activist, researcher and individual entrepreneur who was born in Moscow in 1987 and is currently based in Yerevan.
Projects
‘Where have you been for 8 years?’
June, 2023
It is an essay as a final text for the writing lab which took place in Yerevan in June, 2023 within documentary film festival ‘MOST:Testimony’. The task was to write a final essay to reflect on two or more films from the festival programme as well as its main topic about the role of a war witness.
2018 - ongoing
It is a bar as an activism. After DK Delai Sam/a was closed, its team launched a new project, aimed at providing grassroots initiatives with the space to meet up. If DK was granted for its work by the EU foundation, then a new space had to come up with a business plan to support its work. In order to stay independent it was crucial not to take any state financial aid to avoid censorship. The way out was to become individual entrepreneurs to rely on its own fundings. So, we decided to change the format and open a bar which could raise money to stay independent. ‘Delai kulturu’, which implies ‘make your own culture’, became a popular place among activists, who were in opposition to the current political regime. That was a bar, which always welcomed all ‘grassroots’ initiatives. During the street protests in Moscow, ‘delai kulturu’ was a spot for a lot of protesters to come together.
‘Delai kulturu’ also experimented with the way its team was structured and the work process was organized. The project aimed at creating a horizontal collective in contrast to top-down hierarchical systems. By now I may say that I succeeded in realizing that goal. ‘Delai kulturu’ is based on the hierarchy of responsibilities and developed horizontal links among team members.
‘Delai kulturu’ succeeded in creating a safe space for all the people who were suppressed by the authoritarian rule and were deprived of the freedom to express themselves. Till nowadays, especially after the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine, a bar has become a safe space for those people, who oppose the war but can’t leave the country or make their protest visible due to the political suppression.
Additionally, ‘Delai kulturu’ team members played a role of artists and activists by making various art projects reflecting on the current political and social phenomena within Russian society. For instance, we created our own video production to make sarcastic and critical expressions about authoritarian government policy. Next, we published two zines about our activism when working as a bar. To illustrate, we decided to reflect on our role inside the service sector of the economy to present an alternative to the overall trend when service sector’s workers were exploited. As we built a horizontally-linked team, in a similar way we always strove to establish an equal communication with our visitors without subordination. Finally, we organized several music events conceptualizing the current political agenda.
Also, ‘delai kulturu’ always supports various charity initiatives. To elaborate, we donate to several foundations and projects, which help Ukrainian refugees, struggle against domestic violence, help homeless people, work with disabled children, etc.
Founder: Marika Semenenko
webzine ‘Dikorosia’
Webzine with stories of Russian contemporaneity told by a cacophony of voices which are suppressed by the Russian government. I give a voice to those who put the value of life at the center of their moral and ethical world, those who strive for interactions based on equality, those who build horizontal ties and seek a transparent society, and those who respect differences and see them as a strength. I do not want to support the oppression of the individual, or any ideas that provoke violence. To illustrate, there are several interviews with Russian decolonial activists, textual and visual artists’ reflection on the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine, and a sincere conversation with my Ukrainian friend about the war and how we can communicate now, etc.
I use the prefix ‘diko’ (in Russian ‘wild’) as a form of release; allowing me and my interlocutors to express ourselves. In Russian politics today, what seems criminal from the point of view of ordinary morality is actually legal. What is normal for me, for the regime sees as ‘wildness’. In this way, culture becomes a lever of power and it’s only those cultural practices that serve the interest of the elite that are permitted. Everything else must be eradicated as ‘uncultured’.
‘Dikorosia’ seeks to go beyond the terminology of progress and power in which there are leaders and laggards, the civilized and the wild, rights and wrongs. Horizontal association is an effective force against the dictates of officialdom that destroy self-will, otherness, and – ultimately – life.
‘A merit sector’
January, 2022
It is a zine made by the ‘delai kulturu’ team in January, 2022 to reflect on the state of affairs within the sphere of service. Operating as a bar, we became a part of the service sector. Being an activist by supporting the alternative, we faced the main challenge to balance between our intention to propagandize political ideas and simultaneously be profitable. The way how guests treated us as workers of the service sector made us perceive as if we were exploited as non-human objects who always had to hide emotions. This contradicted our ideology of building up horizontal relations both within our team and with the community. We didn’t want to be treated as the service staff but like people who were honest enough to do their work to promote their own ideas and beliefs. So, our task was to explain it to our visitors. We aimed at creating a community of like-minded people, not just random visitors.
In the zine we discussed various aspects of our work within the service sector. To illustrate, we introduced a more ecological way to address people who worked at the bar instead of naming them as ‘girl’ or ‘boy’. Our team members expressed their thoughts and feelings about their work in the service sector, we also wrote down similar stories of the people from other cafes who shared our vision.
August 2021
It a installation made by ‘delai kulturu’ team members for the festival of grassroot unions ‘Fields’, which took place on August 28, 2021
The manuscript contained transcripts of three meetings of the ‘delai kulturu’ team dedicated to discussing the concept of ‘collectivity’. We designed the notes as the sacred Talmud. The monumentality of the pedestal on which the notes were presented aimed to create a discrepancy as transcripts did not introduce a clear definition of collectivity. For us, this was a non-stop process that couldn’t be monumentalized.
‘Washing’
December, 2019
It a musical event organized by ‘delai kulturu’ team and which took place at the car wash spot in December, 2019. The Russian state usually uses watering machines to suppress the street protests. Even after the legal demonstration watering machines always follow the protesters to sterilize the street after them to delete any reminder of the dissent.
Considering themselves as activists opposing the Russian state we decided to occupy the washing spot, a place of sterilization, with our own protest ideas.
Electronic music as a prominent tool to express dissent was our statement against washing our bodies off the street when we want to protest. So, we organized an event where alternative electronic musicians were playing. The entrance was free.
It is a video production launched by ‘delai kulturu’ team.
We aimed at reflecting on the current social and political events in Russia using video as an art activism means for expressing our critical point of view.
In part, we made a series of video episodes called ‘Nevesti’, which meant an antipode to the popular news programme ‘Vesti’ broadcasting on the official Russian TV channel. It was a video parody reducing to absurdity some processes within Russian society. We described it as a disinformation programme opposing those TV programmes which were supposed to inform people about the latest news but instead they were just a propaganda mouthpiece.
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Ministry of dream a video about the news as if the Ministry which controls people’s dreams was created in Russia. The government controls not only the reality but also dreams, censoring the topics which are not welcomed by the official political narrative. However, people have invented ways to avoid the control and still be free to see the dreams they want to.
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What will happen to the world if Russia becomes a sunny country? a video speculates about the alternative future if Russia is a sunny country. As the weather forecast, which is politically determined, doesn’t promise any positive dynamics and bans even a rainbow on the Russian sky, there are people who address forces of nature to disperse ‘bad weather’ created by the political regime. Making a magic herbal drink, they use it to cause a rainbow. But as soon as it appears on the sky, an old natural disaster, hurricane Vladimir, comes back to dismiss all positive changes.
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about ‘button pressers’ a video tells us about the phenomena of contemporary Russian parliament, ‘button pressers’. The video speculates that Russian legislators have mutated into a ‘button presser’, who can press dozens of buttons, instead of their absent colleagues, when voting for a law adoption. This results in the fact that many repressive and absurd laws have been adopted. In the end, ‘button pressers’ stopped considering what kind of laws they voted for so that finally they pressed a ‘yes’ button for dismissing the legislative branch of power.
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Case of culture a cardboard documentation of the events which took place in the Moscow courtyard, where bar ‘delai kulturu’ was located. These events started in August 2019 when other yard’s inhabitants — office workers, illegal hookah bars, a semi-criminal security office — started to hate the guests of ‘delai kulturu’. These were young people, looking informal, artists and activists. As a ‘delai kulturu’ founder, I experienced blackmail, direct threat and then use of force against the guests, emotional and psychological abuse. The main conflict arose between car drivers, who illegally parked their cars in that yard and pedestrians, who came to the bar on foot and used to stand nearby chatting with each other. As a bar, we didn’t allow the semi-criminal security office to earn money by using the public space of the yard as a private car parking. Thus, they wanted us to be deleted. Although we failed to get some help from the city government we succeeded to cope with the issue by making a compromise that we had to limit our guests to specific areas, accessible to them. Nevertheless, this was a happy end story as covid lockdown forced those places to close down but we survived. From the waste of our lives, we have glued together the ignorance, uncompromising violence and hatred that we faced due to the fact that we were not like the rest of the inhabitants of our yard.
