Expropriation of the Territory of Art, "E.T.A.—Text," 1991

In 1990, actionist artists and theorists Anatoly Osmolovsky (1969-) and Dmitri Pimonov—who, in 1989, had formed the art actionism group E.T.A. (“Expropriation of the Territory of Art,” or, in Russian, Э.Т.И.) with artist Georgy Gusarov—organized a festival of French film and used it to stage several provocative performances. Perhaps the most famous of these took place after the showing of Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le Métro (1960), when the two artists appeared on stage, initially reenacting scenes from the film and eventually proceeding to throw cakes at each other. 

 

The newly formed group built on these successes to become a fixture within the 1990s Moscow actionist scene. E.T.A.  actions included attempting to sell a refrigerated bust of Lenin on the Red Square (1990); consuming salami and bread with political slogans, an action known as Price 2.20 (1991), also performed on the Red Square; and, probably their most notorious work, E.T.A—Техt (1991). Here, members of the group, one random passerby, and eight strangers recruited from the Gogol statue near the Arbat subway station, known to be a gathering spot for hippies and punks, spelled out a profane word for male genitals on the cobblestones of the Red Square using their own bodies. The action was in protest of the recently passed 15 April 1991 law prohibiting profanity in public places. E.T.A.’s actions defiantly and definitively appropriated the Red Square as a major site for performance art, challenging or provoking the state’s authority over public spaces and involving the public. The group dissolved in 1992, but its members were involved in numerous acts of protest and political art in the following decade.