What else to do, except to hope for a miracle?

Olga Egorova Tsaplya and Dmitry Vilensky, the members of the Chto Delat art collective, who have left St. Petersburg last fall under threats of being arrested, have spoken in an interview for the SEEcult.org during their temporary stay in December in Belgrade, about the situation on the Russian cultural scene after the invasion on Ukraine, the way they have transformed their work in new, migrant conditions, and about the roles of the artistic, theoretical and activist practices in this time of crisis both in Europe and globally.

– What happened in September, why did you have to leave Russia, are you in an exile of sorts now? Where are you and the other members of your collective based now?

Olga: We were waiting, of course we expected that one day police would find our place because all of our activities were known, it wasn’t prohibited but it was not very welcome in Russia. Of course we are not radical activists, we are just artists who are doing political art - we had our school and our Rosa House of Culture, and we had a mission to create a community… This is why we expected that police would come eventually.

By the way, we closed our Rosa House of Culture at the end of May and transformed our school into a commune. During the summer we had a commune in a village – we had our house in the village and near our house we rented another house and our young comrades – some of them are former students, some are not, all from different generations… they created a kind of a commune and called themselves “коммунарейки” (the canaries) – it is sort of a special combination of communals and canary birds – our film Canary Archive is based on the idea of the imagery of the canary in the coal mine, once used to alarm miners when carbon monoxide levels rose. It is a metaphor that can be seen as a paradigm for our anthropocentric relationship with the world, the broken connection between humans and the planet, and the crucial need for rare sensory perceptions of threat indicators in current times of wars and other disasters.

So, we expected that police would come. And they came on September 1st. We were lucky because our whole family was in the city, so we were alone, Dmitry and I, and they came early in the morning at 6.30 while we were sleeping, and this is typical behavior – a tradition - to come and take you when you are most unprepared.

– Was it a special unit, were they armed?   

Olga: They were armed, but not heavily.. Seven people came to our home early in the morning… One of the investigators was from the Investigate committee which is the main institution of that kind in Russia, and three guys were from the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) along with two witnesses (when the police comes they usually bring people who are “neutral”, they have to observe if everything is going well), and it was a very thorough raid and search – we had to give them everything, they searched everything and they took our computers and hard drives. Then we were interrogated.     

– You had to go to the police station?

Olga: They brought us to the police station, to the investigation committee, and it was a long trip from our village to the center of the city, and we had a very long interrogation.

– What did they want to know? Something about your activities?

Dmitry: They opened a criminal investigation against one of our friends and colleagues that was closely related to current war censorship... Because of some posts on social networks. And we were regarded as witnesses because they knew that we are very close and then it popped up in a lot of press, we were named teachers – mentors, teachers of that kind of radical disobedience…

– Were there any reactions on the cultural/artistic scene?

Dmitry: It was not only us, but it was actually simultaneously- searching in the city and more people, it was related to the Party of the Dead, a quite famous local activist group or maybe even beyond local, because many of them in the meantime moved out of the country. It was very hard for them to investigate because they were already gone. Also, their actions were mostly anonymous, so they don’t know who actually participated.

Olga: All of the actions were… They use masks. Skull masks. And they are anonymous. They started asking us – do you know who the participants are? Of course, we don’t know because we didn’t see their faces.      

And during our “wonderful” meetings they said to us openly that we have to move from Russia, otherwise we will be arrested and the case of our House of Culture will be open. It was openly said. They usually start with that. They want to move people from Russia and if it doesn’t work they arrest them and open criminal cases against them. And this is why we decided that we don’t want to be arrested, we don’t want to go to prison and this is why we escaped from Russia.

And we don’t want to put the participants of our House of Culture at a risk, because if they decide to open a criminal investigation everybody will be in danger. And we have a lot of people who are involved in our activities.

– You have mentioned that you expected something like that to happen and several months before you decided to transform the activities of your Rosa House?

Olga: It could happen every day.  But they decided to do it on September 1st. Nobody doesn’t know this logic.

Dmitry: And why did they come to our house in the village. But these details are part of what still stays unclear.

– Is there any legal process against you now?

