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.

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