About Artem and his art-group

Artem Loskutov - famous siberian political artist and activist.

Artem is known primarily as an organizer and inspirer of Monstration - mayday street-party at the city center of Novosibirsk (the biggest city in Siberia). Artistic group CAT (Contemporary Art Terrorism), member of which was Artem - one of the few groups involved in political art in Russia. CAT during long time has organized street-actions, performances and exhibitions on on political issues.

Political art in one city

Maxim Neroda

THE CAT GROUP

The CAT (Contemporary Art Terrorism) group was founded by myself, Yekaterina Drobysheva and Artyom Loskutov in 2003 as an experimental artistic group aiming to create political art in the local context of the city of Novosibirsk. For two years we devoted ourselves to studying the political and social reality upon which we intended to build a context for political art in Novosibirsk that might correlate with art outside Russia.

DE-MONSTRATION

To criticize existing practices of protest as well as the current social system, we created situations in which representatives of the authorities, business, the chu ch and other repressive institutions were forced to appear in an absurd and comical role in the fulfilment of their formal duties, thus laying bare the abdurdity of the way in which power functions. We decided to refrain from creating material works, trying to reach a point where it would be impossible to sell a work. We also refused to co-operate with cultural institutions, considering them to be repressive organisations that commodify and thus neutralise the artist’s creative intentions. Our refusal to participate in the life of a closed artistic (or political) community notwithstanding, we still aimed to create art, or more precisely left-wing political art. Our artistic tactics consisted in drawing unprepared passers-by into the process of creating a critical artistic statement, as a result of which everyone would partake in the product of our collective labour. During our public actions the system of values we were creating came into confrontation with a system that presupposes people’s alienation from the results of their labour, thus visualising the relations of alienation in society for all to see. To prepare our actions and performances we used flashmobs (2) as well as mailing lists, which we perceived as alternative and uncontrollable media that preserved elements of a free flow of information and enabled people to organise themselves without external direction, thus eliminating the person of the organiser who might be subjected to penal sanctions. Our first public action, a monstration, was organised as a direct critical action against a practice of protest that is taking on a spectacular character, expressed in people’s readiness to display obviously fake slogans. We used the examples of the terms DE-structiveness, DE-construction and DIS-assembling and dissected the term DE-monstration, leaving only the constructive part, i.e. the monstration. Before the May Day demonstration, we published an appeal in the Web, inviting anyone who wanted to join our May Day monstration: every participant would bring a banner that would either be nonsensical or express a simple emotion. The very idea implied the principle of self-organisation, since a person who would display a political slogan at the monstration would automatically become part of the demonstration and thereby an object of our criticism. A few days beforehand, the press carried headlines such as ‘Novosibirsk’s anti-globalists will display obscene and deeply personal slogans at the May Day demonstrations’. About 100 persons joined the monstration with self-made banners which the police immediately asked them to account for. The column of National Bolsheviks present at the demonstration numbered only 30 people, which gave our monstration the character and force of a political statement. The first banner, ‘Tanya, don’t cry!’, was deemed anti-social, and the police demanded us to wrap up all the other banners and leave the demonstration. It was only thanks to the presence of numerous journalists that we were able to finish our procession. On Lenin Square five people were arrested and sent to the police station, where they were forced to sign a statement to the effect that the slogans ‘Urrrgh!’, ‘Ah’ and ‘Something like this’ do not constitute calls to over-throw the constitutional order.

Three participants were sentenced to a 500 rouble (18 USD, 10 GBP) fine. In response to this we carried out another protest, formulated as a conceptual reaction to the authorities’ decision to punish us. We decided to conceptualise the mechanism the authorities use to identify danger. In response to their attempt to transform our artistic gesture into a violation of the law, we used the punishment as an occasion to make a statement. In a notice we published on the Web we announced that we were collecting coins up to 50 kopecks to pay the 500 rouble fine. In the end we collected around 700 roubles. The fine was paid after a long argument at the bank, in the course of which we made it clear to its employees that they were just as guilty as us.

We regard all our activities as an artistic investigation into social relations under conditions of alienated labour, when workers are already able to buy their own means of production, but are nevertheless alienated from the result of their labour. As a political alternative, our public actions used artistic discourse to demonstrate the possibility of a different, creative attitude towards the product of labour.

Text: www.kultura-rus.de No 4, 2006, S. 16
(Research Centre for East European Studies. Bremen)

Artwork by Artem and his group (selected):

Monstration 2004
Fla$h-mob
Monstration 2005
At Lenin’s house
Bumer