is a Belarusian artist and activist of the Mogilev-based Lime Blossom group. “Drawing public attention to the problem of constitutional fascism in the republic,” he notoriously claimed responsibility for a terrorist act in Minsk, in an attempt to disrupt the prosecution of likely innocent arrestees.
Nikolay Oleynikov, A Comment on Co-Dependence, Re-Aligned/Re-Public Helsinki 2013, Mixed technique on wood. Courtesy of the artist.
Curated by Ivor Stodolsky and Marita Muukkonen of Perpetuum Mobilε
RE-ALIGNED is a thematic project including exhibitions, conferences, street and public art, artist-in-residencies, workshops and publications initiated by Perpetuum Mobilε. Working together with Tromsø Kunstforening, Norway, the first regional focus of the RE-ALIGNED project is on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Culminating Exhibition on Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian Art:
RE-ALIGNED ART at Tromsø Kunstforening
13 September–10 November 2013
Opening days: September 13–16
In Tromsø, the RE-ALIGNED project will spread out over several sites, routes and ports including Tromsø Kunstforening, the artist-run spaces Kurant and Small Projects, the Verdensteatret Cinema, the University of Tromsø, as well as the streets, walls, roofs and air-fields of this arctic city. RE-ALIGNED ART is a festival of political art in diverse genres hosting art, cinema, poetry and music, as well three symposia: artistic, discursive and academic.
RE-ALIGNED+MEDIA IMPACT at the Moscow Biennale 2013
Moscow’s leading platform for activist art and the RE-ALIGNED project are joining forces for the second time in Russia. The Moscow events will build on the Helsinki iteration, which included street and public art, poetry and the Arkady Kots band.
October 2013
PAST THE ‘POST-’ / GENERATION ‘PRE-’ at Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm
From Non-Aligned to Re-Aligned Art and Politics
International Conference of the RE-ALIGNED Project
March 15–16, 2014
The RE-ALIGNED project looks into conditions, subjectivities and agencies provoking a new alignment of art, thought and politics in the 21st century. It assumes that the horizon lies not behind, but before us. The “post-modern moment” has passed. We are in a state of “pre-”. Overcoming identity particularisms and old geopolitical fault lines, contemporary currents in art and politics exhibit common alignments based on ideals and ideas.
As in previous times of great public discontent, such as in 1848 across Europe, in 1968 across continents, or in 1989 across the Soviet bloc, artistic advocates of freedom have taken their ideas into full public view. Using a multiplicity of artistic techniques and strategies, the current re-alignment of art with politics tactically combines art and subversion, art and micropolitics, art and education, art and provocation and art and propaganda. The selection of artists, thinkers and activists of the RE-ALIGNED overrides factional divides, including all of these approaches.
RE-ALIGNED ART in Tromsø, whose focus is Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian art, includes the following artists and collectives:
Sveta Baskova, Babi Badalov, Ivan Brazhkin, Chto Delat?, Mikhail Dolyanovsky, Sofia Gavrilova, Gogol’s Wives, Alexey Iorsh, Matvei Krylov, Leonid “Arch Genius,” Denis Limonov, Victoria Lomasko, Media Impact, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Kirill Medvedev, Roman Minin, Monobrow, Monstrations (Artyom Loskutov and Maria Kiselyova), Marina Naprushkina, Nikolay Oleynikov, Pyotr Pavlensky, Pedagogical Poem (Arseny Zhilyaev and Ilya Budraitskis), Pussy Riot, Timofey Radya, Mykola Ridnyi, SOSka Group, Translit & Petersburg Street University, Voina Group and the ZIP Group
Speakers in the programme include Katya Samutsevich (Pussy Riot) over video link, Mischa Gabowitsch (Einstein Forum), Rogatschevski (University of Tromsø), Ivor Stodolsky (Perpetuum Mobilε), Kirill Medvedev (poet and Arkady Kots band leader), Elena Trubina (Ural Federal University), Peter Verzilov (Voina, Pussy Riot associate), Dmitry Vilensky (Chto Delat?), Grey Violet (Voina), and Hilary Pilkington (Warwick University).
RE-ALIGNED Past Events
NON-ALIGNED
Paths Crossing Workshop
HIAP Suomenlinna, Helsinki
December 15–17, 2011
NON-ALIGNED / RE-ALIGNED
Lost Notes from the Underground / …and into the fire.
