Free Voina

7TH BERLIN BIENNALE. STATEMENT BY VOINA

Wed, 02 May 2012 23:12:21 +0400

We met Artur Żmijewski in St. Petersburg in the spring of 2011. That summer he invited us to become curators of the 7th Berlin Biennale. He told us he needed our help to transform art into politics. This doesn’t mean that as Biennale curators we are going to occupy ourselves with exhibition management, which in our opinion is rather useless: exhibitions harm contemporary art. All artists ever think about nowadays is what they can exhibit and where. Therefore the fewer art pieces the Biennale will have, the better. The basis of our curatorial activity in the Berlin Biennale is this: we work without any limitations, and the Berlin Biennale hasn’t mandated any kind of frame. We have a close exchange with Artur. He knows about the difficulties we face and how exhausting it is to live underground. Our work with the Berlin Biennale doesn’t mean that we are leaving our country for this. Our activities here in Russia make up part of our work for the Biennale. All our actions as curators have an official status; we act as associate curators of the Biennale, and the government has to accept this. Our most recent actions were radical. The rulers don’t dare to bring charges against us; they will probably not arrest the entire Berlin Biennale. Trying to leave the country wouldn’t be such a hard thing at all, but to live in St. Petersburg — where the “Commission on Fighting Extremism,” the criminal police, and the Russian department of Interpol search for us, and where our mug shots are even posted in the porter’s lodges of the museums—to live under such conditions is much more dangerous than the kind of elegant adventure of crossing a border. In principle, my position is: I’m staying here. The Russian government is at war against its own people. Many Russians, particularly those with a good education, have already left Russia. Millions of people have never been able to realize their life goals. This is the government’s fault. That’s why I can’t leave. My front line is in Russia. And this is also my aesthetic position: to stay in the most beautiful city in the world. In our opinion, it’s part of the ethics of an artist to resist against the ruling system and to make this goal accessible to the public as well. This is why we seek to make our aim shine in the best possible way. There is an anecdote or perhaps it’s just someone’s memory of Kazimir Malevich: after the revolution in Petrograd, armed with a pistol, he passed through artists’ studios asking who was still painting birches and demanded real art. Armed with a weapon. That is real art.

Aesthetics is the precondition of ethics. Today, ethics are much more important for art. Voina doesn’t tolerate cowardice nor greed—both are the source of betrayal which is the worst and most unforgivable thing for the art activist. I personally cannot deal with apathy or ineptitude. When both occur, moreover in combination with an inflated self-assessment, I become very unpleasant company.

We want to make a type of art that no longer inspires anyone to the idea of awarding us an art prize. But if the museums and institutions can’t let go and continue to suggest us for their idiotic competitions, they are going to regret it. It’s impossible to bribe revolutionary art, and playing games with geniuses is dangerous. It’s my friendly advice that one should take us very seriously. For us, art is not the measure of life. We create new life, new events, that one can refer to. Our rifles are charged and aimed at art so that it stays at a distance and will not spread its art stench over here. We hate PR. We are an underground group. Voina has become very popular. Books and films about us are everywhere, people copy our actions—and none of this has anything to do with us. It’s other people playing copycat. Lazy assholes that advertise for us… this does not have anything to do with our future.

In the Russian press hardly anything has been published about us that paints a true picture of reality. Here, the dishonest writing of lackeys has become the ideology of journalistic work. If one third of what they write is accurate, it’s already a big success. A typical example of this is how the press wrote serious articles about our participation in the corrupt Moscow Biennale in spite of our loud and public boycott. Since 2005 when we have existed as a group there has been a substantial flow of disinformation about us. But sometimes this also has positive aspects: when the police investigated about our action “Palace Revolution” they couldn’t find any evidence, except the wildly contradictory media rumors and artistic interpretations on blogs. Thus the whole thing collapsed in on itself.

Now it’s our aim to present the people with a convincing impression of decisive actions. Passive protest and symbolic actions—now when it is again about “big history”—are immoral. The events in Russia of December 2011 and February 2012 show us: both the government and the opposition (which humiliates itself in front of the government) make fools of the people by degrading protests to the level of consuming Internet memes. There is laughter and ironizing rather than arming ourselves for street fighting. We have taken Berlin. The next thing is the Russian revolution.

VOINA

Vor: "To fuck them in a way the people can grasp, but with all the brilliance that is our wont"

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:24:00 +0400

Since February 6 we’ve been fighting with RIA Novosti, the state
news agency, to publish my interview. The agency asked us for it back
in late December, on the 22nd. Only on the 19th of January did they
send me questions, which the culture section took a whole month to
draft and approve. On February 6, a journalist named Svetlana Yankina
got the interview on the condition that it would be published without
cuts or censorship. The condition was accepted. But after their
newsroom got our answers, they started an endless “approval” process,
which involved the editors sending requests to throw out the brighter
remarks and totally remove all of the substantive parts of the
interview. The editors started sending cowardly missives. “…since I am
the interviewer, it turns out that I knew ahead of time about the
actions you were preparing and did not inform the relevant
authorities. Therefore, I am a co-conspirator. This creates risks not
only for me, but for the agency where I work. That is why I suggest
removing these fragments… Please understand, we are not talking about
censorship.”
And all kinds of crap like that.

A month later, we were forced to published the interview without the foul censorship the RIA Novosti news agency had attempted.

the Berlin biennale Artur Zhmievsky before he invited you to take part in the group of curators.

Vor: Yes, we met in the spring of 2011 in Petersburg. And his offer to become a co-curator of the BB came that summer. Zmiy (Artur Zmievsky) came to Petersburg once more after that. We swam in the Neva river and kept working together after that.

Vor and Zmiy in the Neva

How did you meet?

In Russia Zmiy was visiting the lefties and was really bored during his meetings and boozing sessions with them. The decorative lefties in Russia are after all pretty boring caricatures. Zmiy was living at the time in a posh flat on the embankment of the Griboedov canal. And we were in a squat on Marat, in a flea pit. We showed up at his place late one evening. Kasper was already sleeping in the sling on my back,
and started demonstratively discussing how uncouth it is to live in expensive apartments in the middle of the historical center of Petersburg, which looks as though it has been bombed. We walked around the rooms saying, “Has your Polish ass fucking lost it?” Since he was Polish, we didn’t think that he might understand Russian. But he knew it just fine. But the whole evening he pretended that he didn’t understand a word of Russia and forced us to talk to him in English. Our irascible condemnations in Russia of foreign wealth was how we, apparently, won Zmiy over. The tipsy lefties didn’t say any of that to him.

What goals (if there were any) did he set for you?

It was all very simple. Zmiy said” I need your help to change art, to transform art into politics.” But we, naturally, first had to check out to what extent the activist Zmiy really firm and fucked in the head - the way we check out everyone who comes to Voina. We went into the mushnik (supermarket) and walked around with this piss-off stride.
That is, we were taking items without paying. Since food is a right, and not a privilege. And if your worthless ass sells food, be prepared for it to be stolen. We understand all of that very well. Artur meanwhile acted like typically boorish drunken tourist. He walked in and demanded to be shown “the most expensive Russian cognac.” Which is to say he was baiting (distracting the salespeople). All the while we were stocking up under Zmiy’s disguise. On top of that Zmiy was with this charming activist Sofia. In short, they passed the test. After that I asked Zmiy: “You want to take part in a Voina action?” And he said, “Yeah.” And added: “I’ll do whatever I can for you.”

Vor, Zmiy, Sofia, Kasper Neglyadniy (Can’t-Take-Our-Eyes-Off-Him) and Koza on
Petropavlovsk beach, summer 2011

How do you plan to make that happen?

We certainly won’t be taking part in any exhibitions. All exhibitions are utterly pointless. Holding exhibitions can only harm real art.

So you won’t invite any artists?

Artists are second rate and sort of deadweight creatures. They think about their exhibitions. But they only need exhibitions so that they can make more exhibitions. So the less of them there are at the biennale, the better.

Did the curator set any kind of framework or did that not happen at all?

We work only with carte blanche. That is, with absolutely no boundaries. And with total trust. Limits do not apply to us. Laws don’t exist. The only thing Zmiy said was this: Do only one thing - politics.”

