Формула нормального гражданина. II

«The Formula of the Normal Citizen» explores how social norms shape an individual through the organization of their body, behavior, thought, and daily life. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, the exhibition traces the trajectory from external regulation to internal self-control. Moscow Conceptualism and social art are examined here as practices that reveal the hidden mechanisms of normalization through language, instructions, rituals, archetypes, and behavioral scripts.

The exhibition explores how the perception of the «normal» citizen is formed and how social norms become integrated into daily behavior. The theoretical foundation of the project is Michel Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power. This power organizes space and time, introduces models, compares, classifies, and documents deviations. Gradually, the external demand begins to be perceived as natural. This topic resonates with Moscow Conceptualism and SocArt. Artists in this circle addressed the language of instructions, slogans, questionnaires, archetypes, and everyday rituals, illustrating how collective norms infiltrate personal experience. The exhibition is structured around three chapters from the book «Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison»: «Docile Bodies, ” „Techniques of Verified Drill, ” and „Panopticism.“ These sections sequentially reveal the organization of everyday life, the comparison of the individual to a normative ideal, and the internalization of control. The „normal citizen“ is presented here as a construct built from rules, linguistic formulas, and behavioral models. The real person never perfectly aligns with this model, and it is precisely this discrepancy that becomes the space for artistic discourse.