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"(...) Coming out of Moscow, and therefore familiar with fearful Cold War-style propaganda, AES Group, composed of three Russian Jewish artists, aim in their series 'The Witnesses of the Future: Islamic Project'(1996-97), to reveal the absurdity of the Hungtington 'theory of the Clashof Civilizations'. Their strategy is to take his ideas to an exaggerated extreme by proposing 'the worst imaginable scenario'. Using computer-generated imagery, they have produced cityscapes of the main Western capitals from New York to Paris, Rome to Sydney, Moscow to Berlin, envisaged as they might be in the year 2006 under Islamic occupation. Western historical monuments are turned into mosques, surrounded by Islamic gunmen and nomadic tents. Even the Statue of Liberty is covered from top to bottom by an Islamic veil, the Declaration of Independence in her hand replaced by the Koran. To emphasize this ironic strategy, the artists set up the 'AES Travel Agency to the Future' in 1997, in which these scenarios are put on sale in the form of postcards, mugs, T-shirts etc, while questionnaires are distributed to visitors.
This hi-tech game of guess-the-future, central to the group's strategy, is an attempt to challenge our presumptions about the world. It aims not only to deconstruct the logic of fear as the ideological foundation of geo-political power games but also leads to a disintegration of the psychological constructs behind our perception of images and their meanings.
On one hand, AES Group use shocking images to achieve visual impact; on the other, they set up sophisticated situations in which the spectator is invited to participate directly in the suspension of conventional morality.(...)"

A l'avènement de ce nouveau millénaire, une anxiété générale et légitime nous conduit à nous questionner sur le devenir de notre monde dans les prochains siècles à venir. D'aucuns envisagent le futur comme de grands villages utopiques ou tous les êtres humains bénéficieraient d'une économie universelle et d'avancées technologiques communes. D'autres imaginent le scénario de la confrontation cataclysmique entre différentes communautés, résultat du déclin de la civilisation occidentale.
C'est par un exemple des plus radicaux que le futurologue américain Samuel Hungtington prédit une série de guerres entre les 3 grandes civilisations religieuses majeures : le christianisme occidental, l'islam, et le confucianisme. Pour préserver les intérêts occidentaux (principalement l'expansion du capitalisme multinational et les valeurs libérales) il suggère que les pays occidentaux s'allient entre eux ainsi que les autres pays non islamiques et non confucianistes pour combattre les pouvoirs islamiques..
Originaires de Moscou et par conséquent familiers des propagandes effrayantes de la guerre froide, AES, le groupe composé de 3 artistes russes vise dans cette série « the witnesses of the future : islamic project (96-97) à dénoncer l'absurdité de la théorie du clash des civilisations avancée par Hungtington.
La stratégie d'AES est d'utiliser ces théories en les poussant à l'extrême pour les transformer dans le pire scénario imaginable. Utilisant des images transformées par ordinateur, ils ont réalisé les paysages urbains des principales capitales occidentales de New York à Paris de Rome à Sydney ou de Moscou à Berlin en envisageant comment elles pourraient être en 2006 sous occupation islamique. Les monuments historiques occidentaux sont transformés en mosquées entourés de soldats islamiques et de tentes nomades. La statue de la liberté elle-même est recouverte de haut en bas par un voile islamique, la déclaration d'indépendance dans sa main remplacée par le Coran. Insistant sur cette stratégie ironique les artistes ont mis en place AES l'agence de voyage du futur en 1997 dans laquelle ces scénarios étaient mis en vente sous forme de cartes postales, tasses, T-shirts, etc pendant que des questionnaires étaient distribués aux visiteurs.

Ce jeu hi-tech « devine quel sera le futur » pivot de la stratégie du groupe, se présente comme un défi, une interpellation sur nos présomptions concernant la monde à venir.
Il vise non seulement à déconstruire la logique de peur en tant que fondation idéologique des jeux de pouvoir géopolitique mais amène aussi vers une désintégration de la construction psychologique derrière notre perception des images et de leurs sens.
D'un côté le groupe AES utilise des images choquantes pour atteindre un fort impact visuel et d'un autre, il met en place des situations sophistiquées dans lesquelles le spectateur est invité à participer directement. Dans la pièce « Suspects, seven innocents, seven sinners » (1997-98) (1) le spectateur est invité à reconnaître 7 adolescentes meurtrières parmi 7 innocentes, jeu évidemment rendu impossible par ces 14 portraits neutres et standards d'adolescentes.

