"Partizaning"
Anton Polskyi
artist, activist, and art historianJuly 23, 2013
Center for Urban History, Lviv
Center hosted a lecture by Anton Polskyi (aka Make), one of the founders and minds behind the Moscow-based Partizaning website.
His lecture addressed partisan praxis and political context in a number of areas of concern including: groups with no place of their own in the city; the kinds of space that cities lack; vandalism; exclusion; migration and sex in public places.
"Partizaning" is an international and interdisciplinary phenomenon first so-designated in 2011 by a Moscow-based group of artists and researchers who then organized a blog by the name. The project works to call attention to and popularize the concept of unsanctioned expression or action aimed at the rethinking and restructuring of the urban setting and society as a whole by means of socially oriented urban intervention. These kinds of projects/interventions are quite often implemented by ordinary city residents, are often anonymous, and bear no pretensions of being labeled "art".