Over 6 years we have created 5 interdisciplinary projects with a strong musical component. I will briefly talk about some of them in order to trace how we developed our own musical practice, or, one might say, the philosophy called "The Fragile Orchestra."

The first ORTA project was released in 2016 and was called the Pop-mechanical performance “Medea.Material.” In it, the complex musical fabric of the performance consisted of the "live" performance of the 6-person Igeru ensemble of contemporary music; audio recording of Heiner Müller's "Medeamaterial" in Kazakh and Russian, performed by two actresses; 16 professional fashion model performers playing on tuning forks; the sounds of special motorized video cameras; as well as 12 musical robots assembled on the basis of the Arduino platform.

In this project, we were already applying the principle of open music: all the participants in the performance knew the core structure of the action and what the main points of connection were, but within this structure, everyone improvised their actions guided by their own musical feeling. For example, performers had to go to one of the installations and hit the tuning fork in the direction of the digital board. But how fast to walk, how hard to hit—it was up to each performer to decide.

In 2019, we released our third stage project - the mystery-manifesto The Appearance of the First Volume of the Novel in Thousands of Volumes. By this time, we had been practicing the "fragile orchestra" with friends for two years. It was born from Alexandra Morozova’s idea that one can communicate with friends in songs - to the accompaniment of guitars, kobyz and any other instruments - to discuss questions, problems and, most importantly, sing compliments to each other. This practice is very similar to the traditional Kazakh aitys, only unlike aitys, in which two people sing, in a fragile orchestra, everyone is singing. This crucial distinction also made it possible to remove the division of "speakers" and "spectators," which created a special situation of a common joint practice, free from the need to sing or play "well." Such an orchestra was called "fragile" because it was largely based on very subtle matters - on the mood of the participants, mutual trust, on tuning into each other, which would allow picking up where one left off and complementing each other. And, of course, sometimes the song didn't work out—and that was also the fragile beauty of this practice.

The basic principle of the Fragile Orchestra is the acceptance of any instrument, sound, word, note and melody. But prior to that it is, of course, the acceptance of any person. Music in the Fragile Orchestra is understood as a practice in which anyone can participate, regardless of whether they have an "ear for music," musical education or other generally accepted "musical data". Its purpose is not in representation, that is, not in creating some kind of “beautiful” or “correct” piece of music that must be presented to some outside listeners. Its purpose is in the very process of joint confidential creativity, subordinated only to the inner feeling of the music of each participant. Therefore, the criteria for evaluating, for example, a classical piece of music, are not applicable to the Fragile Orchestra. As for the technique, according to our observations, in the process of practicing the Fragile Orchestra, a certain general musical or figurative theme arises - it always arises spontaneously and naturally, and then develops, expands or even unfolds in the process of playing music. Sometimes this theme can be a popular song known to all the participants, sometimes some idiomatic expression or saying.

And so, for the project The Appearance of the First Volume of the Novel in Thousands of Volumes, we made an open call and assembled a Fragile Orchestra of 8 strangers. We did not select anyone or weed anyone out — everyone who wanted to come, came and stayed. People brought different instruments to rehearsals, and also used various improvised objects as tools: tables, plates, chains, hoses. For a month we improvised, as a result of which not only the musical basis of the performance was born, but also its very structure. The play was shown for three evenings in the large marble hall of the Central House of the Army in Almaty.