The enmeshment of the human body with various forms of technology is a phenomenon that characterizes lived & imagined experiences in Russian arts of the modernist & postmodernist eras. In contrast to the postrevolutionary fixation on mechanical engineering, industrial progress, and the body as a machine, the postmodern, postindustrial period probes the meaning of being human not only from a physical, bodily perspective, but also from the philosophical perspective of subjectivity & consciousness.

This article analyzes the experimental documentary film Deviantnoe povedenie (Deviance, 2011) by and about Zachem (Why, What for), and argues that the Russian graffiti collective’s social and artistic practices comprise strategies for questioning assumptions about status quo, normativity, strict categories, and clear boundaries. The first part looks at graffiti as a social behavior, which was considered “deviant” in the Soviet-era and which still bears that legacy in contemporary Russia.