An ideal extremist

Tonight, Peter Pavlensky held another action - set fire to the central entrance to the FSB building , after which he and the journalists who shot what was happening were detained by the police. According to the first data, the name of this action is “threat”. The Russian special services, and above all, the FSB, threaten the residents of the country, keep us all hostage, unequivocally reports Pavlensky. However, it is clear that this action has more narrow symbolic significance, and it is connected with the case of two citizens of Ukraine-film director Oleg Sentsov and anarchist activist Alexander Kolchenko, convicted in Russia in the case, which only the most ill-forming fans of the Kremlin consider unshakable. They both were accused of creating a “terrorist community”, attempts to “destabilize the situation” in the Crimea and in “specific” acts - arson of the door of the “Russian community of Crimea” and the windows of the local branch of the “Unified Russia”, preparing the demolition of the monument to Lenin and Eternal Flame .

Can't a person with a canister in the capital of such an attentive country approach the building of the most important and all special services that controls here and set fire to a strictly protected door?

You can treat Pavlensky’s activities in different ways, argue about his work, but one cannot disagree that each of his new actions is more accurate, more confident and more painful (for society, first of all) the previous one. It seemed that after entering Red Square , it seemed to not take new media -free, but simple cutting off the earlobe, the “department” , and the Serbian Judicial Psychiatry Institute became even more significant and resonant. Well, of course, no one expected what happened tonight at the FSB building. After all, it is believed that everything is controlled and nothing can be done.

One of my friends, commenting on the action of Pavlensky, wrote that he saw how two young people urinated on the same entrance No. 1 “fun and for a long time. It was in the dashing 2000s, in the same dark cold evening. Topping the need, these two, not touched by anyone, went on at night at night. " Does the reaction of the police and the FSB depend to insult the symbols of power from the era or political conjuncture, asks a familiar question, or, will I add from myself, they still react to specific people and specific situations? If the second assumption is true, then the person with the canystra, who, moreover, in all these law enforcement agencies knows by person, was allowed to approach the FSB door and allowed - to a certain point - to hold the action. For what? Perhaps, in order to blame for something and with the help of which to tighten the nuts once again. But, perhaps, if you return to the first assumption, they could not notice: the country regularly disappears in the country (google, this is interesting), not to mention billions from the budget; So can a person with a canister in the capital of such an attentive country approach the building of the most important and all special services that controls here and set fire to a strictly protected door?

Well, of course, no one expected what happened tonight at the FSB building.

When in Western Europe it is believed to realize that it was easier to prevent preventively influence than fighting the left radicals, it was decided to canalize the energy of passionate youth to the centers of contemporary art and humanitarian projects. Take care of the health of “terror” strictly within the framework of museums, in philosophy and sociology, but let's do without “red brigades” and RAF . This step had consequences not only those that were expected; Partly this system is still functioning. In Russia, this mechanism, unlike Germany, existed - rather with private and foreign money. But still he worked in the very least. For example, just recently, Ukrainian activist Alexei Radinsky played at the Garage Museum at a conference on Soviet modernism . He did not read the planned report, which was already dedicated to the architecture and annexation of Crimea, but instead he talked about Sentsov and Kolchenko, demonstrating that, as he himself formulated, "any conversation between Ukrainian and Russian cultural environments can only begin with the question of their liberation." Radinsky acted correctly, but his voice is, as it were, is eaten by the institution. That is, of course, you can write everywhere about such a statement, as they usually do in such cases, and there are a lot of similar speeches and gestures, but they still remain as if in some parallel reality, leave the feeling of a part of a person who only repels the audience not included in these spaces.

But here the authorities became all these valves, where dissatisfaction went or where the discontent was accumulated, to close it sequentially (the only valve that is recognized as useful and never closes to the end - social networks). And Pavlensky demonstrates the reverse process: how radicalism stagnant there comes from the sphere of art. It must be understood that this action, of course, is not any terrorism, but as a projection of fantasies of conditioned Ephesians, it works perfectly. They fabricate things, and in this array the image of a kind of ideal extremist is formed, which flaunts against the background of an exclusively symbolic deed. Yes, you yourself, Pavlensky addresses the special services, create evil, so that there is something to fight and by whom to scare Russians, and soon this golem will come to life, will live separately from its creator and act far from symbolically; Congratulations to you!