 He also attended a school of theatre criticism run by Moscow theatre magazine "Teatr".At the beginning of the 1960s, Zinik became a close friend and associate of the conceptual artist Alexander Melamid.In his early writing, Zinik was influenced by his older friends and mentors, Alexander Asarkan (1930-2004), a mail-artist and theatre critic; and Pavel Ulitin (1918–1986), who used cut-ups technique in his avant-garde prose.