How do you exchange ideas? By phone, by letters, through one-on-one conversations?

We already decided everything. What and how, I won’t say. Because that’s a matter for inside the group, information only for the participants. I don’t share it because of security matters. We rarely announce our actions.

Do problems come up with preparations?

Always. With the idea for a future action we work under an especially guarded territory. Right under the hearts of the pigs. In their lair. One has to learn a lot, always the training gets to you, and life in the underground can drive you insane. But the result remains as far away as ever. Zmiy knows all of this.

The Biennale is international, but some activists of Voina are forbidden from traveling abroad. Does that make any difference at all?

The work on the biennale does not amount to “traveling abroad.” We see our activity here, in Russia, as work on the biennale. For instance, we made Russian actions part of the global artistic process. At the same time we are in no way limited by our role or our participation in the biennale. We can take part in anything connected to the biennale. Our work has an official character, we work under the banner of the biennale, and the authorities will have to deal with that. We will now fuck them to the limit. One confirmation of this is the burning of the police truck on New Year’s as a present to Russian political prisoners. Above all Taisa Osipova. The authorities cannot make up their minds to bring charges against us, and the pigs don’t dare arrest us. They don’t have the power to arrest the whole Berlin Biennale.

Do the limits on your physical movement limit your ability to create?

If we need to leave the country, I doubt it will be that tough. Living in Petersburg, where you are being hunted all at once by Center E (anti-extremism police), criminal investigators, ORC, OSO-1 and the Russian office of Interpol, where our photographs even hang at the guard posts in museums and where the bosses scare their rank-and-file pigs with stories of Voina like we are the wolves in fairy tales, to live here every day is a much wackier adventure than a run across the border. But I’m not leaving. This is my principled position: to stay here. The actions of the Investigative Committee and the many searchers do not affect this at all. In Russia right now there is a war of destruction. The authorities are destroying the Russian people.
A significant part of Russians, and especially people with a good education, have already left Russia after failing to make it here. The life plans of tens of millions of people to stay in Russia did not work out. That is the fault of the authorities. So I cannot leave. The frontline for me is here. And that is also my aesthetic position, to stay at the ends of the earth. If Petersburg brought me back in handcuffs, with a bag over my head, lying on the floor of a bus, in a convoy of 8 “extremists”, that means this city needs me! On top of that, the next Voina action will also take place here.

On the site of the biennale it says: “They might knock on the doors of artists’ studies, but not to check their work, but to remind them of artistic ethics.” What does that mean to you?

The persistence of ones actions in destroying the system. One has to fuck them in a way the people can grasp, but with all the brilliance that is our wont. And when it comes to the artists’ studios, that reminds me of the joke about Kazimir Malevich in revolutionary Petrograd. The Bolsheviks made him the commissar for art. Gave him a revolver. And Malevich went around with the revolver to studios and asked who was painting birch trees. He shook the revolver in the face of those who were drawing birches and demanded real art from them. Under the threat of a bullet. That’s what real art is. That’s not even a joke, but somebody’s reminiscence.

If you talk about the unethical nature of the art scene as a whole and artists as part of that, then what is unacceptable to you personally?

Ethics is born of the aesthetics of trust. Aesthetics comes first. But ethics for art is more important, no doubt. Such are the times. We in Voina cannot put up with cowardice and greed. That’s what treason is made of, the vilest sort, the most unforgivable sin of the activist. And me personally, I can’t forgive talentlessness and am ready to look down my nose at those without talent. In combination with a higher set of criteria that makes me unpleasant in my interactions with those who
are simpler.

How did you react to the fact that things connected to you were getting into competitions and so on?

From now on we will work so that no one will ever get the desire to give us any more prizes. And if they don’t learn their lesson and continue nominating us for their whorish competitions, then they’ll soon regret it. There’s no point in trying to buy out a revolutionary, and cozying up to geniuses is dangerous. It’s much more constructive and good for your health to take us seriously. That’s a recommendation.

Your victory on “Innovation” became the art event of the year in many assessments. What do you think about that?

Receiving a state prize is shameful. We did not hesitate in rejecting it, and stated as much immediately, long before the award ceremony. The statue was left to gather dust in the building of the State Artists’ Union. And the prize money from the state was transferred to political prisoners. That looked good. Turned out that the state, which considers political dissenters to be criminals, was sponsoring them in prison. Now that’s art.

Doesn’t vanity come a bit naturally to you?

Of course. But we have, as I said, high demands. We don’t measure ourselves by prizes, exhibitions, actions. We don’t measure life through art at all. We breed it. We make events that serve as a baseline. Art grazes in safe and honorific pastures. Our rifles are loaded so that it doesn’t come near enough to spread its artistic reek around here.

Vor, Kasper Can’t-Take-Our-Eyes-Off-Him, Leo the Fucked and Koza training for a new action

The film “Zavtra” by Andrei Gryazev, about your action on Liteyniy Bridge, made it into the parallel program of the Berlinnale. You know about that?

That’s bullshit. There is no film about Voina. Gryazev was not there during the action Cock Imprisoned by the FSB!, which means he couldn’t have filmed it. Of course, anybody who spends even a day with the group can splice together a movie out of whatever, our life is full of everyday adventures. I don’t get sick of our War for a second. Press record and film. But there’s no point even talking about a possible film by Gryazev at the Berlinalle.

So where did that come from?

Gryazev is spicing up the yellow press. But we’ve been hearing lots of things, for instance, about an exhibit of Voina going on in Moscow and Perm, screenings of our actions, even though that’s all false information, provocations and gossip. No we learn that a Gnome is shooting a film? Gryzev is a former fascist, a skinhead. His nickname is Gnome. He used to ride around on roller skates. So this is another smalltime provocation against the group, and there have been plenty of
those recently. Only someone who becomes a rank-and-file activist of Voina can make a film about Voina. We don’t let in anyone from outside. Nobody gets into the group by accident. Even though we give everyone a chance and look them over.

So you didn’t know him?

Like a lot of people with cameras, Gnome was swirling around the group for a while. But he was wimpy, kept a distance. There was no point discussing radical ideas with him, let along filming them. We got rid of Gnome when we understood that he’s a zero. I saw some of his footage, and it’s beneath even criticizing. He’s a snot-nosed geek. A white birch under my window. So Gnome was thrown overboard and we haven’t seen him since. Since there has been a lot of talk going around about a Voina film, I can only assume that Gnome has turned to dirty tricks. Looks like he spliced up some shots on the low of our everyday life, shoved in some documentation of Voina actions, which he had nothing to do with, and is now going to bum around with it at various festivals. Presenting a movie about the great Voina. For sure, some scouts will take the bait. Voina is mad hot right now. Everybody is either writing books or making films about us, or copying our actions. All that has nothing to do with Voina. It’s a coattail of other people’s interests.

Did you assume that that action would have such resonance — the
Innovation prize, the Berlinnale?

“That action” is the greatest work of modern Russian art, the most famous, an international hit. Laurels have nothing to do with it. And PR is repulsive to me. We are an underground group. The rotten faggots praising Voina are not the future of the Voina group.

You once said that you cannot remember even ten accurate publications about Voina in the media. Why do you think that’s the case?

I’m sure Voina is not the only one in this situation. The authorities have no interest in demanding that journalists act professionally, and society doesn’t know how to demand anything at all. All by themselves, voluntarily, journalists don’t want to be themselves. If journalists do resist that, then only through their apathy, disorientation and laziness, which leads to the loss of their image and purpose. I see the press through the example of Voina. If one third of the facts in the news are accurate, that’s already a breakthrough. The Gnome film about Voina is a typical example. Every rumor is mulled over to the point of exhaustion. Before that the press was writing about our participation in the corrupt Moscow biennale, when Voina had called for an international boycott of it, which is, so to say, unpleasant. But it could be that this massive flood of slop could have the opposite effect, in which the Investigative Committee cannot find any proof in the case of “Overturning the Nobles,” nothing but wild rumors in the media and some rather creative texts on LiveJournal. We don’t cooperate with the investigation at all, don’t give evidence. And the case fell nicely apart.

What in terms of creation is a priority for your right now?

