e-flux journal

Art without Death: Conversations on Contents

5 Introduction

9 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time

41 Elena Shaposhnikova and Arseny Zhilyaev Art without Death

57 Anton Vidokle and Arseny Zhilyaev Factories of

73 Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle Chaos and

93 Boris Groys and Arseny Zhilyaev Contemporary Art Is the Theology of the Museum

109 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts

133 Bart De Baere, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Esther Zonsheim Wahlverwandtschaft in denying its or projecting it onto other labor of living comes in overcoming this loss—not destruction or death, as we be in time, and the victims. Our families have all been the victims of right or wrong sides of history, without victors and a different kind of altogether, modernity beyond itself? And reanimate those worlds. It would project the ravages not of vanguardist reforms but of time conserve and preserve previous lifeworlds against much so that its forward arrow actually sought to been developed which was even more radical—so relation to death? of wealth, but of its wholesale reformatting of life in victims, not only of modernity’s great redistribution pity for oneself—we have all lost? What if we are all veneer of triumphalism and pity—pity for others, nity are also paying the price? What if, behind the own conditions. But what if the heroes of moder whose victimhood disallows ever reimagining their tories were usurped, who can only traffic in death, their job is to give life to those poor souls whose his- phalism can be the only entry to the modern. And they have lesson that learned the important trium- can nevermodernity be allowed to waver in this, for all, progress always comes at a price. The heroes of bank to believe all of it had to be for the best. enough energy in their bodies and money in the forward-thinking and empowered individuals with state infrastructure and decent industry produce the centers of power remain places where healthy that theyimportant remain so. that It is important of are modernity always somewhere far away. It is indigenous lifeworlds destroyed by the steamroller For those who still benefit from colonial wealth, the But what if another kind of had modernity Introduction

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5 e-flux journal Art without Death: Conversations on Russian Cosmism 6 responded to the animating capacities of money for understanding how policing structures have liberal era, the biopolitical frame has been crucial it, and as a technique of governance. In the neo- in terms of the limits and allowances surrounding mainly with the administration concerned of life famously called biopolitics. However, Foucault was redistribute vital forces resembles what Foucault and . rial form, in this world, with all their memories is, resurrected not as souls in heaven, but in mate- life using means of advanced technology—that minal status. The dead must be brought back to for the sick extends to curing the dead of their ter obligation to use reason and knowledge to care and progenitor of Russian cosmism—our ethical nineteenth-century librarian, Orthodox philosopher, According to the teachings of Nikolai Fedorov— understood asachange inahuman’s material state. ent in spite of having exited the body, death can be Similar to understanding the soul as pres- always continuously pay. is the debt we already carry, and the one we must exists, the force that animates time itself: life. This to redistribute the only really precious resource that mechanism of the great equalizer—death—in order for its mission could only be to intervene into the couldmodernity not be a polite or deferential one, lifeworlds of history, not replace them. But such a ress would then be to care for and preserve the and in the homes of the colonies. The task of prog- gious shrines and family cemeteries, on the streets institutions of colonial capitals, in the walls of reli- each of our bodies, embedded in the banks and continents. The ravages of are modernity inside The of the Common Task’s call to First, death must be understood differently.

- of Russian cosmism and biocosmism in light of its ers seeks to address the contemporary relevance interviews and conversations and think with artists origins of the . This book of the 1917 , even giving rise to the ideas under their own brand of biocosmism before and Marxist thinkers who incorporated Fedorov’s behind a generation of young revolutionary anarchist how it actually directly influenced the thinking techno-utopian . It can be difficult to grasp diabolical strainstion or certain of Silicon Valley embrace of that exist only in science fic- in its mystical and eccentric in its our planet could eventually live. mals, and all other previously living substance on where all resurrected generations of , ani- the territory life of and infinite immortal resources, even advocating the conquest of outer space as wildly imaginative in his emancipatory ambition, Foucault’s political realism, however, Fedorov was be understood as a denial of that . In contrast to dictatorial strongmen, from Duterte to Trump, can biopolitical , then perhaps the embrace of in a new of light a late as part stage of Foucauldian ment. Curiously, if this mode of being is emerging that celebrate a history of conquest and achieve- culture, even (and especially) within nation-states ture—by suffering and the loss or denial of trative machinations, and is often defined by cul be reduced to the laws of the state or its adminis- historical subjects. Historical subjectivity cannot citizens or economic subjects is not the same as for thought and action. But the substance of life for governance and relative autonomy over one’s own laws and limits through varying degrees of self- and capital, by installing methods of internalizing Today, Fedorov’s vision may appear arcane

