THE ODE
2002

Alimpiev Victor, Zhunin Marian

"The Ode": geanre, theme and the name. The project of young Moscow artists, Victor Alimpiev and Marian Zhunin, consists of interactive installation and 35 min. film of the same name.

The essence of the lyrics lies most of all in one’s experience of something missing or unattainable. Media are able to actualize what is missing and move near to what is distant. Once the ode – the text creating the scale of its object through its "placing on some high and visible point", was one of the media forms. The ode used to make its "remote" addressee pretty "real" and at the same time odious. The criteria of the odious work's success or failure was delight, it was delight that endowed the hero (and the requester) with the authenticity features. Today, when "the revealed body of the world population" (J.L. Nancy) declares the abundance of indivisible and indiscernible reality, the authenticity becomes imperceptible, turns into a habit – a soft spot of reality, invisible to itself. The identification with "a sort of habitualness" is a well-known advertising strategy. This very strategy is used (and being developed) in this project. Having invented a number of "substitute habits" imposed to be used, say, like some medical procedures (giving flowers, crumpling your skirt in critical days, being afraid of threatening shouts, being happy, missing the essence), we tried to make them "visible enough", "authentic", i.e. to make them the value of media – to put a "TV set" on some height. Our "Ode" is an attempt to create "new media" actualizing the very remoteness of an ecstatic song.

video: 256 Kbps. fragment

The site has been created with the assistance of the "Open Society Institute" (Soros Foundation). Russia