Boys banana from Krasnodar

The Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art will change consciousness with the help of mushrooms and dolphins. Photos

Reading the news, it is impossible to believe that in the ultrapatriarchal Kuban, where the Cossacks rules the ball and almost every day forbid something, pranks, anarchists and alternatively thinking artists have been frozen for eight years. Moreover, they are still alive and free. Fiction! Stepan, Vasily, Eugene and Eldar from the ZIP group, which is now exhibited at the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art - fantastic guys. Most of all, they look like the revived boys of banana from the film "Assa".

None of them doubt that dolphins will rule in the future. All the walls were hung dolphins: “Dolphins used to be freed from the autocracy”, “Dolphins do not cry”, “Dolphins love lectures and unofficial meetings”, “On Saturday, they go to Maevka on Saturday at night, and then play volleyball” ...

Dolphins are soared in the bath, conquer space, custody in front of riot police. Somehow one of the Zipa drove around the city all day in a Dolphin costume. And they didn’t even beat him, can you imagine? And the children, on the contrary, were happy.

They are absolutely not aggressive. They do not ask the Virgin to drive away the current president, do not set fire to the doors of law enforcement agencies. “We live in parallel worlds with the authorities,” said Stepan. He and his brother Vasily are a diploma environment designers. So they do this, change the urban environment for the better, but they don’t care about the authorities. Their activism is not in the confrontation with the authorities, but in showing people a different opportunity: look, you can live and think in a completely different way.

True, a couple of times they ran around in a large way. Their most famous action is BOP, a single picket bust. They dragged to the square in front of the Krasnodar mayor's something like a village tolerance on wheels. From there, the hand with the slogan "Freedom to prisoners on May 6!" and other protest slogans. Moreover, everything is by law - indeed, a single picket. But the police came, the booth was confiscated, checked for extremism and only then returned.

It is even impossible for them to say, as they said in Soviet times: “They would go to the factory to work, all the nonsense will fly out of their heads in an instant”, since they worked at the factory with pleasure. “ZIP”, in fact, is deciphered as a plant of measuring devices.

The plant is like a lost paradise. Half of art objects from there. On the wall is a crossing red banner for high indicators in an art competition. In the corner of the wooden model of the conveyor, reminiscent of a staircase in the sky. The layout of the square at the factory where the workers rest. A huge portrait of Lenin in full growth, he really hung at the factory. On a completely Soviet board, it is not clear, it is not clear, honor or shame,-a hell of a mix of pop idols and historical personalities: Michael Jackson, Napoleon, Stallone, Peter the Great, Camberbetch, Akhmatova, Igor Nikolaev, Klichko, Gandho, Stalin, Steve Jobs, Freddy Krueger, but perhaps it is necessary.

Physical work for Zipa is a familiar and even beloved thing. To score nails and saw the boards is normal. The attitude to factory utensils and instruments is almost tender. At the exhibition, a whole portrait gallery of tools: construction foam Shamil, Ilona soldering iron, flatheads of light, hammer of van, linen key, Vasily drill, Nikolai's screwdriver, painter brush, roulette Dasha, Vova’s saw and scissors of Jeanne. And not the slightest sarcasm, no social criticism and satire. Only humor, very soft and kind.

Now the plant is closed, the premises are leased. “Capitalist alienation,” says Eldar, “discos, wedding salons ...”

They did not find the union, but grew up on its ruins. Their work is a kind of archaeological excavation of the Soviet past. And even in the literal sense. They raked out of a pile of construction debris and made an object of art a lot of interesting things.

The left views of their “ZIPs” does not hide: “It cannot be said that we are pro -Sovietly configured and completely accept the Soviet world, but those ideas that are close to us are ready to take from there. First of all, this is collectivity, the ability to work together, cohesion. ”

They do not sign the work with their surnames, this is precisely collective creativity. Even the interview is given all together - like the Beatles. By the way, music is not alien to them: in parallel with the art group, ZIP exists a punk group RIP, in honor of another plant-radio measuring devices. The most famous song is about an anarchocommunist who gives Sams to people for free. Prometheus carried fire to people, and the hero "Zipa", or rather "Ripa", is Samsu. Also a bad gift.

Speaking of anarchism. "Zipa" do not close in their environment, but tend to carry art to the masses, interact. On their old "ZIP" mobile periodically go to Rostov, Voronezh, Lipetsk. Directly in the car arrange mobile exhibitions and distribute comics with a brief history of world art. Purely educational project. We once drove into the city of Kropotkin, Krasnodar Territory, they ask the locals: you know who Prince Kropotkin was, a classic of anarchist thought? No, they have no idea. I had to read a mini-lecture. “The artist must go to the people, including a social worker, especially when it comes to the province,” they say.

When the campaign began for renaming Krasnodar to Yekaterinodar, Zipa proposed alternative options: Putinodar, Moscow-2, Medvedevsk, Novo-Kotchevsk. Then people in the gray came to them and for a long time asked what party they represent. Answer: "A batch of mushrooms and lichens." Indeed, there is such a party, however, not registered anywhere (but in vain). Her anthem "rake, lichen, save." Stepan: “Mushrooms are a single network. The theme of the set, the topic of the unification of mushrooms we like-people will someday also unite in a single force. "

According to the degree of absurdism, all this is approaching the Novosibirsk monsters, but in fact the roots are much deeper-in the pop art and the underground of the mid-1980s. The story of mushrooms, say, directly refers to the crazy Kurekhinsky theory of Lenin-Grib and the Moscow group of conceptual artists “Muhomora”. And the new artistic environments that they love to create strongly resemble the room of the boy Banana from Asssa, with his Communication Tube, a portrait of Nika Cave and other artifacts. The only difference is that Bananan-2017 left the room and is trying to change reality.

There is an interesting object at the exhibition - chess. From one edge of the board, mushrooms under the command of a dolphin, from the other Cossacks. A detailed instruction is attached to the game. Here, for example: "The idea of ​​the course is that the horse on B1 will not interfere with the crocodile on A1 to enter the game." The party’s outcome is preceded in advance, the victory will remain behind the mushrooms.

Conservative values ​​are doomed, but precisely due to their pressure, they believe “Zipa”, in Krasnodar, such a rich informal life. There are many artists, and they are perfectly organized. Artists, workshops, even have their own institution of contemporary art-Kisi. Yes, and the Zipa themselves Status guys: winners of the Innovation Prize, finalists of the Kandinsky Prize ...

“There is no need to fight conservativeness,” says Stepan, “it will pass over time herself, in fact, passes.” Yes, we have such a region, but here you need to know the story. Krasnodar last surrendered to the Bolsheviks during the civilian one. There was already Soviet power around, and Krasnodar kept everything. But after all, he surrendered in the end! So now it will be: the harsh Kuban locality is gradually softened. People drive, watch the world, their consciousness inevitably changes. After that, contemporary art does not seem to be terrible and dangerous, it looks for granted.

Exhibition of the Group "ZIP" in MMOM in Ermolaevsky will last until May 1