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7 e-flux journal Art without Death: Conversations on Russian Cosmism 8 into life. but that would register them and invite them back wanted was not the one that would erase all losses, petrator and victim. And perhaps the progress we members were perpetrators, victims, or both per power of right or dominion. Perhaps our own family and sovereignty without need for any other earthly the cosmos, and to ourselves that gives us strength cannot be named—a deep relation to the world, to ister the pain of losing something much larger that these memorializing mechanisms still fail to reg- ister those losses and render them searchable, but grand narratives to soothe the pain of loss, to reg- names have been given to ideological or historical communist revolutions, and capitalist wars. Many ourselves, lost to colonialism, industrialization, appeared indigenous of as parts apocalypticism of contemporary realist imaginaries. tial—but in some sense equally encompassing— when placed alongside the politically inconsequen- so historically and politically influential, especially anthropocentric strain of thinking could have been ing and imaginative, unapologetically humanist and lection of exchanges asks how such an encompass- historical and temporal politics. As a whole, the col tuses, weird materialisms, extinction narratives, and guard, as well as on today’s art-historical appara- influence on the Russian and political van- artistic —Brian Kuan Wood Today, many of us can remember the dis- - - This conversation appeared in Production of Time Cosmic Catwalk and the Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle e-flux journal, no. 82 (May 2017).

9 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 10 tific means. This becomes the central point of his fixed, cured, and overcome by technological, scien - design. Like a disease, death is something to be death is not natural and is more like a flaw in our losopher, Nikolai Fedorov. Fedorov believed that nineteenth century by a little-known Russian phi- ent view on history, on the past, developed in the conquers and kills all. Yet there is a very differ It’s hard to argue with this sublime spectacle: time ruins and dust. History is a graveyard, a genocide. in the end, cities and empires collapse and become destruction, failure. Everyone dies, all projects fail sees as he looks backward is a pile of rubble: death, the Angel of History. For Benjamin, what the angel Benjamin’s passage on Paul Klee’s Anton Vidokle of History” —, “Theses on the Philosophy call progress. before himgrows sky-high. This stormiswhatwe which hisback isturned, whiletherubble-heap drives himirresistibly intothefuture, towards that theAngel cannolonger closethem. The storm Paradise, ithascaughthiswingsand issostrong has beensmashed. Butastormisblowing from to awaken thedeadand piecetogether what his feet. Hewould like topausefor amoment piles rubble ontopof rubble and hurlsitbefore sees onesinglecatastrophe, which unceasingly we seetheappearance of achain of events, he look. Hisfaceisturnedtowards thepast. Where stretched. This ishow theAngel of Historymust his mouthstands openand hiswingsareout- which heisstaring at. Hiseyes areopened wide, an angel moving backwards, awayfromsomething A paintingby Kleecalled Angelus Novus depicts I have been thinking about Angelus Novus— -

It is a conglomerate consisting of and German entity of the 1930s, which financed the Nazi regime. form. Take Deutsche Bank. It is not the Aryanized the same form, obviously, but in a different, sneaky potential is that it keeps repeating anyways. Not in more general reason for my skepticism of the past’s Nazis don’t just continue trying to kill everyone? be reanimated? 1943? How do we guarantee the But then the next batch, at which point would they one would bring them back to? Say, maybe 1932? killed is alive too. That’s a plus. But what is the point let in their heads? Okay, let’s imagine everyone they resuscitated? Would they walk around with a bul ones as it stands. Nazis are brought back to life. There are enough new for me to imagine a scenario in which all the old Hito Steyerl in fact a field full of amazing potential. and knowledge. What appears to be a graveyard is in this world, with all their subjectivities, memories, back, not as souls in heaven, but in material form, finished and everyone and everything will come and the past is a field full of potential: nothing is them back to life. From this point of view history to rescue them from the disease of death, to bring the necessary knowledge, science, and technology obligation to use our faculty of reason to develop but merely wounded or ill, and we have an ethical reviving them. For him the dead are not truly dead gone until we have exhausted every possibility of felt that we cannot consider anyone really dead or and materialimmortality resurrection. Fedorov and politics for a single goal of achieving physical tion of social relations, productive forces, economy, philosophy of the Common Task: a total reorganiza- Probably these are technicalities. But the As a German personAs a German it’s a bit hard