Dmitry: Yes, it still continues. It is not closed.

– You can’t return to Russia?

Olga: Of course not.

Dmitry: Until the case isn’t closed.

–And the other members of your collective? Did they leave Russia, too?

Dmitry: They left even before. But for many people it is very difficult to leave. They have families, jobs, and old parents… So, it means that not everybody who stays in Russia is absolutely obedient, but at the same time the situation has deteriorated.   

– And where are you based now? In Berlin or..?

Olga: In Berlin, because I applied for a German humanitarian visa and got it. And other people who run our House of Culture, because we applied as a group, they are also granted with humanitarian visas.  

Dmitry: Actually, Germany is one of the few countries – maybe the only one actually, which provides aid for, let’s say, Russian dissidents. Other countries do the opposite. So if you have a tourist visa you can come and you are not allowed to stay… Many countries don’t even allow students, like the Czech Republic, Estonia… I don’t know why but Germany decided otherwise. So they granted visas – not many at the moment, as far as we know from within our circles – maybe around 400 people got it. It is called a humanitarian visa, but it is actually a residency permit to stay in Germany. It is not a refugee status. They give you a “people at risk” status. They established status for people from Afghanistan, they’ve established it for Russians too, but not for Belarusians though.    

– We know of the organization Artists at Risk…

Dmitry: Yes, it is a different thing. The members of AR receive a visa, so they don’t receive a residency permit. But they are doing amazing work. At the same time their system is overloaded. It is important, although they provide only temporary residencies and support. I would say that it is more like a shelter program. So, if you need to escape quickly, they also help out which is great.

Olga: We know a lot of people who have the possibility to escape because of their help. It is so important these days.

Dmitry: But at the same time it is a shelter program. And many Russian organizations or Belarusians are doing similar things – actually moving people out, who are in immediate risk, who are in house arrest…

– Do you know what is happening now in the cultural scene in Russia? In institutions or on the independent scene. Is anyone working on something ?

Dmitry: The scene is devastated. And it is very difficult to explain because a lot of them are mostly engaged in activities that are not publicly visible at all. And a lot of them for example in Petersburg are closed because in such a moment like this one – if you talk about a community engaged in that kind of an antiwar movement or critical thinking or left orientated, they get crushed. Ninety percent of people from our circle left. It is completely devastated.

State institutions or museums like the Garage – have stopped organizing exhibitions and continue sort of archiving, VAC institution continues somehow with the shows, but there are so many no-go areas…

– What does the climate in Western Europe look like towards Russian dissidents and artists?

Dmitry: It is a very complicated issue. On one hand I would say that the problem actually started with visual art from Russia long before the war. The problem was because it is apolitical, acritical, too much engaged in toxic relations to oligarchs, to the state, we call that too postmodern, and also too much market oriented. Actually, to local market, to local oligarchs. Internationally, while the Russian scene permanently complained – it stays unrecognized in the West – a very few Russian participants in international shows and biennials… As long as you pretended that you are out of politics, you are acritical toward the “putinism”, you didn’t engage in the situation with war in Ukraine, not only after February, it is actually from 2014, then you can’t complain, because actually people from international scene expect something else.

At the same time, I would say that right now it is quite understandable that there is a lot of pressure from the Ukrainian side. Not collaborating with Russian artists. It doesn’t matter if they support Putin or don’t support Putin. Right now, they should shut up. They should simply shut up. But you should really understand, emotionally understand that, but at the same time I always put this example of the decision of Nobel comity to place Ukrainian, Belarus and Russian civil rights activists in one space that actually shows how they should work together and not ignore each other, especially the Belarus. I think it is super important, because they have kind of the most powerful civic resistance. And you can understand Ukrainians when they criticize how could the Ukrainians be at the same panel on the Nobel prize with Russians. But they are with the Memorial, one of the most important civil rights movements from 1988. I think even if you have emotionally recognized it, politically speaking I would say it is completely wrong. Because without strong resistance in Russia or inside Russian emigration they can hardly win. Because what could they do without the Russian people? Put the NATO flag on the Kremlin and what? That is not a solution.

