The Russian Idea

In 2007 the artists presented the installation The Russian Idea. Twelve portraits of philosophers and writers with a focus on Russia’s special path (from Dostoevsky to Tsiolkovsky, from Solovyov to Berdyaev, and so on) were installed near a bookcase on the shelves of which were carefully placed loaves of bread. This was a metaphor for the “the salt of the earth” in which the most necessary material food was equivalent to spiritual knowledge. At the center was a monumental metal construction reminiscent of a ship’s rigging. The artists used their installation to illustrate a tragic and well-known episode, the Philosophers’ Ship, which involved the forced exile (in place of execution) of philosophers and other specialists from Soviet Russia in 1922 on the initiative of Vladimir Lenin.