SimonRoberts

The result of photographer Simon Roberts’ one year journey, Motherland is
a bold visual statement about the nature of contemporary Russia, fifteen
years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Project Motherland

EnglishRussia

English Russia

Anastasia Rudenko

Found an interesting website about art + design that has quite a bit of information about art related to Moscow.
http://www.satellitevoices.com/

There's an article on Anastasia Rudenko who is a young photographer that I have never heard of before but really like her work. Almost reminiscent of the essence that Boris Mikhailov's work evokes except more current and she has a similar style to Martin Parr.

http://www.satellitevoices.com/moscow/photography/791/anastasia-rudenko

And here's here personal website:
http://www.anastasiarudenko.com/

Russian NEWSPAPER

Angliya
http://www.angliyaadvertising.com/index.php

Pulse UK
http://pulse-uk.org.uk/

Russian Maslenitsa

http://www.maslenitsa.co.uk/

Russian Maslenitsa in London

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/culture/8354213/Russian-folk-festival-Maslenitsa-coming-to-London.html

A Documentary Film about Marina Abramović

http://marinafilm.com/

Interview: Marina Abramovic

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/03/interview-marina-abramovic-performance-artist

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramović. Portrait with Flowers. 2009. Black-and-white gelatin silver print; photo: Marco Anelli. © 2010 Marina Abramović. Courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Marina Abramovic (Serbian: Marina Abramović/ Марина Абрамовић; born November 30, 1946) is a New York-based Serbian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.

snob magazine

http://www.snob.ru/selected/entry/33186

article about russian student in London and cuts.

snob magazine

snob magazine

Russian News Papers In London

Russia Profile . ORG

About Us

RUSSIA PROFILE is an English-language information service and community platform consisting of a daily-updated Web site and a quarterly special report, geared toward a wide range of readers with a professional interest in Russia. Our goal is to offer the most comprehensive and concise view of business, economic, political and cultural trends and processes underway in Russia.

http://russiaprofile.org/

So here is yet another website dealing with Russian current events amongst other things russian.

AND! their phrase thing is unwrapping the mystery inside the enigma which is basically what we were thinking of playing on.. same Churchill quote reference.

They have an interesting article on the "russian soul" something talked about by everyone from Dostoyevsky and Tolstoi to drunk people nowadays complaining about not being back home.

http://russiaprofile.org/special_report/c1278332961.html

Define: Sovok

Apparently aside from what we as Russians understand under the term sovok there are also other connotations. For example among Russia/Americans in Brooklyn, New York it's used as a term for for the expatriates residing there. Obviously has some negative connotations as well.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?defid=980084&term=sovok


And here is something else thats interesting about the historic origin of the term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus

London - emigration

http://www.afisha.ru/article/emigration-london/

300,000 Russians in the UK, "Londongrad" a prime location

Very good article at

Where to buy russian food ??

This website would locate you to the nearest Russian Shop:
http://www.russianshops.co.uk/

SSUR Ruslan Karablin

New York / Russian outsider artist who mostly works with design.
Made this collection for DC Shoes where he used the idea of Гжель (gzhel) on items of clothing.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/DC-Artist-Projectsa-SSUR-II/816933

RUSSIA! Magazine

An american magazine аbout Russia.
check it out, there are some interesting things on different subjects from art to politics.

http://www.readrussia.com/

Joao Machado- Map Collage

An emerging artist rising to the international scene, Brazilian artist, Joao Machado engages in a daunting series of exhaustive, nearly-obsessive collage works using snippets of maps from different part of the world to create subjects that are Symbolist bent, filled with psychedelia, humorous narratives, irony, and wit.
Brazilian artist Joao Machado makes his art from maps. It came about quite accidentally actually,one day about 6 years ago when Joao was preparing for an art show in Paris he ran out of his regular art paper. It was late and all the stores were closed but Joao had to complete his work before the following day. A well traveled man, Joao had an abundance of maps in just about every jacket pocket. And so there began a new relationship with maps and a new series of works. Demand for Joao's works have grown since he accidentally discovered maps as his medium and I'm not surprised a bit.

Russian anthem

http://youtu.be/AHSBERJTDnc

Matthew Cusick- map works

American painter who was born in New York but currently lives in Dallas, Matthew Cusick creates amazing portraits and landscapes from maps of roads (and other), carefully cutting and pasting them.

Map Art

Layla Curtis

Layla Curtis [born in 1975, lives in London] studied at Edinburgh College of Art and Chelsea College of Art. After graduating, Layla lived in Japan for one year. While there she took part in a residency programme at Akiyoshidai International Arts Village where she developed her hybrid maps series and held her first solo show.

