The Voina Group (pronounced va-ee-NA) are an infamous and brilliant anti-authoritarian/anarchist street-art/provo crew from Russia. They first found notoriety in 2008 when five couples staged a real orgy in a Moscow Museum to oppose the folly of the Russian elections.

Other actions have involved turning a Moscow Metro carriage into a dining car; shoplifting from a supermarket wearing priest’s robes and police helmets to show how invulnerable authority is to it’s own laws; and the stealing of a chicken hidden in a member’s vagina entitled: ‘How To Snatch A Chicken? The Tale Of How One Cunt Fed The Whole Group.’ 

The ‘Crossing the Rubicon / A Dick Captured By The FSB.’ prank – involving the painting of a 60-metre cock and balls on St Petersburg’s Liteiny Bridge just in time for it to be raised in mocking glory of the town’s FSB (ex-KGB) headquarters – caught the attention of the world’s media…

On 15 November 2010 Voina’s Leonid Nikolayev, aka Crazy Lenya, and Oleg Vorotnikov were arrested for overturning a police cars as part of a performance artwork entitled ‘Palace Coup’. Vorotnikov and the two-year-old son of another Voina member called Sokol, rolled a ball under the patrol car and four activists then turned the car over to get it back. The official charges were hooliganism motivated by hatred or hostility towards a social group… even though the police in Russia – or anywhere else in the world for that matter – can hardly be described as fucking ‘social’, let alone a ‘social group’.

Whilst they were being held on remand the famous Bristol street-artist, Banksy (who is not a fucking patch on Sheffield’s Phlegm by the way) sent £80,000 in bail money to have them released. Viona promptly gave the money away to help other political prisoners.

In October Voina boarded the famous Russian ship, the Aurora, which fired the first shot against the monarchy in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. They then scaled the masts and promptly hoisted the Jolly Roger…

Crazy Lenya is on record as saying: “I don’t give a fuck about art.” Which says it all really. But if artists in Britain were suddenly to learn from Voina and begin to undermine power and oppression through their work we’d have a lot more respect for them. Art in Britain has long lacked the ability to critique and unmask power and injustice (just as our comedians now fail to create true satire), but then so have our latter-day Anarchist groups. Maybe the Artists and Anarchists should have a competition to see who can be the first to how naked Emperor Cameron truly is!

Click here to download a free PDF of our ‘Missing You’ poster.

Last night the elusive CWMC (Class War Motorcycle/Motherfuckers Club) paid us a visit and asked us to produce a series of posters which had a simple message and were, more importantly, easy to photocopy and distribute.

We’re looking for suggestions for future posters… if you have a message you would like to convey to rich bastards, bankers and/or Tory scum then let us know and we’ll turn the best into posters.

Click here to download a free PDF of our ‘Fight Back!’ poster.

We’re  supporting the following campaign, so see you on Thursday

STOP SOPA

SOPA & PIPA: The Internet Goes On Strike, Pirates Join
On January 18, many websites will voluntarily go on strike [1] to demonstrate against the threat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) bills, pending US legislation that would restrict freedom of speech, negatively impact economies, and degrade internet security. Participation in the strike has been confirmed by Wikipedia[2], Reddit, Mozilla, and Free Software Foundation, among others. Many organizations, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have expressed grave concerns over the bills [3].
Regardless of whether its purpose is legitimate or whether it will work; the legislation is not compatible with democratic values. It promotes censorship by giving the US Government and corporations the power to block access to – and take down – websites that they consider to be infringing on their copyright monopoly, including search engines or blogs which link to such sites. This would be done by ordering Internet Service Providers to censor access to the Internet and by cutting funds to the infringing websites by forcing the advertisers and payment services to cancel their accounts [4].
These laws would make social networks, search engines, and all websites providing space for discussion and information exchange impossible to run without massive surveillance of all users and the censorship of everything they publish. A link placed by a user in the comment section of an article in a regular Internet magazine could result in the magazine going bankrupt and the owners being charged with a crime. This would not only cripple innovation and entrepreneurship, it would be a flagrant violation of the fundamental human right to free speech. The bill’s supporters refuse to acknowledge the anti-democratic aspects of the bill as a problem; instead pointing-out that the proposed filtering mechanisms have been proven to work in countries like China, Iran, and Syria [5] – nations infamous for their official suppression of free speech and expression.
Pirate Parties are joining the protest and oppose these bills on the grounds that they will erode the rights of every internet user around the world. Pirate Parties object generally to any legislation that would toughen intellectual property law, but these acts go beyond file-sharing – they harm everyone’s ability to participate and interact online, both personally and commercially.
Pirate Parties urge other websites to join the strike on the 18th.
Pirate Parties who will black out on the 18th: Australia, Belgium, Catalonia, Czech Republic, Canada, France, Germany and Young Pirates Germany, Greece, Italy, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Massachusetts and Georgia, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom

Click here to download a free PDF of our ‘Fuck Thatcher’ poster.

A quick reworking of a design from Turpin

Click here to download a free PDF of our ‘Clockwork Orange’ poster.

Then it came to us where we’d seen those eyes before…

Yep, one bat-shit crazy motherfucker who leads a bunch of sheep-like followers into a world of folly and horror looks pretty much like another

Gave us an idea for a poster though…

Click here to download a free PDF of our ‘Manson/Miliband’ poster.

There’s no reason why anarchists can’t have a little fun and games, so we’re getting in the Olympic spirit and producing a series of Anarchist Olympics posters. And we want your suggestions for suitable anarchist sports?

In the meantime here’s a general @lympics poster to get things going…

Click here to download a free PDF of our ‘@lympics’ poster.

An Open Letter to Occupy