Elena Rykova: On the Shore of Shattered Time

In the miniature »on the shore of shattered time« the part of the female voice springs from an improvisation I recorded when singing into a snare drum and listening to the instrument reacting back by amplifying certain frequencies of my voice. This time, the amplifying force in the trio is carried out by the two male voices. The roles aren’t strictly distinct, rather, they form a delicate polyphonic relationship throughout, focusing on a register, where all three voices overlap and share the space with one another.

 

Voice is the agency of power. In Rebecca Solnit’s words, it is »the ability to speak up, to participate, to experience oneself and be experienced as a free person with rights. This includes the right not to speak, whether it’s the right against being tortured to confess, as political prisoners are, or not to be expected to service strangers who approach you, as some men do to young women, demanding attention and flattery and punishing their absence.« (an excerpt from »Silence is Broken« from The Mother of All Questions, 2017).

 

The very existence of our voices is a reminder of our human right to free speech and freedom, no matter who we are, where we are from and where we are headed towards. The photo below was taken by the photographer Victoria Khaliullina. It depicts thousands of protesters being pushed on a frozen pond by the police in Russia. The phrase on the bottom (in Russian) is an art work by the street artist Tima Radya, which says: »What are we? where do we come from? where are we going?«. It was installed in 2017 and became symbolically connected to the political protest in support of Alexey Navalny captured in the photo on January 31, 2021 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. This artwork was forcefully removed by the local authorities on March 7, 2024.

(Elena Rykova)