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Anna Ceeh, from the photo series “Ontological Realities”

Twelve Time Zones and One Common Language

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Russian artist Anna Ceeh (who was born in St. Petersburg) produced the picture series for the current “Report” and compiled the accompanying CD “Melodia” of current Russian, Baltic and Ukrainian electronic music together with Austrian sound artist Franz Pomassl (founder of the electronic label “Laton”). In the past two years, the two of them have travelled intensively in the Ukraine, the Baltic countries and the largest country on the earth, Russia (that extends over 12 time zones), passing through areas far from the central cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. They ventured into the most remote regions on both sides of the Ural mountains.

Antje Mayer talks to the artists Anna Ceeh and Franz Pomassl
Brief key phrases entered in their diary record their experiences: Arctic tundra & taiga, phantom cities, hardcore industry, permafrost, innumerable villages of wooden houses, new and old Orthodox churches of all sizes, , seductive idyll, the most horrendous environmental damage. People of flesh and blood, the biggest lakes and the longest rivers in the world, ecstasy and experiment, Lamaistic monastery and monks, rampant vegetation, Japan Sea, twelve time zones, one common language. On their expedition they surveyed and redrew the map of current music production. They documented and traced previously unknown music regions and musicians that they present on this CD. The title “Melodia” not only refers to the character of the piece that is strongly permeated by melody but is also an ironic reference to the state record label of the same name that was under the aegis of the Soviet Ministry of Culture.

Antje Mayer: Anna, how did you create the images for this issue of “Report”?
Anna Ceeh: I have been working on these photos for three years. By now there are thousands of them. There is always only one original, never a copy, as they were produced with a printing process I developed myself. They will later be put together in a publication. Essentially, the aim is to expose the path to becoming an image, if you like the “performative dimension of the image”. This question has produced a highly diverse spectrum in the history of feminist practice and theory to which I wanted to add a further facet.

Are they self-portraits?
A.C.: Yes and no. They are rather depictions of my definition of myself than portraits. They deal with my reality as a woman or the mother of my daughter. With these images I question my identity and with them I create a new idea of my reality. I take away the documentary character by reworking them and by my interventions with colour. In my photos I wish to manifest my almost manic insistence on this translation between image and reality.

About the CD. For your label “Laton”, you travelled through the most remote regions to explore the white areas on the musical map, to publish musicians from there and to promote them in the West. What kind of musical developments did you encounter?
A.C.: Even as a Russian I was amazed by the incredible dimensions of my native country that extends across twelve time zones. I believe that this is expressed in the almost utopian character of the current music production. In these geographical regions, there is something like a connecting tradition based on the combination of music with current technological inventions. It is interesting to note that many of the contemporary musicians are highly qualified natural scientists. I am thinking of such things as the historic invention of the Theremin in 1919, one of the first electronic music instruments in the world, invented by the Russian physicist Lev Sergejevitch Termen. Or just take the noise experiments of the Russian Futurists. The Soviet synthesisers in the 1980s were also important for music making, the inadequacies of the planned economy meant that virtually every one was a prototype that required a technically skilled user. These are all common historical reference points.

Have the scenes in the remote Russian east developed in a similar way to those in the “West”?
Franz Pomassl: When the first synthesisers and computers became available in the Soviet Union, young people used them to produce music in exactly the same way as people did here, but with the Soviet appliances, the sound was different. But the urge to carry out acoustic research, to draw sounds from the most unlikely things was the same. And besides, back then, like today, these people were not completely detached from the outside world. In the “rest of the world” they found the information they wanted. Murmansk and Vladivostok were, and still are, large and important port cities in their respective regions. Young people there were constantly provided with Western music and pop culture that reached them along sea routes.

We still speak in a Eurocentric way about the musical influence from the West. Is and was it ever so important in Russia? In Vladivostok, where your Laton artist Evgeny Beresnev aka Park Modern comes from, Asia is practically next door.
A.C.: The situation there is hermetic in that, physically, one is still very much located in Russia and cannot travel except virtually through Internet. Everything is far away and travel is therefore expensive. Independent music is distributed almost entirely through the net. Here this is a dream of the future, there it is already reality. There are practically no distribution structures or shops for music of this kind such as we are familiar with. And so everyone builds up their own international distribution structure in the Internet. Thus the musician Evgeny
Beresnev from Vladivostok has fans even in South America and Australia.

Do musicians in Russia deal less respectfully with the new technology?
F. P.: In the “West” we can only use the technology and the sound therefore is just more of the same because all productions, whether pop or experiment, use the same software and hardware. In the turbo-capitalist countries of the “East”, such as, say, China and India, they can still process technologies. They do this without any respect, with a feeling for experimentation. In Europe we throw away old technology; there all kinds of materials, including sound, are constantly recycled. This creates a highly individual music. In the future, the craziest kinds of sound machines will be developed. Many musicians who we met want to give up making music. The invitation to publish with our label “Laton” and to appear at festivals in the West has encouraged many of them to continue. Now they can measure themselves directly against the international avant-garde.

Anna Ceeh was born in St. Petersburg in 1974 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (class of Franz Graf). The video artist, photographer, festival organiser and music label manager (“Laton”) lives and works in Vienna.She has presented her works at Galerie Hit (solo exhibition) and Gal-erie Space, Bratislava (SK); East Bothnian Museum, Vaasa (FI); Mar-mara University, Istanbul (TR); Living Art Museum and Klink og Bank, Reykjavik (ISL); Landmark, Bergen (NO); Detali zvuku, Kiev (UA); “New Media Festival”, ACCEA, Yerevan (AM); “Kontrakom 06”, Salzburg (A); KNAM Theater, Komsomolsk na Amure (RU); “Replica”, Almaty (KZ).
Franz Pomassl is a musician, international DJ and producer. In 1990, together with Alois Huber, he founded “Laton”, the first electronic label in Austria. He initiated and runs the sound research laboratory “Sound Studio” at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.