"I'm scared and stuffy"

Poets of generation 18–24 - about protests, the near future and freedom

“Young are dangerous, you don’t know what to expect from them, it is not clear what is in their heads.” These words are repeated every time they are looking for the reason to ban, not to let it go, or even arrest. Youth is like a bomb that is ready to explode. Of course, there is 18-24 in a generation and such, but, by golly, you should not demonize. We are talking with young poets from the studio of Andrei Rodionov and Ekaterina Troepolskaya at the center of Voznesensky , and I see that they are as terrible, anxious as everyone else. Despite the fact that they are poets and young.

The main topics are freedom, protests, future. The future is vague. Freedom is when they do not touch and you can do what you want. And protests ... a good thing, but dangerous. Strictly on Tsoi: “We are waiting for changes” and “It’s scary to change something”. Everyone feels that the ICS hour is rapidly approaching. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, is about to. But no one is ready for this.

“The space around me becomes in a loud, like wet clothes on land. And then I feel scared and stuffy. ”

Zlata Kharkov, 19 years old.

Read
The poems of young poets from the studio Andrei Rodionov and Ekaterina Troepolskaya.

- Protests, political activism, power resistance - are important things for the poet or along with others?

Zlata: At least these are alarming things, to live as if they were not there, it will not work. In my opinion, we are all now under pressure, and it comes not only from the state. When every acquaintance speaks out on the topic of politics, when you see the same news, the reputed not one, not two, not ten times, but as much as you watch Storis, this causes me terrible anxiety. People immediately divide into their own and strangers: if you didn’t repost, it means you probably are against it. This is disgusting. And if I am leading and taking someone's side, I feel that I am bending under this person or under the position that he broadcasts.

- But there are situations when the third is not given: you can go to the rally, you can not go out, but it is impossible to go out and not go out at the same time.

Zlata: And this scares, it is uncomfortable to live in this, honestly. I do not have a ready answer, what to do in this case, simply does not.

Masha Ptitsyna, 18 years old: The last year I have greatly limited myself to consumption of political news and in general everything related to violence, with social injustice. It makes no sense to let in so much information that you cannot process, and each time to make sure of your helplessness. Recently, I can go to rallies by age, but I decided not to walk - I will demolish the roof. Even when I just watch a video from rallies, the condition is like before crying. In the slogans such as “love will win,” there seems to be there is no political color, but still something inside is shuddering. Not because of the negativity, but just this is a strong emotion. There is a problem in too strong positive emotions.

Sofia Tretyakov, 24 years: but sometimes they are really negative. I don’t blame anyone, I just state the fact: protest is “against”, not “for”, right? We have not yet suggested that you could do good, I don’t know either. For my 24 years of my life, I could not come up with anything that can be improved not in myself, but in others. And I do not think that I have the right to improve something in others.

- There is no positive program?

Zlata: There is, but she is aimed at herself.

Rina Denisova, 20 years: the problem is that we are in the information bubble, where everyone understands everything perfectly. If I repost on the VKontakte website the news of political prisoners, this will not lead to anything, because all my friends are already aware. You go to Twitter - and you already know who they are now trying what is happening in the world in this regard. All this hurts strongly, but at the same time I understand that I can’t get involved in something seriously. If you want to act in a political field, you need to devote this life to this, be prepared for the fact that they will search, detain, judge. And I understand that I am not ready. And I always have this wonderful excuse that I can hardly change something, but I devote my life to modern Russian poetry and talking about it. Because - yes, I am not ready to devote my life to politics. Well, just really: what can you do? Either protest seriously, or disseminate information. The dissemination of information does not work very much due to the fact that there are information bubbles. And there is a more radical and effective version of repost - to go out with the picket at least about pensions, at least about political prisoners. But even such a small political action seems dangerous and radical.

Zlata: I did a simple thing: one day I looked at first Kiselev, and then the rain. It is clear that the people who watch Kiselev will never watch “rain”, and vice versa, well, except for some excerpts where he really races. And I have tears from this. Because I understand that we are heating ourselves with the reposts of these extremes: how wrong they are, how right we are, we need to go out and tell about it.

Rina: Yes, there is a fear of extreme, extremes as a dead end.

Sofia: If you drive yourself to a certain position, you can no longer get out of there. To become a stubborn polls of his innocence.