She was selected for New Contemporaries '99 and had solo exhibitions at Milton Keynes Gallery in 2000; States of Mind, Rhodes Mann, London in 2004 and the Newcastle/Gateshead Tourist Information Leaflet in 2005 commissioned by Locus .

Corruption in Russia

Corruption in Russia is a significant problem that impacts the lives of Russia’s citizens. Russia is on the 146th place out of 180 in the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International. According to some expert estimates, the market for corruption in the country exceeded US$240 billion in 2006.

According to a poll conducted in early 2010, 15% of Russians reported to have paid a bribe in the past 12 months. The overall amount of bribes in the Russian economy skyrocketed from $33 billion to more than $400 billion per year in Putin's government, according Georgyi Satarov.

President Dmitry Medvedev has made fighting corruption one of the top agendas of his presidency, and has launched an anti-corruption campaign.
For a long time, the corruption of officials in Russia was legal: up to 18th century, government officials had lived through "кормления" ("feedings" – i.e. resources provided by those interested in their area of business).

Since 1715, accepting a bribe in any form became a crime, as officials began to receive fixed salaries. However, the number of officials under Peter the Great had increased so much that salaries came to be paid irregularly, and bribes, especially for officials of lower rank, again became their main source of income. Soon after the death of Peter, the system of "Кормление" was restored and fixed salaries only returned with Catherine II. The salaries of civil servants were paid in paper money, which in the beginning of the 19th century began to depreciate greatly in comparison with metallic money. Insecurity within the bureaucracy again led to increased corruption.

In Soviet Russia, bribery was considered a counter-revolutionary activity, and the Criminal Code in 1922 made it punishable by death.

According to a survey conducted in 2006 63% of Russians had a negative or highly negative view on taking bribes, but only 51% had the same views on giving bribes (with 37% being neutral on this issue). At the same time 38% percent had a negative or highly negative view on reporting about the cases of corruption to the police.

On 20 November 2009, the State Duma adopted a law "On general principles of public service delivery and performance of public functions", which allows officials to make the citizens pay for "public services" and "public function". According to the authors of the law it is intended to make it easier for the citizens and organizations to have the public services delivered for them; however, according to the Russian parliamentary opposition parties CPRF and LDPR, this effectively legalizes corruption.

In modern Russia, it is widely accepted that corruption is one of the main obstacles to the country's economic development. In 2006, the First Deputy of the Prosecutor General of Russia reported that according to some expert estimates, the market for corruption in the country exceeded US$240 billion.[1] According to INDEM fund, this number is even larger: in the business sphere alone in Russia, corruption volume increased from US$33 billion to US$316 billion between 2001 and 2005 (not taking into account corruption on the levels of federal-level politicians and business elites). The average bribe that Russian businessmen offer to civil servants increased from US$10,000 to US$136,000. More than half of adult population has direct experience in giving bribes.

The fact that there is legal basis, permitting civil servants to illegally enrich themselves (in Russia, for example, there recently appeared a new term, measuring how "bribe-permissive" each individual law is), through demanding bribes or through illegal privatization, or special privileges for civil servants, leads to a large difference between legal and illegal income for civil servants.

Income of civil servants engaged in government, has been growing. In 2005, their income increased 44.1%. This by far exceeds average income growth for the rest of the population, which grew by 21.3%. Comparing quality of life with official salary gives an idea about the level of illegal income. The poorest segments of society lose the most to corruption, because they have the least financial possibilities than wealthier citizens.

On 26 September 2007, Transparency International published their World corruption perception index. Russia was 143 out of 180, with the rating of 2.3. According to the head of Russian division of TI, Elena Panfilova, there is a "stabilization of corruption" tendency in Russia, where its ratings don't change (from 2.4 in 2005 or 126 out of 158, to 2.5 in 2006 or 121 out of 163). Kirill Kabanov, President of the National Anti-corruption committee of Russia, believes that there is no real fight against corruption in Russia: arrests of middle level civil servants do nothing to curb corruption, and there is no real anti-corruption policy.

The 2009 TI study showed that the global financial crisis only encouraged corruption: in the last year it grew globally by 9%. Corrupt civil servants and politicians in developing countries, including Russia, receive annually US$20-US$40 billion in bribes. According to TI, Russian corruption, as of September 2009, was on par with that in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Syria – 147th place out of 180. According to the Investigation committee of the Gosprokuratura, the number of registered bribes grew from 6700 in 2007 to 8000 in 2008. According to MVD, from January to August 2009, 10 581 cases of graft were registered – 4% more than a year prior. The number of registered bribes of large amounts (more than 150,000 roubles) grew by 13.5% to 219.