Another Vacant Space, Berlin
April 27–August 31, 2012
STREET ART ASSEMBLY
An urban exploration and mobile debate (The AA)
2nd Urals Industrial Biennale, Ekaterinburg
September 14–15, 2012
MEDIA IMPACT RE-ALIGNED
2nd International Festival of Activist Art
Murmansk
June 18–20, 2013
RE-PUBLIC
Russian Art in the Streets
Kiasma Theatre, Urb Festival, Helsinki
August 2–11, 2013
RE-ALIGNED ART PROGRAMME
of the
OPENING DAYS AND SYMPOSIUM
Tromsø
13-16 September 2013
RE-ALIGNED ART
at Tromsø Kunstforening
runs from 13 September – 10 November 2013
Friday 13 September, 2013
20:00 Exhibition opening, RE-ALIGNED ART at Tromsø Kunstforening, Muségata 2
The exhibition will be formally opened by Mariam Rapp, Executive Councillor
for Culture and Health, Tromso County Council.
Opening talk by curators Ivor Stodolsky and Marita Muukkonen and the Director of Tromsø Kunstforening Svein Pedersen.
Participating artists:
Sveta Baskova, Babi Badalov, Ivan Brazhkin, Chto Delat?, Mikhail Dolyanovsky, Sofia Gavrilova, Gogol’s Wives, Alexey Iorsh, Matvei Krylov, Leonid «Arch Genius», Denis Limonov, Victoria Lomasko, Media Impact, Kirill Medvedev, Roman Minin, Monobrow, Monstrations (Artyom Loskutov and Maria Kiselyova), Marina Naprushkina, Nikolay Oleynikov, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Pyotr Pavlensky, Pedagogical Poem (Arseny Zhilyaev and Ilya Budraitskis), Pussy Riot, Timofey Radya, Mykola Ridnyi, SOSka Group, Translit & Petersburg Street University, Voina Group and the ZIP Group.
22:00 Opening party at Tromsø Kunstforening/Café des Beaux-Arts
DJ Aikio and DJ Deer-off (Kolya) & DJ Lenin Grib (Misha)
Saturday 14 September
12:00 – 13:00 Registration and Coffee
Symposium RE-ALIGNED ART at Tromsø Kunstforening
Introduced and Chaired by Ivor Stodolsky and Marita Muukkonen
Welcoming Words by the Director of Tromsø Kunstforening Svein Pedersen
13:05–13:20 Introduction by the Curators of the exhibition
13:20-13:45 Pyotr Verzilov (former member of Voina, Pussy Riot associate and husband of Nadya Tolokonnikova) in conversation with Ivor Stodolsky and Marita Muukkonen (video link)
13:45-14:35 Grey Violet participant in Voina actions, liberatarian and LGBT activist joined the panel.
14:35-13:50 Coffee break
14:50-16:00 Artists panel
Babi Badalov, Mikhail Dolyanovsky, Eldar Ganeev, Sofia Gavrilova, Leonid «Arch Genius», Roman Minin, Nikolay Oleynikov, Tima Radya, Stepan Subbotin and Dmitry Vilensky (Chto Delat?/What is To Be Done?).
16:00-17:00 Exhibition opening at Small Projects, Grønnegata 23
17:30 Film-screening at Verdensteatret Kino, Storgata 93B
For Marx, a film by Svetlana Baskova. The film addresses issues in trade union activities in today’s Russia. Introduction by the director. See the trailer on Vimeo
22:00 Exhibition opening at Kurant, Søndre Tollbodgate 17
Poetry Reading by Kirill Medvedev (transl. read by Ivor Stodolsky) & Revolutionary Songs by Medvedev, Nikolay Oleynikov and Misha Griboedov of Arkady Kots.
Sunday 15 September
Symposium Can We Get Past the ‘Post-’?
From Non-Aligned to Re-Aligned Art
at Tromsø Kunstforening, Muségata 2
This symposium addresses the shift away from the “identity politics” of the late twentieth century and their (post-) ideological ambiguity and toward a renewed alignment between art and politics in contemporary Russia.
