DARIA KRYLOVA
Aquarium during Summer
The album House of All Saints came out on September 16th, 2022 and it features 15 songs. It's an album by a Russian Rock band called Aquarium. Most of the songs were written before the start of the war in Ukraine, however they are very accurate in their dialogue with the themes and ideas that are prevalent in the Russian society. Any line taken from any song can be applied to what is happening right now, and that is what caught my attention. In this photo project, called Aquarium during Summer (Akvarium vo vremya Leta), my goal was to emphasize some of these lines.
I chose Kirill Serebrennikov's Summer as an inspiration for the project’s style because of how hopeful the overall ambience of the film is. Most of the drawings on the covers are inspired by the scene in which Maik Naumenko comes to the character called Bob (referencing one of Grebeschikov’s nicknames) to ask for help. The half circles appear on the wall, while Naumenko goes up the stairs. The numerous scribbles that are used in the film convey a playful mood and also show the possibilities that human imagination has in creating a world of one’s own dreams. In my view it matches the overall mood of House of All Saints. When listening to the songs, I felt as another better world is created right behind me. I chose 4 songs from the album to create covers for as if they came out as singles. Two of the covers have lyrics written on the background or on objects as a way to directly address the lines that have been an inspiration. The other two covers do not have lyrics written anywhere because for me the songs felt more as a whole object rather than a specific line for which I am waiting during the entire song.
The cover of Vorozhba represents the last line of the song, which is so that the light returns to us. The song is clearly reflecting on the current war in Ukraine. I understand the last words as author’s wish for all of the horrors to end. This excerpt from the song is written faintly on the right side of the cover, where the wall comes together with the pavement. The cover shows a withered plant rising from pavement. I transformed the plant by drawing four different flowers growing out of it to show the hope for something that has seemingly perished. Transformation of one object into another also happens in Kirill Serebrennikov’s Summer, when the character of Victor Tsoi says that he and Natalia are going to use a spaceship. The next car to pass by them looks like a rocket — engines are drawn on the car with white scribbles. Despite Vorozhba being rather active in its tempo, I wanted to convey the opposite mood with the cover. The image feels quiet and calm, similar to the ending of the song.
Agatha’s Song (Agatina Pesnya) is one of the most optimistic pieces in this album. I believe one of its main messages is in this line: look around, how lovely everything is. The author says through the song that during any time it is important to remember that love and nature do not disappear. However, not everybody is capable to see that. The cover features a guitarist who is playing Agatha’s Song. The lyrics that encourage one to look around are inscribed in faint on the front part of the guitar. While performing the song, the guitarist steps into the song’s world and behind him appears a beautiful sky full of stars. This is one of the two covers that use yellow for scribbles, the second one being the cover for House of All Saints. Yellow along with magenta pink appear on the main poster of Summer. Both colors are bright and emanate optimistic, summer-like ambience. Therefore, I used yellow for the cover of Agatha’s Song because I wanted to portray the hopeful nature of this music piece. The cover has a touch of lightheartedness in it and does not feel claustrophobic, despite being visibly narrow. The guitarist is smiling softly, he is enjoying the song and there is nothing that worries him. He manages to find happiness in simple things that surround him.
While listening to House of All Saints (Dom Vseh Svyatych) I feel as the song has everything and everyone in it, but it does not feel packed and flows smoothly. That is eventually what the lyrics are about: whoever you are, you will end up at the House of All Saints. Summer has a scene on a trolleybus, when characters perform Iggy Pop’s The Passenger and the environment around them transforms. It is filled with doodles of stars and other cosmos related images. The location does not have as much meaning for the narration as a similar location in the other film by Kirill Serebrennikov Petrov’s Flu (Petrovy v grippe, 2021). There, a bus represents the boat that takes people down the River Styx to the Underworld. Inside the bus the main character Petrov encounters various people, since anybody can find themselves on a bus. They will be either taken to a next stop or to the Underworld. Therefore, the cover that I have created features a bus and some of its passengers. Each passenger has a different scribble associated with them to show the variety of personalities. There are stars, smoke and a bright yellow celestial body behind the windows to emphasize the variety of the outside world from which passengers come into the bus. I wanted the cover for this song to feel as much filled with different personalities as the song is.
The cover for Surprise (Surpris) does not refer to any particular line in the song, except for the mention of a raven. The beginning of this short piece (1:13 minutes) is a slow melody that feels as if it is partly silenced with a thick layer of water. The beginning gives me a feeling of being a sound from an underwater sequence, in which everything moves slowly and elegantly. Following my rule of referencing the lyrics in every cover, I used several artificial feathers as a symbol for the raven that is mentioned in the song: I am amazed with an element of the raven. The feathers are put into a bottle to show both the mysterious nature of the song and to emphasize the particular trait of the raven with which the author of the song is amazed. The addition of scribbles allowed me to give the underwater world some volume. The half-circles that surround the bottle are corals, they have inhibited the outer surface since the bottle has been underwater for a long time. This cover was meant to be mysterious and somewhat haunting. I believe the ambiguity of the lyrics is shown well in this cover, since a song is capable of creating a variety of meanings.
