80. PARTICIPANTS’ STORIES

Several tens of meters away from the action scene, on a snowy waste ground 18 of 23 total members of the audience received pieces of cardboard (40x60 cm) with front sides covered with craft sheets (each sheet had a number in the middle). As the group approached the scene (a lowly outstretched snowy hill), one of the action’s organizers marked numbers from 1 to 19 (his own cardboard piece was marked number 9) with a fibre tip pen on craft sheets. Then the participants were prompted to form a line on the hill according to their numbers, from left to right, facing the waste ground – in order to be photographed. After that, following a verbal command, all the participants simultaneously turned their backs upon the waste ground, removed craft sheets from their cardboard pieces (they were attached with paper clips), folded them several times (keeping them) and discovered sheets of white paper (sized A2) attached to cardboard pieces, with various black letters printed on them.

After fixing the cardboard pieces with letters on the snow before themselves (front side facing the waste ground; the cardboard pieces stood upright by means of two strained ropes) the viewers descended from the hill and read the inscription formed by the letters:

 

СРАКУЧВЫ САОНКИАСТЗ

 

This was a random combination of letters on the viewers’ cardboard pieces (the presence of two separate words was provided by piece #9 with a blank white sheet on it held by one of the organizers. He was also standing among the audience, i.e. his cardboard piece was the only determinant in the random sequence of other letters).

Then the audience was prompted to go deeper into the waste ground (approximately 150 meters away from the hill) and approach another organizer of the action who had been waiting for them on a forest path.

While the action’s organizer whom the audience had approached was writing factographic information onto the piled craft sheets (those which the viewers kept after detaching them from the cardboard pieces) with a felt tip pen, two other organizers arranged the letters on the hill to form a large inscription РАССКАЗЫ УЧАСТНИКОВ (Participants’ stories) – it could be distinctly seen from the audience’s position.

 

Moscow, Losiny Ostrov

24.3.1997

A.Monastyrski, S.Romashko, E.Elagina, I.Makarevich, M.Sumnina, N.Panitkov, S.Haensgen.

S.Letov, A.Filippov, A.Petrelli, E.Bobrinskaya, N.Sheptulin, A.Tobashov, M.Chuikova, T.Antoshina, E.Nesterova, I.Chatskin, A.Panov, M.Sidlin, V.Sofronov, V.Miturich-Khlebnikova, M.Perchikhina, Yu.Leiderman, O.Sarkisyan, M.Konstantinova, S.Anufriev, Pertsy, N.Palazhchenko Yu.Ovchinnikova.