Misha Glazhin, 18 years old: I personally do not feel myself with the mind or the conscience of the era, I have a firm feeling that I have not been a lot of myself. After the January events, I had an impulse to self-development, a desire to represent something from myself appeared. As for the information bubble ... I have the opportunity to watch opposition telegram channels, but every evening, when I am studying, I hear that on TV is in the program that my grandfather watches, “Evening with Kiselev” or “Time will tell”. It's nice to be in at least two information bubbles.

- Amazing. It turns out that you are aware of what is shown on TV, despite your age and information technology. For example, I do not know.

Masha: Even if you don’t watch anything, there are memes, they spread everything that on TV very well. There is such a meme format: someone has been saying crazy things for two minutes. And there are a lot of all sorts of kisel, nightingale, from which bloggers make inserts.

Rina: This is Poop , there was a dude who made navels based on press conferences with Putin. Such a hellish cut, mounted so that everything is even absurd. There was a great navel with Lukashenko about five years ago, from time to time he crawls out in the tape, and you think: how funny! And then what happened in August in Minsk, and the first thing you recall, looking at Belarusian protests is the hell of a dictator Lukashenko. The video is so mounted that he, like, says: I will kill women, men ... With the help of these videos, in which everything is cut-out, you can get into the context.

What can a poem do about the fact that we have been living under Putin for twenty years? Nothing. And the meme can.

- It turns out that the poem in this regard is even lower than the meme?

Rina: The meme is certainly much higher. The highest level of conversations about politics is memes, a little lower-stand-up-comedy, stand-up comics listen to laugh, they have a 100% more audience than the same poets. And only other poets read poets.

"... the nerves are twisted into a tourniquet,

The head has a continuous bell.

I think many are waiting in the future

Fatigue and work with a psychologist. "

Sofia Tretyakov

-How do you imagine the next five to ten years?

Masha: Own or Russia?

- Are these different things?

Rina: More or less. We really lived in Putin for twenty years of our life, but this is not only a specific historical period with such a ruler, it is personal life, something still happens to you, even if there is stability around. Therefore, it is quite possible to divide.

- With a great desire, you can separate more radically - take and dumped.

Sofia: I never wanted to leave.

- And now too?

Sofia: And now.

Misha: I, maybe I would like to leave, but is very attached to the climate. I would like to feel that the climate around me is natural-stitchy, not very friendly. Maybe when I’m unlearned, I’ll go to raise the cultural life of Murmansk or Norilsk, if someone else will live there by that time. And if you leave Russia, then somewhere to Canada or Iceland, but it’s hard to get there. Well, remember, as they say, for which you fight: for the sake of moving to Iceland. And if about the future in Russia ... I want a comfortable corner for myself, that's all.

Sofia: We have such a topic in the studio every year - “The Future of Russia”. And I have never written on this subject.

Masha: I wrote.

- And what did you write?

Masha: That the future is foggy. But in general, I am ambitious. I can imagine that in the future I will have a political party and I can change everything very much. Fortunately, I do not have a traumatic experience that my parents have. A little, it immediately says: "God forbid again the 90s ...".

- And what does that mean?

Masha: that the facelessness is worse than authoritarianism. People are afraid of changes, do not want to change. And even more so, they are afraid that something in society will change.

- Are you not afraid?

Maria: I'm afraid, of course, but I have to overcome fear.

- And what exactly wants to change, why does this system do not suit you?

Maria: Not that it doesn’t suit, there is simply a desire for progress. I know what can be done better, at least try. I generally have an idea that at first I will live for myself, and then I will take care of political activities.

Zlata: It's like a family: first I’ll live for myself, and then I will lead a Lyulechka.

Misha: Or as a schoolboy: now I will play twenty minutes, and then I will take care of my studies.

Rina: I also want to say about the future and my ability to influence it. The future is behind decentralization, unlike the present. At one time I was worried about the theme of the Perm Cultural Revolution, there for several years a lot of steep happened for several years. But it was a colonialist rally coming from Moscow. Contact with people living in Perm, as if there were no.

It is necessary to stir as many cultural actions as possible, but not repeat the Perm mistakes and make them with the locals.

Sofia: It's hard. I remember how we came to Kansk to the festival. And the grandmothers shouted at the journalists: “Why are you shooting a shame?!” It was believed that they were shooting where they have ugly in the city. And they removed the opening of the monument to the writer Zazubin near the house where he lived. Although the house is really in a deplorable state.

Rina: I’m going to Kansk at the store at night, and they shout to me: “Board, why are you in a skirt?!” Amazing, of course.