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‘My body’ video clip a video clip where me and my friend and colleague Raphael sing a song claiming that our body is not ours any more but belongs to the state. The song talked about a place where I used to grow up and where my parents live now.I described one day when Raphael and I went to that place to collect nettle to cook soup. On that day there were street protests in the center of Moscow against the election fraud for Moscow city legislative body. These protests were heavily suppressed by the police. And we went in the opposite direction, to the Moscow suburbs, which were regarded to be gray and depressive areas. There I took Raphael to the place where my family used to have a garage. I hadn’t been there for many years as that place was associated with the event when my dad went to park his car and didn’t come back home. Next morning my mum took my brother and me to the garage to check what was going on. She asked us not to cry if we found our dad to be dead. We didn't find him. Later he came home and told us that he was beaten by the policemen and detained without a reason. He spent a night in the police office, and he wasn’t allowed to call home. I called our song to be a rap of mechanization in contrast to pop-mechanica, a group of avant-gardist artist and musician Sergey Kurechin, which he created in the late 1980s in the USSR. This was a symbol of Perestroika, when the authoritarian state started to lose control over people’s private life that led to the collapse of the repressive state. In our case, vise versa, Russia became authoritarian again trying to suppress people’s rights and freedoms. As a result, we were not subjects of political life, and even our physical bodies, as the only tool to protest in the streets, were suppressed by the police. To conclude, I introduced a metaphor naming political repressions as ‘nettle’ which we were cutting off as if trying to get rid of the state authoritarian regime. I speculated and compared it to the bolsheviks who organized a revolution to ‘drain the swamp’, this was what they called imperial Russia.
‘Delai Film’
2013 — 2018
A documentary film festival devoted to the topic of change for better, inclusion of all the people into a society and fight for justice. From 2013 to 2018, the festival annually gathered filmmakers, artists and activists from various countries in Moscow. The films shown at the festival were dedicated to the topics of informal economies, urban space transformations, technology impact on human life, street art, culture of memory, gender issues, social injustice and environment protection.
October, 2018
A project for the 1st architectural biennale in Tbilisi. What are future holds for a post-Soviet microrayon? We have decided to see how Gldani is developing and suggested some of its inhabitants reflect on the given issue. If in the Soviet times resettlement of the majority of people into the same microrayons under the state control for their life corresponded with the task ‘to make a person more public’ , that is to say to make them refuse from their personal experience for the benefit of imposed above ‘collective’, then now after the change of political and economic situation the rules of the microrayon’s life have changed. The spontaneity of actions has appeared, and private began to embrace the public: inhabitants began to expand their personal space using loggia or using common territory next to the house to make a garden or a backyard. If the public becomes private, then private becomes public: as for example, somebody’s garage becomes a place for a traditional feast. The boundaries of the microrayon began to mutate. Le Corbusier's ‘Dom-ino’, which served as the basis for the module's massive building construction, was converted into ‘Ino-dome’ by Gldani inhabitants, who created it in the course of chaotic exploitation of the recent modernist grid.
We suggest reconsidering the Dominoes game, which is very popular among locals. Similar to the game, which has its origin data sets, equal to all players, inhabitants transform the space, using inherited infrastructure, converting a distinct grid into the uncontrolled chaos. Each new game illustrates one of the scenarios of Gldani development. Dominoes finish with a ‘block’ or ‘dead end’, when all the players are deprived of the possibilities to make further moves. Maybe a ‘block’ is one of the possible futures of Gldani, when there will be no space for movement left.
