Meet Partizaning, a website and public project seeking to create a new social art movement. On March 4th, they launched their English website (eng.partizaning.org) in Debalie, Amsterdam, during Welcome Back, Putin! – a festival showcasing Russia’s leading art activists.

Their projects have included:

• Car Impounding: an event organized to kick start an automobile intervention in collaboration with Flacon Design Factory on February 27th. The idea was to deal with the issue of growing car ownership and the irresponsible attitudes of drivers towards pedestrians, the environment and their city. Volunteer participants received sticky labels that resemble official traffic and parking violation tags - and invited members of the community to stick them on badly parked cars - aka blocking crosswalks, trolly and bus paths. The goal was to create a sense of shame among drivers to raise awareness.

• Wiki Parliament: a response to the crisis in Russia and ideas of political representation. It emerged following the November 2011 elections and the many protests and meetings held thereafter. It lets all enthusiasts and/or professionals connect and work on the basic text, which should serve the interests of the overwhelming majority of users and citizens. People can supplement the main proposals, or create separate articles based on you areas of expertise, interest or knowledge – especially related to governance and lawmaking.

• The Residence: a container which has been installed at 4 different locations across the city, and currently sits at the Flacon Design Factory. It is an artist’s studio, and a repository for materials necessary to create works in the city: paint, tools, a bicycle trailer, a mattress, a small supply of food, boards, plywood, cardboard, paper, buckets, and boxes. It was part of the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art.

• Want to get involved? Join them at the event ‘Delai Sam’ from 14-21 April 2012. OR you can join the Car Impounding intervention through their group on facebook or by picking up labels and instructions at Cafe Moloko at Flacon. They also invite street artists to work in the shipping container/mobile street art studio - the Residence, currently located at Flacon. 
• Follow @Partizaning on twitter, and on vimeo, and friend them on facebook, and visit their English or Russian site! 
• Email them at partizaning.org[at]gmail.com for more information or to collaborate on projects.

Below is an interview with the members:
Make / Anton Polsky: activist, art-historian, designer.
Igor Ponosov: street artist, curator of The Wall project (Winzavod).
Sonya Polskaya: art-historian.
Shriya Malhotra: urban researcher, english editor.

AR: What is “Partizaning?”

Partizaning is the name of our website and new social art movement or strategy for replanning the city. It is based on street-art + activism and falls in the Russian traditions of pioneers and socialism. 

AR: Why is art a good tool for activism? 
Make: Art has always played an important role in revolutionary change. Now, many artists and art institutions in Russia are disappointed and seek to implement their projects on the street. We are inspired by situationist practices which show that real life can be more interesting than fictional worlds or documentation presented in galleries or museums.

Art is an area of critical discourse, and artists themselves are often very sensitive to the surrounding social environment. Therefore, it is critical to have an artistic approach to solving social, environmental and political problems in order to find solutions to local and global problems, which are increasingly connected. Plus, good art and design lets us visualize different lifestyles we want to strive for. By popularizing the idea of strategic, DIY art-based activism in Russia and globally, we can start a series of social, ecological and political changes.

Make: искусство всегда играло важную роль в деле революционных изменений. Сейчас многие художники в России разочарованы художественными институциями и они стремятся реализовывать свои проекты на улице: примеры акций The Yes Men или Occupy показывают, что реальная жизнь может быть интереснее, чем вымышленные миры или даже документация, представленные в галереях или музеях.

В связи с этим художники часто тяготеют к различным формам общественной деятельности и пытаются использовать свое творчество для информирования, площадку для высказывания или пропаганду.

Однако часто художники остаются на пол-пути к настоящему активизму, ограничиваясь лишь жестом в сторону возможных перемен. Партизанские тактики тяготят к непосредственному воздействию на окружающую действительность. Вместе с тем, для того, чтобы действовать эффективно, нужно хорошо понимать что, где и как не в порядке.

Так или иначе, искусство — это территория критического дискурса, а сами художники часто очень чувствительны к окружающему социальному окружению. Поэтому именно критически-художественный подход к решению социальных, экологических, политических проблем предполагает поиск самых нетривиальных решений. Плюс искусство это и хороший дизайн, визуализация другого образа жизни, к которому захочется стремиться.

Shriya: Art has the unique ability to raise awareness, engage bigger audiences, and creatively inspire people’s imagination beyond what exists and towards greater possibilities. For activism, it is almost the perfect tool to think and act outside of the box. And this approach is kind of what cities really need right now - new, creative solutions that are participatory and multi-dimensional. So art and activism in cities seem to go together seamlessly. 

AR: How will you achieve your goal of promoting art-based DIY activism?

Make: By popularizing the idea of strategic, DIY art-based activism in Russia and globally, to start a series of social and political changes. 

Sonya: Our task as the site is to research information, providing the reader with concrete examples that are implemented in real life. Instead of ranting theoretically, we show people about what can be realistically done using all available methods.

Наша задача, как сайта - делать грамотный research информации, предоставляя читателям конкретные примеры, реализованные в реальной жизни. Вместо теоритических разглагольствований мы рассказываем людям о том, что реально можно сделать доступными всем методами.

What projects are you proudest of?

Make: I feel like I have been a part of a big project for last 2 years starting with my USE/LESS cycling map.

Igor: From 2004 to 2009, I wrote and published a book series about Russian street art: Objects. This is very important for researching the evolution of Russian street art.

AR: How do you engage with your community? 