Introduction to partners at the University of Tromsø by
Moderator Yngvar Steinholt
13:05-13:25 Introduction to the key concepts of the symposium by Ivor Stodolsky: Re-Aligned: A Glossary of New Terms.
13:25-13:45 Elena Trubina, On Fragility of Globalized Imagination: Persistence of Smaller Scales
13:45-14:05 Mischa Gabowitsch, After Cynicism: Protest in Russia beyond Moscow and Saint Petersburg
14:05-14:25 Dmitry Vilensky, Art and Activism. A Field Report
14:25-15:25 Lunch in Café des Beaux-Arts
Moderator Holger Pötzsch
15:30-15:50 Andrei Rogatschevski: Subversion as Propaganda: The case of Igor’ Cherchenko, a National Bolshevik Artist from Israel’
15:50-16:10 Grey Violet / Seroe Fioletoveo: The Russian “Opposition Movement” and Minorities
16:10-16:40 Discussion
17:00 Walk and Talk to Works in Public Spaces
Leaving from Tromsø Kunstforening, Muségata 2
Monday 16 September
10:00-15:30 Symposium Re-Aligned: Politics, Art, and Protest
at the Centre for Peace Studies, University of Tromsø
Part 1 Main auditorium, Center for Peace Studies
Moderator: Stephen Wolfe
10:00-10:45 Mischa Gabowitsch, The Russian Protest Movement (exact title TBA)
11:00-11:45 Hilary Pilkington, Keyboard warriors, trolls and other nasty beasts: The role of the media and social media in the rise of the new “far-right” in the UK
12:15-13:00 Lunch break
Part 2 Cinema theatre, Visual Cultural Studies (Teorifagbygget, house 6, room 6.222)
13:15-14:00 The Border Musical film and presentation by Dmitry Vilensky of the artist group ‘Chto Delat?’
14:00-15:00 General discussion
RE-ALIGNED ART at Tromso Kunstforening runs from 14 September to 10 November, 2013
Installation of wooden high-chairs with plastic seats, seat belts and other accessories; windows of the TKF with materials, including clay putty, markers and wood.
Three “thrones” facing three windows, tower high off the ground in this witty, pleasurable and practicle new work by Krasnodar’s ZIP Group. The audience is invited to climb the step-ladder and preside on these “thrones”.
The first, the “Leisure Chair” invites the visitor to take a seat and “just relax” and look out through the window at the landscape, that is, the flagpole, the park surrounding the art hall, the road, the buildings and the piece of the Atlantic Ocean which separates Tromso from the mountains towering around it.
The second, the “Chair of Strategic Decisions” invites the participation of visitors. One can make little figurines of clay putty, draw arrows with paint or markers on the window, leave notes, or interact in any other way with the window and in this way also make strategies to do things with what lies behind it.
The third, the “Chair of Self-Exploration” is boarded up. The enthroned participant has a moment to go within him or herself, to reflect and investigate in piece what lies within.
x
In a mockery of “stability”, the prized acheivement of the Putin regime following the “wild 1990s”, the pyramid built by Tima Radya and his crew in this video is a precarious stack of heavy metal riot shields. Slightly angled on their sides and punched through with their characteristic peepholes, this threatening symbol of power has been turned into an object of ridicule. With a red carpet leading to the base of the pyramid and a golden throne on top, the work satirizes the position of the Russian government, its shaky authority built on violence and coercion. As the pomp of the military march ends, the pyramid collapses like a house of cards.
Timofey Radya’s street-art sculpture, composed of 55 riot shields a red carpet and a throne, was made in an atmosphere of intimidation and repression of the political protest movements that rocked the country following the fraudulent Russian legislative elections of late 2011 and the presidential election of early 2012. Nevertheless, it retains a certain light-heartedness, not to say hope.
For RE-ALIGNED ART, “Figure #1: Stability” is screened every evening from sunset until midnight on the wall of the Troms County Council building, which stands adjacent to the art hall.
The video is freely available on the internet, courtesy of the artist: http://t-radya.com/street/35/
2:30 min, video loop, 2012. Re-Reading Room.
