Expropriation of the Territory of Art, E.T.A--text, 1991

Actionist artist and theorist Anatoly Osmolovsky and Dmitri Pimonov, who in the late 1980s formed the art actionism group “E.T.A” for “Expropriation of the Territory of Art” (Э.Т.И.) with Georgii Gusarov, organized a festival of French film using it to stage several provocative performances. Perhaps the most famous 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 becoming a fixture within the 1990s actionist scene in Moscow. “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 on the Red Square, Price 2.20 (1991), and probably their most notorious work E.T.A.--text (1991) when they spelled out a profane word for the male genitals on the Red Square with their own bodies (fourteen artists were involved), protesting the recently-passed April 15th, 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. The group dissolved in 1992.