Absent Futures, Eternal Presents: The Recycling of Moscow Conceptualist Aesthetics in Contemporary Russian Street Art

Abstract: In light of rising authoritarianism and neo-conservatism in Russia since the 2010s, street art has become one of the most iconic forms of cultural protest. While contemporary Russian street art embodies the subversive character of the global street art movement, its uniqueness, this article argues, lies in the legacies of the late Soviet artistic underground that inform its subversiveness. Based on works by selected street artists, including the art group Iav´ and the individual artists Misha Marker and Ffchw , this article demonstrates how such street artworks recycle the aesthetics of late Soviet works by Moscow-based Conceptualist artists. The presence of Moscow Conceptualist aesthetics in contemporary Russian street art, this article further argues, is due to a condition that some street artists perceive as common to both their current historical moment and late socialism: a lack of outlook on the future and a perceived sense of stuckedness in an eternal present — a theme which Moscow Conceptualist works, especially from the Brezhnev era, explore extensively. Through such a cultural recycling the street artists expose what they see as a return to the stagnation that characterized late socialism. Yet their works differ from Moscow Conceptualist ones in their aim: where Moscow Conceptualists aimed at exposing the workings of and provoking laughter at the Soviet realities among audiences who, especially during the late 1970s and 1980s, were limited to trusted participants of the underground circles, contemporary street artists actively seek to engage wide audiences across social strata and borders in critical reflection on Russia's socio-political landscape. Thus, contemporary Russian street art re-imagines Moscow Conceptualist aesthetics as a force of resistance — a resistance which does not necessarily aim at the radicality of political confrontation, but at the slow yet foundational change in peoples' minds and bodies through sustained exposure to street art.