BLOOD AND WATERCOLOR ON PAPER

An interview with Evgeny Avilov, by Zarina Zabrisky

A man draws blood with a syringe and paints — but does not consider himself an artist.

Two men sprinkle holy water on Lenin’s mausoleum and get arrested.

Why?

We talk about the exorcism at the Red Square and many other things with Evgeny Avilov, the author of blood watercolors dedicated to the war in Ukraine. The paintings are the backdrops to Babel’s “RED ARMY” (a piece of the Arts Resistance production “GOGOL, BABEL, BULGAKOV: Black Magic Literary Theater”). He is an activist, a Russian Orthodox believer, a former theologian, and a self-described anarcho-capitalist.

Evgeny told me about painting in blood, generation wars, Russian gangster blockbusters, Tin Woodman and dignity.

It was not a regular interview. We disagreed on most things. Yet, like in a distorted time mirror, I recognized the pain. A human being, vulnerable and naked, struggling on the tip of the steely needle of the state.

I’ve been there. This is the reason I am a part of The Arts Resistance, a free movement of artists and people of conscience. The Arts Resistance is creating a space away from the oppression of the system — by the means of the arts. We will be doing a series of dialogues with the artists who believe that silence is a crime.

ZZ: Why sanctify a building containing the Bolsheviks’ leader’s mummy, the symbol of Soviet power in the middle of the Red Square, shouting, “Get up and go!”? You must have known that you will be spending time in prison for this action? (Oleg Basov and Evgeny Avilov spent ten days in jail in January, 2015.) Please tell The Arts Resistance about your action at the Mausoleum.

EA: This action makes sense from the point of view of religion, politics and art.

RELIGION:

First of all, the mausoleum was never sanctified. This is quite an exception. These days, even the cosmodrome Baikonur got sanctified!

Many religious people consider our action a mystical ritual. For instance, if you look closely at the video you will see the reflected image of a temple on the wall of the Mausoleum. You can really see the domes on the wet granite.

The believers decided that once the temple was touched by holy water it revealed itself. A miracle .

ZZ: I look at the video, and what do you know? The temple is there. Hmmm. I am not a religious person… yet, right here:

What was it, REALLY?

EA: The department store across the street reflected in the mirror like wall of the mausoleum. Take a look: the central department store, the main one in the country, does look like a church.

But you know, it is like the miracles performed by the first Christian saints.

Also, the Mausoleum is a symbol of enslaving Russia by communists. Many think that Russian people are insane because the Mausoleum sits in the heart of the capital, in the Red Square. It’s like a zombie tool, a psycho tropic weapon.

POLITICS:

In Ukraine people were destroying monuments to Lenin, one after another. I, too, felt like either setting one on fire, or falling one like a log.

I decided that the mausoleum and holy water was an optimal option.

Another political layer: in Russia these days the government is mixing communism with the Russian Orthodox Christianity. My position: communists can’t be believers, or Orthodox. If a Christian, an Orthodox, says that he will build heaven on earth he is committing heresy. A true Christian can never say such a thing. It just can’t be. Not possible. One needs to surrender and accept. People are not perfect. And Heaven does not exist — except for the real Heaven. But this one is far away and you can’t get there during your earthly life.

ARTS:

Arts. This action is also modern art. It was fun and carried tons of content. You probably understand about the arts aspect.

ZZ: I think I do. It is very close to me. In my first short story collection I have a story about a giant mummy of Lenin chasing a girl across the Red Square as she runs from Lubyanka,

from the KGB building that is watching her from the windows… And then Lenin came up in my novel…

I think that in many ways we all are — as a nation — are haunted by the ghost of Lenin.

Lenin as a collective image. Not only a Bolshevik leader, but an archetypal Tyrant, a mighty patriarch, a Tsar…

Ivan the Terrible killing his son… (he did kill his son).

Peter the Great… yep, also responsible for killing his son.

Peter the Great chasing Evgeny (namesake!) of Pushkin’s poem around St. Petersburg…

Stalin (yeah, you guessed it, he also killed his son — although not himself…he did not exchanged his son Jacob Dzhugashvili for a Nazi general when he was captured by the Nazis in 1941.)

This Cronus -like ghost in our collective memory…

It lives inside of us. We are haunted…

I like the idea of the holy water or just a good wash. From inside. We all need to go through an exorcism ritual. I think you caught this by your performance.

It is great art, in my opinion.

EA: I have never considered myself an artist. I have to call myself an artist so that if they prosecute me for my actions they apply different articles of the criminal law to me.

ZZ: Wait, how would you define yourself if not an artist?

Hmmm, there was this really good movie. A ten minutes documentary, The Death of Tin Man. It is based on the Wizard of Oz. I associate myself with the main character.