Olga: That is not possible. And of course, we have the same enemy. And we have fought together. But we can emotionally understand the Ukrainians now, it is a difficult situation.

– It is a little bit strange because – it is ok for citizens to have that emotional stand, but shouldn’t artists and cultural workers display a sort of higher conscience – we know from our experience during the war that some artists from Croatia, Serbia and other sides in conflicts were connected and they were trying fight nationalism together…

Dmitry: Like (Boris) Buden's project in Croatia, Arkzin…

– But of course, when someone from Serbia went out of the country during the 90s and said that he/she is from Serbia, they would often be faced with collective guilt, despite all the activism at home…  but it is strange that even the artistic collective doesn’t recognize your struggle against all the things that caused what is happening now.

Dmitry: It’s pretty dramatic, because I was personally involved in two different talks when I was invited to speak about the Russian situation or local resistance. And there were people from Ukraine in the same panel and they refused to participate because organizers invited someone from Russia or Belarus. And we made some comments and we discussed, but actually it looked very frustrating. I’m not surprised when it is clear that they are people with very strong nationalist voices or people from liberal or liberal-nationalist backgrounds. I cannot polemicize with them. But when it comes from the people who are actually your comrades, with whom you have worked together in 2014, and when they say – we don’t want to talk with you because you have a Russian passport or I don’t talk with the Belarus who have been living in Berlin for 15 years, and do a lot of community work for refugees… Why?  I think it is wrong.

Olga: But emotionally it is understandable, of course.  

Dmitry: At the same time our mistake was that we failed to establish a certain kind of – how to say – empathetic protocol of communication , which is sometimes very difficult because if you received an invitation from Western institution – let’s say in USA or Europe, and you know that there will be participants from Ukraine and they know that there will be participants from Russia and by default you think that it is ok but then, a few days before, some noises start surfacing in social networks or people say - no, we are dropping out because you will be there. They don’t tell you, but maybe you should contact them. That was my mistake maybe.

– Do you have any contact or communication with any Ukrainian artists?

Dmitry: Actually we do, privately. We have had our school in St. Petersburg since 2013. And we have many Ukrainian students, not many but two or three of them in every generation of the school, and we have good personal relations with all of them right now, we help them financially sometimes or write recommendations for them. I keep communicating privately with artists, feminists, journalists, mostly with leftists views but when it goes public, they also say – guys we are afraid to revive these connections.

Then there is another issue which, actually, maybe makes sense to rise here in Belgrade and it is possible here because our closest friends are coming from a so-called left international and they have a lot of problems on the Ukrainian side. Because their voice in the approach to war is quite different from the nationalist approach. And they are also quite silent although all of them are immigrants, so they don’t live in Ukraine. Volodymyr Ishchenko is one of the most publicly visible brave leftist intellectuals and has a very critical point of view on the history of armed conflict in in Ukraine from the very beginning.

– Maybe there will be a nuclear war at the end, it seems that nobody can say – stop it now? And there is no initiative to talk in the global art community, no dialog or intellectual suggestions on how to stop the war, or how to avoid the danger of a nuclear war?

Dmitry: I’m not sure that the artistic community can do it.

– Your collective merged political theory, art and activism. Do you think that political theory or history of sociology could explain what is happening now and influence another view on everything maybe?

Dmitry: On one hand the Western tradition of pacifism is continuing and the stand that people in fighting countries should not fight between themselves but against capitalism. But this sounds unrealistic. Right now the national narrative or imperial narrative is much stronger. And at the same time people still keep talking – let’s make peace, about fraternization etc… Sounds great, but… The other side is super simple. We need a total military collapse of Russia. That’s why we need to know what it is in the end. And it is very difficult to say what will it be in the end. Ukraine would regain all territory, including the Crimea. Ok, how long it would last? Five years, more?… and with very high, risk because of whatever could happen next– a sudden accident on a power station, or some rockets hit Poland and NATO answers. We don’t know… Somehow Putin has become the new Hitler. And Russia becomes kind of a Nazi state, fascist state, an image that can be destroyed, but then you need to destroy Russia. So, we’ve seen that the pacifistic way is unrealistic, and yet the military one is also sounds not so realistic for me. Because actually even if you imagine / with all the heaviest sanctions against Iran, along with all the militarization for 40 years, Iran has one of the strongest armies. Quite serious power. Iran sells drones to Russia right now. Iran has, for 40 years, a proxy army in Syria and Lebanon. And only 40 years later we have now quite a serious riot. And how do you imagine this sanctions against Russia? Russia is much more sustainable. It has its own resources - agriculture, gas, oil, chemical industry, fertilizers, which is very important for agriculture.. And a lot of unofficial international support (China, India…) How could it be easily destroyed?  But maybe it will collapse somehow from the inside…

