#serkov

Vladislav Serkov Morse Coded Totem

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serkov

Acting like the “Pope to this century’s Michangelos”[1], throughout the 1950s, the CIA secretly organised and funded several exhibitions showcasing abstract expressionist artwork, as ammunition in the cold war. In order to disprove the Soviet view of America as a cultural desert, artists like Jackson Pollock, who had very little respect for the government, were secretly used as political tools to prove America was a sophisticated and cultured democracy.

Vladislav Serkov, the Kremlin demiurge, is an advisor to Vladimir Putin and the devisor behind the Russian ideology: Sovereign Democracy.  When interviewed in 2014 regarding the U.S. sanctions levied against him in response to the annexation of Crimea, Serkov responded; ‘the U.S. I am interested in is Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg, and Jackson Pollock. I don’t need a visa to access their work. So I lose nothing.’[2]

Serkov is familiar with the avant-garde and has turned Russian politics into what Eduard Limonor remarks ‘as a wonderful postmodernist theatre’.[3] Under the male version of his wife’s name, Serkov published, but denied to writing, the story ‘Without Sky’. The short story outlines a future dystopia of ‘non linear war’ in which those in power use ‘false complexities’ and the ‘third word’ to uphold confusion and absolute control.

Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg and Jackson Pollock are all symbols of American counter culture: vigilantes against the state. Vladislav Serkov, alike the CIA is endorsing those that are opposed. But unlike the 1950s CIA, this is no secret, his contradictions are his ‘third word’ and his political technique. The art of confusion is upholding the oxymoronic system that is Sovereign Democracy; and Vladislav Serkov is the artist.

[1] SAUNDERS, F. S. 1995. Modern art was CIA ‘weapon’. [Online] [Accessed 27th September 2016] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html

[2] KASSEL, W. 2014. Tupac in the Kremlin. Foreign Policy. [Online] [Accessed 27th September 2016] Available from http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/20/tupac-in-the-kremlin/?wp_login_redirect=0

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