120. BARREL 120

O. Kulik was invited to purchase a blue, 120-liter barrel with a red lid in the city of Zheleznodorozhnyi, outside of Moscow.

Carrying the barrel and wearing headphones, through which he listened to a soundtrack created by S. Zagniy from the soundtracks of two CA actions of 1985, “The Barrel” and “Russian World” (the construction of the rabbit), Kulik and two assistants headed along the right bank of the Yauza River away from the railroad bridge (where several CA actions had taken place and the soundtrack for the action “The Barrel” had been recorded) and toward the tree where, during the action “Three Megaphones for Kapiton,” a box with the DVD recording of the action “Russian World” was left (Kulik was to identify the tree with the box by a red cardboard disk with the inscription “Sanatoria of the Trade-Unions of the USSR,” which was attached to a tree on the Yauza’s other bank, directly opposite the tree with the box).

Having climbed up into the tree and retrieved the box, Kulik discovered that the disk with the video recording was not inside. (For the organizers of the action, the absence of the disk was unforeseen; it had been assumed that the disk was inside the box and, according to the plan of the action, if the disk had been operative – Kulik carried a laptop with him – Oleg was to keep the disk and place the empty box into the barrel and send it down the Yauza; if the disk had not been operative, he was to throw the barrel into the river with both the disk and the box inside. All of these eventualities had been discussed ahead of time, and the organizers of the action walked far ahead of Kulik along the left bank of the river and were located on the bridge by the “Red Bogatyr’” factory, onto whose territory flows the Yauza. The second participant in the action, A. Malyshkin walked with Kulik along the other, left river bank. One of his tasks was to push the barrel away from the left bank after Kulik threw it into the river.

On his way to the tree, Kulik found a plastic box in the form of a Kremlin tower with the inscription “Happy New Year’s 1978” on the river bank. (This type of box was used to distribute gift sets of candy, etc. to children under the tree at the Kremlin.)

Having put both empty boxes into the barrel – the velvet box from the disk and the plastic one in the form of the Kremlin tower found by chance – Kulik threw the barrel into the Yauza. Accompanied by Kulik on one bank and Malyshkin on the other, the barrel floated on the current until it disappeared in the territory of the “Red Bogatyr'” factory.

(Also unexpected for the organizers was that, according to Kulik, after the end of the action soundtrack (lasting 56 minutes, 57 seconds), the headphones began to play Homer’s Iliad, whose audio-book was by chance the next recording on the player and whose file played automatically after the end of the “Barrel – Rabbit Construction” soundtrack.)

 

Moscow, Losinyi ostrov

May 22, 2009

A. Monastyrski, O. Kulik, S. Zagniy, A. Malyshkin, G. Witte, A. Rossikhin, V. Ribas,
V. Malyshkina (photography), D. Novgorodova.