Yasha Kazhdan
The festival will feature Kazhdan's "Being Michelangelo," an appropriation of the Sistine Chapel's iconic ceiling.

Off The Wall Videos

The Pusto Festival of Video Art runs on Friday and Saturday.
When the Pusto Street Festival of Video Art started in 2002, the videos were projected onto a grubby white wall on Pushkin Square. Last year, it was held in the memorable, but dilapidated, constructivist building Dom Kommuny. But it seems that Pusto is moving up in the world: This week, the seventh video-art festival will be held at the Sakharov Museum.

The program will include a "best of" retrospective of previous festivals, alongside works by both up-and-coming and established artists.

Yasha Kazhdan, who is now having a retrospective at the Zurab Gallery, has been a star of Pusto Film Festival since its start. One of his most famous works is "Being Michelangelo," which shows a Mars bar being passed from hand to hand repeatedly against a background of blue sky with clouds, imitating the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Another famous Kazhdan clip, "It's Good That We Didn't Die in the '90s," shows a pair of hands pulls out cult objects from the '90s from a wooden box to the sound of funeral music. One of the first things to come out of the box is an ethnic woven bracelet, then a Victor Tsoi badge and, finally, a pager.

The prankster group the Blue Noses, well known for their cheeky collages of famous politicians, are also veterans of the Pusto Festival and will be showing their newest works.

The Pusto Street Festival of Video Art runs Fri. and Sat. from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center, located at 57 Zemlyanoi Val, Bldg. 6. Metro Kurskaya. Tel. 623-4401/4420. The closing ceremony is on Sun. at 8 p.m. at the GazGallery, located at 5 Nizhny Susalny Peruolok, Bldg. 1. Metro Kurskaya. Tel 226-3340 For more information see www.gazgall.ru.