Thirty-Three Characters. The letter "Ц"

Last summer and fall in St. Petersburg there was a festival «Thirty-Three Characters», dedicated to the Cyrillic alphabet. Several street installations were created as a part of the festival and I would like to show you one of them today. It's an art installation in the form of the Cyrillic letter "Ц" (the Latin letter "C", as in "Cicero").

The author of this installation is Vitaly Pushnitsky. Here is what he said about this work: "Vainness and redundancy, incomprehensibility - these things are characteristic of the cliché about the "mysterious Russian soul." But this cliché didn't come from nothing, did it? All that smoked-up Old Russianness, swamps, native huts and moss on the northern sides of trees, all those images and even smells, somehow resonate in the images of those old letters as well. It was the language and its very lettering that gave the stereotypes of Russianness that particular chthonic form, which today can only be laughed at or shrugged off. But for some reason it is not funny. I think that the shape and form of the language is the same way of thinking, like its imprint or map. The letter "Ц" is like a rudiment not present in Latin. And it has its own secret absurdity."

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Smartphone	Xiaomi Redmi 3
Location	Saint Petersburg, Russia
Date	August 2020