Alina Gutkina
Notes on the musical field. Positions and shapes

V–A–C Sreda online magazine presents a new three-month programme dedicated to the place, role, and transformation of sound in contemporary art and everyday life.

In this issue, we publish an essay by Alina Gutkina, an artist and participant in the New New Age exhibition at GES-2 House of Culture. In her essay, Gutkina reflects on sound in three contexts: hearing, genre, and the music industry. Beginning with the “egoistic” character of the ear and the peculiarities of auditory perception, Gutkina moves on to explore the socio-political dimensions of genre and the importance of communities in the Russian musical industry.

I

Sensory experience has two dimensions. Acting within, an impression gives rise to a feeling and does not serve to define the Other. It is simply my condition, a reaction affecting only me. On the opposite side, acting from without, a sensory impression becomes a bridge through which I come closer to the object. Here I am interested in the conditional dichotomy of hearing and sight, and, in connection with this, in my experience of departure from artistic practice for musical production.

Hearing gives me revelation in temporary form, while sight also gives me a permanent component, a reflection in material form, this is how I see succession in simultaneity. In the effect of sight, the permanent character of knowledge predominates significantly.

Compensation for this difference lies in the fact that what is heard is remembered many times better than what is seen. What I hear in and of itself disappears forever, what I see is a relatively stable object. Might this be why the human ear is easier to deceive than the human eye?

The ear is a particularly egoistic organ, one that only takes, giving nothing in return. Its form itself as it were symbolises this—a somewhat passive adjunct to the human head, the most immobile of the organs of the face. The ear makes up for its egoism by the fact that, in distinction to the eye, it cannot close or turn away: it is doomed, in as far as it takes, to take everything that comes. Only together with the tongue does the ear give rise to an inner, unified act, in which a person both gives and takes—but even that by turns, as it is impossible to speak well when you are listening, and to listen well when you are speaking. Opposed to this egoism of the ear is its relation to possession. I “possess” only visual objects, while what I hear disappears the moment after its appearance.

That which takes place in space is audible to all, and my perception will never take away from another’s. Hence the particular importance of that which only I hear. There is no secret that conveys itself only through the eye. The ear makes provision for any number of participants in the experience, while at the same time serving a content that excludes everyone.

If we compare the public at a museum with the public at a concert, then it is likely the latter that will receive the more uniform impression. We are unlikely to succeed in receiving an identical viewing experience, while sound can be transmitted evenly to a large number of people (leaving aside the nuances of sound systems). The sound message imposes its own duration, while I read a visual message at my own speed.

My eye goes where it wishes. It can run from the detail to the whole, verify and study the visible more or less constantly. My ear simply takes the sequence of the soundscape. For me, the heard is a sequence of elements, appearing and disappearing, which means it deprives me of the ability to construct a hierarchy. Looking at an installation, I can single out a part and endow it with significance, but to do the same with a composition, I will have to interpret different sound levels in a single listening. I can only draw out and comprehend elements of sound on second listening. The whole only emerges through repetition, while the painting is formed of the aggregate of its elements and background. After all, there can be no still-frames of sound. Relistening as the passing along one and the same route helps me recognise and construct a gradation. To what extent are they changeable, and are my interpretations freer?

I’m afraid that, working with the visual as an artistic practitioner, I used sound as a crutch, constructed a hierarchy of impressions through the most understandable instrument—the visible. Yes, it appeared then disappeared afterwards due to the performative nature of my works, but it remained in the memory as a sequence of pictures. I stepped into musical production like into a grey zone, in order, first, to determine whether a reincarnation was possible; second, to think about time as though it were space, and, finally, to become a part of the community of those who prefer auditory to visual experience.

II

It could be supposed that I have simply presumed sound to be something absolutely indefinable and abstract. Clearly, even without trained listening, we are capable of distinguishing the sound of an air conditioner from a genre composition. The music industry lives by its own criteria. And aptitude for differentiation undoubtedly correlates with listening experience. Not every one of us is capable of picking out grains from the landscape, but almost all of us can determine genre.

We will begin with Simon Reynolds and his concept of the hardcore continuum: a genre has no single point of emergence or point of death, only an uninterrupted evolutionary process, in which there is neither a first or last word. In the context of the hardcore continuum, all terms are valid. Genre is not something single, fully-formed. It always emerges from the full spectrum of music. Its path and forms are changeable, flow and spread in endless directions of influence. That is, tracing a starting point is practically impossible. But music does not appear in a vacuum, genres exist as reflection, reconsideration, or resistance. One can trace sociological, political, and economic events. Basing oneself on them, gradually unwinding genre, like a knot, one can find the beginning of the thread.

In my study of dance music in Britain in the 1990s and 2000s, I refer to the memoirs of people who were directly involved—pioneers of jungle, British garage, acid house, and illegal warehouse raves. These genres and phenomena appeared at the boundary between disciplines as a reaction to the frustration of the younger generation. Behind each genre stands a story: accidentally discovered sounds on the Roland (a musical synthesiser produced by the Japanese Roland Corporation) in acid house, or the deliberate investigation of sub bass in dubstep, the effect of time stretching in jungle, or the disappearance of the third beat in two-step. And only then the pattern by which we follow the tradition of innovation to this day.