Olga: It could be a long frozen conflict.

Dmitry: Like Korea. In this case we don’t really have a threat of a nuclear war because nothing pushes Putin to destroy the whole planet.

– And if Trump wins?

Olga: Yes, I guess it is possible.

Dmitry: But this is actually Putin’s strategy - to keep this conflict as long as possible, waiting for what will happen in the USA, how will Europe survive the winter, what would happen if China attacked Taiwan, even if something happened in former Yugoslavia – we don’t know (what could happen) in Kosovo now… So, lots of local destabilizations.

Olga: Unfortunately, time is working for Putin. Because everything that is going on now in Europe – politics turning to the right orientation in Sweden, Italy, Germany…Currently they are not supporting Putin, but maybe next year, who knows?

Dmitry: It is super dangerous. But if you ask right now, what’s the problem with Russia? Before I did always criticize that kind of opinion, so to speak, that Russia is openly, a really fascist state. But know I think it is correct. Rhetoric in the public sphere, that kind of mobilization …

Olga: But maybe it will change because now the inflation is already 20%. Maybe something could be changed in the spring.

– You mean because of the social situation?

Olga: We have to wait. We are all waiting for the black swan, and I personally believe in a miracle.

Dmitry: Perestroika had a lot of potential to go in different directions. It went in this direction. We can also be very critical towards the West… The privatization, shock therapy, had traumatized the society completely and made it very automatized, so people stopped believing in politics, everything is just about the economics – the strongest rules. And then it comes together with that political theory called political capitalism where the whole market depends on politics which is not democratic. That is how Putin managed to gain an almost despotic power. Also, right now there aren’t any skeptical, but only kind of frustrated voices - that Russia will always be like this / a country of slaves blah, blah…Maybe in a hundred years, or thousands, there will be a revolution (hahaha)

– Your nation is also famous for some revolutions…

Dmitry: Right now, looking back, we can see that many things went wrong. I should also say that many things went wrong in the West too. We should also not forget about that. And how can we rescue something or improve something, or change it right now, in this situation? That is actually a super heavy question.

– What will happen with your activities, with your School and other things? Could you transfer it to Europe where you are now…

Olga: Yes, we have already sort of transformed it. We have finished our engagement at the school, so it is already in the past. What will happen in the future? We have already started our new school called the School of emergencies. It is realized at many locations. In our situation we have to invent something new and we have one line of our School of emergencies in Stockholm, and one part of our participants are from Sweden, and the other part are Russians / I mean people from Russia, we have agreed not to use that term (Russians)... they now live in Istanbul, Germany, Yerevan, in Belgrade, everywhere… Now we are living in a new reality for all of us. Sweden, for example, is a new reality for us, as well. We have to find a way how to live together, with all our different experiences, how to understand each other, because our necessity is to understand that we have to understand each other.

That is the model where we have four or five modules and we meet each other for one week and we continue to meet online… Another line of our School of emergencies will be in Yerevan in Armenia, starting in spring and we will invite people from Russia who live in Armenia and not only there. It will be in English, because that is our language now.

Dmitry: Esperanto…

Olga: This is important for us because we used our language until now, but now we have a new reality. I’m afraid it is not Esperanto. We have to start from the beginning, we have to use it (English) as a new language..  And you know another big problem is that a lot of people in Russia cannot leave the country because they don’t know any foreign languages.

Dmitry: The concept of School of Emergencies comes from Benjamin, and actually for us maybe it is important to say that after Benjamin the emergency is not an exception but a rule. We all live in that kind of state.

