O Leonid Nikolayev είναι νεκρός
και το έμαθα μόλις σήμερα
'Ηταν το πιο ατρόμητο μέλος της ρώσικης ανατρεπτικής κολλεκτίβας Voina Art
"He had loyalty" (Oleg Vorotnikov)
Αποχαιρετισμός από τον ιδρυτή της Voina και φίλο του Oleg Vorotnikov :
Leonid Nikolaev, Voina
Lyonya's joining of the Voina collective marked a golden age for Russian political and artistic activism.
Among Lyonya's first successes was his frontal assault on a government car [the kind on top of which Russian officials flash their infamous flashing blue beacons to cut through traffic, often causing accidents and killing pedestrians along the way]. In that unprecedented choreographic maneuver just outside the Kremlin's walls, Lyonya, donning a blue bucket over his head, sprinted across a busy thoroughfare and climbed over a sleek black government vehicle adorned with one of such beacons.
There is still a video out there that captures the Blue Bucket stunt and shows Lyonya being chased by the car's driver to the blare of cars and to the dismay of the mere mortals stuck in traffic that day. This protest action against Russia's sharply divided class society and the privileged, government-backed omnipotence of the country's bloodthirsty officials has been dubbed Lyonya the Fucknut For President and has become a powerful symbol of social activism to hundreds of thousands of fear-stricken citizens.
Indeed, Lyonya soon moved on to join the leadership of Voina, quitting his job as a sales manager at one of Moscow's sauna-heating-systems companies.
Lyonya was also among the activists who, on the night of June 14th, 2010, painted a giant 65-meter penis on St. Petersburg's Liteyny Drawbridge ('Dick captured by FSB' action), which, when raised, faced the local headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB). After completing this monumental Voina masterpiece in as little as 23 seconds, Lyonya rushed in to rescue his activist buddy from the hands of armed cops; and even though initially apprehended, he managed to escape the following day. In the meantime, the Russian media kept spinning stories of Lyonya's alleged arrest and punishment,even as the Russian authorities' bet on "the cold head, hot heart, and clean hands" (KGB's old motto) acquires — with the help of a few buckets of emulsion paint and the bridge's turning machinery — its symbolic significance for ages.
His penchant for the absurd was again satisfied when Lyonya participated in Voina's 2010 protest action 'How to Snatch a Chicken'on the subject of the artist's survival in the word of big censorship. In that action he played the role of an anarchist husband lending his wife a hand in shoplifting a chicken from a Moscow supermarket inside the wife's vagina. This action became notoriously popular among pundits and critics from both camps, garnering countless mentions in the following years.
Historic Palace Coup ('Palace Revolution' action) turned up the burner on Moscow's simmering social discontent. In September of that year, a police vehicle was overturned by members of Voina. It all started with President Lyonya the Fucknut and his buddy rocking the car from side to side in an attempt to retrieve a boy's football trapped underneath. The final scene in the footage in which Lyonya returns the ball to one-and-a-half-year-old activist Kasper won the hearts of even the most fervent hungerers for change. Did Voina manage to reform the police system on that cold September night?..
Apart from all these, Lyonya is widely credited with many other awesome protest gigs.
He was a uniquely brave man. Steadfast, determined, reliable. The choicest of human material, a blueprint worthy of mass production. Dozens of times, he was apprehended by the police and kidnapped by Russia's security services for his guerrilla protests. He faced Russia's jail and endured, and his release was thanks to your efforts getting the moneyed Ms. Banksy to bankroll Lyonya's bail.
Any time in Lebedevka prison I was called in for questioning on a Voina-related case, it was with a sense of pleasure: I enjoyed the long, uncomfortable silences, knowing beyond any doubt that neither Lyonya nor I would ever snitch or roll.
He had loyalty.
After years of evading government persecution and lying low under assumed identities, Lyonya had embraced the joys of proletarian hard work. And one night, that hard work got the best of him. He crashed while trimming branches off some fucking trees. He went into a coma and died in reanimation.
Lyonya is now in a morgue somewhere, and the cops are do not know.
See you around, Lyonya!
Oleg Vorotnikov
Founder of Voina
2015 Sept 24
[Βλέπε επίσης Lifo/Magic Circus : Voina (Πόλεμος) Art-Group. Βραβείο "Innovation" - 29.04.2011]