To show the people a convincing picture of decisive actions. To passively squander it all on symbolic actions right now, when you can smell the History, would be amoral. The December and now the February events make that clear. The citizens have been led astray by an opposition that grovels before the authorities, back-scratches, worrying in advance about their phantasmagoric seats in parliament and nothing else. People in the streets are forced to pointlessly freeze, in a trance, under a foreign tune. And none of those frozen people can make up their minds to have a dance. As a result, instead of getting three months of experience in a war of resistance the crowd has experience in freezing and stomping their feet at protests with blown-up condoms in their hands. And that’s what they’ll take to the presidential elections. The opposition has reduced the protest to the point of using memes that are generously provided for us by the Kremlin zombie box. Everyone is sucking Putin’s jokes dry and moaning gratefully instead of training themselves to be street fighters, preparing themselves for battle, sabotage at the enemy’s flank. Seriously, if the political opposition cannot handle Center E, if they think that is their unconquerable enemy, then they have to change their methods of action.

And what about your life?

Mama Can’t-Take-Our-Eyes-Off-Her, the daughter of Voina

On January 19 Koza had a daughter. Mama Can’t-Take-Our-Eyes-Off-Her. Now Casper, who that day turned two years and nine months, is an older brother, while Mama is the youngest activist of Voina. And the youngest political prisoner. She was arrested by Center E while still in Koza’s stomach. That’s our little battle-hardened Mama-Anarchia.

You’ve taken Berlin. What’s next?

Russian revolution, what else. Read your history.

Voina in Venice

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:37:00 +0400

VOINA in S.a.L.E. Soon we'll be completely fearless

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:28:04 +0400

SaLE-Docks April 24th – June 3rd
Opening music + live set: Tuesday, April 24 h.18
Exhibition runs from Thursday to Sunday, from 14.30 to 19.00

Voina (from Russian: Война; eng.: War) is a group active in Russia since 2005. Their work has been shown in many countries and as a result of attempts of repression by the government, activists from around the world (from Venice in Fukushima, from Zurich to New York) have taken actions in solidarity of the collective.

Currently Voina is associated curator of 7. Berlin Biennale.

About Voina we loved the audacity and the decision to assume a full “biased” perspective. We can debate about their art, but undoubtedly the work of the group is separated from the hypocrisy that often characterizes artists and curators, very radical in words, but always extra careful to not get involved in certain paths, which could lead them to the margins of the system or possibly to confrontation with issues and needs that are outside their personal artistic agenda. There may be differences in the point of views between the method of Voina and that ofS.aLE Docks, but it seemed possible to produce a profitable linkage, thus giving space to the example of an artistic practice that has in common with us (and the whole movement in Italy which is occupying spaces in the name of a new cultural season) the idea that prudence, in art, risks to turn into sadness. And we feel that Voina, in the words of its members, agrees with this point of view: “We had sex in public and this doesn’t frighten us anymore, we invaded a police station and this doesn’t frighten us anymore. What more is there that can scare us? We will deal with death in the future. Soon we will be completely fearless. “(T. Peter, 2008).
At SaLE Docks, will be projected several videos of the actions of the group, from the early years of activity to date: the famous giant phallus painted on the drawbridge in front of the headquarters of the Russian secret service, up to collective sex celebrated to denigrate metaphorically the passing of the baton from President Putin to his successor Medvedev, through the ironical invasion of a police station by some members of the gang, dressed up as supporters of the regime, until the sealing of the doors of a popular restaurant owned by a Moscow television star pro-Kremlin.
Although Voina has a definite subversive attitude, the opposition to the regime of Putin & Co. has created in the last months a wide opposition movement that has spanned across Russian society and mobilized hundreds of thousands people in cities and in provinces . This movement comes from the outrage at the re-candidancy of Vladimir Putin in the presidential elections and was reinforced by the dramatic use of fraud and illegality during the elections in December 2011.
Putin, more than any other, embodied the rhetoric of “stability” that has harnessed Russia after the chaos of post-Soviet 90s. A rhetoric that has created a parallel system, on one hand the government corruption and cronyism, on the other hand the birth of new mafia-style organizations encouraged by large institutional vacuum. It is in this social humus that in the first decade of the century a third option came through, the one of a new Russian-left composed by different political orientations which, in addition counts on, above classic activists, intellectuals, artists and collectives, all of them very far from the official nostalgic Communist Party. Of course, the big opposition demonstrations in recent months have not solved the emergence of democracy in Russia, the official information continues to be enslaved while blogs are censored, the Russian police is an institution best known for the ease with which resorts to torture, Putin (thanks to the fraud) was re-elected president at the first round of the elections. The movement itself seems to be slowed down from the liberal and quite distinct nationalistic part. Nevertheless, Russia, in the year of Occupy Wall Street and of the “Arab spring”, did not wait on the sidelines and raised up massively against the “Putinist stability” that, in the global crisis, appears to be the Russian feature of the attempt of the financial capital to maintain in balance the helm of the world (even in front of a growing social dissent).
Voina is one of the most radical voices of this disagreement since a long time. It is no coincidence that some of its members have a federal and international policy arrest warrant pending and Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaev have served four months in prison because of their artistic militancy. Artists and clandestines, the Voina arouse both great enthusiasm and adversity; what is sure is that their aesthetic extremism recalls the history of modern Russian art. Artists and writers (now considered classics) are those who, in the wake of the October Revolution, theorized and experienced, during the Twenties of the Twentieth century, the dissolution of art in life that became a litmus test of the historical avant-garde. Sergei Tretyakov and Sergei Eiseinstein, for example, literally brought the theatre into the streets, in the public space, and declined it as a means of pursuing social unrest and sabotage of that illusionism typical of the bourgeois performing arts.
More recently, during the Perestroika and the parallel peculiar subsumption of Russian art in the global system, underground artists rejected the monetary hysteria to focus on a critique of the transition. Just think of “Mercy” (1991), the first exhibition at Trekhpudny, the alternative gallery in Moscow. The show consisted mainly of the presence of two homeless people inside the exhibition: the project by Konstantin Reunov e Avdey Ter-Oganian is just one example of an attitude alternative compared to the dominant one, namely the revival of symbolism and of the soviet imaginary on market purposes. Instead, the artists gathered around the Gallery Trekhpudny, formed an artistic adventure certainly alien from speculative interests and characterized by a stimulating confusion between the routine of life of the community catalyzed by the space and the Kairos of the artistic happening.
We stop here, do not want to hazard historic-artistic lineages without merit, however, we were interested in photographing a certain attitude that, in various forms, has characterized the history of Russian art, coming up to Voina.

http://www.saledocks.org/?p=1462
http://www.facebook.com/events/362406140463412/?notif_t=plan_user_invited

Voina points to the art of dissent

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:44:50 +0400

By EDAN CORKILL

Activist art: For “Voina Wanted (in Fukushima)” Chim↑Pom and local artists help Alex Plutser-Sarno display the “Voina” banner at a dump site for radioactive tsunami debris in Fukushima

The photo shows an unshaven Russian glaring into the distance from behind prison bars. It’s a striking shot, so it is hardly surprising that when it was printed on a 4×6-meter banner and unfurled at an entrance to the 20-km exclusion zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the police officers on duty were somewhat perplexed.

“They came out and asked us what we were doing,” explained Alex Plutser-Sarno, a member of the infamous Russian art group Voina, which has been holding similar “actions” around the world for the last few months.

Making statements: Alex Plutser-Sarno of Voina with Toshinori Mizuno, Motomu Inaoka, Masataka Okada, Yasutaka Hayashi and Ryuta Ushiro of Chim↑Pom talk about activist art at the Watari-um, Watari Museum of Contemporary Art. EDAN CORKILL

The man in the so-called “Voina Wanted” photo is the group’s leader, Oleg Vorotnikov, who was arrested in Russia in late 2010 after one of the group’s more provocative artistic forays — the overturning of an empty police car. Vorotnikov was eventually released on bail after British graffiti artist Banksy donated $20,000 to the group, but he remains on international wanted lists — and hence the “Voina Wanted” actions that have been held throughout Europe, the United States and now Japan.

