The performance "The Funeral of the Fly" took place over 12 hours at the festival Archstoyanie. During that time performers carried the body of the Fly and made periodic stops for vocal improvisations. At the very end the Fly was buried and her tomb was decorated with flowers. The performance was inspired by pagan rituals of funerals of insects known in various parts of Ancient Russia. In pagan Slavic mythology, researchers have discovered a belief in the connection between the souls of dead ancestors and insects. It was believed that in autumn, the souls of the dead in the form of insects (or on their wings) fly away, and in the spring they return back to their descendants. The ritual of seeing off the souls for the winter consisted in the manufacture of small vegetable coffins, inside of which were placed the bodies of insects: flies, bedbugs, cockroaches and fleas - a farewell procession to which mourners were invited and, accordingly, took part in the funeral rite itself.
Idea Masha Kechaeva
Performance by Masha Kechaeva and Alexey Kokhanov
Composer Alexey Kokhanov
Photo by Tom Ellis
with grant support of Archstoyanie festival
Nikola-Lenivetz,
2018
"The Chorus of Radiolarians" - video installation with focus on bioconstructivism inspired by biological forms - radiolarians, microorganisms inhabiting warm ocean water. In the 19th century, German scientist Ernest Haeckel discovered and depicted more than hundred species of these unicellular creatures in his book “The Beauty of Forms in Nature”.
Author/costumes - Masha Kechaeva
Producer - Kseniya Lyashenko
Video - Michael Meshkov
Photo&Video - Maria Yastrebova
Composer - Mitya Vikhornov
Voice - Lisokot
Light - Maxim Beloborodov
Post production - Nick Smirnov, Tim Berezin
VJ - Igor Tatarnikov
2014