The documentary short-film Monument shows the hard labour of jackhammer-workers dismantling an enormous Soviet-era monument in Kharkiv, Ukraine. As part of the programme of modernizing public space for the EURO 2012 football championship, these contemporary workers removed these monumental symbols of working-class heroes. Today, in the words of the artist Mykola Ridnyi, “labo
ur is now no longer the embodiment of heroism, but has absorbed indifference, ignorance and disrespect – the main components of the capitalistic rat race. This paradoxical situation lets us see more clearly the transformations of both the role of labour and the figure of the worker in contemporary society and history.”
Moscow’s leading platform for activist art and the RE-ALIGNED project are joining forces for the second time (the first was in Murmansk).
These events in Moscow built on the RE-PUBLIC, in Helsinki, when the Finnish hip-hopper Paleface and the revolutionary punk-folk band Arkady Kots met. In a short period, they wrote and did a first recording of a track dedicated to the political prisoner Alexey Gaskarov.
Street art by Sampsa, put up on the streets of Moscow by Ivor Stodolsky, Paleface and Marita Muukkonen, constituted RE-ALIGNED’s participation in MEDIA IMPACT mediated by Tanya Volkova, which ran as a parallel event to the Moscow Biennale.
Supported by:
Timofey Radya, “Stability” (still), 2012. Video. Courtesy of the artist.
MEDIA IMPACT RE-ALIGNED
2nd International Festival of Activist Art, Murmansk
(June 18-20, 2013)
RE-PUBLIC
Russian Art in the Streets
Kiasma Theatre, Urb Festival, Helsinki
(August 2-11, 2013)
RE-ALIGNED ART
Exhibitions, Conference, Residencies
Tromsø Kunstforening, Norway
(September 13 – November 2013)
PAST THE ‘POST-’ / GENERATION ‘PRE-’
From Non-Aligned to Re-Aligned Art and Politics
International Conference
Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm
(UPDATED!: September 13-14, 2014)
Curated by Ivor Stodolsky & Marita Muukkonen of Perpetuum Mobilε
RE-ALIGNED is a thematic project including exhibitions, conferences, artist-in-residencies, workshops and publications co-initiated by Perpetuum Mobilε and Tromsø Kunstforening
which, with the help of the Norwegian BarentsKult foundation and the Norwegian Arts Council, is furthering the first regional focus of the RE-ALIGNED project on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Read the in-depth general thematic concept of the RE-ALIGNED in the DISCOURSE section of the website here.
The RE-ALIGNED project looks into conditions, subjectivities and agencies provoking a new alignment of art, thought and politics in the 21st century. Overcoming identity-particularisms and old geopolitical fault lines, contemporary currents exhibit common alignments based on ideals and ideas. The “post-modern moment” has passed. The horizon lies not behind, but before us. We are in a state of “pre-”.
Across continents artists, activists and thinkers of all stripes share mutually recognisable orientations – most often non-alignedto both authoritarian governments and rapacious corporations, and re-aligned by narratives pointing towards the universal, or what one might call the “pre-mondial”. This long overdue shift has spurred ever more urgent demands for fundamental restructuring, from Wall Street to the global “street”, with the symptoms of the crises seen in the revolts shaking the Arab world, Spain, Chile, China or Russia.
The first regional focus of the RE-ALIGNED Project:
The RE-ALIGNED ART exhibition, opening September 13, 2013 in Tromsø Kunstforening, focuses on the artistic strategies of contemporary engaged and activist artists from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The current re-alignment of art and politics, anathema to a previous Russian postmodern mainstream, today tactically combines art and subversion, art and micropolitics, art and education, art and provocation and art and propaganda. In Tromsø, RE-ALIGNED ART will spread out over several sites, routes and ports: from the neoclassical Art Hall to local galleries and theatres, to the walls and squares of the city, into the fields and skies… and the walls of far-flung capitals.
New commissions and works seen for the first time outside of Russia, as well as by now classic pieces, will be contextualised through a dedicated audio-visual Action-Documentation Stairwell and a Re-Reading Room, as well as an Art and Practice Symposium at the Kunstforening and a parallel academic symposium co-organised with Tromsø University.