ZZ: I watched the video. I like the birth of the revolutionary terror interpretation and the father-son conflict. It is sad. He doesn’t say anything about sadness. He says:

EA: So, I associate myself with the Iron Woodcutter… And here is all there is about the performance.

ZZ: Now, can you please tell me about the paintings? What is the war in Ukraine to you?

EA: About Ukraine. Ethnically, we are the same. So are the Byelorussians. Of course, each nation has its own language and culture but we are very close. There are a lot of family connections. And all three nations share the same faith. We are Orthodox Christians. It is the first time that the Orthodox Christians, Slavs are tearing each other.

ZZ: I am not sure you are exactly right on this one. There were many wars, including the wars of 1015–1019, with two brothers, Yaroslav and Svaytopolk. Karamzin writes about it.

EA: But not recently. What matters is that it is a civil war.

Say, there are three members in family, and two of them are poking at each other with knives. Putin managed to do it. You can’t fall lower than that…

Putin has created an artificial conflict by triggering the noble feelings: help out your own kind! Your Russian brothers are suffering from the hands of the Ukrainians. And here you go with Russians: show them where things are not just, and they will be there.

These people were used to first act and then think. They fell into the war mentality, beyond good and evil. Take the movie Brother .

Our country came to be 25 years ago when the Soviet Union collapsed. For 23 years the country is on war. From every war the veterans arrive injured morally. Like the main character of Brother. You know this movie?

ZZ: Of course. “The Russians do not abandon their own kin at war” — it’s a quote from this movie, right?

EA: Yes, people do believe in that. Putin manipulates the best in people, with a cunning of a psychopath.

There is a reason why this movie is so popular in Russia. You can only understand this movie when you live here. This is how these people are, when they arrive from Chechen war.

They don’t know what they were doing. They absorb anything and they lose their moral principles. It is like he is programmed, like a computer.

Soldiers stop understanding the difference between the good and evil. The border is already very vague.

The war kills not the body but soul.

These men come back burnt. Ukraine, Donbass, is a catalyst for people like this. Putin gave the vets a chance to take revenge… to live in the reality they know.

ZZ: Why blood?

EA: It is pretty obvious. Blood is being shed. I take it: this is my blood, our blood. So, I decided to spill my own blood. The only real way to express how I feel. I think it is important now as we have war.

It is also a reference to a proverbial truth served to us, “The military law is written in blood and it’s not up to you to negotiate it.” So it feels like many rules are written in blood. And because they are paid for with torn out arms and legs, they can’t be negotiated.

ZZ: How do you get blood?

EA: I know from my own experience: a human being is a survivor. I just take blood from my vein, and no headache. I can’t say that I am that good at it. I get a lot of bruises. It is good if someone helps. 20 millimeters syringe is tough to handle.

ZZ: (I have to stop Evgeny here. I have bad flashbacks of syringes and needles. When I was his age I also handled 20 millimeters syringes for shooting all kind of potions we prepared at home, our homemade version of heroin and a hellish upper “white” that doesn’t exist the West. I managed to kick the habit but cringe when I see the paraphernalia…

What dark irony, I think. We used syringes to escape the Soviet Union. My children generation still escapes the ghost of the Soviet Union — with syringes. I lost friends to overdoses. This deathless vampire of a state drinks its children’s blood and devours its flesh…

I don’t say all of this to Evgeny. What’s the point?

He has his own, current pain.)

Instead, I say (and I mean it): This is a great artistic statement. I have to accept it. My ext question: What is happening in Russia nowadays? Why is it so terrifying?

EA: It is terrifying because there are very few people born in Russia, not the Soviet Union –from 1990 and on. These young people have their own mentality and were formed differently from their predecessors. But the important life decisions for them — for us — are taken by the people who lived in the Soviet Union.

These previous generations are willing to exchange their freedom for safety. You can call safety different names: Putin called it “stability.”

But, as one of the American presidents said, “A nation that changes freedom for safety does not get either.”

You can’t explain this concept to people who grew up in a socialist, totalitarian country.

I feel that my grandparents and parents are sentencing me to a Gulag.

These people in charge of the future — they are not choosing their future, they might not live to see it.

They are killing my generation.

What we have now is a conflict of generations.

ZZ: Hmm… (Thinking to myself: I am not sure. I left Russia before Putin came to power but I did grew up in the Soviet Union. There always was a majority — an obedient, conforming mass that followed the right steps: from a young pioneer to a party functionary. And there were always dissidents, artists, non-conformists, underground and rebels.

My father never joined the party and could never grow career-wise. He didn’t make a big deal out of it. Just listened to the BBC News in the kitchen and taught me not to believe anything I read in the newspapers and always read good books. He gave me banned books. I read Master and Margarita at twelve… Most people didn’t even see it at the time.

