04/09/2015 Academy Cologne: Performance - Eredovoe Udogestvo

eredovoe udogestvo is a relatively new group of artists whose choice of a name already expresses their poetic stance: dropping the first consonants of the Russian words peredovoe khudozhestvo (advanced artistry) is a consciously infantile move, although it yields something that sounds a little like early transrational Futurist poetry. Such thinking is typical of one of the group’s founders, the Saint Petersburg poet Roman Osminkin, whose work is permeated by a spirit of subversion and over-affirmation. In a Small Victorious Anschluss, eredovoe udogestvo presents its own version of an historical battle reenactment. Such reenactments are a populär pastime among patriotically-minded Russians today, and one of the instigators of the war in Donbass, Igor Girkin, is a leader of this movement. Osminikin joins Anastasia Vepreva and sound artist Anton Komandirov in this new commission to reenact the annexation of Crimea with tanks, sexy prosecutors, and Russian passports for all, offering the Cologne audience a trip down memory lane to the “bloodlands” of Russian imperialism.

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