“Yakuza Jurodivy” by Piotr Bockowski
The following is an article written by Piotr Bockowski, of the London based ‘Chronic Illness Sewage’. It is an article written following Bockowski’s witness to a piece of performance art by the radical artist Leonid Kotelnikov (Fake Trailers).
In a world where human life is being destroyed and devalued in real time, in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and else where, Bockowski notes the context to his intention with this article is a response to “the exile of contemporary, underground Russian culture – marked by the ten year anniversary of the annexation of Crimea.”
Yakuza Jurodivy – a case of Russian exile and collapse.
Neofeudalism, circa 33 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Scanning the room of a central London mansion with an empty animalistic stare of “lizardish“ contact lenses, supersized fake prehistoric retinas cut space with vertical slits as they reflect fractured electronic glares. “Euro trash serf” has their entire body covered with visceral tattoo patterns of meshed figures all the way into their sphincter. Dressed almost solely in an extra large Uber Eats thermal backpack, Leonid Kotelnikov walks into the crowd in a stiff knightly manner, with a waste bucket on his head while triumphantly holding a mop as if a mediaeval warrior of EU economic immigration from barbaric Eastern Europe, who has been activated by free market crusader apps.
Born “in a heavy thunderstorm, in the middle of the night”, about the time of the Ukrainian vote for independence that effected in immediate dissolution of the Soviet regime, Leonid in the wake of a zombie revival of totalitarian aggression of his “mother state” developed ‘fake trailers’, a performance act assuming a form “between a dramatic piece and advertisement”. It masquerades as a tragicomic self-exile of contemporary young underground Russian culture into Europe, which is not exactly ready to recognise the existential difficulty of such dissidents. Two years ago, at the age of 30, Leonid terminated his decade long Russia-based schizo-noise project on the day of full-scale invasion in Ukraine, by performing on a pavement of central Moscow standing still in silence. Fortress Europe closed for Russian passports, so he initially moved to Georgia like many others who are fleeing desperately the war they don’t want to be part of.
Leonid left behind a decade of radical art event curation, originating from legendary ‘Structure’ festival around Moscow held in places of desolation in the outskirts of the totalitarian capital, such as an abandoned factory put on fire, a slaughterhouse, and a forest, train, derelict shooting ranges of Moscow police, mental hospital for children and a botanical garden. Ten extraordinary exploits that happened between 2012-2014 hosted artists such as Oneothrix Point Never, Felix Kubin, William Basinsky, Chipping & ICEPEAK as well as a wide spectrum of local artists between folklore and grind core. Importantly, Leonid became a statement of a bodyart hyperbole reaction to industrial noise live acts visiting Moscow, indulging in drunken lunacy with Martin Bladh after the gig of his Swedish band IRM or punching Jukka Siikala during a show of affiliated Bizarre Uproar from the Finnish fetish scene.
Ever since the Russian rape of Ukraine escalated into total war, Leonid embraced his walk of life as modern anarchic Jurodivy, an ascetic holy fool mystic figure stolen from the Russian orthodox tradition and subverted into nomadic lifestyle of stateless wonderer performing ridiculous excess with disarming spontaneity if not straight forward challenge to the posturing of cultural idealisms. Tattooed not unlike a soviet yakuza, during his travelling, obnoxiously exciting electronic music act he sometimes impersonates a paranoid criminal manoeuvred into complicity with the death machine and sentenced to auto-destruction, dramatically degenerating into a certain collapse of civilisation type figure, like G.J. Shipley in “Terminal Park” described as “the only authentic world war possible, that of mankind against itself for itself”.
With maverick assistance of his gonzo journalism schizoid alter ego Pavel Korkin, who writes cryptic reports from Leonid’s crusading activism, he is provided a company to fake psychiatric hospital residency of fake trailers performance art. Slipping through the cracks of European institutions by animating counterfeit identities provided by Korkin, Leonid hitchhiked across EU only to find himself sleeping with a screw driver on the streets of Paris, just by a rail-track hole and entrance to catacombs haunted by necrophiliac sodomites. Degraded into WesternEuropean trash just like Russian aristocrats in exile after the soviet revolution a century ago, he pursues living the life of “speculative fiction” in an “attempt to invent telepathy” (as he confirmed during an exclusive interview). Notably, fake trailers performed together with neoprimitive Caucasus duo Darja Kazimira & Zura Makharadze at Death Cult festival in Barcelona, alongside Zero Karma electrifying her musical instruments made out of human bones.
At the end of last year, Leonid was smuggled into the East end of London by experimental curator Anastasya Olegovna, affiliated at the time with Pushkin House, a notorious cultural institution hosting anti-establishment events of Russian freethinkers in London. Neofeudal lizard incarnation of fake trailers happened just before Leonid’s visa expired and he had to leave to Eastern Europe, where he appeared in alt venues of Estonia, Lithuania, Berlin, Czechia, and Poland this winter and shall perform in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia in the spring of 2024. Following that, if documents allow, we are awaiting his return to London, UK Lin June 2024 to perform at a Chronic Illness Sewage event.
Piotr Bockowski 2024
@chronicillness_sewage