- And it was not struck that in the same Kansk, a tough story with the guys who are accused of terrorism has unfolded now?

Rina: I was struck, and this is again about the distance between cultural programs and a real life. Some people from the center come to the periphery-and let's show everyone what art is correct. And nearby is completely different, certainly no less important.

Sofia: But the locals get in contact very little, but they do not want to impose something forcibly, this is an imposition. And there is an excuse, therefore, that we can’t vaccinate art, because art does not want to vaccinate there.

- Is it worth vaccinating art?

Rina: This is also a colonial formulation, it must be left in the past, as well as the search for a mythical national idea. Russia is a gigantic country, so many things are so tanned and closed that everything is about to fall apart.

Sofia: I really love regional news. A woman in a state of intoxication stole a concrete mixer - that's where freedom is! I liked the story so much that I wrote a poem. Such stories are important - stories about an unusual choice, about the manifestation of personality. But ultimately you write anyway from yourself, which means, at least partially - to yourself.

“It is necessary to reborn

become a glass menagerie

Rainbow over the blocked Moscow "

Rina Denisova

- There is such a journalistic stereotype: the blanket generation has grown, for which the main value is freedom.

Zlata: I don't know. I think about freedom only when it becomes less.

- Is it smaller?

Rina: Of course. A year ago, I cleaned the album with preserved pictures, because they began to actively plant for reposts and pictures.

Zlata: plus censorship. We periodically act with verses, there were performances on which you cannot swear, we were warned about it. And now you can’t swear by default. There are some sites where you can, but this is rather an exception, and for me the mat in the text is important. Just "I/we are mat."

Masha: The feeling that my tongue was taken from me. If you want to express your thoughts as clearly as possible, so that you are understood. And they say to you: you must speak differently.

And to think, then, too. It is logical that if we limit our freedom, our self -expression, it infuriates us.

- And you are really ready to fight for the mat?

Masha: And everyone is already fighting. As a result, everyone began to swear twice more actively, such as everyone would not be imprisoned. And I like the Morgenstern post, where he swear against this law.

Zlata: At the same time, I understand that everyone has their own freedom and there are people who are really offended.

Sofia: Where are these people who are insulting a mat, not aimed at them?

Masha: So the children read, why are you! Children, in general, write ...

“But no one prevents you from swearing at home or in personal correspondence.” This is the “secret freedom” that Pushkin wrote about, something like an internal emigration that was so popular in the 1970s. Let me be not free to do this and that, but internally I am free.

Masha: Well, this is ... what's the point?

Misha: But it seems to me that this is a thing that you can not control.

So often it happens: you are walking around the city, if you want to go through the butcher and think - what if everything is blocked there by riot police?

You can, of course, do not go to Myasnitskaya and go through the boulevard, no one limits me in this, I limited myself to myself, and if myself, it seems like my freedom is not broken. You suck this impulse to self -restraint, and a barrier arises in your head, which you may not even think about. Are you free or not free with this barrier? I can't answer it.

Rina: It seems to me that this is closer to freedom than to go ahead. When you go ahead, you become a hostage to the idea that for which is ahead. And already no inner freedom then.

Sofia: Most of all, I am afraid that I will have some established point of view, and I, God forbid, will begin to impose it for someone. I'm not even about political ideology, but about the lack of variability. I would like to do something non-stereotypical or at least stem stereotypes so that there is a feeling that they can be moved somewhere. Freedom is when I do something and do not touch me. It’s not so difficult to be free. The only thing that oppresses is social stereotypes, especially from relatives. I just react like a frantic cucumber every time someone says that I am a woman and should give birth. They tell me that I should perceive this as an option, as a creative opportunity (my mother says so), but if this is an opportunity, I can not embody it, right? For me, this is a zone of lack of freedom, a zone of conflict. And what is freedom, when is the conflict? Well, no particular. However, I do not think that with women who got married and gave birth, something is wrong. They chose this path, I respect their choice, but there are other ways.

- This is just about freedom, freedom of choice. It is possible, but it can be like that.

Rina: Freedom of choice, by the way, is closely connected with information bubbles. There is a clear limiter of freedom - the state, but there are social networks, applications, this is all, it also works to restrict freedom and close in its bubble. Of course, it is convenient when Spotify recommends the music that we like, this is a bunch of advantages and pleasant fichens, but thus limits you. This is also not free, it must be overcome.

Sofia: To feel free, you need to push the frame all the time. Stand at the frame and push it all the time.