Alexey Navalny

Alexei Anatolievich Navalny (Russian: Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, born June 4, 1976) is a Russian political and social activist who in recent years gained great prominence amongst Russian bloggers and mass media due to his social campaigning activity. He uses his popular LiveJournal blog to organize serial large-scale petitionings by Russian citizens addressing issues mainly related to heavy corruption in Russia in accordance with Russian laws which appear to be widely ignored by top Russian officials and state-controlled businesses. He also regularly writes articles on topics he is concerned about in several top Russian mass media such as Forbes Russia.

He was dubbed "Russia's Erin Brockovich" by the Time Magazine. Also, Navalny was named Person of the Year – 2009 by Vedomosti. Navalny was a World Fellow at Yale University's "World Fellows Program" aimed at "creating a global network of emerging leaders and to broaden international understanding" in 2010. He graduated from People's Friendship University of Russia in 2003.

Navalny is a minor stockholder in several major Russian state-related corporations and some of his activities are aimed at making the financial properties of these companies transparent. This is required by law, but there are allegations that some of the top managers of these companies are involved in thefts and are obscuring transparency.[4] Other activities deal with wrongdoings by Russian Militsiya, such as Sergei Magnitsky's case, improper usage of state's budget funds, quality of state services and so on.

In October 2010, Navalny turned out to be an outstanding winner in virtual "Mayor of Moscow elections" held in the Russian Internet by Kommersant and Gazeta.ru. He received about 30,000 votes, or 45%, with the closest rival being "Against all candidates" with some 9,000 votes (14%) followed by Boris Nemtsov with 8,000 votes (12%) out of a total of about 67,000 votes.

In November 2010, Navalny published confidential documents about Transneft's auditing. He claims that the published scan is the one of original document. According to Navalny's blog, about four billion dollars were stolen by Transneft's leaders, and their fraudulent activity was coordinated by Vladimir Putin.

In February 2011, in an interview with the radio station finam.fm, Navalny called the main Russian party, United Russia, a "party of thieves and swindlers". Shortly after, a pro-party lawyer declared that some regular members of United Russia had asked him to proceed against Navalny.[citation needed] In May 2011, the Russian government began criminal investigation into Navalny, widely described in Western media as "revenge", and by Navalny himself as "a fabrication by the security services".

Alexey Navalny - New Yorker

Late on a snowy evening, Alexey Navalny, a lawyer and blogger known for his crusade against the corruption that pervades Russian business and government, sat in a radio studio in Moscow. Tall and blond, Navalny, who is thirty-four years old, cuts a striking figure, and in the past three years he has established himself as a kind of Russian Julian Assange or Lincoln Steffens. On his blog, he has uncovered criminal self-dealing in major Russian oil companies, banks, and government ministries, an activity he calls “poking them with a sharp stick.” Three months ago, he launched another site, RosPil, dedicated to exposing state corruption, where he invites readers to scrutinize public documents for evidence of malfeasance and post their findings. Since the site went up, government contracts worth nearly seven million dollars have been annulled after being found suspect by Navalny and his army. Most remarkably, Navalny has undertaken all this in a country where a number of reporters and lawyers investigating such matters have been beaten or murdered.

By now, Russia’s reputation for corruption is a cliché, but it is impossible to overstate how it defines public life at every level, all the way to the Kremlin. Russia is one of the few countries in the world to slip steadily in Transparency International’s annual rankings. Out of a hundred and seventy-eight countries surveyed in 2010, Russia ranks a hundred and fifty-fourth, a spot it shares with Cambodia, Guinea-Bissau, and the Central African Republic. Corruption has reached such extremes that businesses involved in preparing the Black Sea resort of Sochi for the Winter Olympics of 2014 report having to pay kickbacks of more than fifty per cent. The Russian edition of Esquire recently calculated that one road in Sochi cost so much that it could just as well have been paved with, say, nine inches of foie gras or three and a half inches of Louis Vuitton handbags. In October, President Dmitry Medvedev announced that a trillion rubles—thirty-three billion dollars—disappears annually on government contracts. This is three per cent of the country’s G.D.P.



