THE SOVIET KITCHEN
You know the story. In the seventies, Russian people used to hold in the kitchen their discussions on the current political situation. The kitchen was the only private space, far from unwelcome ears, able to contain a few people.
Nowadays, life is happier. Life is more beautiful. Any institution will invite you to spit on the institution, to imagine the best way to destroy it. You’re paid to be subversive. You can even become the director of a subversive festival (they generally include in their title something with tactical, strategy, radical, guerrilla, resistance… apparently, we have inherited from the idea of avant-garde this military-oriented vocabulary) that is subsided by the government. You discard the suspicion of recuperation with a contemptuous gesture. You’re above it, because you know. In fact, you even think that by using the institution to pursue your own goal, you thwart this clumsy recuperation trap. Poor you! Naïve you! These guys have always been more refined than you ever thought. But what should you do then? Should you hide in your basement and do underground things to maintain certain honesty?
So, what about getting back to the old good time? What is really subversive should not escape the four walls of the kitchen after all!

Setup: the outside world is cold and hostile. But we don’t care. We’re all packed in the kitchen (some coffee is on the fire) and we indulge in criticizing whatever. It’s so nice to be one of the happy few.