Monstration

Costumed Komsomol members marched around the city with effigies of priests and crosses and completed the action by burning a Christmas tree near the Lenin House.

[1] In 2004, Artyom Loskutov and members of the Contemporary Art Terrorism group in Novosibirsk joined the annual May Day demonstration.

They were carrying posters with deliberately absurd slogans in an attempt to shake up a boring political procession and to make fun.

Fellow Siberian artist Ivan Dyrkin named the march "Monstration," a demonstration without the prefix de, which he considered a negative connotation as in deconstruction or degradation.

[2] The modern monstration incorporates signs and messages that are deliberately absurd, nonsensical and apolitical that indirectly defy the government and express a conceptual paradox.

[6] Its main purpose was to offer a wider group of citizens an alternative way of opposition against the authoritarian regime by means of peaceful street protests that used absurd and nonsensical elements.

[7] In 2011, Monstration was recognized for "Innovation" by the National Centre for Contemporary Arts and selected as "Best regional project.

"[9] The purpose of the protest was to ridicule Kremlin's hypocrisy in the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and to raise awareness about politics in Siberia.

President Vladimir Putin recently signed legislation that introduced prison sentences for violations of territorial integrity in Russia.