Ballettikka Internettikka
(Intima Virtual Base and BeitThron)
Igor Stromajer & MC Brane

First published in CIAC Electronic Art Magazine (August, 2002, n.15; Montreal, Canada) www.ciac.ca/magazine

It all started in 1999 when Igor Stromajer earned the peculiar nickname, the Pavarotti of the Internet for singing his Oppera Teorettikkaa Internettika, a transcoding of the HTML into song, at the Opera house in Ljubljana on March 18th. After the incantation of the code, two years later he delivers another surprising creation : Ballettikka Internettikka. On March 28th 2001, the artist shows Part I of the net.ballet, a prelude to his grand Part II performance to be held at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow on the International Bolshoi Day March 28th 2002, which is the Anniversary of this sacrosanct temple and/or fortress of the performing arts. And, Stromajer did it. At 20:00 GMT+3 he was indeed dancing his net.ballet at the Bolsh.oi, as the artist calls it, while the composer MC Brane (Brane Zorman) of the oeuvre "conducted MP3 orchestra." For eleven minutes, there he was in full splendor, out there, in cyber space / on the Net stage, in Bolshoi's cellar and on the screen of four hundred users.

Entering its 226 season, the Bolshoi (big in Russian) is still the Bolshoi because it always has been the Bolshoi. Perhaps big enough, old enough and generous enough to receive a new stream of artistic expression such as net.art. Without any doubt the Bolshoi is a great monument of classical performing arts which is still alive and well. The possibility for an amateur dancer or singer to penetrate there is unthinkable, yet with the net medium in his body, Stromajer goes beyond the absurd.

The idea of presenting Ballettikka Internettikka II at the Bolshoi set Stromajer and Zorman at the hallway of the theater became an impossible task. Many attempts were made to make it the legal way, yet, to no avail. Stromajer says: "The new general director of the Bolshoi theatre, Anatoliy Iksanov, told the press in Moscow that he would like to include new dynamics into his theatre. Well, Ballettikka would certainly be an opportunity for him." Bosma states:

"But despite Ballettikka Internettikka Iwinning the first prize at the Media Forum Festival in Moscow in 2001 and a sufficient budget for the project to which the Bolshoi would not have had to add anything the famous Moscow ballet theatre never reacted to the letters from the artist and he had to change his strategy."¹

The struggle continued to the very last moment. In this make it or break it situation, On March 24th, intima.org distributed a press release with the following information:

1. DECISION

I. Stromajer and B. Zorman decided to perform the ballet in the TOP place for ballet / location: The Bolshoi Theatre

Ballettikka Internettikka: Part Two - ballet.net is going to take place in The Bolshoi Theatre on the International Bolshoi Day on March 28th 2002, exactly one year after Ballettikka Internetttikka: Part One - net.ballet. On Thursday, March 28th 2002 (19:00 Moscow time), The Bolshoi Theatre Group is going to perform the following opera (on the main stage): The Tzars Bride - An opera in four acts (Composer - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; Libretto - N.Rimsky- Korsakov and I.Tyumenev, after L.Mey's drama; Conductor - Boris Khaikin).

OPERATION

It is unknown how the ballet.net.dancer I.S. and the ballet.net.composer B.Z. are going to enter The Bolshoi Theatre on that day, but they are preparing two different options/plans to do it. Both options are illegal.

Option N.1: James Bond

- to buy the tickets for The Tzars Bride and enter the main door & to dance at the Bolshoi's toilet during the break.

Option N.2: art terrorism

- to enter The Bolshoi Theatre via small window in the left wing of the building and to perform the ballet.net action in the cellar.

This illegal action is carefully studied as an invasion. Watches are Synchronized and all the details are prepared. Artists are going to use hi-tech mobile and wireless equipment for invasion and live transmitting (i.e. portable computers, mini digital cameras, night - vision systems, mini discs, MP3 audio systems, mobile WAP telephones etc).

With the motto We shall never surrender... they went on this quixotic mission from Ljublana to Moscow and back. Many things could have happened but the mission was successful and the live broadcast of Ballettikka Internettikka Part II did take place. The guards on the main entrance did not allow them to get in with the equipment they were carrying because rules no.3 and 4 of the Bolshoi state:

Rule 3. It is forbidden to enter the theater hall with flowers, large bags, cameras or video cameras;

Rule 4. No picture taking or filming is allowed in the theater.

