Exposition at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum

This “exposition” (at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum) caused uproar in Russian internet

The photo above has been published in many posts which are topping today’s charts of Russian blogosphere and the reaction of people who read the story surrounding this picture is unanimous – “WTF?!?”

Translated from http://drugoi.livejournal.com/3742536.html

21.06.2012, Russia | Yesterday the governor of St. Petersburg Georgiy Poltavchenko was meeting the guests of the International Economic Forum at the Peter and Paul Fortress. As reported [ru] by the site Saint-Petersburg.ru, the event director “Victor Kramer has prepared very unique reception, totally different from all previous events, and the gala dinner for this senior forum has turned into unusual spectacle.”

The reception’s main theme – “Reflection.”

Victor Kramer’s idea was to show how “the city is reflected in the mirror of Neva river“. The guests were presented with different art performances. One of such performances consisted of four girls aged 9-10 years, painted with silver paint. They were representing the live statues of gods of wind at the pool with water.

The governor of Kirov Oblast Nikita Belykh posted the picture below in his Twitter account accompanying it with the following comment “This is  how children are tortured in Piter“.

Live statues in Saint Petersburg international economic forum

One of the witnesses  - Katya Solntseva wrote in Facebook:

“It’s not Photoshop, it’s true. Together with Alexander Mikoyan and Ruben Vadanyan, I was dragging out these children. First, we tried to find the organizers of this “show”, but couldn’t locate them – so just tore the children’s collars (they were fixated with pins around their necks and glued to the box in which the children were inserted) and pulled them out. You can’t see the whole horror from the picture. One of the girls sat in such way that the sun was shining directly into her eyes. I think they stood there for at least one hour :-( Especially shocking was that all passers-by were indifferent, or taking pictures and went further. Only we decided to pull the children out :-(

I really want to punish the organizers … “

Reactions of Russian netizens

prosto_vova:  Fuck it, if someone would display my child like that – I would kill them…

emmy_l:  Feudal entertainment.

maxdz1:  In the 15th century Europeans (Spanish and Portuguese, mostly) were using black slaves from Africa as monkeys. And in 21st century the lords of St. Petersburg lords use the “home-grown” monkeys. :)

5min:  The bastard must be caught and painted.

delice:  What were thinking the parents of these children?

_brenner_:  Modern art, fuck.

shortcircuit_ru:  And on the girls’ heads are ashtrays, I guess?

Che Che:  And it’s in the city which defeated the propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia.

[Note:  previous comment refers to the municipal law recently accepted in St. Petersburg, which imposes fines for "the propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia among minors"]

herr_traktorist:  This is one of the cases for which the obscenities were invented.

2kapitana:  Next time it will be naked cupids, painted in gold. They will represent the love of simple people to dear leaders.

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