Hello and thank you for downloading witness on the BBC World Service with me,

Dina Newman. Today we go back to November 1994 when a Russian conceptual artist

Alegulik posed in front of an art gallery in central Moscow, naked, pretending

to be a guard dog and attacking passers-by.

He wanted to show that since the collapse of the USSR, Russians,

some in their scramble for wealth, others living in extreme poverty,

had lost their ability to relate to each other as humans. It's a late November evening in Central Moscow and the first snow is melting underfoot while pedestrians hurry through the slush to the nearest metro station.

Cars are slowly crawling through congested narrow streets.

Suddenly a naked man appears in the street on all fours. He is on a leash, barking and furiously jumping around.

This was Ali Akulik with his performance entitled The Mad Dog.

About two to three hundred journalists and art critics have gathered for the occasion

and they scream and applaud every time the artist attacks the audience or jumps on passing cars.

I thought about it.

I felt as if I was in a jungle. I saw nothing but flashing lights and heard screams everywhere.

I saw crowds of people. I remember clearing lights, the screams, the whistles, the dog collar choking me.

My friend and assistant poet Sasha Brenner led me on a leash and he was pulling it so hard that I started to

elucinate but that's what I needed to lose my mind so I could perform properly.

I had to be both very very serious and very very mad. The point of this mad

performance was to show that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russians in their struggle to

survive had lost their humanity.

What we had seen was nothing but a selfish fight for resources.

It was a fierce fight, an ugly battle of animals let out of a cage.

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