But a ‘block’ can be frozen, that is to say – save Gldani as an architectural monument, which according to one of the inhabitants can happen in the future. Above the modernist grid with distinctly outlined boundaries, Gldani inhabitants created their own network of everyday contacts, personal memories and strange as it may seem of vine rod. This network of horizontal links has been here for ages and can’t be simply re-built. Or maybe can, according to the existing programs of post-Soviet microrayon’s modernization, but in that case inhabitants have to net it again.
Co-authors: Dmytro Isaiev and Anna Dobrova from MistoDiya Collective, Dmytro Prutkin, Marika Semenenko
‘DK Delai Sam/a’
2016 — 2017
A community-center, which worked in Moscow over a period between 2016 and 2017. DK provided various grassroot initiatives with the space for events for free. Delai Sam/a translates as Do It Yorself (with a feminitive ending).
For 11 months, DK proved the hypothesis that there was a need for a community center in Moscow, which could be a place for ‘grassroots’ initiatives to meet up without a fee or censorship. As for censorship, in 2016 it was already complicated to hold an event on almost any social topic without a fear of being banned by the intelligent service.
After two months the project had been launched, there were events in DK almost every day. Film screenings, lectures, book presentations, discussions, exhibitions, workshops were held there.
In April, 2017 DK was closed as the landlord denounced the rent contract due to the fact that DK was searched by the intelligence service as an act of censorship.
Co-founder: Marika Semenenko, Daria Fedotova.
‘THE END OF THE TRUTH’
April, 2017
Activist and art project devoted to the culture of memory of the ex-publishing house, which produced the biggest Soviet newspaper called ‘Pravda’ (in english means ‘Truth’). The goal was to emphasize the role of ‘Pravda’ in shaping the architectural and ideological heritage of Soviet Moscow and the Soviet society in general. It absorbed a lot of meanings which was crucial to memorize — a means of untruth, a symbol of the Soviet utopia, an ambitious project to create the world's largest media hub, an architectural monument of constructivism, an industrial quarter in the center of Moscow, an almost abandoned space in the 1990s and a failed attempt to create a creative cluster on its basis.
The project team exhibited oral stories of people who worked or lived in that territory at different times. Additionally, we produced a DIY newspaper ‘Who is a ‘pravdist?’ (the union of ex-workers of ‘Pravda’ publishing house used to be called ‘pravdist’), where oral stories were printed out. Also, we made a documentary short film ‘Pravdists’ to tell about the residents of ‘Pravda’ ex-factory creative cluster. They were forced to leave the territory due to the demolition of several buildings as a part of new development for the ‘Pravda’ architectural complex.
The project was conducted in cooperation with Nik Degtyarev, an artist, and architectural collective ‘Prostory’.
‘PEOPLE AND ROCKETS [IN THE CLOSED CITY]’
June, 2017
Activist and art-research project devoted to the phenomena of a ‘closed city’, which was Soviet Dnipropetrovsk, located in Ukraine. From 1959 to 1987, Dnipropetrovsk was a ‘closed city’ due to the space rockets’ production. Due to the fact that people's life stories weren’t archived as it wasn’t regarded to be a part of the official history, the goal of the project was to reveal those missing details: the relationship between a man and production, ideology and consumption.
The results of the research were exhibited in an art gallery in Dnipro (a new name of Dnipropetrovsk after the Decommunisation law). The exhibition consisted of audio recordings of oral histories which told visitors about various life experiences in a ‘closed city’, archival videos from the times when Dnipro was closed, curatorial texts, which revealed the concept of ‘closure’ from different angles, personal belongings of locals, which they brought to be part of an open source temporary museum.
What’s more, the project team cooperated with several city museums which didn’t have any information about Dnipro being a ‘closed city’ in their official exposition. Each of the museums was invited to make a 30-minute comment on the phenomenon of the ‘closed city’ from different aspects. Thus, the project launched a discussion, which in fact was an attempt to put into practice an alternative approach to the official historic narrative so that a critical analysis of the past could be possible.
co-authors of the project: Katya Semenyuk, Anya Pohrybna, Marika Semenenko
‘DOMINO GAME: ZERO’
It is a plan of a typical flat. This is also a starting point, on the basis of which the further transformation of the district is taking place.
