Collective practice "Breath song" prepared by artists Vladimir Seleznev, Andrey Chugunov and participants of the Meditative Media Lab (in the framework of the Laboratory of a Young Artist in Ural NCCA in 2021): Daniil Bochenin, Herman Bysigin, Irina Vilkina, Alena Gureva, Katya Kolpakova, Anastasiya Pishygina, Lizaveta Sidoriuk, Artem Surkov, triaixeta, sosha_sablya, juliana iohm.
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Breath song is a collective practice prepared by the participants of the Meditative Media workshop. Visitors are invited to view videos made by artists in places where action is absent. By exploring the absence of action, the artists explore its extent, using techniques of stretching and compressing the speed of video playback. The same process takes place in the sound part of the performance, where a multi-voice sound is recorded in real-time and then time-processed.
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Vladimir Seleznyov comments:
"I saw this method of sound meditation in an active church in New York at a memorial evening for Elaine Summers - artist, experimental filmmaker, Fluxus Happenings participant and, according to Wikipedia, intermedia pioneer. Her films were shown, dance and music performances were performed, and people who worked with her during her lifetime shared their memories.
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The composer Pauline Oliveros proposed one of the performances, in which everyone could participate. The idea was as follows: you had to inhale a lot of air and exhale to make some sound, with each exhalation you had to change the sound. The different length of exhalation and the merging of polyphony was infinitely spiritual, Elaine's meditative film was playing on the screen, with girls in white dancing in the background. The whole thing together made an incredible impression, in some places, it just gave me goosebumps, it seemed like some specially written piece of music rather than improvisation. After this incredible experience, I also started to use this practice in different classes".