Sergei Bugaev Afrika

Stalker 3 is a 53-minute film of found footage, edited by the artist, with sound reworked in collaboration with Dimitry Gelfand. The video, which was found by Russian Special Forces, captures one day – April 16, 1999 – of the war in Chechnya. It shows the fate of the Russian 245th Motorized Infantry Regiment, comprised primarily of new, untrained recruits, who were returning home without helicopter or aerial support, two weeks into a general ceasefire, and who were ambushed and wiped out by Arab fighters. At first, the amateur quality of the video and the impressionistic imagery makes one uncertain of exactly what one is witnessing. The unfolding of the events reveal themselves gradually, turning our expectations on their head and pointing to the chillingly matter-of-fact way and dry, ad hoc procedural manner by which violence is enacted in reality.

Stalker 3 by Sergei Bugaev Afrika

In spite of the work that has been done in the last decade on cultivating space, Russia fortunately remained absolutely a naked young virgin with relation to culture. This is good and bad. Good, because Russia still has not settled down to that derailing train of world culture which is being run off the rails. Here I would like to go into certain aspects critically, in particular, into the interests of certain industrial groups in the development of contemporary culture. One of the functions of culture is anesthesia, the reduction of the painful influence of civilization with its wars, which are the business card of military industrial corporations. The struggle for new bridgeheads of consumption compels corporations to create the visibility of a cultural landscape. The model of culture as anesthetic soon will be applied in Russia also. We have no institutionalized approach that helps to preserve a critical structure within the anaesthetizing Western model of culture. In the situation that Russia found itself - no culture better than just any sort of culture. Culture is not only a demonstration of some kind of personal achievements of man; it is also a system of doctor-patient reaction, within the same person, to constantly changing diagnoses. Understanding of contemporary civilization through illness, through certain ecstatic conditions to a much greater degree, have a relation to the idea of culture in its avant-garde phase. In my work "Stalker-3", based on a documentary video filmed by Chechens who destroyed a column of Russian federal troops, I had to inoculate myself against this illness.

The modern artist can be called a banker of the system of corporate security, since works of art are the superior products of culture, and accordingly serve as the crowning part of the multi-tiered tower of capital. They are the steady capital whose surplus value rises proportionately to the development of the whole system. Here there is no road back. The existing process does not permit us to depreciate this or that work of art, even if it is a product of the manipulation of this or that system. For example, I love contemporary American art, as I also love the art of socialist realism. Both the one and the other, apart from the attraction of a personal system of reaction are the consequences of manipulations of state institutions. But it is impossible to suppose that in America Jackson Pollock will suddenly be overthrown, as happened with artists of socialist realism in the Soviet Union. Our situation was unique. But it is easy to guess the way out of it. Now there is very much talk about terrorism, but they forget that one of the most effective forms of terrorism is semiotic terror, engaged in by the mass media. The object of terror is not man himself in his entirety but his unconscious. If today a struggle is being fought against terrorists armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles, then no one is talking about the corporations' influence on consciousness and the unconscious, which are practically unprotected. Unfortunately, today no adequate mechanisms have been worked out to defend man's mental world from the negative influences on it exerted by the transnational corporate structures. Malevich's "Black Square", Duchamps' "Pissoir", and Cage's "4'33'' "approximate these works to the formula of Lao Tzu, who said that the art work is good when it can be described and transmitted in two words. These two words are very important. The task of modern art is not to disclose mysteries but the reverse - to conceal them. Here I want to return to my work "Stalker-3", to an incredibly poor-quality product. When we speak of Hollywood films, then it involves the quality of the representation. I have enormous respect for artists who work with new technologies. But it must be taken into account that any serious achievements in the field of conveying and creating an image will be elements of the mechanism of influencing the human unconscious. I would like to talk about low-quality productions which approach Malevich's "Black Square" in the spectrum of concealing the space of the representation and simultaneously inflicting a blow on its quality. In this sense, the quality of the representation is a pledge of the approaching danger, which strengthens the rising system of terror. If yesterday bombs and missiles were the privilege of state structures, then now they are at the disposal of terrorist groups. The same can be said of contemporary technologies of influencing the subconscious. If today this is an achievement of the corporations Coca Cola and Microsoft, which sell their products, then tomorrow the same will happen with ideas also. The Wahhabites exert their influence not only with weapons, but with ideas, description of space. It should be called to the defense of the unconscious under the banner of the 21st century. Today the subject must be defended. Today there are no adequate mechanisms to defend the human mental world from the transnational corporate structures' negative influences on it. The task of modern art is not the revelation of mystery, but rather its concealment. What we talk about is not only criticism of the transnational situation into which Russia successfully moved, as it seems to many. The question is in what way we can oppose the threat of semiotic terrorism, aimed not at destruction of the infrastructure of states, the physical covering of its citizens, but to inflict blows on the more complex components of human beings, namely their unconscious.

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