In the studio, Navalny sat next to Evgeny Fedorov, a doughy, bespectacled member of the Duma and a fairly high-ranking member of United Russia, the political party led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, which today dominates Russia. Fedorov had been invited on the air to debate an assertion that Navalny had made in the same studio two weeks earlier. When asked by a radio host what he thought of United Russia, Navalny had said, “I think very poorly of United Russia. United Russia is the party of corruption, the party of crooks and thieves. And it is the duty of every patriot and citizen of our country to make sure that this party is destroyed.” United Russia announced its intention to file suit against Navalny for slander. Unfazed, Navalny responded with a poll on his blog asking readers whether they agreed with his assertion that United Russia was in fact a party of crooks and thieves. (Of forty thousand respondents, 96.6 per cent agreed with Navalny.) Then he announced a contest to design a poster using the “crooks and thieves” line as a slogan.

Sitting beside Navalny in the studio, Fedorov fumbled nervously with a stack of colored folders and a thicket of scribbled notes. Without looking at him, Navalny drew a sheet of paper from a slim file in front of him and began to read through a list of members of United Russia’s leadership council. He pointed out that one of them, the former governor of oil-rich Bashkortostan, had unified the region’s oil industry and installed his son as the chairman of the resultant conglomerate. Navalny then noted that the governor of the Krasnodar region, where Sochi is, had a twenty-two-year-old niece who had somehow come to own a major stake in a multimillion-dollar pipe factory, a poultry plant, and a number of other businesses. The governor of the Sverdlovsk region (Boris Yeltsin’s birthplace), Navalny said, has an eighteen-year-old daughter who owns a plywood mill and a dozen other local businesses. “How does all this wonderful entrepreneurial talent appear only in the children of United Russia members?” he asked. “What business schools did they attend?”

Fedorov dismissed this as meaningless invective. (All the officials have denied any wrongdoing.) He accused Navalny of terrorism and of working to undermine the country, implying that he was receiving financing either from the C.I.A. or from the U.S. State Department, if not both.

“Honestly, what you’ve just said is shocking,” Navalny said, perfectly deadpan. “I thought that, since you brought so many documents with you, you’d be able to raise substantive objections about the facts of corruption in United Russia, which, I think, are totally obvious.”

Fedorov also wanted to contest Navalny’s assertion, taken from the official property declarations posted on the Russian parliament’s Web site, that Fedorov, a career civil servant, is the owner of five apartments, a house, a summer cottage, and two cars, one of which is a Mercedes. The house is a wreck, Fedorov protested, flashing pictures to the host, and he owns only four apartments. As for Navalny’s assertion that United Russia provides political cover for the corrupt officials in its ranks, Fedorov had a simple bit of advice: “It’s pointless to discuss each of these examples on its own. There is a clear procedure. In instances where the law is broken, the procedure works,” he said. “Write to us. The President even said so himself: ‘Give us the facts!’ ”

“But I’ve been writing for many years,” Navalny burst out. “That’s the whole point!”

Rospil

http://rospil.info/

Russia Calling 2

Russia Calling

Victory day Celebration 2010

On the 9th May 2010, Russia celebrated the 65th anniversary of the end of World War 2, while remembering those who died fighting for their motherland.
Sons of Russia, in cooperation with the Russian Embassy and Westminster City Council run St George ribbon campaign.

Sons of Russia volunteers gave out The Ribbons of St George with the brochures explaining the symbolism of this campaign. The ribbon is a symbol of remembrance of those who fought and defeated Nazi Germany.

Adrian Brannan

Adrian Brannan is a contemporary artist who works mainly in the medium of photo collage focusing on cityscapes as his most frequently chosen subject matter. Adrian has worked in this medium since studying at the Glasgow School of Art from where he graduated with Honours in 2000. He has exhibited in various UK locations including with the Royal Glasgow Institute for the Fine Arts, the Association of Photographers Gallery in London and The Glasgow Room.Adrian has won various awards from the likes of the Association of Photographers and Glasgow city Council.

In a time when the majority of image manipulators are using digital photography and post production software such as Adobe Photoshop Adrian has notably chosen to use traditional optical photography and manual 'cut and paste' collaging techniques in the pursuit of what he has described as a "more truthful and unclouded representation" of his subject matter.

Adrian has captured his hometown of Glasgow as well as being commissioned to create works in Barcelona, London and various areas in Switzerland. Adrian's work is held in public and private collections worldwide.

