The elite as an accomplice

Summing up the results of the theater season and revealing the mechanics of budget terror (the artist is responsible for the life of his accountant), Marina Davydova concludes that the theater process will not stop, the performances will be released, as they come out in Iran, but the price of the issue is “terrible provincialization” of the domestic scene, which is “worse than death”. But neither Davydov, nor dozens of people, today on Facebook escorting to the prison of Kirill Serebrennikov, do not take the next step: if the provincialization is worse than death, should you really prefer death?

Calls to the collective action (cancel all performances for the evening?) Not only do not make sense, but also late for fifteen years. In order for the collective action to become generally possible, the community needs to rebuild itself as an altruist population.

If your priority is to maintain your expert’s position, give comments, to be called “director”, “curator”, “critic”, go to festivals, speak on TV, maintain a level of consumption, nourish the flock, serve as a ray of light in the Dark Kingdom, then all the rest will have to do. That is, in general to everyone. And it is more correct to do it silently. Without theatrical wringing of hands.

And, on the contrary, the first step in an attempt to abandon privileges is the awareness of its privilege, but just with this we are traditionally bad. The elite, whether it be an official or artist, is still filled with Jesus with respect to Smerdam who did not visit a special school. And now, in the arrest of Serebrennikova, the traitor is to blame , his accountant Nina Maslyaeva is a man who first fulfilled the orders of his successful boss, and then thrown into prison and deprived of the right to vote and protection.

It should be understood that the confrontation today does not follow the “artist -vale” line, but just along the line of “Serebrennikov -Melieva”. The case of the Seventh Studio goes far beyond the limits of the theater world, terror has long ceased to be point. On the streets and in a cafe, tired people - university and museum workers, employees of public organizations - are constantly discussing the inappropriate expenditure of budget funds and the possible consequences for themselves. There are a lot of these people, and Isabelle Jupper will never protect them from the stage.

Continuing to work in the field of authorized culture, artists play on the side of those who take the future from the country, driving it into poverty and archaic. While the creators and related persons imagine themselves to the vanguard of modernity in an irrelentic country, by the majority of the population they are perceived as the beneficiaries of the system - Moscow locusts, fatigue for folk money. The metropolitan bomond, flying from the Film Festival in Kaliningrad to the festival in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, is mistaken if he thinks that the beautiful is growing up, he only nurtures irritation. Few people think about the social consequences of this compromise “self -realization”.

Obviously, without the sanction of the state (support policy, as in France, or a policy of non -interference, as in the USA), contemporary art is impossible and does not make sense. Today our state does not give such a sanction. The installation is completely opposite, and individual efforts on some islands do not form the word “eternity”, they form a conqueror -shaped word - in a word that is well memorable according to the first frames of the film by Kirill Serebrennikov “Pictuating the sacrifice” . Everyone who continues to imitate the “process” under these conditions is similar to participants in the revived program “Plant -PECTORISHILTO” - well -fed sad men who are unrealistically joking on three and a half permitted topics. As a result of constant compromises, having lost everything, cultural figures are forced to turn to the state again and again, agreeing to more and more humiliation.

The castrated and provincial “culture” approved by the current state cannot compete for the attention of the public either with world analogues (still widely accessible), or with new folklore that spontaneously arising in a digital environment. The meaninglessness of compromises is extremely exposed not only to the arrest before the completely prosperous and universally inscribed Kirill Serebrennikov, but also by the sudden breakthroughs of the ether like the recent battles of Oximiron and the glory of the CPSU: this is where all the energy squeezed out of TV and art went, where is the prohibition of Russian language continues to live. And the most terrible insult in this environment is a suspicion of belonging to the mainstream, to the elite, to the world of the TV - an alarming call from an unknown country, which in the near future there are still a lot of nicknames.