Let me tell you an interesting story from my life — the outcome of which was nothing less than the revelation of a global capitalist conspiracy, headed by a world government, against art itself. As will become clear, the aim of this conspiracy was the complete destruction not only of art as such, but of the very possibility of its existence.

Let us begin at the beginning. As an émigré in Constantinople, back in the distant year twenty-two, I, like many of my compatriots who had been blown by a passing wind to the southern shores of the Black Sea, was spending my days in utter loneliness and poverty. Thoughts about the fact that we had no one left to rely on the fate of the motherland gave me no rest. In search of something one might fall in love with for a lifetime, I wandered through the ancient city and stumbled upon a person who introduced herself as an exhibition organizer and an active agent of the art business. At the mention of such titles, a faint hope naturally flickered within me — as it would in any representative of my profession who had found oneself in the difficult position of exclusion from the academy and stripped of all honours —hope for a barely tolerable existence.

The exhibition in which this person invited me to participate was to take place in one of the few remaining independent institutions of Muscovy. But her main promise was that my paintings might be sold for a decent sum to various collections. Although collaboration with “the former ones” troubled me, I did not hesitate for long. I agreed to provide several canvases that I had managed to take with me into exile.

Preparation for the exhibition, despite my colleague’s assurances to the contrary, proved extremely difficult. I had to spend a significant sum on shipping the works, driving myself deeper into debt. In addition, under pressure from the organisers, I was obliged to answer humiliating questions from the tabloid press. Soon enough, I began to have doubts about whether taking part in this enterprise was worth it.

The opening of the exhibition tore the masks off the organisers. The atmosphere of debauchery and distasteful merriment of the low-brow audience, quite inappropriate in a time of war, convinced me that the exhibition was a fluke and no sales were to be expected. Moreover, I realised with bitterness that I would never again see my works — those I struggled so much to take with me into exile.

To my consolation, I soon found that I was not alone in this. In long conversations with the many exiles who filled Istanbul’s meyhanes in those years, we no longer pondered the fate of our lost motherland, but our own strategies for individual survival. Gradually, it became cleaon but ourselves.

The main conclusion of our understanding of what was happening, we began to conclude that our meetings were the exposure of a worldwide bourgeois conspiracy directed against art. Moreover, through painful reflection, we realised that we ourselves were instruments of this conspiracy. So cunning and elaborate was its architecture, it is worth laying it out step by step.

At the start of our artistic careers, in the distant years zeroes, certain organizations began to enter the art world calling themselves institutions. Their declared purpose was the comprehensive support of art, artists, and audiences, allegedly motivated by nothing other than pure love for art.

Delighted by such manna from heaven, we avant-gardists — accustomed to living off scraps— could not help but be seduced by these wonderful organisations with their noble aims. Our entire guild enthusiastically welcomed the appearance of these new actors, and we placed our most cherished hopes in them — hopes of finally being heard on a global scale.

As these organisations strengthened, however, we began to notice a side effect of their growth. This included the domestication and commodification of artworks, the imposition of normative ideologies, the creation of an unhealthy competitive atmosphere — both among artists vying for the institutions’ favours and between the institutions themselves.

Over time, the institutions absorbed, digested, and excreted in the form of products all independent activities in which the spirit of true art still flickered. The recognition of our miserable situation, however, came far too late: seduced by the hope of success, we had been disarmed as authors and creators of our own reality long before the war.

During the warm winter of the year twenty-two to twenty-three, those of us who had ended up in Constantinople discovered with great astonishment that the ancient city harboured organisations identical in purpose and meaning to our own. In conversations with members of the Istanbul intelligentsia, we repeatedly encountered the same lamentations directed against their own institutions as those we voiced against ours.

Straining to understand, we were dealing with a global conspiracy against art. And the co-optation of artists was only one — and by no means the main — component of this conspiracy. The true aim of the conspirators was the destruction of the art itself.

But art, not unlike life on Earth, is rather difficult to destroy completely, for it resides not only on canvas or in stone, but also in the mind, as per the concept of non-retinal art proposed by Marcel Duchamp. So to annihilate art, one would need to get rid of the mind, which is problematic at the planetary scale. Instead of obliterating humanity, the conspirators developed a plan to replace art with something else.

As humans have been fascinated by fire since ancient times, the bourgeoisie decided to keep the general population riveted to screens with scenes of war, burning cities, etc. This worked for most people. For those craving sophistication,they designed art fairs and film festivals.

By means of this cunning strategy, the global bourgeoisie believes it can destroy art through the distraction of its viewer.

Anticipating your objections — “why would the bourgeoisie want to destroy art if they love buying it and storing it in Swiss free ports?” This is indeed the most interesting question.

I think it’s because art contradicts their vital interests.

How so? I believe that the task of the bourgeoisie is to secure a luxurious life under worsening ecological and socio-political conditions. Preferably reaching physical immortality in some tropical paradise of yachts, palaces, and concubines. The remaining eight billion people, in a world of almost fully automated production, would be a burden and a source of instability.

Thus, people must first be enslaved, plunged into deep depression regarding their hopeless existence, convinced to stop reproducing and consuming the precious resources, and start killing each other.

How does art contradict this mission? By showing the masses the reality of their situation as lambs led to slaughter. No amount of news can pierce the curtain of unreality that has settled between the viewer and their screen. But a powerful film, performance, or novel can. They can produce a catharsis so vital to human beings, something the ancients understood well, from which the entertainment industry so diligently shields its customers.

Such a film or performance can open people’s eyes, eventually allowing them to see reality. And that reality is as follows: we have little time left to stop humanity’s slide into the world of Mad Max.

If we do not wake up today, tomorrow we will all be artists with no means of subsistence, creation, or resistance.

Therefore: avant-gardists,émigrés, and proletarians of all countries — make art, not war.