I do not want to use vvvv for russian state comanies. please, help me to understand if i'm wrong

hi vvvvolks.

i faced an idiological problem.
since march 4,2012 russia is no more democratic kind of state. it has no any kind of legal goverment (no legal parliament, no legal president). this is my personal point. my point based on what i saw myself and on what i heard from people i can trust.

most part of the russian economic belongs to state or 51%-state companies (e.g. gazprom, rzd and so on). we worked with them many times before. most of them ruled by persons involved in politic. they help current non-legal goverment.

today is the first time after march 4, my partners discuss new project for a state-company. my point for now - i will not work for them.

since march 4 i do not want to be involved in it. i do not want help them to look ok while nothing is ok.
i do not want to involve vvvv community in it (if i do something, i use contributions and modules made by different people around the globe)

i know commercial way is a way of compromises. but in every compromise there is a line you can not cross.

what do you think? will you work for them instead of me? or should i “stay professional” and keep working?
any ideas?

thanks.

What about doing some subliminal stuff?

In a legal way, I mean.

Good luck

@h99 thanks!
i thought about and i disagree since

  1. we get money from them - it’s extremely unprofessional to take money and include some subliminal (“25th” frame or jokes or QR-code or something like)
  2. they control the proccess - they can remove all this before the show
  3. if they’ll see it at the show - it will worse only me and company
  4. if they won’t see it, that means nobody see it and all this subliminal stuff is useless.

Hi bo27, this is a HARD topic.
We, as european, are far away from your reality.

resistances are not only subliminal things, wich are,i think, out of the bonds.

resistances are also being with people, or sharing projects, or trying to help in many manner freedom of minds and bodies.

i have many friends, thru egypt to syria to lebanon and jordon. Many of them are just trying to survive from their artistical work. usually you need money to survive.

Some of them say they will no more work for the system, some other continue to and try to construct new things. Some other leaves their country, some of them stay.

Its more a question on how you want to resist, according your temperament, your life situation ( childrens no childrens etc…) and how you consider you will act in real life.

Actually you are not in syria, where guns and army are attacking civilians, so you stay “only” in a corrupted country, ruled from a long time by same people, same companies, and same big interrests.

I think you can try to find your way in that, and construct your own personnal way to resist to this, and make things change at one moment.

For what i know, nobody ( included me) can formulate any idea, as we are not leaving this kind of difficult situation. You may perhaps exchange words and thoughts on skype or face book with tunisians, syrians, egyptians, lebanon, iraki people… its where i think you will find really answers, and people understanding really what s going on.

@karistouf

thank you for a good answer. most you say is true, my goal is to find different points from people working in the similar field as me.

because our kind of job has some specifics.
we are not involved in any kind of politics, but we are helping our clients to show their successes

my pleasure bo27 ! ;-)

Hello Andrey,

It’s a sensitive subject and i understand the situation as i am from similar corrupted country, only difference is we still have the freedom of voice and not so rigid system.

I personally think everyone has their own right to accept the work they do or deny. In your case i think you have total right to deny faking/making wrong public stunt through media and this is definitely ethical in an effort to respect your people. After all you are not making anti-political campaign against your government, you are just bittered and dont want to pretend as everything is great!

If i was in russia, i would do the same as you!

if you can, do not work for them.

I’m often not happy working for some of my clients but I’d draw the line at weapon companies and companies that in any way help ‘bad’ governments. You have to draw a line somewhere surly?

I think our government was not changed after 4th march, all people is still on their places. It’s definitely your decision, but i think currently, government orders is about 70% of our current target market, so we can’t just ignore it. If you think more deeply, you can understand that we working mostly for private shows and exhibitions, where target audience is still government or near government people. So we mostly not working for propaganda. For me, it’s always hard to work for our government, but as designer, i can’t ignore them.

sure.
but it’s like hard ill person. everybody know he’ll die. but while he is live there is a hope (or 1/100 chance). this hope died at march 4.
or one of great football teams (Barcelona or Manchester United) play vs village team. everybody know the result. but they still play by legs not arms. at march 4 they took a ball by hands. so this is not football any more this is rugby.

you right about 70% of market.
and guess i found my own solution here:
we have our own greate multitouch terminal SURFX. we let them to use it. we rent/sell it to them with basic apps (even vvvv apps) or without any apps. since it is ready to use product. like BigMac. so we are still on the market.
but i will not do anything special for them. nothing they can show as ‘modern/exclusive/special’. lets all those cheap flash-guys do the job.

and i’m ask everyone here:

  1. If you have a project related to russian goverment - sell them only non-exclusive, old, ready-to-use projects/products.
  2. Ask for highest price as possible.
  3. Avoid any exclusive/creative projects.

will you join me, alg?

First and most important I appreciate this discussion is going on here, and that some of us are interested and it is permitted by VVVV.

I share the same situation in my work and in my country (México).
Our main client is the government and although most of the time Flash is used for the projects the issue of which software is implemented is not relevant in my opinion.

Also i think that there is a very small amount of projects that do not face this conflict in a greater or smaller degree as working for big companies or governments, even commissions for art projects are not exempt of political and economic interests that we do not like.

I agree with bo27 that the most immediate solution is not to invest too much time or effort in their projects.
But this is not the most optimal solution and this problem is a very old problem and there is no easy way out.

The positive side of this is that we have peers everywhere with the same questions and we expect to solve this together and maybe this is part of the answer of how to overcome.

What about trying to give back to your comunity something from the profits you get with the job? generate something related to your political position, but it doesn’t mean you have to explicit say so to the ones who are hiring you…

@ventolinmono
thanks. commercial jobs are always compromise. i never ask where money come from. actually i do not support Occupy 99% strategy. any progress as well as any art goes from power of a person. and this power should be paid.
i support any private company or business in russia since there is a power of person. but never officials - since they destroy any personal activity.

@manuel
it very depends on. by one hand, creative cost much less here than in europe. by another - in terms of quality/price we have extremely high prices. so finding a balance is our air.
last year we faced a situation with goverment event when they paid foreigns much more than they usually pay us. only because they were foreigns )) but in terms of quality it was very well done.

lol !!! Good one mate

corruption exists because the current system (alias democracy) allows it to exist. it’s kinda easy to develop a less human centric system which can filter out the possibility of undetected governmental money traffic and the possibility of decisions driven by only personal interests of politicians in charge, but until they’re in charge and until politics is based on retorics and protocolls and not on algorithmic organization management, such a system won’t be developed. just some fake anti-corruption stuff what scratching the surface while petting people’s head through their media.
but there’s no problem until the parking area of IKEA is full, until there are long queues at McDonald’s and until Apple can sell their shit for that price, we’ll have jobs.

@microdee. What’s that about algorithmic organization management?
Sunds intresting, Do you have some readings?

i meant with that a system like how the bitcoin works. the author created a system which is self-sustainable and completely open for everyone so if you doesn’t like the current implementation of it you can start your own modification. it works because the concept calculates with some anarchical features and sustainable because there’s no one responsible core which is the foundation of the whole stuff (ok it has, the internet:P). so if something like that could be developed in governmental organization that would solve some major problems and it would make some protocoll stuffs completely irrelevant. however in a bigger picture that would question the role and the concept of countries as relevant and useful organizations.