Make: In modern society people are increasingly isolated from one another and this is particularly the case in post-soviet countries and in Moscow especially there are many different communities, but it is hard to connect and work with all of them. People don’t know their neighbors and there are no communities based on area + most of the people who live in Moscow come from different cities. That’s why we mostly deal with communities based on shared interest and organize events and discussion through the internet. For us, community is formed not by geography but by shared beliefs – and this has been enabled by the Internet. Thanks to the Internet, relationships among people are easier to establish and have begun to build anew.

In particular, it is very difficult to work with older people – they all are very busy, set in their ways and no one is interested in what we have to say. However, we are starting to have meetings and change people’s minds, at least in Moscow.

We work mostly using internet. And it is important to us because as of last winter 50% of Russians use the internet. We also leverage the language of art which is more engaging and creative than any other tools we have.

Make: Проблема в том, что в Москве вообще тяжко с различными комьюнити, можно сказать, что благодаря интернету вообще отношения между людьми начали строиться заново. То есть большинство комьюнити формируются не по географическому принципу, а по идеологическому и в интернете.

В остальном мы вынуждены ориентироваться на среднестатистических горожан, вместе с тем, конечно есть отдельные районы в городе, где существует своя специфика. В этом смысле многие и очень часто воспринимают что-то новое в штыки.

Очень сложно работать с людьми старшего поколения, даже нашими родителями — все очень заняты и никому нет не до чего дела. Правда с началом митингов все поменялось, по крайней мере в Москве.

AR: How do you define success?

Make: In the long term, success to us means new means of self organization and alternatives that will cause social / ecological changes and better cities in Russia and across the world.We want better world and we want to act as we can and like — using the tools we have which is art. We want to serve as an example for others — whoever they are occupied by— to work together, trust each other.

AR: What is Zachem? What is special about the street art movement in general in Russia right now? Has there been a noticeable increase of street art around the election?

Igor: Zachem is the name of a famous russian graffiti crew, one of the first and most important graffiti teams (the word translates to “Why? What for?” — in Russian). They became very popular 5 years ago. 

Its value is not only in the adaptation of American Graffiti for the Cyrillic alphabet, but also the question asked to themselves and to the audience. This kind of conceptual component is a rarity in traditional graffiti bombing. Later, some members of the team organized itself into an art group - No Future Forever. Trying to move away from the canons of graffiti artists, it focuses on social and political issues.

I see two important points in the development of Russian street art. The first was the mid 00’s, which saw the rapid development of techniques, forms and methods that generated a lot of street art collectives and projects. And even though they were often copied from temporary, Western trends, this time played a key role in subsequent development.

The last couple of years, I have noted a new period of re-formatting of illegal art in the city. First of all, this is the main essence of street art - site-specific, not only physically contextuality architecture, but also social and political. So, gradually began to form their own authentic style, above all, is not recognizable in the west for some graphic design elements, and in its intention and mood. Radya, P183, Cyril who are the most important street artists at the moment, and for a long time have worked in the field of socially-oriented art. The political situation naturally affects the other street artists, who generally do not take into account the social context of the environment that hosts their work. This vector of development includes Partizaning are among the new phenomenon, which seems almost the only way for prospective self-street artist.

Igor: Зачем одна из самых первых и значимых граффити-команд. Ее ценность не только в адаптации американского граффити под кириллицу, но и в постановке вопроса, как к самим себе, так и к зрителям. Эта некая концептуальная составляющая большая редкость для традиционного граффити бомбинга. Позже часть участников команды организовалась в арт-группу No Future Forever. Стараясь отойти от канонов граффити, художники акцентируются на социальных и политических проблемах.

В развитии российского уличного искусства я вижу два важных момента. Первый приходится на середину 00-х, бурное развитие техник, форм и методов, породившее большое количество стрит-арт коллективов и проектов. И хоть они зачастую были временными и скопированными с западных тенденций, этот момент сыграл ключевую роль в последующем развитии.

Последние пару лет я отмечаю новый период переформатирования нелегального искусства в городе. Прежде всего, это основная сущность стрит-арта — site-specific, контекстуальность не только физически архитектурная, но и социальная и политическая. Так, постепенно стал формироваться собственный аутентичный стиль, прежде всего, узнаваемый на западе не по каким-то графическим дизайнерским элементам, а по своей интенции и настроению. Радя, П183, Кирилл КТО наиболее значимые уличные художники на данный момент, которые на протяжении длительного срока работают в одном проблемном поле социально-ориентированного искусства. Политическая ситуация естественным образом влияет и на других уличных художников, которые раньше вообще никак не учитывали контекст социальной среды размещения своих работ. Этот вектор развития мы причисляем к новому явлению Партизанинга, которое нам кажется чуть ли не единственным способом перспективной самореализации для уличного художника.

AR: Do you ever see your work as “illegal?”

Make: We call it unsanctioned, because it’s not actually illegal. We try to do things that should be done by authorities. Using art, humor, satire. In the words of Kirill Kto: “…rather than hiding behind guerrilla activities or imitating those who are ashamed of what they have been doing… We street artists have nothing to be ashamed of. We are doing it right.”

AR: Do you participate in other forms of political protest or organizing?

Make: Yes, we are part of projects like 10/10/10 Delai Sam (DIY), Wikiparliament, Moscow 2020. It seems that we are doing something all the time, and we separate from art wherever it is difficult or unnecessary.

Make: 10/10/10б Делай сам, митинги, Wikiparliament, Москва 2020 мне кажется, что мы по жизни все время чем-то занимаемся, и отделить где арт, а где остальное оч сложно и не нужно.

All images courtesy of Partizaning.