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I is a symbol of micro-action, with which residents started to occupy the public space of their house, particularly a part of the common hall in order to increase the size of their own apartments.
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II is the process when the balcony is glazed and turned into a full separate living room.
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III is the transformation of an open loggia.
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IV is a takeover of the territory near the elevator and the bigger part of the common hall.
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V is a garage, which is more than just a place for cars in Gldani. In garages they make small laboratories to produce wine and chacha, with the further hosting of their neighbors or conducting business.
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VI is a place to park cars outdoors, which dramatically changed the image and the way of life in Gldani.
2010 — 2016
A grassroots festival held over a period between 2010 and 2016 in Moscow. The festival’s goal was to showcase bottom-up initiatives aimed at developing Russian society according to democratic and humanian values. Annually, the team gathered together a variety of grassroots projects under one canopy to encourage other people for action. For instance, this was projects in the field of environment protection, human rights defendance, urban development, gender equality, etc. Various formats of events, ranging from public talks to workshops, took place at the festival.
The festival was a bottom-up initiative, organized by an open group of activists, everyone could join it. Thus, every year team members varied. I co-organized «Delai Summit» twice, in 2015 and 2016.
August, 2015
An activist and community art project aimed at creating conditions to facilitate horizontal links among residents of a block of flats located in the Kyiv suburbs. Once a week our team held meetings with people who lived in the biggest multi-floor building in Obolon district at the outskirts of Kyiv. All those discussions resulted in an exhibition of local talents, which we organized together with the residents. On the very day of the exhibition it was suddenly transformed into a full-fledged neighborhood festival.
‘Connectable’ was conducted in cooperation with two Ukrainian architects, Anna Dobrova and Dima Isaev.
‘Delai Sam\a: grassroots civic practices’
2010 — 2015
the book is devoted to grassroots initiatives in Russia and the post-Soviet space over the period from 2010 to 2015. It tells how they are born, have been developing and achieved results. All the stories are told about the people who were determined to act to change the surroundings for the better, who knows what kind of society they want to live in. The book was written by a wide range of authors, practitioners and theorists from various professional fields. I was one of them.
‘Who needs this?’
June, 2014
An activist and community art project aimed at changing the negative image among locals of a suburban Moscow exhibition hall. Our team aimed to create various participatory activities to encourage visitors to come to the unpopular exhibition hall. Obviously, exhibitions which had taken place there were not of interest to the people living around. To change the issue, we suggested that we should provide locals with the possibility to use the space in the way they wished.
We came up with a swap as the tool of engagement, produced and placed in the surrounding area several improvised mobile points for collecting unnecessary items, which, additionally, advertised the upcoming swap.Parallel to the swap we also organized a discussion to ask locals what kind of events they needed to be held there. Although our experiment had great success, it lasted only a month.
In the end the Moscow city government was motivated to monetize all the activities within the hall and, as a result, any self-organization wasn't allowed anymore. The hall became empty again.
The project was conducted in cooperation with two artists, Tanya Efrussi and Nik Degtyarev.
Autumn, 2013
a photo documentary and anthropological project aimed at searching for the identity of Moscow suburbs.
The project was part of a decentralization programme designed and implemented by the cultural department of the Moscow city government in 2013. It aimed to repurpose the Soviet exhibition halls built in Moscow suburban areas in the late 1980s to create on its base local community centers.
Our main goal was to destroy the idea about the Moscow outskirts as a monotonous territory. We aimed to show that even within similar spaces, designed according to the same masterplan, each area was unique due to people with their own everyday life stories happening there. We assumed that people and their stories created a genius loci of each area.
We organized five photo exhibitions within the space of the former exhibition halls in five various suburban areas. Photos depicted local people and their stories about memorable places from the area. We linked our heroes with one another by looking for the next storyteller in the place, which the previous one just described to us. We defined our hero as anyone who was somehow connected with the area, no matter if they appeared there from time to time or had been living there for many years.
The project was conducted in cooperation with Marina Antsiperova, a journalist.
