Nieviadomy Artyst - “Between Predators and Parasites” [FRC EP 06]
it’s hard to stay human between predators and parasites
i’ve started preparing this EP in march - and set the release date for the presidential elections. but spring and summer were hard - with illness, self-isolation, separation, moving between homes, work/nowork - and then this stressful *election* campaign. so not all the tracks were finshed. 2 more are half-backed. but who cares about ‘proper’ releases, right? not me. this is a work in progress - more tracks to come.
i hesitated about releasing this work, as i don’t like to capitalize on the current events, to earn extra symbolic capital by jumping on the political-art bandwagon - that’s the easiest way to draw media attention. but this bunch of tracks were long in the making/thinking and had to be published. i wanted to channel my anger towards both Lukashenko’s rotten, inhuman system, the corporate world that was slyly consuming and coopting our independent cultural scenes - and to the western media who had stamped the Belarusians with the ‘last dictatorship’ and ‘New East’ tags and - with popcorn at hand - were waiting for some heroic deeds / breaking news / thrilling sensations from this ‘emerging exotic land’. fuck off to all of them.
‘parasites’ - refers to the ‘anti-parasite law’ adopted in 2015 that proscribed fines for the unemployed. during the protests that followed, the people rightly argued that it is the state officials, the police and the military, and ultimately - the president - who are ‘parasites’ - not the people who have no job because of the economy’s dire state. ‘predators’ - refers to a type of water cannon used by the Belarusian state to disperse crowds - they were bought for the taxpayers money and proudly displayed amidst the ‘anti-parasite’ protests. they are used now during the post-elections protests.
an early variant of this artwork was featuring Francysk Skaryna (the main figure of Belarusian Renaissance Humanism) not only banishing the police machinery that became our state symbols - but also threatening to Gazprom, one of the Kremlin’s tentacles that strangles Belarus. let me be clear: i support neither Lukashenko’s dictatorship (he’s illegitimate since 1996 and must be jailed) nor Kremlin (c)overt attempts to swallow Belarus through its proxies - corporate or human. they will choke on us.
4 track album