RottenBeat:

academic and musical dialogue with new Russian punk

RottenBeat was an open academic-cultural project on the contemporary Russian artistic underground. Designed to engage researchers, the ‘researched’, journalists, academics and the general public in direct dialogue, it drew on a well established network of scholars interested in these issues from the ‘Doing Culture’ and ‘Situating Culture’ series of workshops, as well as new participants - principally music producers, journalists and cultural critics. An academic workshop at Pushkin House (July 4th) was sandwiched by two not-for-profit punk gigs in London (July 3rd and July 5th). These performances were well attended by a mixed audience of Russian and English speaking journalists, promoters of East-European culture in London, activists of punk and DIY movements and a general audience interested in both punk-rock and new music from Eastern Europe. View research poster.

The workshop at Pushkin House (view programme) attracted not only an area studies academic audience but also established academics and PhD students working on UK or non-East European music and culture scenes, as well as performers, creative industry workers and journalists.

It included: 

- keynote presentations on the continuing significance of punk in contemporary culture from Alexander Kan (BBC Russian service) and Penny Rimbaud (ex-Crass, author and key ideologist of DIY movement)

- panels in which band members talked about their music and ideas

- panels of more academic papers presenting provisional research findings from the AHRC funded ‘Post-socialist punk’ project (speakers: Ben Perasovic, Ivana Mijic, Aimar Ventsel, Yngvar Steinholt, Hilary Pilkington, and Ivan Gololobov

- a methods-related panel in which researchers on the ‘post-socialist punk’ project discussed with band members (all of whom are also key informants in the project and some of whom are trained social scientists) methodological issues associated with the project

Project Outputs....

In addition to generating lively debate around the Russian artistic ‘underground’ and broader methodological issues such as gender and subcultural research, ethics and the East European research environment, and ‘insider’ versus ‘outsider’ researcher positions, the workshop fostered fruitful collaboration with Pushkin House, a charity for promoting Russian culture in the UK. This collaboration resulted in a series of lectures by the Post-Socialist Punk research team on ‘Underground Russian: Art, Politics and Style’, triggering lively discussions and leading to the establishment of further contacts between academics and artists, journalists, publishers and promoters interested in contemporary Russian artistic and cultural underground:

• Russia’s Radical Youth (presented by Hilary Pilkington and Ivan Gololobov, University of Warwick, 23 February 2011)
• Contemporary Russian Art-Hooliganism (presented by Ivor Stodol’sky, University of Helsinki and Ivan Gololobov, 24 March 2011)  
• Rock-State and Religion in Russian Rock (presented by Yngvar Steinholt, Tromso University, and Ivan Gololobov, 11 May 2011)
• Reconstructing History: Cossack Movement in Post-Soviet Russia (presented by Anton Popov, University of Warwick, 14 June 2011) 

Further project outputs have included:

“Rokovedenie? Est’ takaya nauka!” [Rock-studies? There is such science!]:
As a consequence of attendance at the RottenBeat workshop, Aleksandr Kan of the BBC Russian Service opened an interesting debate on the value of rock-studies and their role in understanding rock-music. Members of the Post-socialist Punk research team (Yngvar Steinholt and Ivan Gololobov), invited musicians and scene activists (Ilya Alexeev) and renowned Russian music critics (Artemiy Troitsky) contributed to the discussion.

“Russkie vechera v Londone” [The Zverstvo: Russian Evenings in London]:
An interview by Krasnodar journalist Roman Matytsyn with members of The Zverstvo about their trip, concerts and exchange of experience with colleagues from the UK. 

And forthcoming....

The University of Warwick research team will edit a special issue on East-European Punk for the newly established journal Punk and Post Punk (planned for Summer 2012). 

University of Warwick experts will organise another ‘season’ of lectures with Pushkin House devoted to the unseen sides of Russian culture, such as underground literature and film, as well as historical consideration of Soviet and pre-revolutionary radical arts (planned to start in Autumn 2011). 

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A public electronic multimedia resource, featuring authentic music, visual, graphic and other art from Eastern and other non English-speaking European countries: www.rottenbeat.com

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