Неразрушающий контроль
Nondestructive Assays

Héctor Zamora

Composer — Alexander Zhemchuzhnikov
Sound director — Shamil Gainetdinov

What Russian did not travel by train? Who did not listen, how at long stops workers knock with long hammers on wheels, moving from car to car? Is there anyone who, at least once, did not wake up to a ringing sound of a knock right above the ear during a night stop? Who has not followed with lazy eyes the movements of inspectors, standing on the platform, so as not to miss the departure of the train? ..

This knock – is the sound of interrupted movement, a sound that for a passenger means rest on the road, and for the train – care about it. This knock is a technical element of control to check the integrity of parts and the reliability of joints.

In the sound performance and the inheriting its installation the meaning of sound from the metal hammer striking the wheels broadens. The knocks from the mechanical routine are transformed into metaphorical, musical, personal actions – they build a rhythmic pattern..

A hammer is a tool that allows you to experience a sound in its unbroken frequency, duration, sonority, length. With its ephemeral existence sound can indicate a flaw inside a huge machine, detect a defect in what seemed at first sight impregnable. But it’s not a matter of vulnerability, but of conversation, where a person’s hand is the continuation of his ability to hear. A hammer knock is done not to indicate an error, but to help eliminate it. Thus the act of control is transformed into a gesture of non-destructive care.

Performers are young workers of the Sverdlovsk Railway: Dmitry Lisitsyn, Anastasia Obyanyeva, Marina Gulyashcheva, Alexey Likhachev, Alexander Matveev, Alexander Yegoshin, Ruslan Bryzgalov, Sergei Lagunov.

Locomotive bogies are provided and installed by Ural Locomotives Ltd.
The rail grid is provided by the specialists of the Sverdlovsk Railway,

Zhenya Chaika
Curator of the Artist-in-Residence program
The Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art