Monstration

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Monstration is a public performance that looks like a protest but is created as art. It often mocks serious demonstrations. The word was coined by Russian artist Ivan Dyrkin in 2004 in Novosibirsk, and the practice has been especially popular in Russia. Its roots go back to the Soviet era, when processions in the 1920s and 1930s carried anti-religious messages, such as banners about birds or burning a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve 1933.

In later decades, groups in Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk staged absurd demonstrations (1960s–1980s). In 1995 artists and poets organized a march called Styobius Strip. In 2004, Artyom Loskutov and the Contemporary Art Terrorism group joined the May Day parade, carrying posters with deliberately absurd slogans to shake up the procession. The term "monstration" comes from dropping the de- prefix, which Dyrkin saw as a negative connotation like deconstruction.

Today monstrations feature signs that are deliberately absurd, nonsensical, and apolitical, yet they can indirectly challenge the government. Although they are apolitical in intention, participants have sometimes been arrested for political agitation. By 2010 monstrations were held in about 20 cities, including Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Vladivostok. The first monstration in Kursk took place on May 1, 2014 with the slogan "For the rights of butterflies in the stomach." In 2015 the main slogan was "We did not watch Fifty Shades."

The movement has drawn controversy. In 2014 Russian authorities cut coverage of the Kursk event and warned media outlets; they also opened an investigation into BBC Russian Service for reporting on it, which BBC described as a parody. Officials likened the idea to Euromaidan and talked about threats to Russia's unity. Russian President Vladimir Putin has since signed laws increasing penalties for violations of territorial integrity.