Read the full article: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fa20120412a1.html

The ‘Un-Whored Path’ of Leo Tolstoy and Voina

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:27:00 +0400

by Jacquelyn Gleisner

03/31/2012

“In order to properly define art, it is necessary, first, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure,”(1) wrote Leo Tolstoy in 1897.

Voina, “Fuck for the heir Bear Cub!”

At the time Tolstoy was writing his way through a spiritual crisis, developing a body of work that outlined his unconventional beliefs. Today these writings function as a symbolic script for the provocations of the Russian performance group Voina, self-defined as “a street collective of actionist artists who engage in political protest art.”(2) As Tolstoy’s views grew increasingly more radical, he became a social pariah. In a similar fashion Voina’s mendicant members are sometimes in the news, frequently in trouble with the law, and always outside convention.

Separated by one hundred years, the author and the art collective Voina (which means “war” in Russian) comprise an unlikely couple within Russia’s avant-garde. Beyond their overlapping cultural heritage, Tolstoy and members of the street art group share an ideology tinged with ascetic undertones. Tolstoy reshaped his life, eschewing the excesses that would hinder his highly personal quest for spiritual purity. While Voina’s pursuit is more political than spiritual, its puritanical members live without comforts such as fixed shelter, cell phones or an overall sense of stability. Tolstoy and Voina’s rabid views regarding sex, money and truth set them apart from the mainstream. Both of these iconoclastic figures have found a place on what Voina founder Oleg Vorotnikov (who calls himself “Vor,” meaning “thief” in Russian), has described as “the un-whored path.”(3)

Koza and Vor of Voina

Yet Tolstoy’s path was not always free from whores. At the height of his virility when he served as the commander of an army cavalry regiment, Tolstoy (like his peers) frequented brothels and enjoyed the company of many women. To his credit he dutifully documented these encounters in his journals. Later, as Tolstoy was courting young Sophia Andreevna Behrs, sixteen years his junior, he had a unique pre-nuptial request: Sophia was to read his diaries in order to learn of her fiancé’s checkered past. Ironically, the unhappily married Tolstoy would endeavor to abstain from all sexual relations with his wife many years later. (This was a decision he reached only after he had fathered thirteen children with Sophia and one bastard child with a peasant, by the way.) Sex, according to Tolstoy (and his pen pal Gandhi), was an impediment to moral purity and therefore, piety.

While Tolstoy championed celibacy as a means of moral purity, the members of Voina utilize sex to deliver a political message. The rowdy art collective became an international media sensation in 2008 when the group staged a sex party inside Moscow’s Biological Museum. In front of a sign which read “bear-cub successor,” six couples disrobed and began copulating.(4) The performance took place in February, just one day before the presidential election. Titled “Fuck for the Heir Bear Cub!,”(5) this extreme action was a pun on the name of the politician, Dmitry Medvedev, whose moniker is derived from the Russian word for bear. Medvedev had waged a campaign with the Russian public to increase the birth rate. Voina responded with an orgy inside the museum. An inverted endorsement of Tolstoy’s abstinence, the performance inside the museum was a brazen refusal of the candidate.

“Lev Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana”, 1908, the first color photo portrait in Russia

Sexual abstinence was but one source of discontent in Tolstoy’s marriage. The Russian writer and thinker also tried to quit smoking and give up eating meat. However, the deepest schism between himself and his family developed over his attitudes towards money. Born a man of privilege and wealth in society, Tolstoy rejected both his inherited wealth and the rights to his publications as his views became more austere during the final chapters of his life. Sophia, overcome with frustration and fearing poverty, was wont to throw herself in the snowy ditches on the property of the family estate at Yasnaya Polyana. The more enraged his family became as he gave up his fortune, the more Tolstoy fantasized about straying as a mystic and a peripatetic.

It is not surprising that Voina’s attitudes towards money are also unorthodox. In fact, the group lives without money altogether. Vor and his wife, fellow Voina member Koza (formerly Natalia Sokol; her artistic nom de guerre means “she goat” in Russian) have lived without money since 1998; they subsist on what they can steal and what they are offered. Vor believes refusing to pay for things like food or shelter liberates him to become a true force of resistance. Vor, who has two children with Koza, has stated:

“Most people make excuses for doing nothing by saying that they have to survive or feed a family. This justification doesn’t apply to us.”(6)

Voina’s art is expansive, not expensive. The group is a caveat to the often affluent milieu of the contemporary art world – in Russia and abroad. Money, or rather its intentional absence, makes the members free to focus on more important matters.

Family is potentially one such matter. Arguably, Tolstoy, the author of the oft-quoted passage “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”(7), had greater concerns. At the age of eighty-two Tolstoy left his own family behind. To find happiness Tolstoy believed that he needed first to unfurl the fetters of his life. Like the members of Voina, he planned to embark on the life of an ascetic, uncluttered with materials wares. This new life, however, was short-lived. At the time of his departure, Tolstoy’s health had already been poor; he would be dead within a week. In November 1910 on the day before his death, Tolstoy’s final words to his son Sergei were: “I love truth … very much … I love truth!”(8) As the octogenarian’s body caved to pneumonia, Tolstoy’s final utterances were hardly an apology and almost an explanation of the curious unfolding of his concluding years. Tolstoy, the aspiring ascetic, would reject even his family on his journey of the truth that he loved so dearly.

L. N. Tolstoy in his study. Yasnaya Polyana, 1908. Photo by K. K. Bulla

One century later the members of Voina are aligned with Tolstoy’s staunch commitment to truth seeking and sharing. Voina acknowledges that freedom of speech can come at a cost. Speaking the truth has imperiled the safety of the fanatic members of Voina, several of whom have been beaten and incarcerated by Russian authorities. Nonetheless, Voina remains committed to the truth, even when facing the ultimate form of renunciation, death. Koza spoke for the group when she declared,

“We’ve had sex in public and are no longer scared of it. We’ve invaded a police station and are no longer scared of it. What else is there to scare us? Death we will deal with in the future. Soon we will be completely fearless.”(9)

For the members of Voina, danger never outweighs the imperative of exposing the truth.

Through the negation of desire and the abnegation of pleasure in art, Tolstoy and Voina illuminate a deeply personal truth. The truth – be it for moral or political gain – is irrevocably linked to asceticism. Koza stated, “The situation around Voina constitutes an integrity test for the art community. Artists have to understand that before anything else they are citizens, and as citizens they must express their position in their art. It’s just a matter of being honest to oneself.”(10) While Tolstoy was true to himself – at the expense of his worldly comforts and finally, his family – to abandon pleasure for the benefit of a greater good is a test of integrity that many people and many artists will surely fail. Tolstoy and Voina have shunned, not just the whores but nearly everyone, on their path of purity.

(1) Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Late Steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy, Jay Parini, ed. (London: The Penguin Group, 2009), 65.

 (2) Free Voina, What is Voina? http://en.free-voina.org/ (March 23, 2012)

 (3) Walter Mayr, “Russia’s Art Revolution: Voina Challenges Putin with Imagination,” Speigel Online International, Dec. 21, 2011. (http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,805084-2,00.html) 

(4) Hrag Vartanian, “FREE VOINA! Two Russian Art-ivists Languish in Jail,” Hyperallergic: Sensitive to Art & Its Discontents, Dec. 22, 2010 (http://hyperallergic.com/15354/voina-interview/)

 (5) http://en.free-voina.org/ 

(6) Speigel Online International, Dec. 21, 2011. 

(7) Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Constance Garnett, (New York: Modern Library Edition, 1993), 3. 

(8) Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy: Spiritual Writings, Charles E. Moore, ed., (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 36.

 (9) Thomas Peter, “Art shock troops mock Russian establishment,” Reuters, Jul 23, 2008. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/07/23/us-russia-art-idUSL1650947620080723) 

(10) Hyperallergic: Sensitive to Art & Its Discontents, Dec. 22, 2010.

