Music on Bones
During the Cold War, Western music in the Soviet Union was banned and destroyed. Distributors of rock, blues, or jazz could face up to seven years in prison. Yet creativity often resists repression – and sometimes, as shown by a unique form of contraband the KGB called “music on bones”, it becomes unstoppable.
Soviet-era music “smugglers” found an unexpected medium: X-ray images. By pressing grooves into them and cutting them into circles, they turned bones into music – portable and, at first glance, inconspicuous. Unwanted X-rays were plentiful, providing ample material for recordings. These albums were sold discreetly at markets, in parks, or near music stores, offering forbidden sounds of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and more.
For a time, this trade escaped the authorities’ notice. The audio quality was poor, and the “records” sometimes lasted only months, but listeners didn’t care. This distribution method became symbolic: Western ideas, carried as music, traveled across Soviet land imprinted on the bones of unknown – sometimes deceased – individuals worn down by the regime’s prohibitions.
Censorship is a central theme of this work, approached as a complex, multilayered phenomenon. Rather than framing it solely as repression, Music on Bones considers its constructive side: by rejecting undesirable elements or entire works, censorship dismantles but also creates – shaping new discourses, languages, and citizens.
The project reconstructs this obsolete method of recording and distribution, touching on themes central to contemporary art: power, repressed identity, cultures of resistance, the commodification of culture under capitalism, authorship, and originality.