NOW - 24.07.2013 - «Blubber-Oil»

A message from an artist landed in my inbox. Just like many others which I receive regularly: “I’d like to work with DEREVO”.

I skimmed through the text without paying much attention and instead turned to the attached pictures which I liked very much. Immediately some dance images came to my mind.

So I answered the message and we made an appointment to meet in Moscow. Then I went back to the original message and noticed the small addition at the end: “I’m 15 years old”.

I only had time prior to shooting at the Mosfilm studio. So we met at 7 in the morning in an empty café.
She brought her camera and took some photos.
We spoke as equals, feeling like old acquaintances. I asked her about what was going on amongst young artists.
While she spoke to me about this, we walked at a leisurely pace towards Mosfilm.
We were walking quite slowly indeed; it was a pleasure, something unusual to see in Moscow.

So now,
as far as I could understand, the young are not interested in focusing on the source of a problem. They have a way of elevating an intense experience of reality to a level from where they can project their charged thoughts onto the monotony of everyday life, painting it brightly, as if lit by a spotlight shone from a helicopter’s belly.

And apparently I was seen by this girl like an oil film on the surface of water, able to spread over any possible subject of discussion, even the risky ones.
She called it the “blubber-oil” effect: a temporary taming of the waves.

During our conversation we felt distanced from the pavements and monuments. For an hour Moscow became an unreal cardboard city. I also gained a sense that the Mystery of Art has just been discovered but not yet deciphered.

Assuming that the “helicopter” theory is correct, there’s no need for decryption. The barcode of the Art will be placed on every damp corner of the city (look at her pictures) and will be dissolved in a minute. The Theory-Hypothesis-Null by Rama Michael Tamm has been amended by the “Null-Hypothesis-Null” construction.

She, Valeria Erza, stands with a permanent invisible connection to the others of her own kind. On that morning I was introduced to and easily accepted into this circle.

There’s no name for this “circle-sensation-consciousness” phenomenon. Not yet. To enter you need a password. In my case, my morning indifference towards my own creative work has worked as a password.

And so we both got ourselves some ice-cream which neither of us finished, stopped by the risen sun.

 

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Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photos: Valeria Erza