I knew the artists whose only exhibitions were happening in their attics (where they painted and lived). One of them, Vadim Rokhlin, created breathtaking illustrations to the novel.

My friends and I preferred to hang out in the streets and yards with thieves and burglars to building our careers. I remember one of the most shameful and horrifying moments of my seventeenth years. It wasn’t overdosing on the stairs of an abandoned building or finishing uneaten portions of dumplings at a public canteen, no. I was working at a military plan as a typist, and a Young Leninist leader had a crush on me. When I got into a hospital faking high blood pressure to prepare for my university exams (I studied at nights), the Young Leninist arrived to the ward with a carnation and a pine cone and announced his feelings. I almost died of shame. I can still see that ridiculous pine cone. The idea that I can be associated with a head of the Young Leninist organization was beyond revolting. (Interestingly, hanging out with crooks and drug pushers felt all right.)

At the time it was all intuitive. But now, looking back, I know why — we detested the decaying, deadly system that was trying its best to suck us in and turn us into its fodder. Just like Evgeny, I was painting my own life in blood.

Still I feel guilt for my generation. I mumble something): “Well we might not all be like that… I took my daughter out of here… there…Do you think it is a conflict of generations?” To my relief, Evgeny answers:

EA: I think it is rather a conflict of philosophies. There are people who are free and people who are willing to trade freedom for their prison food ratio.

ZZ: Yesterday I met a young woman from Moscow on a street. I was walking with my daughter, telling her that things are getting worse. And this girl is saying, “Oh now things are good there and no one wants to leave.” What do you think about this?

EA: I think those who do want to stay collaborate one way or another. They have this symbiosis with the security services. As for me, I don’t want to have slaves and don’t want to be a slave.

ZZ: From here, we are under impression that there is mass, zombie brain washed, repeating blindly whatever is served to them by mass media, susceptible to propaganda. How does it all work?

EA: There is this novel: a psychologist is explaining to children why people joined the Nazi party and what mechanisms were at work. It is conformism at its worst.

You see, the modern art is based on non-conformism. This mass mentality is the opposite. It doesn’t matter to people what they say. They have nothing important to say. So they just repeat what they hear.

ZZ: Is it the effect of propaganda? What happens to people?

EA: No, it is the difference in mentality.

If you are not a believer and do not read the Bible, open any children’s book and you will see: it is good to be friends and not quarrel; love animals; listen to your Mom. Share. So if someone has lost his or her moral horizons they can find it in an ABC book. Because our first books do not teach us to do all this shit that the grown ups are doing.

And everyone knows that stepping out in the street as an activist, just as one person, you will not achieve anything concrete. But you will save you own dignity.

You must become a personality. You got to have dignity. And when you do you can’t not act.

But, of course, there are consequences. If you have the views that are considered a norm in the West, let me put it this way — you do not share hate and intolerance — you are in trouble. You are then being squeezed out of here.

Not that anyone is expecting us in the West, let’s be honest.

Sometimes people do not realize it is risky and this is time to escape. If your case as an activist is not too strong, not enough to provide a foundation for immigration, it can become a problem. So it is suicidal.

No, this is not pessimism. I just know that the apparatus is hard at work and it will take it a long time to stop. In the last three months things got really bad. If people don’t see it, it is because they are collaborating with the power. Other people, say those who do not steal public money, do not pump oil and do not take part in some machinations, they are starting to have problems.

What kind of problems? Did you have problems?

I was hit by Putin’s sanctions more than European sanctions. I lost my job twice. I have my own problems with “Crimea is Ours!” mentality.

What kind of jobs?

EA: UNIX-administration. First I worked in St. Petersburg, for an American company, my salary was $1,500 a month. I was happy. But then because of the sanctions the company had the problems with raw material deliveries. Okay. I moved to Moscow and worked for a company servicing banks and ATM. I had the same salary. At that time rouble collapsed. So tons of banks went bankrupt, and my company didn’t care about hiring administrators, it cared about the business survival.

And so I am thinking — is this what you guys in power wanted? Industrial enterprises closed? Unemployment? Why didn’t you ask me? I don’ understand. Do I need Crimea? What if I don’t need it? Where am I supposed to go? I just wanted to live normally. After this war, nothing is the same and nothing is going to be the same.

ZZ: What can we help with? What can The Arts Resistance do?

EA: We need to stay out of prison. I’d rather be shot than go to this prison because the things they will do to you there…Help people escape from here. Run away. Make sure people are not sent back, to this country.

Please understand: Russia is still called democratic.

It is not so.

It is a totalitarian, dark, fascist power, where the state has prevalence over people.

There is another thing. People who go to protests here need to know that they are not alone. That being in minority does not mean that we have lost our minds. It really helps to know that out there somewhere we have support.