A l'occasion d'un nouveau projet, « Le mur de Berlin-2, Nouveau, Joli et Perfectionné (1997) » le groupe AES propose de reconstruire le mur de Berlin sous forme de matériels hi-tech fluorescents. Et pour célébrer la construction de ce nouveau mur ils chantent : « Seigneur ! sépare le pauvre du riche, le Sud du Nord, le bien portant du malade, l'Ouest de l'Est, le civilisé du sauvage »

"(...) At first glance, it seems like Mr. Huntington has found some good friends in this group, although they do not come from the same civilisation. But that is just the initial, superficial impression, because what AES actually provide is a fascinating and powerful counter-image to the prejudiced cliches that Mr. Huntington seeks to prove and support. So, precisely where Mr. Huntington goes astray and confirms distorted claims, the group breaks them down, calls them in to question, and in a ratherdisquieting way with their strikingly well-done computer collages illuminates how unbelievable and invalid these prejudices are.
In their own words ?the project is neither anti-Islamic nor anti Western, but tries to function as a psychoanalytical therapy in which phobias from both Western and Eastern societies are uncovered and worked through.? The group did not take any of the photos themselves, but used and abused available material, playing with the fear of the Islamic fundamentalist, in a way that seems to come almost straight from a textbook on how to oppose media control of images. An anti-myth against a myth, or a perverted collage against an already-perverted collage. The project was reproduced on posters and postcards; cards which mimicked the green rectangular space showing the date and the city in the lower right corner from that famous clothing company notorious for using images in a provocative way. It is also on the Internet. As a whole, the project takes powerful one-sided images so far, and with such precise irony, that the result is politically so incorrect and yet so astonishingly essential. It makes you see and think through the manufactured myths and images. (...)"

We, the members of AES Group -- Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich and Evgeny Svyatsky, produced in 1996 the first images of "Islamic project: The Witnesses of the Future" during the breakout of Chehenian War. In 1997 we founded a travelling to future agency "The Witnesses of the Future" which have visited Paris, New York, Graz, Stockholm, Belgrade etc. The project at once met active and controversial reaction in international press. In German magazine "Art" Ingleright wrote that AES support brutality of Russian troops in Chechnya. The journalist was seriously mistaken, we have always been against the war, and the magazine had to give a refutation next.
Then, in 1998 in the same magazine Rainer Metzger claimed Islamic project he best art concept of the year. However, not only western press gave a feedback, we've got a view from Islamic world: Cairo's newspaper El Dustour wrote: "(...) the project makes the Arabian world think not only about relationship between East and West, but about inner relationship between radical and loyal communities. Spring 1997 issue of SIKSI magazine published a feature which said that the project refutes "Clash of Civilizations" a book by professor of Harward, Samuel Huntington. Mr. Huntington counts nine civilizations: Western, Orthodox, Islamic, Confucian, Buddhist, Japanese, Hindu, African and Latin American. He claims that conflicts are most likely to emerge as alignments of the West against the Rest, and especially the West against Islam. The world according to Mr. Huntington is definitely a worldview from WASP USA. Mika Hannula continues: "Where Mr. Huntington goes
astray and confirms distorted claims, the group breaks them down, calls them into question, and in a rather disquieting way with their strikingly
well-done computer collages illuminates how unbelievable and invalid these prejustices are".
When horrible terror broke out in America our artistic phantasm grotesque of 1996 seemed real and Mr. Huntington appeared to be right, we could feel as artists that became prophets. But now all of us understand that revenge for the events in America would not be the last link in the chain, but the start of the 21st century history when mankind has to solve the problems of coexistence in global world of poor and rich, religious and consumer societies. The project is neither anti-Islamic nor anti-Western, but tries to function as a psychoanalytical therapy in which phobias from both Western and Eastern society are uncovered and work through. In "Islamic project: AES -- The Witnesses of the Future" we tried to reveal the contradictial ethics and aesthetics of our times. We believe that contemporary art does not solve the problems, but it can raise the major questions.

AES group, Moscow 2001