Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
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artificial hells<br />
My second example, <strong>the</strong> ‘Hooter Symphonies’, is one <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> most mind-<br />
boggling cultural gestures <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> post- revolutionary period. Not only did this<br />
musical endeavour seek to facilitate mass participation, it also reinvented <strong>the</strong><br />
entire concept <strong>of</strong> instrumentation by harnessing <strong>the</strong> sirens <strong>and</strong> industrial noise<br />
<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> modern city into a new underst<strong>and</strong>ing <strong>of</strong> what constituted an orchestra.<br />
Conceived as a new <strong>and</strong> truly proletarian music, <strong>the</strong> Hooter Symphonies<br />
aimed to turn <strong>the</strong> whole city into an auditorium for an orchestra <strong>of</strong> new industrial<br />
noise, conducted from a ro<strong>of</strong>top by a man carrying large fl ags; <strong>the</strong>y<br />
embraced ‘all <strong>the</strong> noises <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> mechanical age, <strong>the</strong> rhythm <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> machine, <strong>the</strong><br />
din <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> great city <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> factory, <strong>the</strong> whirring <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> driving belts, <strong>the</strong> clattering<br />
<strong>of</strong> motors, <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> shrill notes <strong>of</strong> motor horns’. 86 The Hooter Symphonies<br />
were initiated by <strong>the</strong> music <strong>the</strong>orist Arsenii Avraamov (1886– 1944), a reformist<br />
who in 1920 had asked <strong>the</strong> Commissariat <strong>of</strong> Enlightenment to confi scate<br />
<strong>and</strong> demolish all pianos as a necessary fi rst step in destroying bourgeois music<br />
<strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> twelve- tone scale. After experiments with factory whistle symphonies<br />
in St Petersburg (1918) <strong>and</strong> Nizhnyi Novgorod (1919), Avraamov oversaw a<br />
spectacular noise symphony to celebrate <strong>the</strong> anniversary <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Revolution in<br />
<strong>the</strong> Baku harbour on 7 November 1922. The event used sirens <strong>and</strong> whistles<br />
from navy ships <strong>and</strong> steamers, as well as dockside shunting engines, a ‘choir’<br />
<strong>of</strong> bus <strong>and</strong> car horns, <strong>and</strong> a machine- gun battery. The aim was to evoke <strong>the</strong><br />
struggle <strong>and</strong> victory <strong>of</strong> 1917, <strong>and</strong> involved versions <strong>of</strong> ‘The Internationale’<br />
<strong>and</strong> ‘The Marseillaise’ with a 200- piece b<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> choir, <strong>and</strong> a large portable<br />
organ <strong>of</strong> steam- controlled whistles on <strong>the</strong> deck <strong>of</strong> a torpedo boat. With characteristic<br />
scepticism, Fülöp- Miller notes that <strong>the</strong> results <strong>of</strong> such experiments<br />
were unhappy, to say <strong>the</strong> least:<br />
on <strong>the</strong> one h<strong>and</strong>, <strong>the</strong> capacity <strong>of</strong> modulation in <strong>the</strong> instruments used was<br />
not very great, <strong>and</strong>, on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r h<strong>and</strong>, <strong>the</strong> ‘compositions’ performed<br />
were much too complicated. Although <strong>the</strong> ‘conductors’, posted on high<br />
towers, regulated by waving fl ags <strong>the</strong> intervention <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> various sirens<br />
<strong>and</strong> steam- whistles, which were at considerable distances from each<br />
o<strong>the</strong>r, it proved impossible to attain a uniform, acoustic impression. The<br />
distortions were so great that <strong>the</strong> public could not even recognise <strong>the</strong><br />
well- known <strong>and</strong> familiar ‘Internationale’. 87<br />
The (un)recognisability <strong>of</strong> a tune seems to be a minor quibble in <strong>the</strong> face <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong><br />
searing impression that remains <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se efforts today, both visually <strong>and</strong><br />
conceptually: a barely visible man forlornly st<strong>and</strong>s on a factory ro<strong>of</strong>, a tiny<br />
speck in <strong>the</strong> face <strong>of</strong> an invisible (but one imagines overwhelming) industrial<br />
cacophony swirling around him. The futility <strong>of</strong> this proposition <strong>and</strong> his impotent<br />
centrality st<strong>and</strong>s as <strong>the</strong> poignant inverse <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> conductorless orchestra.<br />
Here, <strong>the</strong> lack <strong>of</strong> a new repertoire really doesn’t matter, because <strong>the</strong> proposition<br />
<strong>and</strong> its outcome exceed all existing categories: Avraamov’s Hooter<br />
Symphonies are perhaps more visionary than any o<strong>the</strong>r Russian cultural<br />
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