The War

WE ARE VERY SORRY TO ANNOUNCE THAT THE WAR BY JAMES BENNING CANNOT BE SCREENED AT THIS YEAR’S VIENNALE. Instead GRAVITY HILL NEWSREELS will be screened on November 1, 6.30 p.m. at the Urania and AUTOREIJI BIYONDO on November 2, 11.00 p.m. at Stadtkino.

A collection of material depicting some of the more spectacular political interventions undertaken by the Russian art/activism group Voina (“war”) in the past six years, including – of course – the notorious “punk prayer” performed by Pussy Riot, a female group of ex-Voina activists, in a moscow church in February 2012. “Art Is Resistance” – you couldn’t put it more clearly than the slogan on the T-shirt of Natalia Sokol, one of the co-founders of Voina. Russia is in the stranglehold of an autocratic superpower, and Voina’s idea that art might help to overthrow the system seems naive, but at the same time utterly necessary.