I'm back from Riga, where I celebrated New Year's. The report will be teeny-tiny, because everything was quiet and retiree-style.
There's such an insane amount of unread stuff in Google Reader and my friends feed over a few days that it's unclear how to even wrap my head around it now. Every time after days away from the infosphere it's this same problem.
For example, Parker writes about the latest art action by the Voina group, along the lines that stealing doors and engaging in vandalism isn't art. The motif of “take responsibility for yourself” and “do no evil” constantly pops up with Goblin too, who lately, to be honest, evokes more and more disgust in me, because he clearly brings no good to the world on his site, only rationalism.
In principle, you can understand the artists — how else can you show the modern world anything, if it has long ago swallowed, digested, and shat out all the usual provocations? Only by doing. So welding a door shut isn't vandalism after all (though I doubt it's art, either). But stealing physical things is definitely not good, so the score between the artists and society is 1:1. As for the material damage to the restaurant — it more than pays for itself in free advertising, so everyone's even here.