Right after the event intima announces:

> Ballettikka Internettikka - Part Two | ballet.net

Illegal internet performance was successfully realized! Live online broadcasting lasted 11 minutes (20:00 - 20:11 GMT+3). Video and audio archive is already available at the direct address as well as the information about the event. ("Option N.1: James Bond" failed, so "Option N.2: Art Invasion" was deployed).

In vino veritas: "art invasion" as a strategy and "cellar" as a place seem to match Net art. Independently of the Bolshoi's administration, one fact is added to its rich history: net.art's fifteen minutes of glory on the theater's premises. Ironically, the performance was shortened by four minutes. On the solemn occasion of the Anniversary the main stage celebrated with Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Tzar's Bride while the two subversive types Stromajer and MC Brane were stealing the bride in the cellar and playing a different kind of pas-de-deux such as solo audience and solo performer and/or one conductor and one dancer. In fact, Stromajer's history includes an intriguing transition to net.art. Before becoming a net.artist, he was theater director and as he says the theater medium felt increasingly distant to him. In his last theater project consisted of one actor performing for one spectator. This experience spelled out as intima.org kind of net.art.

With the Bolshoi project, Stromajer creates a situation of transfer / transference / between classical ballet (and opera) and net.art, as well as between body and machine. He emphasizes the monumental aspect of net.art by creating a physical link to opera where the ideas of the total artwork begun. Thus, the artist constructs a third space where a classical art form shares the stage with the More specifically, by creating a situation of synchronicity, Stromajer plays out the dualities of the phenomenon of art viewed simultaneously as big and small, public and intimate, classical and new, traditional and innovative, main stream and marginal, real and virtual. The artist points out:

"You can -translate- the work though. I was trying to translate a net art piece into the real space when I was singing the HTML structure of one of my projects. That is what I would call a translation of one medium to another, but you have to keep in mind it is just a translation: you then have two seperate pieces which are completely independent."²

Playing against the odds in an act of creative intimate revelations is characteristic of Stromajer's expression and his complex form of resistance: intima virtual base. Transcoding the HTML through voice in Oppera Teorettikkaa Internettika and body in Ballettikka Internettikka presents an experiment into the intimacy of creating net.art by expressively stripping the page and showing what is behind the screens. Stromajer addresses the issue of treating about the physicality and emotion in creating net.art and confronts the view of this new technologies art form as cold and impersonal. Through empathizing with the net.art creative process, he interprets the motions and the emotions of the artist, the depths of the medium by contemplating it and putting it into perspective. The artist contextualizes net.art while shifting its focus on the body, as well as movement and music. This form of dis-concerting renders his work dynamic. Through dancing net.art creation Stromajer interferes with different media, crosses their borders and opens the curtains of the history of art for net.art. In this respect, Ballettikka is an gesture of integration rather than rejection. The coexistence of classical opera, ballet and net.art is possible even if it is situated between the cellar and the main stage and even if it takes a strategy of art invasion.

Stromajer presents himself as net.ballet.dancer and Zorman as net.ballet.compser / MP3 conductor. Discussing the project at the Bolshoi, Stromajer points out:

"It's the top place for dancing and we wanted to demystify it. I wanted to dance there as a non-dancer and was dancing there in the name of all the ballet dancers world-wide: all of them who cannot dance in the Bolshoi, but would like to, because the Bolshoi is an international symbol for classical ballet."³

With this project Stromajer and Zorman also demythologize net.art and express its potential for vitality by showing in pantomime and music, the involvement of passions and dramas, trials and tribulations in the its creative process. One can hardly say that Stromajer is a military man or a stripper for that matter, yet, his expression is at times shocking bordering on the flamboyant as it abounds on subversive methods and references to military strategies for intimacy on the Net. For this artist the Net is an emotional, vibrant matter which only remains to be uncovered.

Notes
1 Josephine Bosma, «Claiming the Stage: Ballettikka Internettikka pt 2», (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Published by Cream, April 25th 2002
2 Interview with Igor Stromajer, in laudanum.net
3 Interview with Igor Stromajer, in laudanum.net

Link
www.intima.org/ballettikka

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