Exposure of the Masoch Fund
No. 4, November 2002
I cannot say that this is the most difficult of my journalistic investigations. But maybe the most fascinating. Usually, the background of hidden activities revealed during such investigations is work for intelligence agencies, or, worse, trivial crime. Here, however, following the information, we unexpectedly enter a space where the laws of what is commonly considered reality are transformed.
Where they try to work with the “matrix”.
A huge amount of information collected during the investigation – thick dossiers on the founders of the Masoch Fund, hundreds of publications and reviews – actually only superficially acquaints with this team. And only certain informational crumbs – strange meetings or casually dropped phrases – give a chance to try to recreate the real picture of events. Possibly, to touch the mysteries that may change our ideas about our own capabilities.
So, let’s start from the beginning. The Masoch Fund is an alliance of two artists – Igor Podolchak and Igor Dyurich, producing artistic actions combining most types of art, media, PR, and sociotechnologies.
On the other hand, it is not so difficult to identify the shadow side of the founders’ activities – fulfilling orders from political and oligarchic forces, large-scale election campaigns, political consulting, and PR.
Summarizing the first stage of the investigation. The Masoch Fund is a creative association, a production studio, an exclusive advertising agency, a PR agency, a design bureau; its ambitions are the creation of artifacts, meta-brands, and spiritual values; its sphere of interest is political technologies, sociotechnologies, contemporary art. This level of approach usually exhausts journalists’ research presented in the world press.
But we will go further, assuming that in fact all actions and campaigns of the Masoch Fund are just fragments of a mosaic, each working to achieve a number of hidden goals. But even being calculated, they do not allow us to see the meta-level where everything unites. Its analysis would allow us to answer the question – who are these people and what are they really striving for?
Here we move to the second stage of the investigation, where, due to lack of facts,
we will operate with guesses and reasoning. Ahead of time, I must admit that this investigation – and I have four folders of information before me – besides being the most fascinating, turned out to be the most disconcerting, creating more new questions than giving answers to the initially posed ones. We can only invite you as co-authors of the inquiry, sharing the most significant facts and letting you draw your own conclusions.
So, here is a scattered list of the most important data from the collected dossier.
Among the characters noticed in contacts with the Masoch Fund (partners, colleagues, clients) are very different people from almost all spheres of activity, united only by one – a key position for their space. Among those whose contacts are precisely recorded – Kuchma, Gelman, Rodnyansky, Shchedrovitsky, Sergiytsev, Todorovsky, Viktyuk, Pinchuk, Khoroshkovsky, Onukh, practically all leading Ukrainian journalists.
We can only speculate what Podolchak and Dyurich discussed at meetings with George Soros, or, for example, with Michael Dixon, secretary of the political department of the US embassy. Or what connections allowed Podolchak to hold an unprecedented exhibition of his works in space, on the orbital station “Mir”.
An example of the everyday life of the Masoch Fund can be the data of external observation of its office on one day in August. Before me flashed characters who would never have been suspected of common interests. The “working day” of the Masoch Fund president began at 11:28 when he arrived at the office on Shelkivychna Street. At 14:04 he was visited by one of the leading Moscow political technologists, one of those called “Kremlin” behind their backs. After his departure, about fifteen minutes later, the main opponent of the previous visitor appeared in the office – one of the ardent ideologists of local nationalism, whose meeting also lasted about an hour. Closer to evening, after six, a certain public figure, journalist, and anthropologist from Israel arrived at the office. Later, another interesting character joined them, a shadow PR specialist who has been cooperating with the Masoch Fund for several years, with whom around eleven in the evening the president left the office.
And there is an abundance of such ambiguous testimonies – negotiations, communication with public opponents, messages and rumors, which, in my opinion, testify to one thing – programming opinion leaders and correcting their activities. I repeat, this is my version.
It is quite interesting to turn to the “exposed” actions of the Masoch Fund. “The Last Jewish Pogrom” in Marat Gelman’s Moscow gallery. “The Best Artists of the 20th Century,” prepared for the Venice Biennale (which was associated with a loud scandal leading to the loss of positions by some well-known politicians). “Mausoleum for the President.” “Clinton’s Last Tour” and many others. Information about most of them can be found in hundreds of publications, in hundreds of Internet links. Note only that by building a schedule of actions, roughly considering the time spent preparing them, one can easily find significant time gaps. During some of these intervals, political projects timed to elections took place (from the well-known – Kuchma’s presidential campaign, from the recent – the “For a United Ukraine” campaign). But some time intervals marked by strange meetings or periods of complete “broadcast silence” arouse justified suspicion.
It is also quite interesting to try to imagine the true goals of some “artistic” actions of the Masoch Fund.
For example, the action “Return of the National Shrine.” Remember, “Portrait of the Father of the Nation by the Father of the Avant-garde,” “Meet the Father,” and so on.
