The Russian premiere of Bill Viola’s video work "The Deserts" was held at the Pushkin Museum 
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Pushkin Museum im. A. Pushkin and the Ensemble of soloists "Studio for New Music" with the support of the Aksenov Family Foundation presented the premiere in Russia on May 31 of the video work "The Desert" (1994) by Bill Viola to the music of Edgar Varez. The work was shown in the main building of the museum, the musical composition of the same name was performed under the baton of conductor Sergei Akimov.
Déserts was created by Bill Viola to be shown accompanied by a live performance of the music of the same name by Edgar Varese (1885–1965). According to the idea of the composer - one of the main innovators in experimental music of the 20th century - his musical work was also to be accompanied by a video sequence. Varese wrote: “” Deserts ”for me is a magic word indicating a connection with infinity. It means not only “deserts” in the physical sense - sandy or snowy, deserted seas or mountains, deserted space of space, deserted streets of cities - not only a harsh aspect of nature that gives rise to thoughts of sterility, remoteness, timeless existence, but also that distant inner a space that cannot be seen through any telescope - a space where a person remains face to face with the world of mysteries and loneliness,inseparable from the very essence of his being ”. The composer did not manage to implement this synthetic audiovisual project during his lifetime, but left general references to images, leaving space for interpretation for the video artist.
The Frankfurt Modern Ensemble, which performed contemporary music, approached Viola with a proposal to create a visual score for Varese’s Deserts, after the soloists noticed the composer’s notes about an unrealized visual component. In October 1994, Viola’s Deserts premiered in Vienna with the Modern Ensemble conducted by Peter Eotvos.
The musical work "The Desert" by Varese, which premiered in 1954, is notable for the use of taped sound collages interrupting live music at three points in the score. In Bill Viola’s video work, this basic structure is used to express the stark contrast between the inner space of a person alone in a windowless room and a variety of scenes of the outside world without people: shimmering desert views, undulating underwater landscapes, night streets, the bright glow of a raging fire. Here, images of emptiness and destruction do not necessarily mean denial, loss, or ultimate annihilation; rather, they become agents of transformation, which should ultimately lead to a deeper knowledge of oneself. After all, a clear line between the inside and the outside,loneliness and emptiness is destroyed through the crescendo of liberation - in a musical score and on tape - and the two worlds, isolated above and under water, merge into one.
The Russian premiere of the video work "The Desert", held with the support of the museum’s longtime partner, the Hennessy Social and Cultural Foundation, was attended by: Marina Loshak, Director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. A. S. Pushkin; Olga Shishko, Head of the Film and Media Arts Department of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts A. S. Pushkin; Pierre Levy, Ambassador of France to Russia; Hilles Arno Beshoor Plukh, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the Russian Federation; Dmitry Aksyonov, founder of the Aksenov Family Foundation; Ksenia Sobchak and Konstantin Bogomolov; Dasha Veledeeva, Chief Editor of Harper’s Bazaar; Vasily Tsereteli, executive director of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Olga Sviblova, director of the Multimedia Art Museum; Teresa Mavica, Head of the VAC Foundation; Arkady Novikov, restaurateur; Ulvi Kasimov, Sferiq Capital; Emelyan Zakharov, co-founder of the Triumph gallery; Irina Sedykh,Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the OMK-Uchastiye Charitable Foundation; Alexander Erofeev, Vice President of VTB Bank; Margarita Pushkina, Founding Director of the Cosmoscow International Contemporary Art Fair; Gor Nahapetyan, Skolkovo Moscow School of Management; Ilya Khrzhanovsky, director; Gregory Sluzhitel, actor, writer; journalists Julia Vydolob and Anastasia Kamenskaya.
REFERENCE
Bill Viola is an acclaimed video art classic who pioneered its origins in the 1970s. For more than four decades he has been creating audio and video installations, films, video, sound environments, as well as media works accompanying large-scale concert and opera performances. Viola represented the United States at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995; his solo exhibitions were held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1997), the Getty Museum in Los Angeles (2003), the Morey Art Museum in Tokyo (2006), the Grand Palais in Paris (2014), Palazzo Strozzi in Florence )2017), Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2017), Royal Academy of Arts London (2019), Busan Art Museum South Korea (2020); in 2014 in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the works of the series "Martyrs" were placed as a permanent installation,since 2016, the video triptych "Maria" has been located there.
In 2021, at the Pushkin Museum. Alexander Pushkin hosted the exhibition “Bill Viola. Journey of the Soul ".
Edgar Varese is a French and American composer and conductor, one of the pioneers of electronic and concrete music, "prophet of sound", "skyscraper mystic", electronic pioneer, "adept" of the theremin. Edgar Varese’s teachers included Vincent d’Indy, Albert Roussel and Charles Widor. However, experiments in the field of physics, the study of mathematics and the nature of sound became fundamental for the composer. The composer’s triumph was his participation in the world exhibition Expo’58 in Brussels, during which his work was heard in the Philips pavilion by millions of visitors.
The Studio for New Music Ensemble of Soloists is the leading Russian ensemble of contemporary music, founded in 1993 at the Moscow State Conservatory named after V.I. PI Tchaikovsky by composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky, conductor Igor Dronov and musicologist Alexander Sokolov. The ensemble’s repertoire includes almost all chamber and chamber orchestral music of the 20th and 21st centuries, starting from the early Russian avant-garde and Western modernism. The ensemble has repeatedly given joint concerts with the Ensemble Modern, played music with the "Schönberg-ensemble" and the Klangforum Wien. The studio has become the first and only Russian ensemble to date, which was invited to the International Summer Courses of Contemporary Music in Darmstadt.
Direction "Pushkin XXI" Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin - a program designed to give viewers an idea of contemporary art and its most prominent representatives; to demonstrate the art of new classics who speak not only the language of painting, graphics and photography, but also the language of new forms: video, sound, performance can brightly and harmoniously fit into the traditional museum context. New media, which are often temporary and ephemeral, can give a new interpretation of classic works of art, forcing them to breathe, move and enter into dialogue with the viewer.
"Pushkin XXI" is a museum within a museum. This direction is based on a combination of educational, research and exhibition activities, which allows you to show the evolution of an artistic image created by any means - from traditional to modern.
Aksenov Family Foundation (AFF) is an international multidisciplinary platform whose strategic goal is to highlight the unique role of contemporary culture in everyday life. Using the synergy of projects created at the intersection of contemporary art, science and technology, the foundation contributes to the professional development of those areas of contemporary culture that have the most capacious communication potential for interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, and is engaged in their comprehensive support, as well as increasing the level of audience involvement in new cultural practices., both at the personal and social levels.