On a chilly Moscow morning last November, 10 plainclothes policemen broke into the Moscow apartment where Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev were sleeping. Screaming at everyone to stay on the ground, the officers handcuffed the two men, pulled plastic bags over their heads and threw them into a police van. They drove north for 10 hours while police allegedly kicked and abused the two men, who have been held in a pre-trial detention centre in St Petersburg until this week.OMG! What had they done?
But Mr Vorotnikov and Mr Nikolayev are not drug dealers or dangerous murderers on the run – they are artists.This is disgraceful! Artists should not be harassed by the State like this*!
What are they, sculptors? Do they work in oils, or ceramics?
The two men are part of Voina, a radical art collective that has infuriated the Russian authorities with a series of increasingly audacious stunts, and whose jailing has caused concern in Russia about a return to a Soviet-style censorship of the arts.A…’radical art collective’, eh?
Hmmm…
Hey, Russki cops? Need anyone to hold your coat? Oh, and give that one a hefty kick in the kidneys from me. He looks like a cat-thrower…
* Unless they are mimes, of course…
Over the past three years, the group's installations and performances have included organising the mock execution of migrant workers in a Moscow supermarket, an impromptu expletive-filled punk rock performance in a courtroom, throwing live cats at McDonald's cashiers and painting an enormous penis on a bridge in St Petersburg.Oh, OK.
Hey, Russki cops? Need anyone to hold your coat? Oh, and give that one a hefty kick in the kidneys from me. He looks like a cat-thrower…
* Unless they are mimes, of course…
9 comments:
Normally I'd say leave them alone, however throwing cats at cashiers doesn't sound to artistic to me. More like assault with a deadly weapon.
W/V irate
No kidding :-D
Think we could get the Guardian and Mail to move their head offices to Moscow?
Are we palying catch the Pratchett quote?
And I'll offer to help as well, anyone who mistreats cats deserve what they get.
IIRC, the penis on the bridge was quite good, in that it was painted on a sort of swing bridge over a canal. As the bridge lifted, it sort of got erect...
But then, admiring vandalism is not really me and I expect someone got round to removing it. Followed by these guys.
And the one thing you can say about graffiti with utmost certainty is that it always lowers the tone of the neighbourhood. Even in its supposedly uplifting moments.
""throwing live cats at McDonald's cashiers""
That's disgraceful. McDonalds cashiers do a wonderful job.
If Moscow Police would be good enough to add Clowns to the list I'll organise a whip round for some "de-stress" medicine (Vodka).
I hate clowns... They are seriously sinister.
Cat throwing eh? I can think of one or two cats you would not want to be on the wrong side of.
TTFN :)
Michael
Cats - they get a hard time of it all really, if they are not getting put in bins then they are being hurled at cashiers - and come on its not really 'sticking it to the man' to hurl a cat at a cashier. The cashier is sat at the bottom of the corporate food chain, probably earning a pittance. The last thing they want is to find a feline pitched at them during the 10.58am McMuffin rush.
However, I must admit the idea of the lift bridge graffiti cause a bit of a smile.
"...throwing cats at cashiers doesn't sound to artistic to me. More like assault with a deadly weapon."
Quite!
"Think we could get the Guardian and Mail to move their head offices to Moscow?"
Oh, I wish!
"And the one thing you can say about graffiti with utmost certainty is that it always lowers the tone of the neighbourhood. Even in its supposedly uplifting moments."
Yes, even Banksy is still vandalism. I wouldn't want to look at one every day.
"...its not really 'sticking it to the man' to hurl a cat at a cashier. The cashier is sat at the bottom of the corporate food chain, probably earning a pittance."
A hallmark of most of these pretentious 'challenge' groups is that they don't target anyone high up enough to cause them trouble.
Just the people trying to make a living...
Playing 'Pratchett quotes' NO - the reference was to hanging (artists) up by their thumbs.
Mimes only get hung upside down.
And Greebo was a 'deadly weapon' but didn't need to be thrown.
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