Spectacles of Freedom. Performative Practices of the Late Soviet Underground
Authors:   University of Columbia, Lipovetsky Mark 
Published: March 2022

The article considers the origins and history of performizm in Russian culture. The author broadly understands this phenomenon as the theatricalization of everydayness and historical shifts, expressed in the gap between the lifestyle, aesthetic preferences and cultural norms of the majority, and the performances of otherness. The study centers on the analysis of the forms of creative theatrical productions in the 1960s–80s. By drawing on the works of N. Evreinov, who was the first in Russian culture to develop the principles of the theatricalization of his own life — transgressiveness, outrage, and aesthetic (or simply non-pragmatic) motivations -, the author explores the performative turn in Soviet art and makes a distinction between performances, happenings and performative practices. In the performance, there takes place a rethinking of the relationship between ritual (the sacred) and art (the aesthetic) owing to the modelling of the liminal situation as a process of destruction of sustainable binary oppositions. A demonstrative experience of freedom is characteristic of happenings — the spectacle of freedom generates the effect of a shocking transgression. The author attaches particular importance to the group and individual performative practices. The performance style of theatrical rejection, cultivated among the nonconformists of the late Soviet period, embodied a specific pattern of otherness (The Mitki). The author investigates individual performative projects taking D. A. Prigov and Ven. Erofeev productions as an example. The distance separating the author from his image became the object of original performative practices. The author also emphasizes that contemporaries attributed particular importance to the feature of life-creating projects as the embodiment of freedom with all the dangers. The paper concludes that this freedom is paradoxical. It does not reside in self-expression, as in romanticism or modernism, but in the performance of oneself as another, who, due to the illocutive power of performance, replaces the self with the image of the other. The transgressiveness and redundancy of these performances imply a radical rejection of any stable identity, escaping from any frame, and revealing the relativity of each of them. The article considers the origins and history of performism in Russian culture, beginning with a broad understanding of the phenomenon as the theatricalization of everydayness and historical shifts, expressed in the gap between the lifestyle, aesthetic preferences and cultural norms of the majority and the performances of otherness. The study centers on the analysis of the forms of creative theatrical productions in the 1960s– 80s. Drawing on the works of N. Evreinov, who was the first in Russian culture to develop the principles of theatricalization of his own life — transgressiveness, outrage, and aesthetic (or simply non-pragmatic) motivations, the author explores the performative turn in Soviet art and makes a distinction between performances, happenings and performative practices. In the performance, there takes place a rethinking of the relationship between ritual (the sacred) and art (the aesthetic) owing to the modeling of the liminal situation as a process of destruction of sustainable binary oppositions. Happenings are characterized by a demonstrative experience of freedom is characteristic of happenings — the spectacle of freedom generates the effect of a shocking transgression. The author attaches particular importance to group and individual performative practices. The performance style of theatrical rejection, cultivated among the nonconformists of the late Soviet period, embodied a certain pattern of otherness (The Mitki). The author investigates individual performative projects taking D.A. Prigov and Ven. Erofeev’s productions as an example. The object of individual performative practices was the distance separating the author from his image. The author also emphasizes that contemporaries attributed particular importance to such a characteristic of life-creating projects as the embodiment of «freedom with all the dangers». The paper reaches the conclusion that this freedom is paradoxical, and does not reside in self-expression, as in romanticism or modernism, but in the performance of oneself as another, who, due to the illocutive power of performance, replaces the self with the image of the other. The transgressiveness and redundancy of these performances implies a radical rejection of any stable identity, escaping from any frame, and revealing the relativity of each of them.