Source: http://wowhuh.com/archives/660

Russia under Putin: a burning desire for change

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:54:06 +0300

Voina art-group on Channel 4th News

The full report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vvtDGckRE4

Source: http://www.channel4.com/news/russia-a-burning-desire-for-change

Presentation of Voina actions in Dada's Cabaret Voltaire

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 06:50:00 +0300

Voina Group presentation. On the screen you can see the portrait of a Russian opposition activist Taisiya Osipova behind the bars. Taisiya Osipova, the wife of a Russian opposition leader, was sentenced in the end of 2011 to 10 years in prison for the alleged possession of half an ounce of heroin, a move that her supporters say is aimed at intimidating and dividing the Kremlin’s political foes.

Source: http://plucer.livejournal.com/548753.html

VOINA WANTED on the Muenster Bridge, Zurich, 2012, 4 feb

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:57:11 +0300

Voina Wanted banner hung on the right side of the Limmat River in Limmatquai.

Lindenhof in the old town of Zürich, the historical site of the Carolingian Kaiserpfalz, situated on the left side of the Limmat River.

Voina Wanted banner hung on the Muenster Bridge. In the background there is St. Peter’s church, one of the four main churches of the old town of Zurich, besides Grossmünster, Fraumünster and Predigerkirche.

The action was supported by Voina Group activists Adrian Notz, Phillipp Meier & Nadja Putzi (DADA’s Cabaret Voltaire), Leopold Helbich. Photo - Yana Sarna. Initiator and author of the action - Alexei Plutser-Sarno, Voina Group media-artist. Portrait of Oleg Vorotnikov in the courtroom - Vladimir Telegin, Voina Group activist. «Voina Wanted» – worldwide solidarity action by the Voina Group for the persecuted artists and group members Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol, who were put on the international wanted list by Russian police.

Source: http://plucer.livejournal.com/548607.html

VOINA WANTED in Zurich

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:31:22 +0300

VOINA WANTED action took place in Zurich, Switzerland on February 4, 2012.

The height of Karlsturm tower where the Voina Wanted banner was hung is 62 meters. There are 187 footsteps leading to its top.

The action was supported by Voina Group activists Adrian Notz, Phillipp Meier & Nadja Putzi (DADA’s Cabaret Voltaire). Photo - Yana Sarna. Initiator and author of the action - Alexei Plutser-Sarno, Voina Group media-artist. Portrait of Oleg Vorotnikov in the courtroom - Vladimir Telegin, Voina Group activist.

“Voina Wanted” – worldwide solidarity action by the Voina Group for the persecuted artists and group members Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol, who were put on the international wanted list by Russian police.

Source: http://plucer.livejournal.com/544919.html

Russian Art Group Claims Attack on Police Van

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:02:51 +0300

By ELLEN BARRY
Published: January 2, 2012

MOSCOW — A spokesman for the radical art collective Voina on Monday announced that its members had broken into a St. Petersburg police station on New Year’s Eve and used gasoline bombs to incinerate a police vehicle used to transport prisoners as “a gift to all political prisoners of Russia.” Amateur video posted online showed a figure tossing lighted objects under a large vehicle, which was then engulfed in flames and spewed smoke into the night sky.

The St. Petersburg police responded skeptically to the Voina claims, releasing a statement that described the fire damage to the vehicle as “insignificant” and noting that there were similar rumors of arson after a fire in August that forensics specialists determined had been caused by a short circuit.

Voina, which was founded by a Moscow philosophy student in 2005, won a contemporary art award sponsored by Russia’s Ministry of Culture for a 2010 work that consisted of a 210-foot penis painted on the roadway of a St. Petersburg drawbridge, which rose to point at the offices of the F.S.B., the state security service. Its members went on to a project they called “Palace Revolution,” in which teams of men ran up to parked police cars and flipped them over, in what they described as a protest against police corruption.

The group’s activities dropped off in 2010 after two of its leaders were arrested on serious hooliganism charges; both men were released last spring on bail, with the assistance of $20,000 donated by the British street artist known as Banksy. The charges, which could bring seven-year sentences, still stand. A third member has been in detention on vandalism charges since taking part in a protest on Dec. 6 and is on a hunger strike, Aleksei Plutser-Sarno, the group’s spokesman, said by e-mail.

All day, liberals bickered online over whether the arson attack on the police vehicle constituted “pure art,” as one commentator put it, or, as another maintained, “an act as idiotic as voting for United Russia,” the ruling party.

Andrei V. Yerofeyev, a prominent intellectual who has championed Voina in the past, said he thought that the group had helped awaken a more activist spirit in the Russian populace, and that it should move away from radical political acts like the burning of the police vehicle.

“The goal of art is deeper than activism,” he said. “They have carried out their assignment.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/world/europe/russian-art-group-voina-claims-attack-on-police-van.html?_r=4&ref=design

The Tver Court of Moscow sentenced the activist of the party “the Other...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:02:35 +0300

The Tver Court of Moscow sentenced the activist of the party “the Other Russia” Dmitriy Putenikhin, who poured water on the prosecutor of the Manezhnaya case, to seven months of corrective labor. The defendant was released from custody at the courthouse. Sentencing will take effect in 10 days.

Koza, Kasper and Skif Bratok

On October 28th Putenikhin splashed a prosecutor Alexey Smirnov with water near the building of the Tver court, where he was answering questions from the press after deciding in favor of a cruel sentence for those accused in organizing riots on the Manezhnaya Square in December 2010. The defendant fully admitted his guilt and repented. The prosecutor requested a punishment of six months of hard labor for insulting a government official. The sentence was read out by the Judge Sergei Komlev:

“The guilt of public offense has been proven. In view of repentance and the social danger of the offense, as well as an earlier conviction of the accused, he will be sentenced to seven months of hard labor with retaining of 20 percent of his wages.”

The court also decided to destroy the evidence in the case, namely, two bottles of mineral water “Senezhskaya.” The victim prosecutor Smirnov did not attend the hearing and requested a review of the case without him. Lawyer of Putenikhin, Dagir Hasavov, said that he was pleased with the outcome of the process and that his client will not appeal the verdict.

Dmitry Putenikhin (also known by the nickname of Bratok Skif and the pseudonym Matvei Krylov) was taken into custody October 28, 2011. The court sanctioned his arrest for two months, as public prosecutor stated that the defendant “could escape and continue their criminal activities.” Putenikhin kept in jail “Butyrka.” As a result of trial court on Thursday, the time spent in Butyrka will count towards the sentence on a oneday – to – three bases.

Thus, Putenikhin will have to work at the correctional facility for one month. As explained to the BBC by the lawyer of Putenikhin, Dagir Hasavov, the sentence means that Putenikhin will have to pay 20% of his first paycheck to the state. In the near future Dmitry Putenikhin’s lawyer intends to file a lawsuit against a TV show “VID” where, according to him, the convict worked until the day of his arrest. Putenikhin will demand that he be compensated for the moral damages. After completion of the trial on Thursday he said that on the day of his arrest he was fired without explanation. Hasavov added that the broadcaster refused to answer questions and stated that Putenikhin has never worked there. This includes the program “Wait for me” where Dmitry did work, which refused to give him a personal characteristic needed for the trial. The lawyer received a formal response from the television, according to which Putenikhin never entered an employment agreement and thus has no employment records with the “VID”. The reply says that Dmitry had a short term contract with the television company (two months). According to the lawyer this is not true, and Dmitriy’s work records were not released by the TV staff once they found out that the records would be needed for the court. The officials from the TV show “Wait for me,” said to the Russian service of the BBC that Putenikhin did not cooperated with them in any form. The assistant editor of the show, who refused to provide his name or the whereabouts of the editor, said that he didn’t know Dmitriy Putenikhin.