The selection of artists, thinkers and activists of the RE-ALIGNED project overrides factional divides. Events at RE-ALIGNED ART (Tromsø) and RE-PUBLIC (Kiasma Theatre) and MEDIA IMPACT RE-ALIGNED (Murmansk) will include world-renowned artists and collectives such as Dmitry Vrubel, Pussy Riot, Nikolay Oleynikov, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Babi Badalov, Chto Delat? and Voina alongside new figures such as Sofia Gavrilova, Alexander Delphinov, Alexey Iorsh,Avdotya Kablukova (Zoa), Victoria Lomasko, Matvei Krylov, Sergey “Monobrow” Kleschev, Michael Dolyanovsky, Pedagogical Poem (Arseniy Zhilyaev and Ilya Budraitskis) and Sveta Baskova (film); as well as legends in the making such as Arkady Kots (music), Petr Pavlensky and Timofey Radya.
DISCURSIVE PROGRAMME
The RE-ALIGNED project investigates notions of the “pre-”, such as multi-lectics, hybridity and the re-engagement in political, as much as basic anthropic realities. It addresses the dearth of concepts for grasping the shift away from identity politics, “post-ideological” ambiguity and relativism of the outgoing era.
The “free market” collapsed in 2007-9, two decades after the collapse of “real socialism”, leaving the Cold War of binary ideologies with no winners. Hence the (often ironic or subversive) stance of non-alignmentto any “meta-narrative” has likewise lost significance. Filling the ideological vacuum from the right are racist and revanchist fictions. Re-engaged narratives, however, are becoming by necessity realistic and holistic in a time of mondial crises – ecological, economic and intra-cultural.
Speakers in the first phase of the project include Viktor Misiano, Petr Verzilov (Voina, associated with Pussy Riot), Grey Violet (Voina), Dmitry Vilensky, Tatiana Volkova and academics such as Prof. Hilary Pilkington among many others.
Past Venues include: NON-ALIGNED, Paths Crossing Workshop, HIAP Suomenlinna, Helsinki. NON-ALIGNED / RE-ALIGNED, Exhibition, Another Vacant Space, Berlin.
Acrylic on 10 Sheets of plexiglass and wall,
2m x 3m x 5mm, 2013.
(first realised in 2011)
The penitential system of Russia has not changed significantly since Soviet times. There are more than 10 types of different penal institutions, such as those only for women, or only for juvenile males, etc.
The installation consists of 10 transparent sheets, each containing the locations of prisons in one type of penal institution. The visitor can investigate these sheets individually, or cumulatively, with a view of the map of Russia, which can be seen through the maze of black marks on the back wall.
PROCESS////////////////////////////////////////////////////PROCESS
is widely known for its provocative, politically-charged actions; most famously, perhaps, the monumental phallus they painted on a drawbridge in St. Petersburg which rose to stand erect facing the F.S.B. (KGB) headquarters.
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Voina (Russian: Война = War) is a known for their provocative, controversial and politically charged works of performative actions. Their probably most known action is the monumental penis painted on the St. Petersburg drawbridge in 2011, so that it rose up pointing at the offices of the F.S.B., the Russia security service. More than a dozen criminal cases have been brought against the group. On April 2011 the group was awarded the “Innovation” prize in the category “Work of Visual Art”, established by the Russian Ministry of Culture. The group was founded by Oleg Vorotnikov (a.k.a. “Vor”, ideologist) and Natalia Sokol (a.k.a. “Kozlyenok”, coordinator) in 2005.
Watch Jophi Cragg de Mark’s docu-clip based on materials from TO THE SQUARE 2 aka #TSQ2: Watch this space for an upcoming full-length documentary based on #TSQ2 (https://www.re-aligned.net/square-2/) and its artists and contributors by the Swedish-Uruguayan artist Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena. … Continue reading
For TO THE SQUARE 2 Drawings on banners and leaflets on Lasipalatsi Square. Googleheim is a museum that collects artistic practices which have emerged during popular revolutionary waves and protests over the last decade. The collections show stuff artists and … Continue reading
For TO THE SQUARE 2 Mo-we-Mo-bil is an experimental mobile cinema which aims to activate dialogue and participation in Helsinki through screenings in public space. It is made of a mobile projection unit and special cinema chairs, which can be … Continue reading
TO THE SQUARE 2 (#TSQ2) on DW — TV (Deutsche Welle) Broadcast in 7 languages including Arabic, English and German, and on the website in 30. Date 13.09.14 | 21:30 – 22:00 UTC Broadcast times 14.09.14 | 03:03 – 03:30 … Continue reading
