In this manifesto, three Petersburg architects explore the architectural alternatives to representing an increasingly affluent market economy. This text should be read in the context of the speedy renovations made in Petersburg on occassion of the 300th anniversary celebrations.

1.
– The alternative to consumer society is the  refusal to take part in its games of the infinite purchase/change of  commodities.
– Every product of postindustrial system has poor quality, and could not have a better one, because in this system the amount of updates has killed the quality.
– Speed of the cycles – a product’s cycles of change – is caused by its poor quality and is in direct ratio to deterioration; the consumer is obliged to replace a trendy product before it falls apart in his/her hands. Each new cycle is a sort of a crime made with an aim to conceal the previous ones.

2.
– How should we name the condition of a person who is not included in the senseless race behind the pseudo-updated product? Proceeding from today’s system of values and hierarchies is  POVERTY.
– The condition, that we name poverty is a social pace.
– It is not necessary to change society, it is necessary to leave it. What kind of exodus is it important to choose? An individual or a group one? We believe, that the group one is more effective. The number of members in a group is directly proportional to its efficiency. Local communities are doomed to gradual degradation and, finally, to defeat. The mass exodus means a destruction of existing society (an exodus as the base of its dismantling). This is the target of our aspiration, because it is unique now: the reasonable and responsible public action.

1. Art is political by essence. The new art radicalizes the political essence of art by refusing to alienate itself in the work of art (poiesis) and by stressing the fleeting but repeatable act or gesture (praxis). The work of art cannot fully disappear, but it is no longer meant to be self-sufficient.

2. Praxis is the form of the work of art. The form is the frozen praxis that does not only envelop the contents but penetrates and shatters it from within.

3. Art is action. But it is a special kind of action, which has a character of probe. Not in the sense of an irresponsible prelude for another, serious, action, but in the sense of an experimental test of what seems to be impractical in principle. The utopian contents of a work of art is a world where it would be possible, and the audience that would make sense out of it. The temporal and spatial gap between this utopian world and the real existence of the work of art as a probe of this world makes the form of the work. The work of art keeps affirming itself, in each act of its performance and reception. The irony is only permissible in it as the irony of irony – a chance that your play will turn serious.