The victim in thhis case, Alexei Smirnov, was a prosecutor of the trial in the Manege Square December 10, 2010, following the murder of a football fan Yegor Sviridov. In this case five people, including three activists of the “Other Russia” Ruslan Khubayev, Igor Berezyuk and Krill Unchuk, were given sentences ranging from two to five and a half years in prison. In protest against the sentence imposed on October 28, 2011, Putenikhin splashed the public prosecutor with mineral water. He was arrested thereafter. The case of Putenikhin was considered without hearing of the witnesses, because the defendant did not deny his guilt. The victim Alexei Smirnov initially claimed that he heard the cry “Death to the prosecutor”. Those present at the scene say that Putenikhin shouted, “Do not forget, never forgive”, which is confirmed in several videos, including those shown on Russian TV channels. Further, Smirnov could not identify Dmitry Putenikhin with certainty and later dropped his allegations. After this charge was reclassified from “threats or violent acts in connection with the administration of justice” to “insulting a government official.” An open letter in support of the arrested “drugorossa” (member of the Other Russia party) was signed by many social and artistic personalities, including Marat Gelman, Artem Troitsky, Dmitry Bykov, Rustem Adagamov and others. On November 27th a rally was held in support Putenikhin on Clean Ponds in Moscow. It was attended by more than a hundred people.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/russia/2011/12/111229_putenikhin_verdict.shtml

Russian Protesters Use Art as Act of War

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:51:24 +0300

Anna Nemtsova Jan 6, 2012 4:45 AM EST

An art collective put a phallus on a bridge and burnt a police truck on New Year’s Eve. Can they truly call their protests art?

For a group of artists, academics, and philosophers from Moscow and St. Petersburg, the war against the Russian government started six years ago, when the group formed an underground art club called Voina (which means “the war”). Their aim: declare war against police abuse and the government’s highly publicized authoritarian methods.

On May 29, 2009, Voina’s members carried guitars, amplifiers, and microphones to a federal courtroom during the hearing of Andrei Yerofeyev, a Russian curator being prosecuted for his Forbidden Art exhibition. They then performed a song called “All Cops Are Bastards” in front of the judge. Later, they projected a 120-foot-high skull-and-crossbones symbol onto the Russian White House, in what they called a warning message for corrupt authorities. In the summer of 2010, Voina artists painted an enormous phallus on the 200-foot-tall Leteyny drawbridge in St. Petersburg a few minutes before it elevated—in full view of the headquarters of the FSB, the successor of the KGB Voina proclaimed that the phallus was aroused by the hierarchy of Putin’s power.

Voina sees its role as a bellwether for Russia’s mass conscience, and by all accounts, Russian hipsters have enjoyed the group’s radical freedom of expression, with other guerilla performance artists joining in the subversive protest mission. In fact, for the past six years, many members of Russia’s more mainstream political opposition groups have sympathized with Voina’s unconventional methods.

That changed on New Year’s Eve, when Voina’s activists dedicated what they called “a street performance” to the group’s imprisoned members and all Russian political prisoners. They burned a police truck in the courtyard of a St. Petersburg police station, devoting their “fire gift” to Russian political prisoners.

A video claims to show members of Voina setting vehicles on fire in the courtyard of a St. Petersburg police station

As with all the previous projects by the art guerillas, a detailed description, photos, and a video of the act (arson, in this case)—was uploaded to a Web page by one of Voina’s ideologues, Alex Plucer–Sarno. In an email interview with The Daily Beast, the underground artists confirmed that on New Year’s Eve, Voina’s leader, Oleg Vorotnikov, took his 9-months-pregnant wife, Natalya Sokol; their 2-year-old son, Kasper; and Voina activist Leonid Nikolayev, dressed in a Russian Santa Claus costume, to burn the police truck. These are the same types of trucks that have transported each of the protesters to jail at least once.

“What do people normally get for a New Year’s gift? Shampoo? Or a bottle of whisky? Imagine, you are powerless, locked up in jail, and somebody gives you a gorgeous, fiery present,” Vorotnikov explained. As many as 20 legal cases have been filed against Voina group activists, and yet, says Vorotnikov, “We are up for the war. The war begins right now.” If burning a police truck is art, one might ask, then what is war?

Russian opposition leaders and civil-society figures see Voina’s act of arson as damaging and disturbing to the current political situation. Over the past few weeks, tens of thousands of Russian activists have taken to the streets in Moscow and other cities to protest against Putin’s domination of Russian politics. To Boris Nemtsov, one of the more conventional opposition leaders, Voina’s radical act has served to undermine the peaceful movement that has awakened in Russia since last month’s reportedly falsified election results.

“Half a year ago, when the country’s protest was deeply asleep, I would understand Voina,” Nemtsov says. “But today, when 100,000 people protest against the Kremlin on the streets, Voina gives Putin good reason to say, ‘See, they are nothing but criminals,’ about the opposition in general.”

One of the inspiring figures behind Moscow’s mass anti-Putin protests, theater critic and satirist Victor Shenderovich, long ago stopped seeing the antics by Voina as aesthetically attractive. “Voina’s latest performances—turning police cars upside down on Palace Square, spraying police with urine, or burning police trucks—look tasteless from an artistic point of view, unlike their previous art projects.” Shenderovich said that by burning the police truck, Voina performed an act of trivial hooliganism at a delicate historical moment for Russian opposition.

To Vorotnikov and his wife, aesthetics and diplomacy have long ceased being a part of the discussion. Since they take their 2-year-old son with them to each “action,” Kaspar has been detained by police three times; once, last spring, Kaspar was injured when a police officer grabbed him out of his father’s hands. Vorotnikov said that on Nov. 15, 2010, several police officers broke into the Moscow apartment where the Voina family was staying with friends and threatened to send Kaspar into social services. According to Sokol, police confiscated her passport, medical insurance document, driver’s license, and her Moscow State University employee’s certificate—leaving her without any legal documents or access to neonatal care when she gives birth later this month.

Despite the arrests and public outrage, Voina’s war goes on. The group deals selectively with unknown underground civil leaders and anti-fascist and anti-Kremlin Left Front–movement activists, sticking to its agenda of overturning Putin’s regime. It would seem that Voina should be happy about the mass rallies all across the country and opposition declaring the same goals as Voina. But that’s hardly the case. The group’s activists feel frustrated with the opposition. “The opposition leaders compromise with the Kremlin, they discredit the spirit of protest, people’s anger. The opposition’s goal is to become a part of the existing system and not to fight it,” Vorotnikov says, sarcastically complimenting the authorities for “allowing” the protests, so people’s anger “flies out of the chimney, like a puff of steam.”

If burning a police truck is art, one might ask, then what is war?

Internationally, Voina’s ideology—defined by the group as “an anti-consumerist lifestyle marked by alternative living strategies, such as dumpster diving”—is publicized more significantly worldwide than it is at home. Giant “Voina Wanted” banners can be seen in the U.S., the U.K., and Germany. As German film director Artur Zmijewski, a Voina supporter at the Berlin Biennale, put it, “Art is free, and Voina activists are not just saying words, they act to prove the idea.”

Last November, the Berlin Biennale appointed Voina’s activists, including Vorotnikov, Sokol, and their son, as the festival’s curators. That, of course, was before they burnt the police truck.

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/06/russian-protesters-use-art-as-act-of-war.html

THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES: Voina Claims Arson Attack

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:50:04 +0300

By Sergey Chernov

Vorotnikov holds his son as they stand in front of a police vehicle similar to the one Voina claims to have set on fire

St. Petersburg law enforcers have filed a new criminal case against award-winning Voina art group for burning down an armored police truck on New Year’s Eve. They also addressed the group, whose activists are in hiding, via news web site Fontanka.ru late last week.
Late on Dec. 31, a Voina activist climbed over a fence surrounding Police Precinct No. 71 on the Petro- grad Side and set fire to a massive Ural truck using Molotov cocktails as an art stunt called “Cop’s Auto- Da-Fe, or Fucking Prometheus,” Voina spokesman and chronicler Alexei Plutser-Sarno said on his Livejournal.com blog.
The statement said the armored Ural police truck was targeted because it was a prison-on-wheels used for holding and transporting detainees.
“This is our modest New Year present to political prisoners from a group of artists,” Voina’s Oleg Vorotnikov said in an email interview this week.

“It’s undisputable that political prisoners are forgotten by Russian society — because they remain locked up in prisons. Political prisoners have become the norm in Russia, and this norm is a despicable crime of the state and its cowardly and indifferent citizens.”

