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The Flying Komarov
2023 - CNSMD Lyon, FR
collaboration w pianist Imogen Edwards

live performance
‘The Flying Komarov’ is a duet for piano & notation that directly engages with its namesake, an album of 32 drawings by Ilya Kabakov (1974).

The sixth in his ‘Ten Characters’ series, Kabakov’s album represents a dreamy embodiment of artistic escapism & the hidden power it supplied those living under the Soviet regime. In this particular story, Kabakov's characters find themselves  freed from the constraints of gravity, floating out of their houses & up into the clouds. Some even manage to escape to skies further afield, clinging onto the wings of passing airplanes. One character, however, remains gravitationally bound & can only wave at those flying by. As his friends dissolve into the atmosphere, so Kabakov’s canvas succumbs to a final page of blankness, silencing both the image & the dream encoded within.

In performance, Imogen & I worked as a mutually reliant ensemble, each dependent on the other to co-ordinate entries & variations of material.

 
8’06”
[piano, notation, fixed media]

photos: @_ewen__

"Always, for as long as I can remember and even when I don’t remember... there has been a desire to run, to get away from that place where you are now; to run without looking back, so as never to return; to run so far away that they can’t bring you back from there; to run so fast that you can’t be caught; to run so suddenly and unexpectedly that no one could anticipate it and interfere; to jump out at the most unexpected moment when no one is expecting it; to jump through the window which is always closed, through the door which is most likely locked…" 

Ilya Kabakov
©2024 Helena Atkin