Posted inOpinion

Voina Update: ‘We will…carry out…punk ideals into life.’

We reported on the case of the Russian art collective Voina last week but today Marina Galperina of Animal NY has an update and interview with Voina’s Alexei Plutser-Sarno and it doesn’t look good. “They wiretap our phones, write down every … word. For me they have already prepared a criminal article, reading ‘organizing and leading a criminal community’ — namely, the Voina art group … gallery art has died. Today you can [only] do … innovative art in the street only or in prison, on the edge between Life and Death, between Reality and Imaginary. Art calls for sacrifice,” Plutser-Sarno says.

Posted inArt

FREE VOINA! Two Russian Art-ivists Languish in Jail

The radical performance art collective, Voina, has been challenging the Russian authorities for years but on November 15 two of their artists, co-founder Oleg Vortonikov and Leonid Nikolayev, were arrested for a performance this past summer that involved the overturning of a cop car as part of an anti-corruption protest.

Even with this major set back, Voina continues to fight and they resist the efforts of the authorities to squash their artistic protests. The group has fans all around the world and even stealthy street artist Banksy is a fan and has thrown his support behind the group and pledged £80,000 in an effort to help. To find out more about the situation I conducted the following email interview with Natalie Sokol, a third member who was also detained but later released, about the arrests.

Posted inArt

Sound of Art is Loud, Sound of Partying Louder

Last Thursday, Paddy Johnson (AKA ArtFagCity) held a debut party for her ambient sound-collecting DJ battle record Sound of Art at Santos Party House, and I think our small sector of the art world collectively took the morning off on Friday. This short vacation ended with your humble writer as well as the Hyperallergic editor stumbling into work around 11am accompanied by groans and sensitivity to light. Thanks to the musicians that spun the album in their sets that night, the conclusion after the party, and post-copious LP and vodka sales, was that art sounds pretty loud, but art-partying sounds louder.