FRANCIS ALŸS, Lada Kopelka Project, April 16 – 21, 2014
10,5 x 14,8 cm
postcard, with texts in Russian and English
edition unknown
published by Manifesta 10

The text on this card reads: ‘When we were young, my brother and I shared a 1981 Lada Riva. One day we decided to escape our bourgeois Belgian society and drive to Leningrad. But the car broke down and soon after our lives parted. 30 years later I invite my brother to drive from Belgium to St.Petersburg, now in a 1977 Lada Kopeika. Upon arrival we’ll crash the car into a tree in the courtyard of the Winter Palace, together with the illusions of our youth.

Without an ending there is no beginning.’

Francis Alÿs is well-known for a walk called The Green Line through Jerusalem, along the 1948 partition lines, through armed checkpoints, holding a leaking can of paint: Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic.
inv.FAlÿs 471