的缺席使得这个项目为新的见解提供了肥沃的土壤。有许多实验音乐的史学（Piekut 2011, Adlington 2013, Born et al. 2017），但这些都明确地集中在西欧和美国的背景下。通过将研究扩展到俄罗斯的背景下，该项目旨在扩大现有边界之外的实验主义奖学金。我的目标是通过遵循Kurekhin的职业生涯来推进这些理解，并具有与Yurchak（2006）相似的批评背景，专注于音乐/声音。在音乐学方面，Schmelz（2009）利用Yurchak的概念作为他分析苏联作曲家的起点——尽管仅限于艺术音乐的类型。因此，Schmelz的研究虽然相关，但在范围上与这个项目有很大的不同。最近的文献（Piekut 2019）已经开始分析“本土前卫”，指的是“没有完全脱离文学体制”的艺术家，他们占据了“一个与之截然不同的区域”（Levitz和Piekut 2020）。尤尔恰克的vnye（“内部/外部”）概念定义了苏联后期生活的阈值体验，其中有许多未被探索的重叠。库列欣的音乐完美地扩展、推进和研究了这两个概念。通过研究库列欣音乐的生物政治模糊，我将把乡土前卫作为一个稳定的概念进行分析，这一概念虽然源于特定，但可以反映出前卫的表演。在推进对库列欣音乐环境的第一次研究中，我的目标是：*确定库列欣作品的阈值社会美学如何在音乐本身、表演和表演者互动中产生（生物）政治颠覆；将生物政治文献与声音/音乐研究联系起来，推进并提出问题。*调查库列欣对未来主义者（如马雅可夫斯基）的影响。当（后）苏联的未来是不可想象的（Yurchak 2006），库列欣对“过去-未来”的参与告诉我们苏联整体性的艺术解决方案。*考察库列欣在20世纪90年代向民族主义的转变；寻找讽刺（音乐）颠覆的局限性（通常被认为是一种固有的激进类型，Wilmer 2020），并找到苏联后期和后苏联文化之间的区别。*探索非苏联艺术家对Kurekhin的影响——从美国的Cage到德国的Einsturzende Neubauten——按照Frolova-Walker（2018）的要求，将“俄罗斯音乐置于世界背景下”。

This project aims to explore the cultural and (bio)political significance of late and post-Soviet improvised music by following the career of improviser, composer and avant-garde pianist Sergei Kurekhin, and his circle. Following his first solo release, The Ways of Freedom, in 1981, Kurekhin became a key figure in the informal music culture of Leningrad/St. Petersburg until his death in 1996. Kurekhin is best known as leader of Pop Mechanics, a spontaneous ensemble known for its absurd theatrics, ever-fluctuating membership, and shifting of styles within single performances; fusing high- and low-brow, old and new, in an eclectic collage that emphasised the 'in-between' Pop Mechanics represent a significant number of improvisers of the 1980s Leningrad scene, as many were, at one time, part of the ensemble. Additionally, the temporal span of Kurekhin's output offers a perfect lens through which to better understand cultural production during perestroika and after the fall of the Soviet Union - a period noted to have received little attention (Etkind 2014). Studying Kurekhin's milieu offers new insight into Soviet decline and illuminates the cultural shift that followed.In the only text to discuss Kurekhin's cultural output (regarding his personal engagement with news media), Yurchak writes that the 'history and analysis' of Kurekhin's 'remarkable artistic project still awaits its author' (2011:311) - a lacuna I aim to fill. The absence of Kurekhin from musicological scholarshipmakes this project fertile for new insight. There are numerous historiographies of experimental music (Piekut 2011, Adlington 2013, Born et al. 2017), yet these are focussed explicitly on Western Europe and U.S. contexts. By extending research into a Russian context, this project aims to widen experimentalist scholarship outside of its current borders. I aim to advance these understandings by following Kurekhin's career with a similar critical background to Yurchak (2006), focussed towards music/sound. In musicology, Schmelz (2009) has utilised Yurchak's concepts as starting points for his analysis of Soviet composers - though limited only to the genre of art music. Thus, Schmelz's research, while relevant, significantly differs in scope to this project.Recent literature (Piekut 2019) has begun to analyse the 'vernacular avant-garde', referring to artists 'not entirely delinked from the literate establishment,' that occupy 'a zone distinct from it' (Levitz and Piekut 2020). There is significant unexplored overlap with Yurchak's underlying concept of vnye ('inside/outside') that defines the liminal experience of late-Soviet life. The music of Kurekhin is situated perfectly to expand, advance and investigate both concepts. Through studying the biopolitical indistinction of Kurekhin's music, I will advance the vernacular avant-garde as a stable concept useful for analysis, that, whilst emanating from a the particular, can reflect back on avant-garde performance writ large.In advancing the first study of Kurekhin's musical milieu, I aim to:* Identify how the liminal social aesthetic of Kurekhin's oeuvre produced (bio)political subversion in the music-itself, performance, and performer interactions; to connect, advance and problematise biopolitical literature to sound/music studies.* Investigate Kurekhin's influence of Futurists (such as Mayakovsky). When no (post-)soviet future was imaginable (Yurchak 2006), Kurekhin's engagement with 'past-futures' inform us of artistic solutions to Soviet totality.* Examine Kurekhin's shift towards Nationalism in the 1990s; to find the limits of ironic (musical) subversion (oft cited as an inherently radical genre, Wilmer 2020), and locate a distinction between late and post-Soviet culture.* Explore the influences of non-Soviet artists on Kurekhin - from Cage (USA) to Einsturzende Neubauten Germany) - to situate 'Russian music in a World Context', as called for by Frolova-Walker (2018).