Reading by Fire (Drone of the Language)

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Performance by ETI movement, February 15, 1991

Authors: ETI movement
Idea: A. Osmolovsky
Venue: Moscow, Chapaevsky Garden — construction site of the unfinished theater (nowadays the “Triumph Palace” apartments are built at this place)
Participants: Anatoly Osmolovsky, Pavel Rubtsov, Natalia Koroleva, etc.
Audience: Three people — Oleg Kulik, Anya Chijova, Anton Nikolaev

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Description of the venue:
At the site where a round stage was supposed to be, there was a foundation pit with a large concrete column in the center and twelve smaller pillars around it.

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Description of the performance:
On six of the pillars, there were piles of books by Marxist theorists: Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, Engels, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao. On the other six pillars stood people holding books by the same authors.

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In the center, a man held a lit 3-meter-long torch and sequentially set fire to the piles of books. As each pile was ignited, the participant holding a book began reading that author.

Thus, clockwise, the piles of books were burning and the reading of these authors followed consistently. As a result, there was a simultaneous reading of the books — “drone of the language”.

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“Drone of the language” is a structuralist term, meaning simultaneous reading, with texts overlapping and interweaving.

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Designation of meanings:
The burning of books resulted in public reading-reproduction. It was a critical element of the time when society was turning its back on Marxist theory. Since the society was “burning” Marxist theory, the performance warned that removing books from libraries leads to actualization — public demand.

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Publication:
“Decorative Art” magazine, 1991; authors — Ludmila Bredikhina and Oleg Kulik

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