For the Carnival in Venice there are Slava Polunin, Mikhail Chemiakin, Anton Adasinskiy & DEREVO, Dmitry Shagin, seven small and four tall people gathered, as well as many more artists.

Original text by Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: Jennifer Williams
Photo by Elena Iarovaia, Mirella Lampertico
Photo design by Elena Iarovaia

Alternative Text »

I received a letter. My fear of pathological frankness turned my letter to myself into a letter from myself to him. Both situations are true. Well. It’s hard to explain on the phone.

Hi, Sveta!

We don’t see each other often, but I know you surf the Internet sometimes. I will write openly here.

“…Darling, you’ve got mixed up with a devil…“ – it’s from some opera, actually.

Probably DEREVO is beautiful and perfect on stage when you’re looking from a distance, from the back rows. And afterwards – in your dreams and remembrances.

Don’t come closer. You’ll see details, nuances. You’ll see stupid everyday training; notes, doubts, tears. A simplified language of illiterate machines, which have only two tasks: to build the bridge between the body and sensation, to weaken the commanding system of the brain; and another one – to live in a fairytale, to live in an eluding world, and to drag the lovely public in there without asking for their permission.

A fist.

There are exercises and exercises. The system developed by DEREVO, which we still follow, affects the complexity of human perception of the world: emotional, physical and mental.

Now after many years of work I can say that the consequences are irreversible and lead the participants of the experiment too far beyond.

Unfortunately I’m on the threshold of insanity too.

Anton.

On February 5th, 2007, DEREVO performed an action “The Squirrel” in the “Osobnyak” theatre in St. Petersburg.

Text by Anton Adasinsky
Photo by Elena Iarovaia, Anna Bogodist
Photo design by Elena Iarovaia