{rodina}. a short presentation in english.
Click to viewjust made a short presentation of {rodina} art group for a swedish council. think got some likes for the video.
Hello
my name is leonid tsoy and I here represent the art group named {rodina} (the motherland) based in Saint Petersburg and practicing performance, street intervention and other close types of contemporary art requiring the artist’s presence.
I want to bring an apologiy for my English which is far from excelent.
Our group was formed a year ago after a performance called “The Dictation”. It was strongly based on a textual part and involving the audience - so that it could be called “a total performance”. Two persons were acting one as a female teacher providing a usual Russian language class at school and the other was male, who was turning it into some evil mystery-play. The teacher was dictating a text with the title “The Motherland” which was kind of one big patriotic cliché and the other participant was deconstructing it by some gloomy and absurd verse on the same subject.
That caused a real chocking effect among the public who were first deeply involved in the usual school exercise of dictating and were deceived (1) by the context of the first September Russian holiday of the beginning of a school year, (2) by the previous event of the evening which was a Math lesson, and (3) by teacher’s behavior in the beginning of the dictation.
After that evening the collaboration had started and the title of the dictation caused the name of the art group.
We have held about twelve events within this year, and you are going to see the extracts of the most remarkable of them in the video.
As I can imagine the retelling of the performances in words is rather boring to hear, so I will try to be brief.
The second extract you will see in the video is from the performance “The Right for Voice/ the Right to Vote. The Oral Resistance” it sarcastically imitates a tv-show, in the beginning of which two speakers provide a rather violent interview with the public by giving a microphone and taking it back at once without leaving an opportunity for a person to speak out. Then they made their weird conclusions on the pieces of words the people managed to say and that made a very truthful image of Russian television. The reason this event took place at the end of September 2013 and the reason I took part in it was the hunger-strike of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in prison. That was also the reason of the title “The Oral Resistance”.
I would say, the art of {rodina} group is rather descriptive than protesting. all that is often done as an imitation of the discourse (or the speech) coming from the state authorities and mass media. of course There is always some irony added, which does not reduce the horror and shame and disgust caused by that state authority’s speech. So the pleasure {rodina} is giving to the public by its art is masochistic.
In January {rodina} organized a scientific conference, and the condition of participation was not only the quality of the text of the short lecture but in addition the lecture had to be accompanied by some art activity - performance, for example. You will see in the video an extract from my lecture on the subject of contemporary Russian lawmaking wich is compared to the most recent russian art activism of Bombily, Voina, and Pussy Riot art groups. The main idea was that those were very close phenomena and that the lawmakers have learned some provocative strategies from contemporary art.
And as I have said before {rodina} is imitating the language of state authorities and bureaucracy so we can see here kind of a double postmodern art loop.
In March after the Crimea events {rodina} went out for a plein air as traditional city artists do. The group stood at the place traditional for the city artists but also did some weird art. One was painting a city paysage seen but with his own blood taken right away in the street, while the others covered the newspaper photos with evil dooldles.
The next work I want to say a few words about is Masha Ivasenko’s performance “Time to Redden”. It is an antiwar protest and at the same time a feminist protest against reproductive pressure. The idea could be clearly seen in the video, so I would only say that the form of gesture the artist has chosen is very powerful, cause it requires and in fact causes equal courage of the public and the artist and effectively shows that the limit between the artist and the public is phantasmatic. I also want to say that Masha is now abroad and in a very difficult financial and psychological situation. Maybe those who are gathered here could help her somehow.
On the 18-20 of July {rodina} held two performances in an almost non-stop marathone.
The first one was called “For the sake of Your Safety” and it was a rude invasion in the Dirty Gallery on Marata street while a feminist gathering took place there. And {rodina}’s members just went in and tied everybody up with the ropes, while one man was sayng out loud through the megaphone that that was done for the sake of their safety.
The other one was a three days intensive art watching in the art zone named Refugee Camp on the roof of the Bobby Gallery during which the three comrades were sleeping by turns in a self-made coffin. On that watching the artists received political and other news from mass media and were reprinting it mixing with their own thoughts and feelings. {rodina} has a plan to publish that report. In the end of those 48-hours of wakefulness {rodina} made a closing performance named “The Sale of the Spiritual Wealth”, while a real sale of the art objects was taking place. {rodina} took paper money only for the matryoshkas filled with pure oil and covered with pure human blood. The money was burned in the end.
And the last one of {rodina}’s works is “Happy Birthday, War!” which was a long walk down the Nevsky prospect with a baby carriage filled with dead heads made of cabbage. This was on the first of September on the birthday of the group, on the day when the Second World War started, and several days after the soldiers of Russian army, who perished in Ukraine were buried in Pskov anonymously.
Now let’s see the video, please
[пока заводы стоят и вокруг одни современные художники сделал презентацию творчества {родины} для шведского консульства. спросили, привлекли ли ваши акции внимание правительства. я говорю: пока нет, может в следующий раз]