A bizarre flashmob emerged out of a student prank in the city of Yekaterinburg, according to local media reports
A prank by students of the Russian Ural Federal University (URFU) in the city of Yekaterinburg has ended with police intervention, the local media reported on Monday. The youths erected a four-meter-high snow phallus sculpture in a university courtyard before being ordered to destroy it by law enforcement.
It took the students around four hours to build the giant phallus. However, when they were almost finished a police patrol arrived. The officers demanded either the sculpture be demolished immediately or its creators travel to the police station for further legal proceedings. The students agreed to remove it.
A video that surfaced on social and was then published by several Russian local media outlets show three people trying to destroy the sculpture with shovels and jumping at it in rather futile attempts to tear it down, although they eventually succeeded, according to media reports.
The incident became the latest episode of a bizarre flashmob that has engulfed the Urals city this month. It started with some URFU students erecting a similar – although reportedly smaller – sculpture near a different university building on October 31.
The idea appeared to be catching on as similar sculptures – big and small – soon appeared in various city districts, mostly near student campuses or buildings belonging to the city’s universities and colleges. In some cases, the city’s utility services had to use a bulldozer to remove them.
The issue has drawn the attention of the local authorities, with the city’s deputy mayor, Aleksey Bubnov, branding it a “provocation.”
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“If [these sculptures] offend anyone, then it is an administrative offense,” Bubnov told the local media earlier in November, calling on the police and civil society to stand up to those behind the pranks. He also called on city residents to send photos of the sculptures to the authorities so that they could be removed.
A group of Yekaterinburg residents also created a petition on Change.org, demanding an end to what they called the “pseudo-art” flashmob supposedly damaging the image of the city.
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