David Hockney

David Hockney, CH, RA, (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire, although he also maintains a base in London. An important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century.
David Hockney has also worked with photography, or, more precisely, photocollage. Using varying numbers of small Polaroid snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. One of his first photomontages was of his mother. Because these photographs are taken from different perspectives and at slightly different times, the result is work that has an affinity with Cubism, which was one of Hockney's major aims—discussing the way human vision works. Some of these pieces are landscapes such as Pearblossom Highway #2, others being portraits, e.g. Kasmin 1982,and My Mother, Bolton Abbey, 1982.

Hockney created these photomontage works mostly between 1970 and 1986. He referred to them as "joiners". He began this style of art by taking Polaroid photographs of one subject and arranging them into a grid layout. The subject would actually move while being photographed so that the piece would show the movements of the subject seen from the photographer's perspective. In later works Hockney changed his technique and moved the camera around the subject instead.

Hockney's creation of the "joiners" occurred accidentally. He noticed in the late sixties that photographers were using cameras with wide-angle lenses to take pictures. He did not like such photographs because they always came out somewhat distorted. He was working on a painting of a living room and terrace in Los Angeles. He took Polaroid shots of the living room and glued them together, not intending for them to be a composition on their own. Upon looking at the final composition, he realized it created a narrative, as if the viewer was moving through the room. He began to work more and more with photography after this discovery and even stopped painting for a period of time to exclusively pursue this new style of photography. Frustrated with the limitations of photography and its 'one eyed' approach, he later returned to painting.

Putin

Found this picture online.. something similar to what I wanted to make in my collage last year.

Sohei Nishino

Born in Hyogo in 1982. Since he was a university student of Osaka University of Arts, he started his series Diorama Map which is created from his memory as layered icons of the city.

The creation of a Diorama Map takes the following method; Walking around the chosen city on foot; shooting from various location with film; pasting and arranging with enormous mound of pieces. Consisted from eight cities, Diorama Map is still ongoing and will be developed in cities all over the world in the future.
Since selected as an Excellence Award of Canon New Cosmos Photography Award, he has participated in several group shows including his solo exhibition. His works are shown at Paris Photo 2009 where he received critical acclaim by many collectors and attracts people all over the world.

Dziga Vertov

David Kaufman (Russian: Давид А́белевич Кауфман) (2 January 1896 – 12 February 1954), better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov (Russian: Дзига Вертов), was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist. His filming practices and theories influenced the Cinéma vérité style of documentary moviemaking and, in particular the Dziga Vertov Group active in the 1960s.

Title Ideas

Also! Thinking about possible titles for the project I found this quote by Winston Churchill

"Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma"

Then theres obviously the really famous poem by Fyodor Tyutchev

Умом Россию не понять,
Аршином общим не измерить:
У ней особенная стать —
В Россию можно только верить.

This english translation isn't that great:

You wouldn't understand Russia just using the intellect
You couldn't measure her using the common scale
She has a special kind of grace
You can only believe in her.

David Anthony Hall

Was walking around marylebone today and stumbled upon this gallery that was showing David Anthony Hall's landscape photographs. Most of them are panoramic shots but some are exhibited in these circular shapes. Thought they would be relevant to Svetlana's project.

Here is the website of the photographer:
http://www.photohall.com/

And here is the website of the gallery:
http://thompsonsgallery.co.uk/

Russia: The Wild East

BBC programme about Russia by Martin Sixsmith.
Theres lots of different topics and I'm currently reading his book which I think is just basically the same thing as the main programme. Interesting read and very relevant in the understanding of Russia and its culture for the "West".

the programme:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010v6p3

and the book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Russia-000-Year-Chronicle-Wild-East/dp/1849900728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306234055&sr=8-1

Rafal Milach

The polish photographer I talked about in the last tutorial.

He has a lot more work on his website and quite a lot of it is about Russia.

http://www.rafalmilach.com/

Regina Gallery

Russian Gallery in London
22 Eastcastle Street
London, W1W 8DE, United Kingdom
Tel. +44 (0)207 636 7768
london@reginagallery.com

Calvert 22

http://www.calvert22.org/

Another gallery dealing with Russian artists.

There's currently an exhibition on that I think it would be useful to see!

http://www.timeout.com/london/art/event/219118/practice-for-everyday-life-young-artists-from-russia

Russian Art Fair 2011

Private View
Wednesday 9th June 6pm to 9:30pm
Charity Gala Evening
Friday 11th June from 6pm
Public Days
Thursday 11am-6, Friday 11am-5 Saturday 11am-6pm
The Park Lane Hotel
Piccadilly, Mayfair
London, W1J 7BX



http://youtu.be/O0103fTnQsM