According to Vorotnikov, the group came up with the idea of “giving the gift of a burning prisoner truck” when activist Filipp Kostenko, who spent 15 days in custody after being arrested at the Dec. 6 protest against electoral fraud, was arrested right in the detention center as soon as his term had finished on Dec. 21 and was sentenced for another 15 days on what he called fake charges.
Vorotnikov believes that “Cop’s Auto-Da-Fe” had an immediate ef- fect: The court declined to put Kostenko in a pre-trial detention center at the end of his second prison term on Jan. 4 until his next court hearing due on Jan. 29, despite the investiga- tors’ request for it to do so. Kostenko was released on Jan. 5 after spending 30 days in custody.

“There are characters who act arrogantly and pretend to be kings, annoying everybody and interfering with everyone’s life — but only until the first hurdle,” Vorotnikov said.
“Once they are given a rap on their forehead, such characters quiet down and start behaving respectfully and politely. Such are the cops from the political police in Russia.
“Let them talk now about what methods are more efficient; peaceful dances in condoms at rallies [a reference to music critic Artyom Troitsky, who spoke at a Moscow antifraud rally in December wearing a condom costume] or the smell of fresh napalm at night.”

Published on Jan. 2, Plutser-Sarno’s posting included photos and a video of the arson. As the news made headlines, later on Jan. 2 the police issued a statement saying that the damage was “minor” and that an investigation into the cause of the fire was underway. The police pointed out that a similar blaze in a police car last year originally reported to be arson was in reality caused by a short circuit.
On Friday, however, the police said that a criminal case into “hooliganism” or criminal mischief (Article 213 of the Russian penal code) had been filed over the incident, and addressed Voina via Fontanka.ru, a local news web site that has police ties.
According to the site, the police suggested that the artists should come to a Petrograd Side police pre- cinct, get in touch with the investigator in charge of the case and “present their artistic views.” “In turn, the police officers promise to pass the results of these conversations to journalists in full,” Fontanka.ru continued, sarcastically.
“We are not interested in the cops’ proposal,” Vorotnikov said in an email Monday.

“We don’t feel that we have any lack of communication with journal- ists. We can always arrange a press conference if we need to make a di- rect statement.”
Vorotnikov reminded police that his wife Natalya “Kozlyonok” Sokol and their two-year-old son Kasper had been beaten by plainclothes po- licemen after a Voina press confer- ence in March.
Meanwhile, the group said that a criminal case against its members for the Palace Revolution art stunt, which involved overturning a parked police car in St. Petersburg in Sep- tember 2010, had been closed for the second time.
The case, which charged Vorot- nikov and Leonid Nikolayev with hooliganism motivated by hatred to- ward a social group, was originally closed in mid-October after Herzen Pedagogical University experts came to the conclusion that the police is not a “social group.”

However, the case was reopened two weeks later after the prosecutor’s office repealed the investigators’ de- cision. Voina reported that it had found out Sunday that investigator Vadim Rud closed the case for a sec- ond time as early as Dec. 1.
Vorotnikov and Nikolayev spent three-and-a-half months in pre-trial detention after they were arrested in Moscow in November 2010, but were released on bail — 300,000 rubles ($9,455) each — paid from a dona- tion made by British street artist Banksy, who learned about the legal charges facing the group via the BBC.
In April, two separate criminal cases against Voina activists — Voro- tnikov and his wife Sokol — were filed after the activists were detained during a protest march to City Hall held on March 31. They were charged with disorderly conduct, using vio- lence against a police officer and in- sulting a police officer. Later, inter- national arrest warrants were issued for the two.
Voina’s lawyer Dmitry Dinze said Tuesday that investigators had not been in touch with the art group, two members of which have been issued with international ar- rest warrants over the new criminal case, Interfax reported. Dinze added that they lacked any evi- dence on the case besides the activ- ists’ claims.
On Tuesday, the human rights as- sociation Agora said in a press release that Dinze had found himself under surveillance.

“I have been constantly and closely watched by two men over the past three days,” he was quoted as saying. “As soon as I cometothecity—Igotoacafé,they go there too. I go to a movie theater, they follow me there.”

Publications: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/voinas-new-year-gift-for-police/450949.html

Far from Moscow, a harsh sentence and political overtones

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 02:19:22 +0300

By Will Englund, Published: January 11

Taisiya Osipova

SMOLENSK, Russia — As opposition leaders wait to see how Russian authorities intend to handle continuing political protests in Moscow, a criminal case here, 250 miles to the west, suggests that tough measures are part of the equation.

The wife of a radical organizer was sentenced late last month to 10 years in prison for the alleged possession of half an ounce of heroin, a move that her supporters say is aimed at intimidating and dividing the Kremlin’s political foes.

The conviction and harsh sentence for Taisia Osipova follow a trial that was marked by dubious testimony and the exclusion of exculpatory evidence. She and her allies argue that her arrest was part of an attempt to target her husband for his political activity — and now a key prosecution witness has come forward to corroborate that charge.

Osipova is an unlikely heroine. A 26-year-old diabetic without much education, she generously salts her conversations with profanity and, as a member of the fringe Bolshevik National Party, once walked up to the governor of the Smolensk region and struck him in the face with a bouquet of carnations.

She gave up such activism when her daughter was born six years ago, and she’s not part of the big-city, middle-class cohort that has turned out recently for demonstrations. Yet some of the young stars of the new political movement — as well as the members of a guerrilla art collaborative and a famous rock singer — have rallied to her side. Far from keeping their distance from her, they are demanding her release.

“She’s in jail as a hostage,” said Zoya Svetova, who writes about crime and civil rights for the crusading journal New Times in Moscow. “This is a political prosecution.”

An added dimension

The case against Osipova began more than a year ago. Investigators obtained a warrant to tap her phone on the grounds that her husband, Sergei Fomchenkov, was sending money from Moscow to pay for illegal party work in Smolensk, according to a copy of the warrant provided by Fomchenkov.

When she was arrested in November 2010, he says, police told her they’d let her go if she could persuade him to return to Smolensk. This is typical of a system that also relies on arresting businessmen to force them to pay bribes, and an example of the official lawlessness that is one of the chief complaints of the political opposition.

But a criminal case that began as an investigation of a small radical group — which now calls itself Other Russia — took on an added dimension as political protests attracted thousands after the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections. Osipova was sentenced Dec. 30.

“People can’t understand such cruel, unfounded treatment,” said Osipova’s attorney, Natalia Shaposhnikova. “And now everybody thinks — it could happen to me.”

Svetlana Sidorkina, a human rights lawyer in Moscow who also worked on Osipova’s case, thinks the intimidation can be effective. “People here remember 1937, they can be scared,” she said, referring to the worst year of Joseph Stalin’s purges.

“They gave her such a harsh sentence to show the people who came out on the streets that they mean nothing,” said Fomchenkov, who has remained in Moscow and continues his work for the un-registered party. “The authorities can do whatever they want. They spit in the faces of the people.”

Up to a point, he concedes, the tactic may succeed in scaring off potential protesters. “But people,” he said, “get tired of fear.”

In fact, argues journalist Svetova, the eruptions of the past month show that many thousands of Russians have already gotten past fear. “Even people who would have nothing to do with Other Russia support” Osipova, she said. “Nobody’s intimidated, and nobody’s afraid.”

‘They were dishonest’

Osipova lived with her daughter, Katrina — born in 2005 and named after the American hurricane — in a white cement-block house halfway up a steep hill on the right bank of the Dnieper River. Her husband, wary of the police, had left for Moscow in 2009.

Vor and Katrina

Investigators claimed to have found heroin while searching her house, which they did after three witnesses, all from Kremlin-related youth groups, allegedly saw her dealing drugs on the street.

One of them, Olga Kazakova, says she was summoned by a Young Guard leader and asked to act as a witness for a sting the police were setting up — a typical Russian practice. Investigators from the anti-extremism unit drove her to Osipova’s neighborhood, where at 9 p.m. one night, she says, she saw the transaction take place — from a distance of 200 to 300 yards, along a winding, dark, steep street. Cellphone records place Kazakova in another part of the city at that hour. But to this day she insists she saw the deal go down.

At the time, Kazakova thought this was a straightforward case about drugs, and she thought she was doing her duty as a citizen. But now she understands that it was about politics and that Osipova was ensnared as a way of getting at her husband.

