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ceramic artifacts and drawings, she restores
or better to say creates a material culture of
a small world where traditional mythological narrative and brutal reality of ecological
catastrophe meet on the ruins of the social
project of modernity: in the beginning of the
1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet regime,
a chemical plant constructed by authorities
in a bear corner of Permia in Northern Russia, amidst of forests on the shore of a lake,
had been abandoned, and chemicals flowed
into it. After having used this polluted water, some inhabitants of the nearby archaic,
rare, small, poor villages mutated into fairytale creatures, in particular mermaids, who
used to live there in ancient times. Aside of
ironic smartness of intrigue and picturesque
character of the chosen socio-natural context,
the general conception of Brochet has deep
metaphoric character: habitual world order
disappears under pressure of its own negative potentials, linearity of time disappears,
archaism uses progress to impose itself, traditional distinction between man and animal,
both in terms of ethics and biology, becomes
less and less relevant.
Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich, a man with
the appearance of a Nordic prince, but living under the palms of Brazil, put his exhibitionism and narcissism in the service of
art, and good one. In the performance The
Persimmons, aimed to demonstrate fragility
of cultural buckles over animal wildness in
man, totally nude, motionless and silent, the
artist sat on the curule seat amidst of a vast
courtyard, every passer being able to do with
him absolutely everything he wants: scratch,
hit, spit, throw a stone or a tomato, etc. In the
first minutes timid, the crowd gradually grew
and came in a frenzy: in the end, the artist is
all dirty and covered in scratches and bruises.
Politically ambiguous opposition between
the artist, white as snow, and predominantly
brown-skinned torturers gave to this performance, boldly referring to the humiliation of
Christ and the famous Stanford experiment,
a particularly provocative character.
Vahagn Ter-Sarkysian (known as
TS), the ventriloquist, gymnosophist and
sacred monster of our days, also explores
this tripartite relation between the human
reason, the animal in man and the almighty
dehumanizing technology, emancipated
from its creator. Amazed by the idea that
the Universe constantly moves towards
its end, which will take form of definitive
cooling and homogenization of all the matter, elimination of differences between its
clots, he tries to accelerate this process,
bring closer the end of the world through
some unthinkable ecstatic, somnambulic
and theurgical acts, attracted to him great
interest of police and medics. He tries to
erase and denies existence of all borders:
between nations, reason and folly, art and
life, beauty and ugliness, nudity and dressing, reality and imagination, sedentary and
nomadic ways of life, speech and stream of
meaningless sounds, man, robot and animal.
Currently, refusing to use any human language and totally nude, he lives somewhere
on the deserted slopes of Mount Ararat,
erring between his native Armenia, Turkey
and Iran and eating nothing but berries,
bark and grasses. Previously, for three months, he circulated on his hands, feet forward
(like lobster, mascot), sang hymns to Brahma and glorifying arrival of robot age, came
to a hospital in Moscow asking if his hands
could be surgically transformed into pincers,
regulated traffic instead of the police, wore
a bag on his head, high heels and lingerie,
lived in an Adventist community in California, spontaneously copulated with homeless
obese women at the landfills, practiced necrophagia, put a stick into the urethra, cut
the hair on the legs by nail scissors, created
false identities and places of work. One of
rare videos of this kind, calm, noble-hearted
and deeply mentally unhealthy man, beautiful as an Ancient Greek hero, faithful to
the idea of art as form of life and thus rejecting any form of documentation, captures
him silently rushing through the coaches of
a monorail. Monotonous sound of wheels
on rails, gray colors and bad weather inside
the train, apathy of passengers, the absolute
meaninglessness of TS’ salmon-run-like action produce a feeling of depression and disquietude, and serve as powerful metaphor
of how unpredictable and dangerous is the
world where tectonic layers of human exis-
Octobre 2016 — Avril 2017
17