Museum Songspiel: The Netherlands 20XX from chto delat on Vimeo.

A Film by Chto Delat?; 2011

Director: Olga Egorova (Tsaplya)
Music: Mikhail Krutik
Set: Dmitry Vilensky and Natalya Pershina (Gluklya)
Costumes: Natalya Pershina (Gluklya)
Choreography: Nina Gasteva
Script: Olga Egorova (Tsaplya) and Dmitry Vilensky

The fourth songspiel by Chto Delat? represents a similar new form of contemporary tragedy as the first three musicals of the “Songspiel-triptych”. But whereas the first three productions were based on accounts of historical events the “Museum-Songspiel” realized in a tradition of dystopia film. The script takes place against the backdrop of an imaginary scenario of Dutch politics in the year 20XX, where all immigrants have been banned from the country.

The first scene – which in contrast to all most other scenes of the film was shot on location at the Van Abbemuseum – shows a Museum’s guard who is controlling the galleries. The dramatic soundtrack accompanying the scene seems to anticipate his confusion, when stumbling upon a group of illegal immigrants, who have sought refuge in a large display case designed for street art incorporated into the museum. The museum seems to be the only institution in which they hope to be able to evade their deportation. The situation reminiscent of a (human) zoo, where one group is separated from another through a large glass wall, is finally resolved when the museum director tells the outraged journalist, that the museum never intended to hide the immigrants from the authorities in the first place, rather they were merely hired as actors for a performance.

The film raises the frightening question of which particular role the museum and therefore also art might be forced to play under political circumstances borrowed from the realities of Russian current political situation. The film is a kind of acid test on how socially concerned art might operate under severe pressure of control by nationalistic populist governments.

The work is a co-production of the Van Abbemuseum, SMART Project Space and Chto Delat?

Distribution and inquiries: SMART Project Space, Amsterdam

Cast:

Museum director
William Sutton

Curator
Willemijn van der Ree

Artist
Lesley Korpos

Journalist
Igmar de Haan

Security guard
Huip van Dijk

First visitor
Claartje van Swaaij

Second visitor
Ruud Drupsteen

Camera man
Wouter van der Wiele

Immigrants:
Derkan Atakan
Dorgija Durasovic
Aurel Peleq
Salomee Rodenburg
Daniel Romali
Asya Vilensky

Museum attendants [choir]:
Lotte Bovi (mezzo-soprano)
Tim Maas (bass)
Frederique Klooster (soprano)
Anette Stallinga (alt)
Joost van Velzen (tenor)

Musicians:
Evgeny Shrednik (oboe), Mikhail Krutik (violin), Alexandra Zubova (violin), Alexey Bogorad (viola), Elena Grigoryeva (cello), Marina Krutik (piano)

Conductor for Choir recordings: Anton Pauw

Translations: Peter Wezel and Thomas Campbell

Camera: Artyom Ignatov and Tom Bierenbroodspot

Make up artist and hair: Loredana Secci

Stage production: Alex Lebbink and Jimini Hignett

Stage building and props: Jimini Hignett, Benjamin Roth, Avi Krispin, Pieter Paul Pothoven, Niels Vis

Production Accountant: Harry Raam

Special thanks to:

Museum of American Art, Berlin

Jimini Hignett

Merijn Oudenampsen

Concert: The Lesson on Dis-Consent (Das Lehrstück vom Un-Einverständnis) / Концерт: Урок несоглаcия from chto delat on Vimeo.

“The Lesson on Dis-Consent“ was recorded in Baden-Baden on October 28, 2011, during the opening of the exhibition Chto Delat? at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden.

Musik/Music:
Mikhail Krutik

Drehbuch/Script & concept:
Tsaplya (Olga Egorova) & Dmitry Vilensky

Regie/Director:
Tsaplya

Kostüme/Costumes:
Gluklya (Natalya Pershina) & Nikolay Oleynikov

The Lesson on Dis-Consent

This performance was recorded at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden on October 28, 2011.

This piece continues the series of musicals (songspiels)* written and produced by Chto Delat and composed by Mikhail Krutik over the past three years.

The occasion for this latest work was the Chto Delat solo show at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. We could not pass up this opportunity to engage in dialogue with the legacy of Bertolt Brecht, who premiered two works, Mahagonny-Songspiel (1927) and The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent (1929), at the new German chamber music festival in this same city. We wanted to produce a new piece in direct dialogue and debate with the work of this great master.

The piece is based on a critical reading of a number of texts produced by the anti-psychiatry movement, which emerged in the late sixties and early seventies in the Europe and US, especially those of the well-known Socialist Patients’ Collective in Heidelberg. In our performance, a “chorus of patients” that has been invited to appear at the exhibition opening becomes engaged in dialogue with the audience.

It is also noteworthy that Baden-Baden is a city with deep historical ties to Russia, and even today it is frequented by members of the Russian elite, who go there to relax and seek medical treatment. We thought it important to critically reflect this state of affairs: thus, one of the characters in our performance is a “typical” Russian businessman, who argues with the chorus and voices the values of this new class.

Our work critiques the modern concept of a healthy lifestyle and discusses how we might radicalize this concept and “turn illness into a weapon.”

* You can view our songspiels at the Chto Delat web site:
chtodelat.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=842&Itemid=299〈=en

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Концерт в Баден-Баденском Кунстхалле состоялся 28-ого Октября 2011 года
Эта работа продолжает развитие мюзиклов (Зонгшпилей*), над которыми Что делать и композитор Михаил Крутик работают последние три года.
Поводом для последней работы стала персональная выставка Что Делать? в Кунстхалле Баден-Бадена, и мы не могли не воспользоваться этим случаем, чтобы не вступить в диалог с наследием Бертольта Брехта, который в рамках немецкого фестиваля музыки, именно в этом городе, реализовал ряд премьер «Махогони», «Говорящий Да» и «Баден-Баденские уроки согласия» (1929). Нам хотелось реализовать новую работу в прямом диалоге и полемике с творчеством этого великого мастера.
В основу работы положено наше критическое прочтение ряда текстов движения антипсихиатрии, получившей свое развитие в Европе в конце 60ых начале 70ых годов и, прежде всего, известного Гайдельбергского «Коллектива Социалистических Пациентов». В концерте перформансе принимают участие «хор пациентов», который приглашен выступить на открытие выставки и оказывается вовлеченным в диалог с публикой, пришедшей на открытие.
Также, важно отметить что Баден- Баден – это город, традиционно имеющий глубокие исторические связи с Россией, и сегодня остается местом отдыха и лечения российских элит. Нам было важно также критически отразить эту ситуацию и один из героев концерта, полемизирующий с хором является «типическим» образом русского бизнесмена, выражающего ценности этого нового класса.
В целом можно сказать, что наше произведение посвящено критике современной концепции здорового образа жизни и о том, как можно радикализировать и «сделать свою болезнь оружием».
* смотрите Зонгшпили на сайте Что Делать?
https://www.chtodelat.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=842&Itemid=299⟨=en