Zaum Tractor is a 2-screen video work filmed throughout Southern Russia as part of the artists’ 3-month residency in Rostov-on-Don. Zaum Tractor addresses notions of freedom and collectivity - contradictory forces within contemporary Russia - sweeping past tractor races, church bells, river barges and the ceremonies of modern-day cossacks.
Throughout, a series of individuals perform zaum, the experimental performance poetry of the Russian Futurists that avoids fixed meanings to reveal the pure sound and wild rhythms of language. One hundred years after its invention, zaum is performed here in front of symbolic Constructivist Soviet architecture, presenting a clash between past and present, the rational and the transrational.
56th Biennale of Venice: All the World's Futures
Arsensale, Venice
9 May to 22 November 2015
Curator: Okwui Enwezor
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