Every Friday, I work a three-hour shift as a student office assistant in the Jandoli School of Communication at St. Bonaventure University. Sometimes, other professors need to use the copier during my shift, so I get a couple of minutes for break.
A few weeks ago during a break, I checked my phone to see if any notifications had come in. Some had, and among them was an email that looked sketchy. I quickly scanned the email and put my phone away with my mind racing.
My shift flew by, and as soon as I clocked out for the day, I ran over to the sitting area down the hall from the office and opened up my email again. After doing some research, I realized that the email was indeed not sketchy, but an opportunity for something great. I replied to the man who’s a publicist for Ukrainian singer Nora Polinnia and got the ball rolling. Next thing I know, I was in the process of interviewing her and telling her story.
Born Polina Nikitina, Polinnia chose her “stage name” when she was 5 years old. She believed that her creativity stemmed too far just for her to be Polina, so she chose Nora Polinnia to put an unconventional twist on things.
Polinnia told me she had dreamed of living in New York City all her life. She ended up coming over to America earlier than expected because Russia invaded Ukraine, and her hometown of Kyiv, the country’s capital.
Once Polinnia and her family arrived in the United States, they moved down to Miami, where Polinnia finished 11th grade online. But the schools in the “Sunshine State” wouldn’t allow Polinnia to finish high school without re-taking 11th. Polinnia knew that wasn’t for her.
“[My family and I] started researching schools in New York City, since that is the capital of the world, and kept coming across the same private school on the Upper West Side: the Dwight School,” Polinnia said. “It is considered a very elite place to attend in general. I applied, and they accepted me, and they also gave me a high scholarship. I was the only new student they accepted into 12th grade.”
There was a catch to this situation: Polinnia’s family was not going to go with her because they were all settled in Miami.
“The Dwight School started searching for families of the current students at the school who would take me in for the year,” Polinnia said. “They’ve never done that before and yet there were many volunteers. I settled in with a wonderful family on the Upper West Side, near Riverside Park, 10 minutes away from the school. Their children attended Dwight as well.”
Polinnia finished high school successfully with awards and realized that she didn’t want to leave NYC. She had started releasing her own music and knew that that was what she wanted to do for a career, so she chose a college that would not only help her excel in that regard, but was also at the heart of the “Big Apple”: The New School.
Choosing to major in theater and minor in music, Polinnia believed that she was on the right path to becoming a better artist.
“I know that I want my main focus in the future to be music,” Polinnia said. “However, I always felt [that] training as an actor would make me a much more confident artist, performer and person. And I was right.”
Polinnia and her longtime collaborator and friend in Ukraine, Martin Nikov, had been working on a song for a little bit, but nothing had really become of it. It wasn’t until Polinnia found her new confidence that “Mass Hysteria” became a reality.
“I knew that this song was unlike anything I’ve ever written,” . Polinnia said. “It was a piece of exploration.”
Despite their being on opposite sides of the globe, Polinnia worked with Nikov to create a song that would be the centerpiece of a social art project. The song and recording also became a part of New School’s curriculum.
“[While song] writing, I was completely taken by the concept of ‘Mass Hysteria,’ a social illness without an identifiable cause,” Polinnia explained. “And soon after I drew the connection: propaganda is a form of mass hysteria.”
But creating music wasn’t nearly enough for young Polinnia. Something else had to be done, and that came in the form of her classmates and artists at The New School expressing the same concerns as her.
“Everybody my age knew that propaganda was bad, but couldn’t pinpoint what to do about it,” Pollinia said. “This disorientation led to laziness, lack of formed opinions and weakness. I wanted to feel a sense of control and clarity. And, I soon found out that many other artists did too.”
Sharing the same sentiment, the name for the social art project came about: #FREEOFPROPAGANDA. Polinnia wasted no time at all getting together a crew to make this social art project a reality.
“I brought together an ensemble composed of student musicians, eager to record all the instruments live,” Polinnia said. “So much so that I integrated the song into my university’s curriculum, just to be able to record. Otherwise, the administration wouldn’t have let us into the sound booths.”
With everyone hyped up, the music video for “Mass Hysteria” started to come together a month after the ensemble was finished. More than 20 students, including dancers, digital artists, filmmakers, actors and stylists, chipped in to help make the video happen.
But the seven-minute film didn’t come easy.
“We shot for only one and a half days [under NYU film director Simon Tosenovsky],” Polinnia. said. “The first day we shot all over Manhattan, and the second day we shot inside my university, turning a classroom into [a scene].”
The team even snuck into a black box theater that they didn’t have permission to use to make sure that it turned out exactly how Polinnia wanted it.
The team worked tirelessly over the summer so that the video could be released in time for the project’s exhibition, which was three days before Election Day.
On Nov. 2, Mryia Gallery, 101 Reade St. in New York, hosted a gallery spectacle that showcased the work of more than 40 students from The New School and New York University. That spectacle included Polinnia’s #FREEOFPROPAGANDA.
Apart from the music featured at the propaganda-themed showcase, students displayed visual art that brought awareness as well.
“Propaganda is everywhere you look,” Polinnia said. “It is a tool accessible to us as artists, but it is also a factor threatening our future.”
As a Ukrainian, Polinnia views American politics as important. And because of what was arguably the most important election in the history of the United States, Polinnia wanted people to use their own minds, not someone else’s, when deciding for whom to vote.
The election has come and gone, but it doesn’t mean that Polinnia’s work is done, or that #FREEOFPROPAGANDA is obsolete. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Her message can apply to anything in life, not just elections.
“The initiative of #FREEOFPROPAGANDA is a movement that unites young creatives at a time when the constant disinformation seeks to divide the population,” Polinnia said. “Propaganda divides, [but] we unite.”
The message that Polinnia is trying to convey is simple: it is impossible to protect oneself from propaganda, and yet we have a say in what happens to our future.
“Declare your mind, despite the chaos,” Polinnia said.
“Mass Hysteria,” Polinnia’s fourth single, opened up a new chapter for her as a musician and showed a whole new side of her, especially since she hadn’t released any music for a year prior. Her more recent works include two EPs, “Past Chronicles”and “Present Chronicles.”
“In 10 years,” she said, “I see myself doing the exact same thing that I am doing today, just at a larger scale and quicker speed: being a performer, writing [and] working on music, creating global social art projects and acting on the side.”
She added, “The best art is created by those who live in between reality and fantasy.”
Source: Tapinto.net
