DeutschIncense of Music 23
The Forest of Symbols
A multisensory concert – Saturday, 13 January 2018, 8 pm
Arkady Shilkloper: French horn, flugelhorn, alphorn, conch shell horn
Alexandra Goloborodko & Aleksandra Yurieva-Civjane (International Cultural Project Butterbrot): concept, installation, and performance
Incense: Nordmann Fir, Spruce Resin
Vinogradov Galerie, Chodowieckistrasse 25, 10405 Berlin
Incense of Music enters the new year daring something new. The concert on 13 January takes place as a collaboration between the International Cultural Project Butterbrot and Incense of Music. The Christmas tree has become a projection screen for the upheavals of our holiday and consumer culture. For the performance "The Forest of Symbols," discarded trees collected from the street are reused — an image illustrating the shadow side of the fir's glorification. At the centre of the evening stands a spatial installation by Aleksandra Yurieva-Civjane and Alexandra Goloborodko, built for the so-called Old Russian New Year at the Galerie Vinogradov. The multisensory performance opens with a set by Arkady Shilkloper (French horn, flugelhorn). The artists interact with the audience through diverse media — video projections, light effects, audio recordings, aromatic essences, and instrumental music. The following day, everyone is warmly invited to view the exhibition, drink tea, and find shared inspiration for the year ahead.
For guests who are particularly sensitive to smoke, this event is not recommended.
Artists
Arkady Shilkloper — French horn, flugelhorn, alphorn, conch shell horn
Arkady Shilkloper, a multi-instrumentalist (French horn, flugelhorn, alphorn, and others), was formerly a member of the Bolshoi Orchestra and the Moscow Philharmonic. He turned toward jazz in the early 1980s and, in 1990, co-founded the Moscow Art Trio together with Mikhail Alperin and Sergey Starostin. He has performed and recorded with, among others, the Vienna Art Orchestra, Rabih Abou-Khalil, Sergey Letov, Elvin Jones, Christian Muthspiel, Vadim Neselovsky, and Sergey Nakariakov. Shilkloper regularly appears as a soloist with orchestras and lives in Berlin.
International Cultural Project Butterbrot
International Cultural Project Butterbrot is an initiative by curators Alexandra Goloborodko and Aleksandra Yurieva-Civjane. Founded in 2009, the project focuses on young contemporary art, intercultural exchange, knowledge transfer, and German-Russian relations. The curators are particularly concerned with a multidisciplinary, context-driven approach to current issues, viewing contemporary art in direct interaction with other disciplines. Deliberately, the project sets no fixed event formats — instead, particular formats and themes emerge from one another through the work on each individual project. Collaboration with diverse institutions, curators, and, not least, the public gives rise to new networks, themes, and questions, which in turn generate new dynamics and energies extending far beyond each project's own timeframe.
Alexandra Goloborodko
Alexandra Goloborodko lives and works in Berlin. She studied graphic design and cultural studies in Moscow and is a graduate of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU) as well as the International Academy of Business and Administration's Institute for Advertising and Design. Since 2014 she has studied at the Institute for Art in Context at UdK Berlin (Master's programme Art in Context). Since 2005 she has been active as an artist and curator on art projects in Moscow and Berlin, including collaborations with Kunstquartier Bethanien Berlin, Design Fabrik Flakon Moscow, and ACUD Kunsthaus Berlin. She also works in cultural education, organizing and facilitating artistic education programmes for young people, including at Dissens – Pädagogik für Kunst im Kontext e.V.
Aleksandra Yurieva-Civjane
Aleksandra Yurieva-Civjane (b. 1983) was born in Riga, lived in Moscow from 1986, and has lived in Berlin since 2003. She studied psychology at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute MOSPI and psychology and media and cultural studies at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. In 2011 she attended the course "Exhibition Organization / Curating" at UdK Berlin. Since 2009, Aleksandra has worked as an independent curator with galleries and arts and cultural institutions, including Galerie Seitz & Partner Berlin, the Kulturamt Neukölln Berlin, and the Goethe-Institut Moscow. She currently lives in Düsseldorf.
Incense
The Nordmann fir (Abies nordmanniana) is a majestic, straight-trunked, evergreen conifer in the pine family, capable of reaching heights of 40 to 60 metres and ages of up to 500 years. It is native to the western Caucasus and the Eastern Pontic Mountains — in Georgia, Russia, northeastern Turkey, and Azerbaijan — and was named in 1842 after the Finnish biologist Alexander von Nordmann, who discovered it in the Caucasus in 1835.
Today the Nordmann fir is the most widely used Christmas tree species worldwide; the leading producer is Denmark, with a stock of around 100 million trees, roughly 5 million of which are exported each year. As a symbol of the festive season, and just as readily cast aside on the street once it ends, the fir embodies both sides of winter celebration — its warmth and its wastefulness.
Burned as incense, fir resin releases a fresh, resinous, green, needle-like scent. It is associated with renewal, the turning of the year, and the immediate presence of the forest, evoking a clear, wintry woodland atmosphere.
Norway spruce (Picea abies) is the only spruce species native to Central Europe, popularly — though mistakenly — known in German as "Rottanne" ("red fir") for its scaly, reddish-brown bark. It is an evergreen, single-trunked tree with a conical crown, typically reaching 20 to 60 metres in height, and is widespread across the boreal conifer belt and mountain forests of Eurasia and North America.
Wounds in the bark release a sticky resin that has long been used for sealing, as incense, and in folk medicine. In Central Europe, spruce is considered forestry's "bread tree," supplying wood for paper, construction, and furniture. Its Latin name, picea, likely derives from the Indo-European root for "pitch, resin" — a linguistic echo of its fragrant, sticky sap.
Burned as incense, spruce resin releases a warm, balsamic, resinous forest scent with a subtle, sweet depth. It is associated with grounding, clarity, and the quiet strength of the conifer forest.