It is hardly possible to assume that the only goal of the Fund was care for the nation, which still had no legalized national shrine. This is too one-dimensional for the Masoch Fund. It looks more like testing the response of the people, and most likely their spiritual and political leaders. Moreover, the legendary portrait of Shevchenko, unearthed from nowhere after half a century of absence and presented in 2001 at the Kyiv Center for Contemporary Art, of course became the subject of close attention of the diaspora, for whom it represented the greatest value. So it should be assumed that the shrine mainly played the role of bait or a touchstone intended to test the environment’s reaction to determine the mood of society and new “players” for the next Masoch Fund project.
And here I would like to stop at the next project. To my great regret, I have very little data – rumors and fragments of schemes, saying little to the uninitiated. But they are quite eloquent. The project is called “President for Ukraine.” What do you think is its essence? No comments.
There are also a number of projects; we only know their names. “Sale of Ukraine.” “Khokhlomasonic Conspiracy.” “Ha-litcyia of USA.” “Monument to Bin Laden.” I will not speculate which of them are part of the strategy, which are intended only to distract attention from the true activities – it will be easier just to wait until these projects are implemented and then analyze. So again – no comments.
Or maybe with comments? The Masoch Fund – by the structure of activity and level of goals – can be classified as secret meta-societies of a closed type, with intermediate tasks of programming public and political leaders and segmental changes of certain social spaces. The Masoch Fund created its cozy space where among seemingly artistic projects a keen observer can see global ones. It is practically impossible to hide the true goals, because if you think about something all the time, sooner or later it will break out – at least in the form of slips or hints. But they are masters at creating conditions for working on meta-projects. Where else to hide a leaf if not in the forest? How best to disguise hidden activity if not among seemingly spontaneous projects?
I think, in the case of the Masoch Fund, there is an evolving experience of implementing increasingly complex projects, mixed with a gradually developed illusion of omnipotence. Indeed, they won at various international exhibitions and biennales. When victories got a bit tiresome, as well as the lack of public recognition of the country – they started “taking down” their own. They “black PR-ed” the “Person of the Year” action. They arranged “Lawlessness of Humanism.” They aimed at the President (then Kravchuk) and succeeded again. They tried with Clinton – also successfully. They got tired of destruction – they started creating public characters, working with society, the hopes of the crowd, public opinion. They conducted several dozen political campaigns of all levels – from deputy to party and presidential in Russia and Ukraine – and took a step further, apparently finally working for themselves. That is, reshaping the surrounding environment in their own image and likeness. The task, of course, is more complicated and larger in scale. But this, it seems, became the next challenge suitable for the Masoch Fund.
On the other hand, here, at this stage, the creators face a new level of problems. The theory is clear to them. But implementation in this case will be more difficult. Before, they decided everything themselves, temporarily assembled teams worked clearly. But those are executors. And to change the world, or at least the country, like it or not, you need like-minded people of the appropriate level at all levels of power – both factual and intellectual. And that is difficult.
So the gentlemen from the Masoch Fund, so used to victories, were surprised. They brought the national shrine – but where is the adequate response? There is none. The magazine “Ї” was published, red, beautiful, smart: “Power. Violence. Terror” it is called. And so what?
The role of “puppet masters” is not yet in store for the Masoch Fund, and in the near future we will not have to fear that the usual world suddenly becomes unlike itself. The only possible hyper-resource that could help the Masoch Fund carry out an artistic revolution is the notorious “world government,” interested (of course, if it really exists) in such experiments. Now, however, the opposite process is observed – the rejection of Ukraine from the world mainstream. And the Lviv residents of the Masoch Fund seem too attached to their country to take it out of the sphere of their ambitions.
Comment from the Masoch Fund
Indeed, over ten years of activity, hundreds of articles have been written about us, dozens of programs and TV films have been made. Honestly, the desire to comment on journalistic findings has long atrophied. However, this example is almost unique in genre/method applied to us. This research-investigation is an example of what persistence, patience, stubbornness, lack of analyticity, superficiality, and omnivorousness can bring to an investigator.
Not wishing to offend the author, we will still respond to the request of “Politik HALL” to somehow relate to his insights.
The mosaic of fragments of materials obtained by the journalist can be assembled in any other way, creating either a battle canvas or a still life. For example, it could be quite convincingly proven that we are Mossad agents, Knights of Vengeance from world masonry, or, on the contrary, occult anarchists.
To find out the truth or get one step closer to it, the journalist should have contacted us, because no one else, due to the nature of our activities, has such a complete collection of compromising material on the Masoch Fund. Without a doubt, we would be glad to share information that would have spared the author from superficial, dubious, and sometimes even ridiculous conclusions.
Moreover, we would like to note that the pathos of changing the world is not unique; it is inherent in all advanced thinking beings wishing for more comfortable living conditions. Of course, one can tear their ass over an occult sign trying to change something, as the author imagines, or one can simply live in their own world, enjoying themselves, communicating with the most fascinating people, and seemingly spontaneously reacting to the challenges of the outside world.
Respectfully,
Igor Podolchak,
Igor DyurichLink
