Voina (Воина) have got to be up there as one of the World's most controversial performance art groups!! Hailing from Russia, their works are extremely provocative and politically charged, which is why at present it has members behind bars! The group was founded in 2007 by philosophy students at Lomonosov Moscow State University and is led by Petr Verzilov and Oleg Vorotnikov who conceive works that act/work as 'protest political street action art'.
Voina came to widespread public attention with their 2008 work Fuck for the heir Teddy Bear!, when they staged a "mass fuck" (массовая ебля) the day before the election of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, whose last name is derived from the word medved, "bear" in Russian. Five couples involved with Voina, including one pregnant woman four days from giving birth, had public sex in Moscow's Timirayzev State Museum of Biology.
The groups reasons for Fuck for the heir are as follows, "We do not have a goal to necessarily be radical provocateurs. We have a goal to be honest artists and tell what we think. We think that the government fucks the people, and the people like this. This is why the action 'Fuck for the heir Puppy Bear' was born". They continued to say that, "This is a portrait of pre-election Russia: everybody fucks each other, and the puppy bear looks at that with an unconcealed scorn".
Currently, Oleg Vorotnikov along with Leonid Nikolayev have been detained by the Moscow police in connection with an anti-corruption protest, and possibly face a seven year prison sentence. In response to their detention, controversial street-graffiti artist/enigma Banksy decided to raise money for the 2 artists by donating all the proceeds of a recent online print sale, raising £80,000 for Voina's cause.
Taken from The Moscow News, Banksy approached the group at the weekend. “[He] asked his journalist friends to find us and personally offer us help. On Dec. 11 at midnight in London and 3.00 am in Moscow his journalist friends found us and discussed everything. We thanked him for his help and brought his attention to the problem of the extermination of human rights in Russia,” Alexei Plutser-Sarno, Voina’s chief ideologist, told gzt.ru.
Voina has directed many of its actions at state officials and politicians, saying they are part of a war waged for the “destruction of outdated repressive-patriarchal socio-political symbols and ideologies,” the Guardian reported. Go Voina! BE FREE!!
No comments:
Post a Comment