Stalker / Olga Kisseleva

Interview with Olga Kisseleva

Each of us waits for our deepest desires to come true, dreaming and visualizing (as is now fashionable), yet they often remain unfulfilled. Perhaps this is because they are not our true dreams, as suggested by the protagonist of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. He serves as a guide to the Zone, a mysterious, barbed-wire-enclosed territory scarred by some external force. Hidden within it is a room, known only to guides, where one’s innermost dreams are said to come true. Though mortal danger lurks along the way, people relentlessly pursue their desires, with the Stalker leading them but not everyone finds what they seek. The room reflects the state of one’s soul, revealing fears and violence. The immersive opera Stalker, inspired by Tarkovsky’s 1978 film, revisits this story, transforming the Stalker into a woman who guides individuals toward inner growth, helping them overcome violence and wrath to embrace acceptance. The project combines visual arts, science, and contemporary classical music by Thierry Pécou. Olga Kisseleva, responsible for the opera’s phantasmagorical stage design, discussed the upcoming production with us. An artist and researcher,Kisseleva has taught art and science at the University Pantheon Sorbonne since 2007, and her works are part of over 25 major museum collections, including the Pompidou Center (Paris), Louis Vuitton Foundation (Paris), and ZKM Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, Germany).

We met with Olga at the Sorbonne, in a faculty meeting room where outstanding minds have thought and taught under the famous murals of Nicolas de Largillière.

Initially the idea of the opera was not mine: I accepted the invitation. There were two reasons for me to join the project. The first was my interest in Tarkovsky and, more particularly, in ‘Stalker’ and ‘Solaris’, a subject that I have been approaching for a long time through my research, and in particular through directing several theses on the subject at the Sorbonne. After COVID, the themes of ‘Stalker’ and the Zone took on a new dimension, and I wanted to link this Zone in some way to my work as an artist. I had the opportunity to share his thoughts with the director of the Normandie Impressionist Festival, with whom I have already collaborated extensively on various projects, always with great success. (Phillipe Platel, director of the Normandie Impressionist Festival; the immersive opera ‘Stalker’ premiered as part of the festival). Philippe is a very talented curator. Sometimes I share new ideas with him, and he helps me to formalise the project and find the right direction. So, I spoke to him about a new concept for Zone, after COVID.

How does Tarkovsky’s Zone reflect today’s societal issues? What problems does it illustrate?

What is the Zone in Tarkovsky’s film? A place where something has happened, where the order of things has been disturbed. People are usually quick to say: aliens have appeared and something has happened. But what did happen? And why aliens? In this place, certain natural processes have been disrupted, a balance has been upset. And how can a balance be upset? Something must have manifested itself, something must have entered the natural space, or something must have disappeared. And this absence has begun to change the environment. It sounds like COVID. It sounds like a nuclear disaster, like Chernobyl or Fukushima. Tarkovsky’s genius lies in the fact that in Stalker, made in the 1970s, the area he showed us corresponds to what we experienced – years later at Chernobyl, then at Fukushima, and during COVID… And, what we don’t talk about very much, Kazakhstan and French Guyana, where nuclear testing also took place, experienced the same insane stories. Or the horrible situation at the Arizona range…

“Let‘s not fight about it, let’s sit down together, think, help, support and heal each other, and everything will work out somehow”

How should we think about our environments after disasters like nuclear events or pandemics, as seen in Tarkovsky’s Zone? What makes a place a ‘zone’ of chaos?

This Zone is about something we actually experienced a few years after Tarkovsky’s film, and I wanted to express some new thoughts on the subject. What is it that turns a territory into a ‘zone’? How do we live with it? And if we have to fight, how do we do it? That’s how these questions came alive in me…
And what’s interesting is that it was then that I started working on a new material, a kind of plastic, for the manufacture of which we don’t use the usual material – oil, but milk residues. Usually, when I have a project, I go to scientific laboratories to find the skills I need. But more and more often – since I also run research programs at the Sorbonne – it’s scientists who come to me with their problems, interested in carrying out parallel artistic research. That’s how researchers working on the production of plastic from milk residues invited me to work with them on exploring this material.