Also, at what point would they be -

11 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 12 is strong, smooth, and brutal. Let’s keep trying. tic. There is too much past around these days and it forgive me for being uncharacteristically pessimis- either. It’s been depleted and sucked dry. You have to Maybe as such they are alive anyway. would be a collective body, not individuals anymore. the grave. After all, these were her comrades. They anymore, but all mixed up with the other guys in one tried to reanimate her, she wouldn’t be “herself” revived. How often can a person get “killed”? If any- second death—because the civil war itself has been already killed her twenty years ago. So this is her my friend’s grave in Turkish Kurdistan. They had to think about this as the Turkish bombarded army wins. And this enemy hasn’t stopped winning.” I had “Even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he collapsing futures toward a fragmented past. and jaded are a sign that the storm is blowing from the grave. All these old people trying to look young toward the womb—or their assumed origins—not driving people back into the past. People are driven has been depleted of resources and hope and it is past. Today the storm is blowing from a future that I think that the storm is no longer coming from the had remained in the past. As for Benjamin’s angel: been reincarnated—even imperfectly—and instead ferently. I would very much prefer it if they hadn’t rearticulated in the present at all—not even dif- point of view none of these entities needed to be First” slogan that it was in the 1940s. But from my “America First” slogan is not the same “America fascist entity either.ously is not a 1930s Trump’s money. It financed the Trump campaign, which obvi- American banks plus Goldman Sachs and Qatari On the other hand, the future offers no refuge Benjamin also wrote something else. He said: AV such a restructuring would result in a society in Technologically, scientifically, and economically, and resurrectionimmortality can become possible. has to take place before a project of universal ties, certainly a significant social restructuring feeling is totally beyond redemption? nobody with a capacity for thought, memory, and was not a monster all of his life. In this way, perhaps pull the trigger, because even a person as evil as him mander had a nervous breakdown and could not the executions. The guard writes that the com - in detail in the diary of a camp guard who witnessed shoot her and broke down. This is described day of the execution he could not bring himself to rassed him previously. But for some reason on the because she was defiant and had publicly embar mander of the camp wanted to kill her personally, she was caught and sentenced to be shot. The com- to help her husband escape. married to one of the leading cosmist poets and tried Markon in a labor camp in the early 1930s. She was account of the execution of Eugenia Yaroslavsky- ing document I came across recently, an eyewitness a murderer.but no one is born There is a really amaz- conditions overone can become under certain time, several reasons for this. curator. It’s either everybody or nobody. There are ent generations do not have the right to be such a this nature cannot be curated selectively, and pres- even the monsters, because a universal project of viction that nobody can be left behind in death, not appealing. Yet I think I understand Fedorov’s con- absurd, and a more selective resurrection could be Hun, or other mass murderers revived does sound

At first glance, having Hitler, Stalin, Second, and to your point about technicali- First, nobody is evil from birth. This is what 1 The attempt failed, and

