#underground movement

Among the Brave

It’s easy to see why graffiti -- as an art form that allows anonymous commentators to express their views on a truly public stage -- would have become such an amenable medium for political artists in a place like modern-day Russia. Street art first arrived in the early 1980s under the guise of “fan graffiti.” Followers of the Soviet-era alternative band Kino and soccer hooligans-cum-gang members co-opted this early version of the medium. By the late 1980s, the hip-hop craze that gripped Muscovite youth triggered an explosion of tags (a side effect of MTV’s first inroads into the country in the later stages of perestroika). One enthusiast organized the first “legal jam” in 1998. Jams like this gave rappers, breakdancers, and graffiti artists a free space for collaboration. But not all of the artists who took to the streets were interested in legal festivals and pure aesthetics. One of the giants of the scene is Misha Most, a friend of Kto. In the early 2000s, Most and five of his friends formed a crew they dubbed Zachem, “what for.” The crew tagged everything from highway overpasses to corporate advertisements with the word, allowing their audience to fill in the meaning according to context. Within a few years the group, which swelled to some 30 members, adopted the slogan “No Future Forever,” an allusion to the Sex Pistols slogan “No Future.” “The whole world seems to be living by this motto,” says Most. “We added ‘forever’ because [this mentality] seems like it will last forever.” In February 2011, long before anyone had an inkling of the protests to come on Moscow’s streets, Most came up with one of his slyest provocations yet. One cold morning he walked up to the wall of the Kremlin and proceeded to write out the full 45-word text of Article 29 of the current Russian constitution. The passage starts with the words: “Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of ideas and speech,” and ends with “The freedom of mass communication shall be guaranteed and censorship shall be banned.” The Kremlin guards stationed around Red Square never made a move, apparently assuming that anyone working with such nonchalance must have permission to be there. The work stayed on display for three weeks before it was buffed by order of the Russian government, much to Most’s chagrin.