This piece  1=0 — was our sly little political prank, originally commissioned as “just a decorative object” for a floor in the newly reopened Flacon art cluster right after Moscow staggered out of the COVID lockdown.

No one expected us to smuggle politics into it. We didn’t warn them either.

1=0 starts with a simple, slightly bitter idea:

when you’re alone, you’re a zero — invisible, harmless, not a threat to anyone.

But the moment there are two of you, or three? Suddenly that’s “dangerous.”

Authoritarian math at its finest.

1=0 turned that thought into a physical object: a giant police loudspeaker — the kind used in Moscow during COVID to chase people off the streets for walking with friends, and later to disperse protesters at opposition rallies.

The installation worked through a ceiling-mounted sensor that counted how many people stood in front of the horn.

If you were alone, the speaker glowed softly and murmured harmless static — like a machine politely pretending you don’t exist.

But if two or three people appeared, the horn snapped into full panic mode: violent strobe lights, a screaming police siren, and a looped recording of an officer ordering people to “disperse” because they were “blocking the way.”

A classic piece of bureaucratic gaslighting, repurposed into an artwork.

The administration had no idea this was political, so the installation survived in riot mode only briefly before being forced into a calm, decorative setting — just gentle color shifts and quiet flicker.

Around it stood the wooden ring-swings we also built for the space.

The photos from that period barely show any people at all — COVID made everyone afraid to leave their homes.

A small act of sabotage disguised as a lamp.