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