Keti Chukhrov / Victor Alimpiev.

Chukhrov / Victor Alimpiev. Lecture-performance “Rhythm as the Prevention of Falling“. In the frame of the annual program “Paths of the Performativity“. It is traditionally thought that rhythm is an auxiliary characteristic of an art-work, it defines its temporal and space organization becoming a formal component of a composition. Relying on the examples of a number of music paradigms and certain video-pieces the lecture will show that rhythm is a special condition of ontology, when temporality happens to be in a crisis. In this case rhythm is rather a syndrome of a standstill, of a halt, of a caesura; it stems from the impossibility to go off and the inevitability of termination. Rhythm breaks the automation of movement, on which the considerable part of the harmonic and metric system of any composition relies on. According to Andre Lepecki it is the figuration of the rhythm that makes performing arts fatally elusive. They disappear before perception is able to grasp any evolving of whatever.