ACTIONISM

Saint Petersburg

2025-2026

"Bulldozer 2.0" Art Action

Art becomes art only when it encounters the viewer. The viewer becomes a viewer only when they appropriate the art.

Without direct contact between art and the viewer, neither art nor the viewer exists. Yet contact alone is not enough. The new form of censorship facing art consists of "blacklists" of artists — lists that no one has ever actually seen, yet everyone knows exist. It is a system of silent filters embedded within grassroots institutions. An artist never hears a direct "no" for even a "no" constitutes a form of recognition. The new "no" is silence. Yet we do not wait for change, nor do we appeal to abstract justice. We assume the only responsibility that truly matters: responsibility to the viewer.

The relationship between art and the viewer is not a matter of casual interest, but a state of perpetual, mutual pursuit. It is precisely through this pursuit — carried out in defiance of all circumstances — that both art and the viewer are born. On September 15, 1974, bulldozers broke up an exhibition of nonconformist artists on a vacant lot in Belyayevo. Back then, the bulldozer served as an instrument of state fear, a symbol of prohibition. Today, we become the bulldozer ourselves, but we deliberately shift the focus — demolishing walls of our own making. The nonconformist art of the 1970s survived not because the authorities legalized it under public pressure, but because the viewers needed it. Two weeks after the "Bulldozer Exhibition" was crushed, an officially sanctioned exhibition by the same artists drew thousands of people — precisely because the public wanted to see that art.

Attention and active engagement must be mutual. Art devoid of reciprocity is not merely doomed to perish — it ought to perish. If necessary, we are prepared to destroy it ourselves. We do not need an external bulldozer to test the vitality of our art. We step out to meet the audience — and in that gesture lies the ultimate test. We deliberately sharpen the edges: today, it is neither the censor nor the artist, but the viewer who determines whether art deserves to live.

July 26, 2019

The "Francis" Art Action

The art action takes its name from Saint Francis of Assisi, who, according to legend, preached the Christian faith to animals and birds. The story of Francis preaching to the birds was immortalized in masterpieces by Giotto and Liszt. We decided to immortalize it through action art.

Instead of a sermon, we recite poetry, because to a poet, the text of a poem is just as sacred. For the artist, art is nothing less than religion, and beauty is nothing less than God.

As part of the art action, we took lifelong financial responsibility for a crowned pigeon at the Leningrad Zoo.
With the New Year holidays approaching, we would also like to remind everyone that fireworks cause the premature deaths of thousands of urban birds every year — from heart attacks, as well as from collisions caused by disorientation. As part of the art action, a firework we purchased was transformed into a bird feeder.

December 14, 2025

The "Three Beauties" Art Action

The nature of a living human being is an endless search for beauty. In a Russian metropolis in February, that search can be difficult: the short month breeds haste, while the climate-imposed monochrome of the landscape breeds boredom. Haste and boredom dull our perception. For us, as poets, beauty is the word, and the word itself is beauty. This art action is a naive and literal call to notice it.

We maintain that beauty is everywhere: in the very heart of the city — on a bridge near the seat of government; in its everyday life — at a bus stop in a residential district; and in its entropy — on a street torn up by roadworks. In the first case, beauty may go unnoticed because we take it for granted; in the second, because we dismiss it as ordinary; in the third, because our preconceptions prevent us from seeing it at all.

These spaces may seem to have nothing in common, but we say that they are united by beauty — one only has to make the effort to see it.

The same, of course, is true of people.

February 14, 2026

The "Poetry-mall" Art Action

November is the season of the biggest discounts in shopping malls. Hundreds of thousands of people visit St. Petersburg’s malls every day. Consumption is natural to us, and we do not protest against it.

The "Stikhmall" Art Action is an intrusion of beauty into the realm of the routine and the material — not an intrusion meant to assert its superiority over them, but one meant to affirm beauty itself as something that exists and seeks harmony with the world of things.

Not everyone can afford to buy designer clothes, but poetry is available to everyone.

November 2, 2025