I suppose it’s not quite plastic, at least not in the general knowledge.

Initially, this technology, which dates back to Antiquity, is called “galalith”, and was used to make various objects and accessories: brooches or combs, pretty semi-precious things.

What symbolism do you see in materials like galalith from milk? How does this tie into gender and sustainability in art?

Its main competitors were precious stones and amber. I really liked this story about milk, because it’s a symbolic material: it’s femininity, it’s the liquid from which man is nourished at birth, care… And I found it interesting too, because the petroleum from which plastic is normally made, is the masculine material, that of confrontation, of war. And milk is the very essence of feminine logic, which says: “Let’s not fight about it, let’s sit down together, think, help, support and heal each other, and everything will work out somehow”. So, I supported this research, and joined the project. The first work we produced was a dance performance with the Monté Carlo ballets around a veil in our supple galalith. This was followed by an underwater performance involving fish and other elements of Mediterranean biodiversity. Although galalith can dissolve in water in a few hours, but is most often consumed by marine organisms, some of which can feed on it, as it is pure protein.

You very subtly contrasted galalith with oil products… How else does the project’s special femininity manifest itself?

As it happens, only women are taking part in this research to date: I’m accompanied by a Ukrainian scientist, a Belarusian designer, an Armenian ballerina, another ballerina from the Ivory Coast… And since 2022, we’ve all been concerned by the horrific wars ravaging our peoples. With this project, we were invited to take part in the Venice Biennale in the San Marino pavilion…

Of course, “Dream of Milk” was the general theme of the Biennale, if my memory serves me right…

…We were told: “You girls are the shards of the greatest democracy that ever existed, and now it’s gone. We, San Marino, are the smallest and very first democracy in Europe.” It’s our duty to help you make your voice heard.

“It’s our duty to help you make your voice heard”

Tell us who else was involved in your project?

So with Philippe Platel we found that this innovative and reparative material could play a role in Stalker’s new reading. And he introduced me to Thierry Pécou, a wonderful composer, who was also interested in Stalker. A classical French composer, successor to Stravinsky and Shostakovich, he had worked in Moscow at the invitation of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and he now lives in France, in Normandy.
And so, we instantly bonded and found common ground: this is the very material that can save us, that can save this zone, can cure this damaged territory…

…Damaged and infected with, say, COVID…

…With COVID, with other things, such as climate change or other ecological problems, while remaining an extremely strong symbolism of a constructive and restorative feminine approach.
This is how the story began.

What inspired Thierry Pécou to create the immersive opera system, and how does it relate to Tarkovsky’s cinematic themes?

I think he was made aware of Tarkovsky’s work during his stay in Moscow. The director, Jean-Christophe Blondel, who was engaged with us, had also approached Stalker. With Thierry they created a very interesting immersive opera system. Thanks to this immersive opera option, the shows were not held in the theaters, but in the most unimaginable places. Our first took place in the Abbatiale Saint-Ouen in Rouen, a few meters from the place where the Impressionist movement was born.
Our next show took place in the authentic airship hangar, and the airships flying above the “zone” became a very strong part of the show. And another scenography was made for the ruins of a neo-Gothic spinning mill located on an island in the middle of a river.
With the buildings that are on the island, this factory is like a Gothic castle, only four times bigger, and there are kinds of grasses and even trees growing inside, and the river. In short, it’s like the Zone! If Tarkovsky knew this place, I think he would shoot there…

Does the choice to cast a female soprano in Stalker connect to femininity as a saving force?

Yes, with the idea that it is femininity that will save the world, it was decided that, in our show, the main role of Stalker would be played by a female soprano. Anna Wartmann, who interprets the Stalker, has a precious and powerful voice, which pierces the walls of the cathedral.

And what are the unique aspects of the immersive experience created for the production of Stalker, particularly in relation to the audience’s interaction with the performance?

During the show the public is mixed with the singers and musicians, he moves with them, immersed in the action. In the immersive system, created for Stalker, there are three levels of listening. You can listen live, just like in a classical opera. But being at an unequal distance from singers and musicians, the balance can be distended. If you wish, you can take a helmet and listen the opera in an equalized version, as if you were in an opera house. But there is also a third, augmented level, for which the sound technician works in real time, adding other pre-recorded sounds.

