Photographs taken in March, when everything worked. 2017:
photo 1 “I am not here”; photo 2 “I am here”
BRINK, KERBSIDE, FENCE, MARGIN
13 June 2016. The search for the site of Slogan-1977
”I DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT ANYTHING AND I LIKE EVERYTHING, EVEN THOUGH I’VE NEVER BEEN HERE AND I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THESE PARTS.”
Slogan-77, Collective Actions Group, 1977
Because I’m really smart, I decided to forestall any possible pre-journey insomnia and I took a sleeping pill.
As I sank into a sweet sleep, I came to a sudden halt at the kerbside between consciousness and the bottomless gulf of the unconscious. The gulf of the irrational gaping open on one side; systemic consciousness pressing up against me from the other. I froze, dumbfounded by the mechanism that had been revealed to me in all its might.
”And what if something like this can happen without any pill, simply in ordinary daily life, and then suddenly you’re not watching this from the kerbside, but you get sucked in immediately, like a waterfall falling from a dam. That’s how people go insane, isn’t it,” I thought. And I couldn’t fall asleep any longer. All night until morning. Because I’m really smart.
(When Shura and I tried mushrooms in our young days, I thought: ”The little hedgehog was walking along, forgot how to breathe and died” – and I instantly forgot how to breathe. It was a good thing that just then Shura spoke up and I was distracted by her idea that the ambulance crew would find us and realize what we’d died of and we’d be ashamed.)
Anyway, I took another pill, and then some sedative drops, it was getting light and I was still observing oneiroidal pictures, balancing on the kerbside and finally and absolutely not getting to sleep.
In the morning I switched on the television and there was a program about dolphins, who, as we know, sleep with half their brain.
I put on the red dress and took my white dress and a red ribbon.
At last everyone has gathered. Shura’s laughing and waving a shapeless red robe, Volka is concerned about the signs falling, Kuzkin was hammering in a nail at four in the morning.
Misha drives us there out of coerced compassion, because I can’t take the wheel.
The road to the lake by car is blocked off by fences. There are fences everywhere here, but between them there are very nice people, who showed us the right gap, which we sneaked through and reached the lake.
We took photographs on the brink, looking at the gulf of the waterfall, imitating the 1977 photo:
We made camp at the lake on Artyom Beach, where it was not recommended to swim but, of course, we took no notice. Shura covered herself in the loose red robe and started flitting about, and I pressed the button on the camera. Shura flitted about on land, and then in the water, then with the light shining through. Very beautiful.
But then not one of the 100 shots came out. Because the camera had to make two clicks – sort of before the event and after it. Kerbside.
Easily overcoming this debacle, we walked up to the top of the hill and set off along a path. The path led us to yet another fence. We went back to a clearing on the hill and I, full of determination, not giving a damn for the nettles and my bare legs under my special red action dress, dashed into the thickets, trying to spot the open spaces of 1977 through the branches. They weren’t there.
I was scurrying up and down the slope, comparing the view with the photograph, when Kuzkin overtook me and set off friskily along the river bank. We found a couple of places that could have been the same ones, but the number of fir trees was different from what it was then.
We decided to start all over again and went back to the pond. An elderly couple in white greeted us politely. I asked them if they had been here in 1977.
No.
We ran into another fence, climbed over it, puffing and panting, and immediately found a hole in it. But we didn’t find the right place.
We decided to come in winter, when the riotous foliage had subsided.
We went back to the beach. Shura won’t give up – she put the loose robe on again, altered the settings in the camera and handed it to me.
I pressed the button, Shura fluttered her red wings, sent up sprays of water, floated and flitted.
Very beautiful.
But then not one of the 100 shots came out. Because the camera had to make two clicks – sort of before the event and after it. Kerbside.
At this point I started getting the feeling that I had somehow, somewhat, kind of got snagged on a fence, dangling by my trousers.
The time came to wind up the expedition. We set off back to where we’d come from, and suddenly came across the same elderly couple, walking towards us. The old guy was in white, with a red bag and playing a mouth organ. Shura, Volka and Misha walked on past them.
”Did you find 1977?” the old lady asked.
And the old guy suddenly turned towards Kuzkin and me and started reciting his own poetry – the beginning was about how the past can’t be brought back, but I videoed the rest of it anyway.
What I had intended to do there concerned my borderline presence/absence in these parts. I was present at the hanging of Slogan-77 as an embryo. Even then I probably didn’t complain about anything.
In total:
2 photographs conceived, but not shot, about my presence/absence.
200 photographs shot, but not taken, with Shura in her robe.
1 photograph shot from a precisely identified 1977 spot, but which the participants forbade me to show in public.
A golden pencil found.
Half of the old guy’s poem recorded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lHn10K1lXE
And that night an incredible thunderstorm gaped wide open.
Truenottruenottruenottrueskyblue