On August 31, some unregistered candidates to the Moscow City Duma again protested in Moscow. About a thousand people (many of them teenagers) and a multiple number of journalists came out with them. However, there were no mass detentions, there were no vivid photographs, and no calls were made to kill the riot police; therefore, there was nothing special to say about the rally on August 31. It is not clear what Sable and Navalny will report to the sponsors. Without a selfie from avtozak what will schoolchildren brag about after school? In general, an amazing paradox: how do prosperous Moscow schoolchildren, untouched by the AUE culture, suddenly, with incredible enthusiasm, pose for themselves in the guise of a regime victim?
In 2008, in Moscow, as part of the youth biennale with incredible creak and skepticism of the art community, I oversaw the exhibition “GOP-ART: Boys. Hooligan art from Russia. " By the way, among the visiting press was the American film crew RT. The exhibition was not political, in AUE culture there is no single political or religious opinion, therefore the exhibition was not about politics, but about how you can literally fertilize a media agenda with the minimum means given to us by nature and artistic wit.
As at any respected exhibition, there was also its own discussion and educational program. In particular, there was a round table “Prison as a PR resource” moderated by me. The participants were young and hot: the War group with the young and the young Tolokno and Sokol, the Bombs group, which were fucking on the roof of the Tverskaya machine, the legendary Ilya Trushevsky, street artist Misha Most, poetess Natasha Romanova and young Grisha Yushchenko, some others about which it is easier to write individual short stories, - in general, the most hot company.
Now the lazy one doesn’t pose with the iPhone in front of the police or the police department, and then, in 2007-2008, two artists fled from Russia, namely Oleg Mavromatti, who crucified himself like Christ on Bersenevskaya embankment, and Avdey Ter-Oganyan, who cut icons on one of the exhibitions in the Moscow Manege. Both of them started LJ and for almost ten years put themselves in the role of suffering victims of the regime - one from Bulgaria, the other from Prague. I remember that Mavromatti even invented an electric chair for himself, so that his haters could shock him for money through the Internet, but could not cope with the management when the line of amusing zhezhniks for the right to shock him exceeded lethal values.
Both emigrants depicted the horrors of the camps threatening them in Russia, the types of violence in prison, “putting on a mop” and enjoyed considerable popularity in the narrow circle of contemporary art in Moscow, which was then completely supervised by liberals Gelman, Erofeev and Bakshtein. But for some reason, they aroused unanimous laughter in our entire company, because in the context of the information society open to hacking, in the context of the avid desire of the Western press to publish without checking, we considered any news about “infringement of freedom of speech in Russia” and “victims of the regime” that if they went to prison, they would not be touched.
On the contrary, they would be supported worldwide! If they were rich and famous and their voice sounded for some time from the covers of world tabloids, as subsequently sounded "War", Pussy Riot and Pavlensky, and not in LJ for 500 subscribers. Here is an assessment of the PR-prospects of the “landing” and the technique of directing the consequences and the round table was devoted.
As an artist, I was not interested in using the prison in my own artistic practice, but the role of the curator of the "boy" exhibition obliged me to sort it out. But among many participants in the plenary discussion there was quite a practical interest. Now some have already served their twins and fives, and those who made a walk into the zone “using technology” not only became iconic, but also made good money, everyone became famous, received awards, grants, and authority. But, apparently, the technology “prison as a PR resource” has begun to outlive and even parody itself.
It was a time of frightened, unfamiliar path of the regime’s victim, it looked risky, and therefore, when the young sexy hooligan Tolokonnikova was sitting in the zone under the support of Madonna, when Vorotnikov and Lenya Ye were supported in the Crosses by £ 500 thousand Banksy, it looked exciting and memorable .
Now, the once creative class has degraded so much that it goes to its two little houses, like faceless dumb sheep, capable of only throwing a bottle and wriggling like worms when they are dragged onto a bus. What kind of media operations are there to introduce their own name and some ideas there in the media. They seriously believe that being hit with a club or being detained and taking a bus is repression worthy of appearing on the cover of a tabloid. Oh guys, there was a time when even on Madonna’s chest it was written about Tolokonnikova, and now there are dozens of you and nothing to say about you - you are the same.
Where is Banksy? Where is the Madonna? Where are the Red Hot Chili Peppers? And most importantly: WHERE ARE THESE PRISONERS ?! Against the backdrop of all this festive Moscow teenage posturing, Assange and Manning are being killed before our eyes - this is not a two-dollar thing and not a blow with a baton, but physical destruction in prison on the obviously trumped-up charges and naive moralizing of the Western press to our good-natured policemen.
Society has changed, elementary statistics are open, and we see where real police atrocities happen, where children are killed on the streets, and then a protest against real killings is shot with rubber bullets and gas, we see that against this background, the “bloody regime” is not so bloody , as the liberal media outlines it, and we see the ratings of CNN and BBC lying around falling.
I remember when Vorotnikov and Nikolaev left the Kresty, both sleek and shiny from good food ... “We never ate as much black caviar as we did in prison,” they said. “It's not scary in jail.” And I see how Assange, who was defeated by illnesses, is taken out and finished off, how American bombs are poured into the Middle East, how a dark-skinned teenager is shot at a playground, and I understand why Oleg Vorotnikov is already in a European prison, who supported the return of Crimea to Russia, and why the liberal media are silent about this.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.