Elena Rykova & María Korol. A Cow in the Backyard (2020)

Stop motion, fixed media, live performance (flute, clarinets, saxophones, violin, viola, cello, synthesizer and electronics).
Stills of animation made with drawing using ink, gouache, soft and oil pastels on Stonehenge paper.

"A Cow in the Backyard was commissioned by ensemble mosaik as a further development of Study in Yellow and Violet, which they premiered in 2019. The Study already interweaves an electronic soundtrack with the live performance and the video animation of color drawings. While Study in Yellow and Violet also works with a text layer, A Cow in the Backyard now focuses on the three audiovisual core elements of soundtrack, live performance and animation; the animation is in turn composed for three differently played screens – in a figurative sense also "as a representation of the three artistic partners involved: composition, visual art and ensemble", says María Korol.

The development of the piece began with the electronic sound track, which is meant to be a bridge between the drawings, their animation and the score for the seven musicians. Elena Rykova used everyday sounds from her own environment as the source material for the soundtrack, which shows a particularly intense harmonic spectrum. The resulting abstract sound composition is characterized by a continuous energetic rhythm, the basic pulse of the piece. Live, the harmonic structure of the sound track is then taken up by individual, slowly changing and meandering chord sounds of the ensemble. The instrumental score is interlocked with the sound track at so-called "knots", between which time indications can be handled variably by the musicians.

This improvisational freedom, the harmonic unfolding and the powerful beat find their counterpart in the animation: the chordal spectrum of the musicians stands, as it were, for a certain, very strong color spectrum which, as the two artists write in the score, moves like a crystalline 3D object in the course of the piece and constantly evokes new perspectives, hints and reflections. At the centre of the animations are female figures which are brought to life, interwoven or exaggerated and placed in ever new contexts by three complementary color pairs – yellow/violet, green/pink, celesta/brown. According to María Korol, the drawings and animations are the result of her "interest in distortion and ruptures", which accompanies her work in general. "The figures are not based on an idealized idea of beauty", but on an interaction of colors, contours, fragments and the penetration of the musical sound space. Elena Rykova describes the general thematic background of the piece as "contemplations on femininity". "The piece poses the question of what femininity can be and what it means to grow up as a woman today."

The theme remains aesthetically clear as a framework, but is also far removed from an activist habitus. Instead, the video animation opens up a view of imaginary personalities, their expressiveness and the power of (female) bodies. It seems like a constant attempt by the figures to define and assert themselves, with abrupt scene changes to natural spaces and more abstract pictorial elements or symbolic codes of seeing, hearing, speaking, sometimes released by the music, sometimes by their own power. "A Cow in the Backyard" thrives strongly on the virtuosity of all aesthetic levels and a stream of consciousness that quickly emerges through the various layers and movements of color. “

– a fragment from the text by Martina Stütz

A Cow in the Backyard was adapted as an intimate installation experience and was presented at Swan Coach Gallery in Atlanta, GA (Oct 10 - Nov 29, 2020).