Attila the -

13 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 14 gized past of that despots all sorts and fascists ways, but there are two kinds of pasts: a mytholo- entering the present and the future in damaging students who was sick with malaria. himself when he exchanged blood with one of his tion. Ironically or otherwise, he accidentally killed up throughout the U.S.S.R., for the entire popula- but as a plan for rejuvenating blood banks to be set to do precisely this, not as a commercial venture set up an institute in Moscow sive treatment to the very rich. In the mid-1920s cial clinic in California offering this very expen- the technique is effective and there is a commer re­ of blood transfusion from teenagers to keep himself Interestingly, Peter Thiel is already using some type alive at the expense of enslaving everyone else. elite billionaires of immortal staying perpetually up with the worst kind of oppression of all: an in the current state of society, then we may end becomes possible muchtal sooner, formif a certain of biological longevity or digi- couldn’t kill anyone even if you wanted to. or war. Besides, everyone will be immortal, so you gender differences: nothing that can produce strife vate property, no hierarchies, probably no ethnic or etary union. There will be no competition, no pri- will need to be pooled together in a kind of a plan- the resources of the planet and all productive forces be a society of separate nation-states because all as resurrectionenormous for all. It would also not to generate the resources necessary for a task as because themarket economyisnot efficient enough It would certainly not be a capitalist society, simply which historical villains could not do any damage. juvenated physically and mentally. Apparently, I understand what you say about the past On the other hand, what is worrisome is that - ant family would be housed on a planet that would so that, for example, a resurrected Parthian peas- reconstructions, essentially planetary museums, in setting up these other planets as period-type population. Arseny thinks that the solution may be simply not big enough to sustain such an enormous ets to house resurrected people, is because Earth and the settlement of other plan- about this aspect of things, but he does advocate tiation, and so forth. Fedorov does not write much communication, no gender distinction or differen- have different bodies, entirely different ways of from what we accept as the human form: they may resurrection may have already changed significantly forth. The evolved humans capable of technological it stressful, alienating, incomprehensible, and so time if they are brought back in 2037: they may find AD 1275 or 634 BC is going to have a rather difficult in museology. Zhilyaev a number of times, because of his interest ing. It’s something I’ve spoken about with Arseny the resurrected people will enter—this is interest- past lives. how manages to fully recuperate the totality of him it’s clearly in the future, but a future that some- Fedorov does not locate utopia in the past. For begin to know what really happened. Interestingly, past would have no chance because we would with their knowledge and memories, the mythical if all these people suddenly started coming back and suffering as much as joy, hope, and love. Now, before us, with all their pain, disappointment, and the actual past—the lives of people that came fantasy designed to capitalize on today’s fears; happened—a fabricated, whitewashed, curated tend to evoke, the golden age that never really Your question as to which historical period 2 Obviously, someone who lived in

15 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 16 resurrected partly as household appliances: so which something goes wrong and people are being rary Russian writer that is influenced by cosmism, in There is a funny story short by Sorokin, a contempo- and the future ones—could coexist and interact. these different forms of humans—the older ones our physical form. So it is an open question, how all really shocked, because we are all so attached to else. I think if I was resurrected as algae, I would be sunlight without the need to consume anything plankton that can derive sufficient energy from other organisms to stay alive—like some types of become self-feeding, so as not to kill and consume thinkers from this circle suggest that we should while we cannot regrow or a leg. an arm Yet other able to regenerate leaves, branches, and so forth, to plant life as a better form, because plants are low temperatures. Some of the other ideas point and live in space without oxygen and at extremely least to make the body strong enough to survive that we do need to evolve our bodies, at the very Fedorov and other cosmists, there are indications human or the contemporary one? In the writings of what body exactly is being resurrected—the old human form will continue evolving and changing, as well. The real question may be that, since the will be sufficiently advanced to repair their bodies who died hundreds and thousands of years ago, it is going to be a technology to resurrect individuals to bring people back in such a shape, and if there and other traumas—clearly it would be very cruel these museum planets. thought that perhaps we are already living on one of gence. When Arseny was talking about this, I had a whole thing can be managed by intelli artificial - reproduce the reality of their original time. And the Regarding bodies with bullet holes, diseases, everything can be drawn from this paragraph: and this harks back to Peter Thiel, eventually. I think aroundmythology AI, but also accelerationist lore— of this intersects in interesting ways with current HS true is a cult of ancestors. some reverence for the dead. Fedorov writes that a that only indigenous cultures at this point keep everyone who died on the way gets nothing. It seems tion that achieves communism will benefit from it; is indifferent to the dead because only the genera- as a mythical proof of sacrifice. Communism also do not produce or consume. Fascism only uses them talism does not care about the dead because they go home, to their families and stuff. Financial capi- was thinking that they would probably just want to and they would attack us like cinematic zombies. I maybe it would make the dead rise from their graves wall around us, because if we this device turned on, jokingly suggested that we should also build a big in the cemetery in , one of the workers zombies in movies. the dead are now largely pathetic comical figures: cities, where most of the living reside. Culturally, remains are removed further and further from the or vote and so they are not political subjects. Their in our society: they don’t communicate, consume, already unsafe because they don’t have any rights wins there will be no resurrection. The dead are enemy wins, for me this means that if the enemy also a possibility … of a coffeemaker stuck in their new body. That is human but they’vesomeone is part got a fragment I think we are getting to a place where a lot When we were filming the large ionizer dish As for Benjamin’s fears for the dead if the

