А. Монастырский, Н. Панитков, И. Макаревич, Е. Елагина, С ...

When Panitkov was distributing envelopes among the audience, Monastyrski wrapped the cloth full of
garbage to form a sack, put it over his shoulder and left the scene in the opposite direction from the
audience.
For some time a lozenge could be seen on the field, formed by S.Romashko sitting on a chair and
sounding his tape recorder (west), the outermost rabbit (east), receding Monastyrski (north) and the
audience (south).
Moscow region, Savyolovskaya railway line, field near the village of Kyevy Gorky
20 th of October, 1983
N.Panitkov, A.Monastyrski, S.Romashko, N.Alexeev, I.Makarevich, E.Elagina, G.Kizewalter, M.K.
Viewers:
I.Kabakov, I.Bakstein, V.Sorokin, Yu.Leiderman, V.Mironenko, A.Zhigalov, N.Abalakova, D.Prigov,
I.Pivovarova, I.Chuikov, E.Gorokhovsky, S.Gundlakh, Yu.Albert, A.Filippov, V.Zakharov, T.Didenko +
15 others
31. MUSIC WITHIN AND OUTSIDE
For a week‘s time I was meditating on action titled "Towers". I cut out images of towers in various
magazines and pasted them on white paper, accompanied with a tower‘s description, estimated a 30-
minutes long taxi ride. But then it suddenly came to me that the job was not worth the effort. However, on
the 7 th of April I decided to record the sound of trams passing by, which were necessary for the "Towers"
action. About midnight I and Sorokin went to the boulevard along Koroleva street, and I did what was
needed. On the next day I was certain to cancel the action. I did not even listen to the record made on the
boulevard. Two days later N came to me. We had a nice time together, and all of a sudden I felt an urge to
listen to the record with trams. It turned out to be splendid. I had a stereo recorder, so the effect was
dimensional: first a distant sound of an accelerating tram appears in the right ear, then it thunders by in
the center of my head, and finally fades away in the left ear. I devised a plan of an action titled "Trams are
remains of towers": Romashko with a turned-on Walkman stands on pavement, facing the boulevard
where trams run, and listens to my record for 30 minutes. It only consists of noises of trams passing by. In
the end of this record there is an instruction for Romashko prompting him to describe in a few words the
sound environment in which he was perceiving the trams passing by.
I offered N. (it was about an hour before midnight) to go outside and make the necessary record. I
switched the lights off in the room to go and get clothed. But then we started to fool around, lied down in
darkness, hugged and kissed… Finally we didn‘t go anywhere.
We got up at 8 in the morning, and I turned on Nina Hagen‘s record "Angstlos" to make a boost – there
were a couple of nice tracks, although in my opinion this particular record was less interesting compared
to her previous ones. By the way, I was writing a short text the other day, concerning aesthetical
estimations and judgments. As far as I remember, I stated that there were no prosperity and decline in art,
but rather "distances" and "depths". After listening to this record, I became uncertain about my own
judgment, as it was too much like "decline", rather than "depth". Later, on the day of our wedding with
N., I listened to some pieces of key musical compositions of the seventies: Klaus Schultze, Glass, Cage,
Stockhausen, and then to the most fashionable songs of the eighties. Alas, I‘d better not done that! With
all my openness and sincere interest for anything really new, the comparison (in my own humble point of
view, of course) was certainly not in the favor of the 80s.
Then we had breakfast and listened to The Residents‘ record: a fine piece of afro-infantile music. And
finally, only after listening to one side of Steve Reich‘s "Music for 18 musicians", the word
"REMAINING" crossed my mind. I went to see N off at a trolley bus stop around noon. We crossed the
street railway where I had planning the action "Trams are remains of towers", randomly chose a tree by