Word: russia
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...June 11, Alexander Shchednov, known in Russia's art circles as Shurik, was hanging up a collage outside the town hall in the southwestern city of Voronezh. The image showed the face of a coy-looking Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin superimposed over the head of a woman in an evening dress, with the slogan, "Oh I don't know ... a third presidential [term] ... it's too much, on the other hand [three is a charm]." But Shchednov never got the chance to display his new work. Before he could hang the collage, he was arrested, becoming the latest...
Shchednov is one of a growing number of artists in Russia who have been accused of breaching censorship conventions and insulting authority. There is no specific law that explicitly forbids anti-Establishment artworks, but law-enforcement figures can easily find loopholes that they can use to detain artists. They are helped by legislation passed in 2002 that forbids the expression of extremism. The law is intended to combat far-right nationalism, but many artists have been caught in its wide...
...showed a crucified Lenin, another portrayed Mickey Mouse as Jesus. Erofeyev was fired from his job at the Tretyakov in 2008, and his trial is ongoing. "Artists should not be prosecuted just because someone doesn't like what they do," says Friederike Behr, a researcher at Amnesty International in Russia. He adds that the antiextremism law itself is not the problem: "There is a good reason for that law to exist. It's just the interpretation and implementation of the law [which] is worrying...
...that day. I would not have risked having drugs with me." Loskutov was released, but his trial is set for later this summer. The artist thinks it will be a litmus test for others. "I think the result will say a lot about the state of art in Russia," he says. "If I am found innocent, it will prove that there is a certain freedom to express oneself. If I am found guilty, it means we are approaching a critical time for art and artists in this country...
...protests in Iran, nor did it make them possible. But there's no question that it has emboldened the protesters, reinforced their conviction that they are not alone and engaged populations outside Iran in an emotional, immediate way that was never possible before. President Ahmadinejad - who happened to visit Russia on Tuesday - now finds himself in a court of world opinion where even Khrushchev never had to stand trial. Totalitarian governments rule by brute force, and because they control the consensus worldview of those they rule. Tyranny, in other words, is a monologue. But as long as Twitter...