The radical idea of a Russian artist and a dissident (exactly that combination is desperately needed by the current, inadmissibly unintellectualized and essentially alienated - 'postmodernist eclecticism') Andrei Molodkin who announced that he would close some of the masterpieces in a specially adapted box and destroy them with acid Rembrandt, Picasso i Warhol, if Assange spends the rest of his life in prison, is an act that is much more than just performing a performance, that public appearance that conceptualizes protest, elevates quite spent protests to a higher level (be careful: protest, today, to a good extent, in fact, only further democratizes the system with with which to settle, especially before the government responds with a comment: we certainly support every form of democratic expression of dissatisfaction, etc.), could strategically lead the accumulated dissatisfaction to deliver a deeper and thus more painful blow to those against whom the rebellion is being raised. Of course, we support that, however, we must also introduce this issue into the analysis space: Greta Thunberg was chosen by ``Time'' as ``person of the year'' (2019), which automatically raises the question: has she grown into an acceptable symbol of the fight for the preservation of the planet, is this the new Joan of Arc who just appears as would make a teenage statement and then disappear; what, then, if the very obstacle for the extremism of the uprising for Ecology, which is a matter of politics, would be treated as another meeting of world leaders who consider how far they have come with the problem of global warming.
It is obvious that all too much of this takes on the appearance of a ``tame play'' which is also directed and heartbreaking, aimed at stirring up emotions that must be turned off in order to approach the heated situation in an extremely rational and pragmatic manner, with a simple question that we should simply insist on: so: progress or the planet?! After all, when it comes to Andrey Molodkin's plan, why don't we try and even risk the following claim: yes, the mentioned three geniuses would gladly agree to have their works 'sacrificed' as a gesture of resistance if - the modern Prometheus (how, among other things, we call Julian Assange, the man who disclosed/showed the world the truth he lives in, and which is the inadmissible truth of the world) spends his life in the prison he fell into because he worked exclusively in the interest of the public, which means openly against the supreme political establishment. (He didn't even stop at the embassy of Ecuador, but it was there that he wrote the book "Google", which is said to have cost him what he is going through today in the notorious Belmarsh prison.)
"Beautiful souls" who are otherwise a real disaster of today's otherwise completely inert and passivated, domesticated society, find it very ugly and above all anti-civilizational to pelt the Mona Lisa with eggs, which some bold green activists do in this way, in fact, herself Including the Mona Lisa in the fight against the ecocide that threatens the planet, excluding the ultra-net heavyweights who will be bunkered or launched who knows where in the future. So: it is very important to finally move from the endlessly intellectual interpretation of sublime Art to the act itself, which implies that art itself is introduced into the space of rebellion, because, otherwise, it threatens to end up being "vaulted" in the possession of some "chosen" corporate master as which is brilliantly portrayed in the film 'Children of men' (2006).
There is really no effect in reinterpreting it as it is Munkov 'The Scream' - a picture of existential (dis)abandonment due to the alienation that surrounds a modern, self-isolated and left to himself, desperate man. We can, why not, in those 'screaming' colors that spill over the sky over the fjord, see the real picture of the current state of the biosphere, which is in a more than dire state, showing through climate crises serious symptoms of disease due to increasingly progressive capitalism, which is not only a gigantic polluter, therefore, of Nature, as much as, above all, of human nature that agrees to be dehumanized, which is so noticeable in the example of Assange and us who literally left him in the darkness of slavery.
Since technoscience is in the 'hands' of big capital, that it has become chronically militarized, that it has embarked on a project of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotization that does not see humans in the future - that commodity whose shelf life has expired - the only art left is that we must be able concretely introduce it into the field of rebellion, into an engagement without remainder, into a revolution without bluff, but because art itself has long been treated as - a democratized and hence permitted form of resistance that does not threaten the Power as much as the announced protest of some group in front of the building of any of the world's , more and more tyrannical governments. All the more, if until now we have created too much art without changing the world (which is more obvious today than ever before), maybe it is time to start thinking in the direction of: how to use already created art for purposes that aim at what art itself always already propagates . (Let's remember, in the end, what Faust decided to do, eager for true knowledge, while we still so shamelessly allow the ``discourse of the University'' (lacan) to - instrumentalize knowledge that will then, as a uniformed expert for a certain area, only serve capitalism, which dresses up in the guise of democracy.)
Julian Assange is so far, there can be no doubt about it, the most prominent figure to appear in the 21st century, so if he doesn't deserve that every artist contributes one of his works to the ``global bonfire'' instead of just promoting it, then we no longer need the world or art.
In the end, yes: Andrej Molodkin acts like any true artist who must also be a dissident or he is not an artist!
Bonus video:
