Dmitri Kourliandski

Aelita

Yakov Protazanov's Aelita (1924) interests me as a film staying on a crossroads of all main tendencies of the Russian art of that time. It is a constructivism and futurism (of costumes and decorations) on the one hand, and documentation of the present-day reality of twenties on the other. It is merciless picture of morals and manners and the strong irony of the 'politically incorrect' novel by Alexei Tolstoi on the one hand, and melodramatic comedy with absurd elements on the other.I'm interested in placing the film in the acoustic aura of that time - time of Russian constructivists Mosolov and Polovinkin, of utopic 'Symphony of factory sirens' by Arseny Avraamov and noise experiments of Luigi Russolo.However as it is impossible today to perceive the film as it was perceived by contemporaries - so the music must not be just a stylization or illustration. Music creates the distance to the picture, placing it regardless of time and opening new perception perspectives.I decided to work as cinema pianists worked at the time of silent cinema - I wanted not to make a synchronised soundtrack, not to accent the action, but to create a general acoustic atmosphere - 'soundclouds' which react the movie action as natural clouds react the wind - even if the wind is sharp and strong the clouds will change slowly.At the same time I tried to achieve the constructivism spirit - the music is totally mechanistic. In the basis of the time organisation there lies a pre-given structure - the sound material fills in this structure as water fills in the given form. The soundtrack is filled with formal processes of the transition from one sound material to another (morphing). Lots of everyday life objects are used as sound instruments - hoses, bottles, cans, toys etc. The instrumental parts form a canonic structure. These canons serve as a symbol of a conveyor production, or multiplication - as on the famous Rodchenko's photos: the objects' multiplication is more important then the objects themselves.Mechanicity and recurring processes were always very interesting and important for me - from all angles: from the replicability of a gesture to the fatal impossibility of influencing mechanical processes (any disruption against the working of a machine may cause its destruction), from heart beats and the succession of breathing in and out to the course of hours in the day and seasons in the year. But for a nowadays author constructivists' ideas cannot be of same character as for the artists of the beginning of the 20th century. Constructivists regarded the machine as a symbol of order and organization. Today, mechanicity makes us rather dread some kind of technogenic disaster. The historical optimistic point of view is replaced today with the catastrophic one. In the Aelita soundtrack it was important for me to reflect such aesthetic aspects.This project is a part of a very intense year of my residency with the 2E2M ensemble. The piece is the ensemble's commission.Dmitri Kourliandski