“I feel very offended,” said the former Young Guard member. “They were dishonest. If I had known in advance that it was designed to put her husband in prison, I would hardly have taken part in this operation.”

Osipova’s conviction is under appeal, and Russian law prohibits prosecutors and investigators from making public comments.

Mushrooming support

Although Smolensk, like most of Russia’s smaller cities, doesn’t have many local news organizations, the Internet has started to pay attention to Osipova’s case. A Web site champions her cause. YouTube videos, some of them obscene, call for her release. Dozens of well-known figures, including the anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, have lined up to back her.

“Guys, wake up,” Yevgenia Chirikova, who organized an effort to save the Khimki Forest near Moscow, wrote in her blog after visiting Smolensk. Invoking the Soviet gulag, or system of prison camps, she added: “The archipelago is not somewhere in the distant past, it is quite near. It is in the callousness of prosecutors and judges, it is in our indifference. Who will be next?”

In Moscow on Tuesday, five people were detained after a series of one-person demonstrations were held at subway stations in support of Osipova, the Interfax news agency reported. Russian law permits one person to demonstrate without obtaining a permit beforehand.

Osipova is in ill health. Svetova calls her a political prisoner. By all accounts, she is angry rather than demoralized.

The authorities threatened to take Katrina away from Fomchenkov but backed down in the face of negative publicity. The 6-year-old now spends half her time in Moscow with her father and half with his sister in Smolensk.

“They are ready to go to jail for their ideas,” Mikhail Yefimkin, a 25-year-old reporter who has written about the case for a weekly supplement, said of Osipova and her husband. “It’s worth admiring.”

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/far-from-moscow-a-harsh-sentence-and-political-overtones/2012/01/09/gIQAoVkTpP_story_1.html

"VOINA Wanted!" hung on the Brooklyn side in New York. Jan. 5, 2012

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 12:04:49 +0300

There is the Empire state building in the background

Photo - Brad Downey, Voina Group activist, with the help of Ed Zipco and Quenell Jones. Initiator & author of the action - Alexei Plutser-Sarno, Voina Group media-artist. Portrait of Oleg Vorotnikov in the courtroom - Vladimir Telegin.

Source: http://plucer.livejournal.com/537113.html

Happy New Year to all political prisoners!

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 20:56:05 +0300

With their December 31st action, Voina sends their New Year greetings to all political prisoners in Russia.

Happy New Year, Philip Kostenko!

Happy New Year, Taisiya Osipova!

Happy New Year, Igor Berezyuk!

Happy New Year, Kirill Unchuk!

Happy New Year, Ruslan Khubayev!

Happy New Year, Sergei Mokhnatkin!

Happy New Year, Rinat Sultanov!

Happy New Year, Sergei Udaltsov!

Happy New Year, Anton Lukin!

Happy New Year, Mikhail Pulin!

Happy New Year, Alena Goryacheva!

Happy New Year, Pavel Zherebin!

Happy New Year, Mikhail Khodorkovsky!

Happy New Year, Yaroslav Nikitenko!

Heroes! Your courage gives us strength and inspires us to fight. We stand together!

Photos: http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/russianrevolution2012/viewed/

"VOINA Wanted". Atlanta. USA

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 02:18:16 +0300

Action “VOINA Wanted”. Bank of America Plaza & The olympic torch monument. Atlanta. USA
Jan. 2, 2012

The banner was hung in front of the olympic torch monument in Atlanta, which was created for the 1996 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXVI Olympiad and unofficially known as the Centennial Olympics.

The olympic torch monument

The banner was hung in front of Bank Of America Plaza (aka NationsBank Plaza), Atlanta’s tallest skyscraper (312m/1023f, 55 stories, 1992), GA, USA.

Bank of America Plaza

“VOINA Wanted” is a worldwide solidarity action by the Voina Group for the persecuted artists and group members Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol, who were put on the international wanted list. Photo - Brad Downey with help from Phillip Gilbert, Voina Group activists. Initiator of the action - Alexei Plutser-Sarno , Voina Group media-artist. Portrait of Oleg Vorotnikov in the courtroom - Vladimir Telegin.

Source: http://plucer.livejournal.com/532834.html

THE LONG DEATH OF TAISIYA OSIPOVA

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:49:34 +0300

2012/01/03 7th Berlin Biennale: Newsletter

Political Prisoner Taisiya Osipova

ANOTHER FRIEND OF VOINA SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS OF PRISON

On December 29th, 2011, after having waited 13 months in prison in Smolensk expecting a sentence, Taisiya Osipova, a 27 years old opposition activist, was made to wait another 12 hours in the court building. Then she was sentenced – to 10 years of prison.

Taisiya Osipova is a political activist of the oppositional party “Other Russia” and the wife of Sergey Fomchenkov, a member of the executive committee of “Other Russia”. They have a five-year old daughter, Katrina.

According to reliable sources, the criminal case of Taisiya Osipova has been trumped up and does not contain objective evidence. The sentence was read in the absence of the media and the public, a practice completely contrary to the Russian rule of open trials.

Taisiya Osipova was arrested in November 2010 in Smolensk, after the police broke into her house and supposedly discovered suspicious money and five parcels with white powder.

Normally, such police break-ins require the presence of neutral witnesses. In this case, the police seems to have selected the witnesses beforehand, making a planting of the evidence possible.

Members of the police force openly expressed towards Taisiya Osipova that they were mainly interested in her husband Sergei Fomchenkov. She was given the prospect of avoiding criminal punishment if she would cooperate.

Many Human Rights organizations, like the Committee for the Civil Rights and for Human Rights in the Smolensk region, the Committee for Children’s Rights of the Smolensk region, the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia and others, tried to protect Taisiya Osipova by stressing that neither the public nor the prosecutor’s office nor the Commissioner can reliably prove Osipova’s involvement in drug trafficking.

The whole charge is based on the testimonies of the witnesses of the break-in. These witnesses are classified as “top secret” and did not appear in court, making it impossible for the defense to disprove their allegations. In addition, the court under Judge Dvoryanchikov ignored a number of proven inconsistencies in the case.

Since Taisiya is suffering from a number of serious diseases, like pancreatitis and diabetes, the overly hard sentence means death for her. There was no initiative to transfer her to a prison hospital or to give her a normal medical examination.

In addition to the above charges, both Taisia Osipova and her husband Sergei Fomchenkov are being investigated with the aim to remove their parental rights over their daughter Katrina. This removal of parental rights has no legitimate reason and should be perceived as way to put pressure on Fomchenkov in connection with his political activities.

Before the trial of December 29th, there have been attempts from human rights organisations all over the world to interfere with the case. Defense attorney Svetlana Sidorkina’s complaint regarding the case of Taisiya Osipova has been accepted by European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The complaint was filed under application number 41366/11 and has been classified as urgent.

The World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) in Geneva has demanded a prompt medical examination and treatment for Taisiya Osipova, as well as her release in the absence of valid legal charges.

As it turns out now, none of these appeals did help.

Further information:
http://en.free-voina.org/post/14763633893

Koza among Russian women who dominate. ‘Babelians’ of 2011

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:53:20 +0300

Codename Koza

Koza and Kasper

According to one potted history lesson given by a former Russian (female) colleague, Russian young men were sent to war and died in world war one, in the civil war, in world war two and in the purges, where the bright (mainly male) stars of the intellectual scene were disposed of. Add to this the poor life expectancy for men, who on average die at least twelve years younger than women at 63, and Russia still has a predominately female population who are beginning to make their mark on the country. These are the ‘rossianki’ to watch.

Natalia Sokol, aka Koza, is one of the core members of Russian guerrilla art group Voina, most famous for painting an illuminated phallus on a drawbridge in St Petersburg, and is often pictured with the group’s youngest activist, two-year-old Kasper

Source: http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/images/689/russian-women-activists-journalists-students/

‘Babelians’ of 2011. October 2011

VOINA

These were the activists, philosophers, artists and citizens whom we met each month of this year across our pan-European citizen media landscape, from Egypt to Russia - follow the links to re-read the articles. Happy holidays!

We first meet Voina, Moscow-based self-styled ‘street art gang’ formed in 2005, in October.

Source: http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/images/699/cafebabel-personalities-babelians-2011/