Dance music was not created just so strangers could have a good time together, but to build a community—a fundament of solidarity and support. In particular, jungle created the committee “for their own, ” which, though it ultimately only observed the inadmissible behaviour of its members and did not meet expectations, was an initiative built on a desire to “preserve” the genre in the form in which it had first come into being. Producers were worried that the industry might swallow and spit out the next new sound. For the British, getting into the industry meant getting on to radio, social media headlines, or television shows. And you’d kind of want to fill a stadium, but fear the community would irrevocably cross you out of its ranks. A particular kind of division into one’s own and the other. Capitalisation and appropriation were the main directions of criticism in Western culture. Garage was luckier. It encountered the industry when well-known popular figures began asking for remixes of their hits. Accepting, producers automatically came onto the market while still remaining in their safe communities. Hardcore in principle did not strive for the mainstream and its sound itself was intended to repel other audiences.

In the post-Soviet space, reflections on the problem of capitalisation entailing a curse on the part of the community are absolutely out of place. Dance music exists in a kind of bubble of promo groups, clubs, and labels—the supporting structures of the community. Capitalisation has only just reached festivals, but this is still an encounter: with others, with oneself, and with the legacy of electronic music. The space is more or less homogenous and open for free expression.

For more than fifteen years, I have worked with the subject of community and horizontal practices as an artist: street subcultures, graffiti, and skateboarding; for exactly ten years, I was a participant in the anonymous performance project VASYARUN. My interest was not only in representation and visibility, but in the mechanism of construction of identity. If then, anonymity allowed me to do away with the figure of the artist, today I have chosen a strategy of self-reinvention and nullification.

It was by using this strategy that I researched the musical industry from within, addressing horizontality, safety, cohesion, equal access (including to spaces in line-ups), institutional reputation, and the responsibility of performers and promoters before their audiences.

III

I did not release my EP in order to set it under glass like they set the mummies of butterflies under glass at the Zoological museum. Behind a facade of installation and entertainment hid my operation of self-reinvention. An attempt to answer the question of whether one can cease to be an artist or how art can make you whoever you want.

We will leave aside questions of craft and skill not because they are not a determining factor, but because the 1990s and the Internet have given us free access to technology. The dubstep pioneers Scream and Benga were thirteen years old when they learned to download sounds from FruityLoops and created their first recordings. As regards education, then in art, as in the musical sphere, it has long since determined nothing, and more often than not interferes, moreover, it does not guarantee automatic entry. In contrast, by the way, to Western academic circles.

For my EP, I recorded three compositions in a strictly clichéd garage style and set off for the labels and promoters. I will say immediately that the music and contemporary art worlds do not intersect at all in terms of figures, which meant becoming just a performer without a background was easy for me. If in art, I worked a long time to attain a kind of expertise, in music I am just an unknown name. Without revealing the participants in my research, I will try to share my observations. At the moment of writing, I would single out three archetypes of Russian labels:

1. Labels with a strong reputation for experts and determiners of taste. Inside, one finds fairly attentive people who know what they are talking about and, for this reason, who concentrate on the release of only the special. Speaking with them, you sharply feel yourself to be an imposter, and also really want to become an accepted participant. They look at you as a potential artist, with whom it is important to work nicely: where are you from, who are you with, what are your history and your goals. Clearly, such a label is interested, first of all, in the creation of a community.

2. The market is the market. Investment in almost everything digestible based on the assumption that one in a thousand will hit the mark. Inside, one finds a serious team that wants to make something easier to sell out of you, hence requirements for the representation of individual artists that are made. The management of such a label is individual and subjective, the bet is placed on the “scent” of producers. Such a label is interested in maximal reach, ready to participate in doubtful initiatives for the sake of the common good. First of all—the building of an audience, among other things for the organisation of festivals. The artist likely feels unneeded and abandoned if they do not produce the necessary results.

3. Labels like families, old companies of close friends, entirely open to new participants. Inside—reign of the founders themselves with the right to a final vote. Getting into such a community means confirming one’s own significance and competence. Knocking on such doors does not cross the mind of a novice, there is only one hope, that they will “discover” you. If you’re lucky, they will prompt and guide you. Belonging to such a label is literally passage into the top “selectors.”

Western labels are not mentioned here. They were not the focus of my research, but, all the same, the experience of communication with a number of them was remarkably different. You are immediately told about the potential of your material and offered concrete solutions (if they answer at all).

Investigation into the mechanism of the creation of a release brought me to search for a horizontal and free environment for expression. And I am inclined to say that today, this is to be found in the Russian electronic music industry. A number of grassroots initiatives (for example, online radio) and a community largely open to communication (art directors and producers) allows practically any no-name artist with basic communication skills to become a part of the environment. Freedom of expression is measured by audience reach: the smaller and denser it is, the safer.

As I have already said, the musical industry is highly separate from the sphere of contemporary art, and this means my expertise does not ensure me easy entry into this seemingly closest of spheres. Why, becoming a producer, do I cease to be an artist, and the other way around? A question that has remained with me to this day. If on the territory of art you simply step over the boundary and find yourself in a new grey area, then in the musical sphere your artistic background is an unneeded appendage. The museum industry as a territory of meanings transforms your material into something more, the music industry sets it in a row of products absolutely equal to one another. But, in exchange, the environment of electronic music guarantees you a community.