In Russia, Vladimir Putin and his friends and followers have conjured the Black Nail – the murder idol. Joy in murder. They mean to spread it.
Without your real presence, without exorcism, the murder idol will take root, in Russia, around the world.
That’s why I will be present at Independence Square, Kyiv, Ukraine, 15 August 2024 between dawn and noon.
Painters, performers, poets, philosophers, sculptors, dancers, bystanders and witnesses, those whose can only sit by and watch – it is time to move, dance, to be there with each other for our friends at war, for our shared vision of a better world, to exorcise the Black Nail.
Wherever you may be between dawn and noon on 15 August 2024, be with me, be with the spirit of poet Alan Ginsberg, who did this first, when it was needed in America. And, as Ginsberg was, be with the tradition of Walt Whitman, who sang liberty and served it, too. Be with the spirit of Isadora Duncan, who re-membered the sacred nature of dance and gifted it to the modern world.
Putin’s gang is not the first to conjure the Black Nail, but Putin is the first in my lifetime to have the power, means and will to drive it hard and deep into human hearts.
The Black Nail goes beyond the joy of murder and the worship of its idol. Once in the heart, the Black Nail attacks what Dostoyevsky calls “Normal Life”, those things that make life easy and sweet in spite of everything, those things that prevent a war of all against all: fellow feeling, culture, reason, the ordinary integrity of mind, body and soul.
Putin needs the Black Nail now because fortune is turning against him. His fellow travelers, his agents provocateurs and his armies are failing. Normal Life puts a check on him because it puts a check on all grand schemes, evolutions and revolutions. But, especially, Normal Life checks those dreams, such as poor Raskolnikov’s – such as Russia’s Bolsheviks’ –that call men and women to cruelty, murder and mayhem for justice’ sake. Mikhail Gorbatchev invoked Normal Life for Russia when the Soviet Union fell in 1991.
Driving the Black Nail into human hearts is Putin’s last, best chance for success.
He and his confederates invoked it in the aftermath of the 22 March 2024 Crocus City Hall massacre in Moscow.
Just a day after the murders, Russia state television featured a short, seemingly banal, play: four accused paraded before the stern and pitiless judge – from time immemorial, a trope favored by authorities in Russia and elsewhere.
But on closer inspection, it wasn’t just ordinary authoritarian messaging. It was invoking the murder idol, tickling at murder joy, conjuring the Black Nail.
One of the accused, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, had the right side of his head bandaged, disguising an [a missing] ear. A second, Muhammadsobir Faizov, plopped half-naked in a wheelchair, missed an eye. Two other battered accused, faces swollen and bruised, shambled along with One-Eye and One-Ear.
Even as the sad parade staggered up to the pitiless judge, media were reporting that interrogators had cut off accused Rachabalizoda’s ear and forced him to eat it; accused Faizov’s interrogators had gouged his eye out.
The two battered accused were props, legends that said: With us, not just pitiless judges but bottomless cruelty, too.
Videos of the mutilations and beatings were and are available on the Russia internet as well, doubtless, as elsewhere.
Directed and deliberate, theatrical, naïvely comic, medieval, the conjuration cries: “Look at the cannibal who eats his own ear! Look at Cyclops the cripple! Look! Those sacks-of-shit black-asses can’t even walk straight!”.
Releasing the mutilation videos has no less a part in the dark spectacle.
Once conjured, the Black Nail, like Cupid’s arrow, must get purchase in the heart in order to prosper. Sadism and voyeurism are to the Black Nail what seduction and sex are to love: growth media. Pierced by the Black Nail, the heart longs for dark satisfactions: “Get that scum! Slap it up! Gouge it out! Rip it off! Make it eat it!”.
If you can, be there with me in Kyiv on 15 August 2024 between dawn and noon. Be on your own responsibility for what you believe and be with me to exorcise the Black Nail with real presence.
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“Okolotok”, meaning “self-sufficient village” in Ukrainian, is a village run by children in a well-known folk tale, explains Kharkiv-based photographer and creator Yevheniia Laptii. The Mad King is the wild child of the tale. He dreams of seizing total power and a princess living in the shadows along with it. ’Okolotok’, When Scary Tales Turn into Reality” photo montage of a children’s dramatization of the tale represents Laptii’s realization that the tale is both sweet dream and nightmare after a soldier from Russia’s occupation force told her “All will be well. If you join us”.
Yevheniia Laptii’s work featured in the 2024 edition of “Circulations”, an annual Europe-wide exhibition of emerging photographers at Centquatre Paris.
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Author: Paul Tracy DANISON