Right now we can hardly dream about a revolution, but we can actually come up with the micro-politics that can create micro-states of emergency - that is how we are able to continue anti-militarist, anti-imperialists and anti-nationalist approaches and create dissident communities, and that is what the School is about. It is not just a reaction to war and repression, and we should not forget about the climate crisis which is a really big threat, also about the psychological crashes.. After Mark Fisher we can see that this whole new generation, younger generation is completely traumatized and paralyzed psychologically, mentally. How can they grow without the possibilities for the future? We are not talking about the time of punk, where there was “no future”. Now it seems that there really isn’t any good future. You have a few jobs and you can hardly pay the rent. That is the reality. The real estate crisis is everywhere. People can’t survive. And at the same time huge amounts of upper middle class people, who actually love money and go with speculation on bitcoin and blockchain , currencies, real estate, IT, artificial intelligence, that create a new global leading force, they come to Belgrade, Yerevan, Tel Aviv and buy everything and then there is no space left for the others.  

Right now, because we have certain resources, we are announcing an open call for the scholarships for artists from Russia who cannot leave Russia and come to get support. It will not be a large amount of money but we want the people to be able to continue, because right now there is another danger - that in this situation where many people have felt the crisis of their entire meaning of existence, and then they have to switch to a very important pragmatic, practical way of thinking – ok, I will stop doing artistic work and help the refugees, which is great. Or we can do some kind of group psychological or mental help, or healing or whatever, and it is important. But at the same time, maybe because our generation - we still believe in that kind of symbolic production – that people need something else, otherwise what would we do with the ruins?. And ruins are also very important because right now in Ukraine we have literary ruins of the cities, and we have mental ruins of our culture, of everyday, of sense, everywhere. Maybe it sounds naïve but we believe that people who have some vision of symbolic meaning can create some sense for the future.      

Olga: Of course that we can create some context for the future, but how can we create the future itself?  

Dmitry: One have to create a future out of nothing. It’s really a kind of a paradox, like “I believe because it is absurd”. Because, actually, believing into something is absurd. There is nothing grounded in belief.

Olga: A miracle only.

Dmitry: So, maybe there will also be a theological shift of sorts, like the Zapatists and its relations to the theology of emancipation. 

We got an invitation from Ana (Miljanic) from the CZKD, here we already did the “Novi ljudi” in 2016, in current situation when so many people moved to Belgrade, we have a special approach. She asked us to develop something, and actually we have a concept that is a bit different, and maybe will be under the umbrella of the School of emergencies, so I guess we will do something like that here in autumn.

Olga: We really love Belgrade, I feel like at home here. We have been floating through different countries for almost three months, but when we stayed here it felt like we were home. We really love the people here.

– Belgrade is also very complicated!

Olga: Maybe I’m feeling like at home because of that (laughing). Because we are not on the look for something that is calm and cozy.

Dmitry: At the same time, you feel that it is a very important place when it comes to the post-socialist context. There are a lot of legacies here. If you go to Georgia, Estonia, Czech Republic (for example) then you can feel so much neoliberal brainwash there among cultural and intellectual field, but when we came here we see that the people we meet from the artistic and intellectual circles are from the left. And we are also speaking from the left side, so we really feel that we have a kind of a home here.

– We are in different crisis for more than 30 years, so we didn’t have the chance to develop the market, the industry, the privatization process was awful, the politicians are talking about our successful GDP or giving us other statistics, but this is only in their dreams. The economic situation is very strange, we are somewhere in between the socialism and the liberal capitalism.   

Dmitry: That is what I call a post-socialism condition. But at the same time mentally – people here have a different relation to property, they feel a sense of community, and also the intellectuals are quite different than in other countries, even in the post-socialist ones. That’s why it would be a challenge for us to do something here and also listen to your voices, because actually right now we are not in a condition to teach, but we are on the move and listening.  

– What else could be done?

Olga: Hoping for a miracle.

(SEEcult.org)

*Funded by the International Relief Fund for Organisations in Culture and Education 2021 of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Goethe-Institut and other partners, goethe.de/relieffund