A performative installation exploring solitude, loneliness, and the boundaries between the two.
52 Hz
- Date:
- 12 Sep–
3 Dec 2023
- Age restrictions
- 16+
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52 Hz (“Fifty-two Hertz”) is a performative installation created by the director Anton Morozov, the artist and architect Andrey Voronov, the playwright Polina Korotych, the composer Oleg Gudachev, and the choreographer Valentina Lutsenko.
52 Hz continues the
Illustration: Varya Fomicheva
The project’s title is a reference to the world’s loneliest whale, which is unable to find other whales who respond to the frequency of its 52-hertz calls. In the object created especially for
All drawings: Anna Kornienko
Theatrical action for a single spectator unfolds within this improvised whale carcass.
Immersed in an atmosphere of solitude, the viewer finds themselves transported from the whale hulk to an ordinary one-room apartment in Moscow, the home of a girl, Anya, who thinks a lot about the world’s oceans, and doesn’t leave the house for months, imagining she is the lonely 52 Hz whale. The installation’s interactive environment, as well as its auditory, visual, and olfactory elements offer an experience that allows visitors to explore the bounds of loneliness.
52 Hz is a memory of life, a re-experiencing of it and, as a consequence, an escape from reality, a dissolving, flickering, a disappearing. When we enter the barrel within the whale, we find ourselves in a museum of things left behind—ideas, feelings, scraps of memory. The barrel is a place that exists in the space of phantom life/pain. Exploring Anya’s artificial loneliness while experiencing actual loneliness within the enclosed space, we encounter our own experiences of separation from people, of escapism, and of open contact with reality.
Who am I now? And how do I feel where I am? Anya searches for answers to these questions and gradually drifts into the void, merging with the space of the world ocean.
— Anton Morozov, director
Photo: Daniil Annenkov
Project team
Andrey Voronov is an architect, artist, and curator. He is a founder of the ARCHATTACKA association and a curator at the HSE Art and Design School. Voronov was a co-author of the Tales of the Golden Apples public art programme in Almetyevsk, and of the Plywood Theatre’s conceptual architectural project for the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theatre. Voronov directed Russia’s first professional Minecraft performances for the BDT Digital portal.
Oleg Gudachev is a composer and improvisational multi-instrumentalist. He graduated with a degree in Composition from the Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory (2014) and is a postgraduate student at the Vaganova Ballet Academy. He is a co-founder and the artistic director of the {instead} ensemble. In 2020, Gudachev was a resident artist at the HELLERAU—European Centre for the Arts and the winner of the Aksenov Family Foundation’s Russian Music 2.0 prize. Gudachev has participated in a number of exhibitions at
Polina Korotych is a playwright. She graduated from Mikhail Ugarov’s dramaturgy course in 2016, and from the Master’s programme at the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts in 2019, specialising in dramaturgy (workshop of Natalia Skorokhod). Korotych’s plays have been repeatedly included in the short and long lists of the Lyubimovka, Eurasia, Big Remarque, Little Remarque, and First Reading festivals. Plays based on Korotych’s texts have been staged through Russia— the Shalom Theatre, the Russian Academic Youth Theatre, the Social Art Theatre, the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre, the G. Kariev Kazan Tatar State Theatre for Young Spectators, and the Tver Regional Theatre of the Young Spectator.
Valentina Lutsenko is a dance artist, performer, and teacher of movement practices and dance. She has created works for
Anton Morozov is a theatre director. He is a graduate of the directing faculty of the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts (Andrey Moguchy’s workshop). From 2017 to 2021, he worked at the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theatre as a director, curator, and video director. He has participated in directing labs at the Taganka Theatre, the Mayakovsky Theatre, and the Karabas Festival, among others. Anton Morozov’s productions have been staged at the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theatre, the Sarov Drama Theatre, the Academic Musical Theatre in Baku, the Chamber Theatre of the United Museum of Ural Writers, and the Yeltsin Centre in Yekaterinburg.
Voices
Victor Bugakov, Olga Vankova
Sound engineer
Sergey Kochetkov
Soprano, Sound design
Natalia Solovieva
Olfactory artists
Masha Golovina, Pavel Nikandrov (Holynose Lab)
Graphics
Anna Kornienko
Programmer
Alexey Lavrentyev
Curator
Anna Ildatova
Producers
Kseniya Lukina, Veronika Luchnikova, Kseniya Makshantseva
Technical team
Alexander Dolmatov, Artem Kanifatov, Nikita Tolkachev
Lighting
Vasily Bolshakov, Denis Grishin, Ilya Zadomsky, Kseniya Kosaya
Senior performance operator
Daria Fedorova
Performance operators
Anastasiya Eremyan, Vladislav Evgrafov, Evgeniya Furman
Media specialist
Anna Kolpakova