Katya Shirshkova

6th CANT release - recording by Katya Shirshkova "The Pond", homage to the work of the same name by Ben Patterson.

Katya Shirshkova: When I was 8 years old, Ben Patterson came to Irkutsk. They told me to show how I play Bach, and I did. Poorly. I also decided to play improvisation, unintentionally, I just got upset and played - I always liked to hold the keys and listen more. Ben liked it. He showed me a trick with a coin, I was scared. And dad became an honorary member of Fluxus and received a box of clockwork frogs as a gift. It was the props for the Pond performance.

Ben Patterson: Pond was one of the early pieces where I tried to use chance operations, like the John Cage school of thought, but in a different way. I like the mechanical frogs hopping about this grid, because they are not perfect. They move in different directions and create their own situation. Depending on where they land or as they pass through the grid, there are signals for the performers to make frog-like sounds. In the end, it sounds like a pond at nighttime with frogs croaking and creeping.

From these lines it may seem that the recording promises some kind of naive memory, a note, but this is a deception and a trap. The trap here is method. A constant refrain appears before the listener, not hiding a letter, and then disintegrates into a net from which one cannot get out. Ben played randomness with a system of squares and mechanical frogs. Katya took this simple net in her hands and turned it into a seine, now side A is a thoughtless immersion in water, and side B is the consequences.