Are you saying that certain accents are placed in this way?

Yes, in agreement with the composer, and overlay with recorded audio fragments.

By the way, is it possible to listen to the equalized version of opera without wearing a helmet?

No, if you don’t wear the helmet, it’s as if you’re attending a normal opera. You will also be hearing, when this happens, some birdsong, running water, and the musicians as well. So, you can do either studio mode or director mode, it’s very interesting. This is how the opera works. But I must tell you a little bit about the visuals.

Of course. How are visuals structured in the opera’s three segments, and how do they support the overarching story?

Yes, we have built the opera in three parts, each of which has a strong visual character.
It all begins in a field of flowers that no longer have any smell. Our Soprano Stalker guides the audience through the field. The structures of these giant flowers, on a human scale, are made of steel, they were forged by a blacksmith. But the flowers are alive: they are made of this new material obtained from milk residues.
The second part takes place in a large vertical structure, also made of steel, which is reminiscent of both scaffolding and a shipyard. They are like ruins, the ruins of a civilization in reconstruction. This form comes directly from my Soviet ????ance. My mother designed the submarines, and she went on expeditions every summer to naval bases in Crimea, Vladivostok, Murmansk. And my childhood was spent by the sea among the submarine yards… It is these constructions that inspired me to create the structures of the world under construction, between the warlike past and the hopefully better future.
These references are not immediately readable by French spectators, surprised by the shape. Where does it come from? How did you do it? – the French keep asking me. How could an artist evoke things like that, how can we even talk about them? But the form is powerful, and when it is located in a Gothic cathedral, the two structures interact wonderfully.

How do feminine and masculine visuals, like the flower field and shipyard, interact within post-apocalyptic and ecological themes?

First of all, we have a feminine universe, with a field of flowers made of milk, the setting of the second scene is very masculine and hard indeed, but there is the third part which is the most surprising. If the first two were very well thought out, and built, and the way the third one came to be was very strange.
The third scene is a door, which the characters are supposed to go through, and we decided that we would have a mirror screen, and that there would be a projection on that screen. A projection of mycelium development, which is very special, that we produced especially for the show at the Pasteur Institute. Louis Pasteur, who was a French academic and biologist, and worked on microorganisms, gave his name to the huge Pasteur Institute, part of the Sorbonne, where microorganisms and in particular mycellia are studied.

What does the mycelium projection in the final scene symbolize regarding art, science, and ecological restoration?

According to my logic, one of the ways we could repair this area in relation to the surrounding nature would be to collaborate and communicate with these fungi, in order to determine if there is a microorganism that could become our ally. So, I went to see my colleagues at the Pasteur Institute… They proposed to work on a specific mycelium that is reproduced by consuming radioactive radiation, gamma rays. So, this fungus cleans the space for us. We took pictures of the growth of the mycelium under the microscope. For some reason, when we started filming, something didn’t work, and to get a sharp image, we had to contrast the film. When we did a screening, what the audience did see? On the screen, the living colony of the mycelium looked like a flame that is slowly lit! It wasn’t not really a flame, but very similar, so it’s the first association that pops up when you look at it is a flame. And this is what we projected on the west wall of the cathedral, the one where the exit door is located. And what do we usually see on this wall?

Jesus Christ?

No, Gehenna and the lake of fire! In our Orthodox churches, so dear to Tarkovsky, the frescoes on the west wall represent hell in the eyes of the faithful about to leave the church.

So how does the mycelium growth on the cathedral wall symbolise rebirth, especially compared to traditional religious imagery of Gehenna?

I think that on this last stage it was Tarkovsky’s invisible mind that guided us to obtain this universal metaphor at the crossroads of art and science. And when I see it, I am sure that he shares our vision of the post-disaster world in which we currently live, and the ways for its reconstruction that we are prefiguring.

Stalker

Credits:

Artist: Olga Kisseleva / @olga.kisseleva
Interview: Marina Stepanchenko
Editor: Maria Abramenko  / @mariabramenko
Assistant: Annalisa Fabbrucci / @annalisa_fabbrucci

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