17 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 18 for the rich get the headlines, but the breakdown implemented: cryogenics and blood transfusions robot race. resurrect rich of people high-net-worth as some sort capitalism’s tendency to exterminate humans and end of the spectrum, to just accelerate extreme it will not humans, harm or, on the alt-right/fascist have been suggested: first, to program the AGI so timing or containment. dangerous creatures and there are questions of humans. Like the dead, AGIs are seen as potentially and override human control and even extinguish ligence (AGI). People think AGI could be dangerous to contain the dangers general of artificial intel and tension. tion, which will further exacerbate social inequality with aPeter Thiel–style vampire oligarchic resurrec- process is accelerated or bypassed, one will end up do it without further hardship for everyone. If this only at this point has one created the conditions to ward canoneproceed to resurrect thedeadbecause First one has to produce this society, and only after contained by a noncapitalist, nonnational society? So, the dangers emanating from the dead will be anyone even if you wanted to. everyone so you will be immortal couldn’t kill nothing that can produce strife or war. Besides, chies, probably no ethnic or gender differences: be no competition, no private property, no hierar together in a kind of a planetary union. There will and all productive forces will need to be pooled states because all the resources of the planet It would also not be a society of separate nation- These eugenicist ideas are already being Within the AGI debate, several “solutions” This intersects with thought experiments 3 - - - just getting rid of humankind by way of eugenic of technologicalsome sort solution—for example, ate in order to bypass it, thinking that there will be mized in AGI mythology. People try to hastily acceler most privileged parts). exterminating humankind or only preserving its by extension, forth—the dead cannot be resurrected safely (or, society—create noncapitalist abundance and so ing first and foremost. Because if we don’t out sort of this are clear: the focus needs to be on the liv limit the impact on the living. The consequences swing, with few attempts being made to contain or garchic and neoreactionary eugenics are in full turers, cooks, and cleaners are the first cosmists. domestic activities. Caretakers, parents, nurses, nur connection to reproductive labor and so-called cosmist activity, then one has to recognize its strong the reproduction and maintenance of life is already a female control: in labs, via genetic engineering, etc. If it spawns fantasies of reproduction wrested from women’s rights on the one hand, and, on the other, religious, economic, legal, and scientific. This affects over life’s production and reproduction by any means: social battleground. Reactionaries try to grab control gendered technology—and control over this is a nance and reproduction of life is of course a very been underway for some time. accelerationistimportant policy, and it has already destroying social health care programs is the most to pass on their genes. Negating, preventing, or lives of millions, the possibility for curtailing them general—for poor people is literally shortening the of health care in particular—and sustenance in The vital part of sorting out society of is mini- sorting The vital part In the present reactionary backlash, oli- There is another aspect to this: the mainte-

AGI cannot be implemented without - - -

19 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 20 power would only lead away from the possibility of violent insurrection and a militant attempt to seize from the start, acknowledged very early on that a Bogdanov for example, who was very close to Lenin dictions internally. people, Certain like Alexander to it. undermine But there were also deep contra- ist countries wanted it to fail and actively worked ent reasons. Most importantly, all the major capital AV advanced technology in this respect? called reproductive activities) potentially the more sary social technology? Is cooking (or other so- would need to be developed to create the neces- At what point did the technology fail? Which parts ism was supposed to create these foundations. As far as I understand it, the project of Soviet social washing machines. on the same planet as techno-eugenicists without problem—for example, whether to resurrect Nazis lies. If this is solved, then everything else is a minor is where the most urgent technological challenge again, hardware outpaced software. I think that this already enabled a much more equitable society, but ple thought that the industrial revolution would have deploying technology in the narrow sense. Most peo- intractable problem which has never been solved by hardware but the programming. This indeed is an and collaborate with one another. It’s not about the tion or machines but with getting people to agree this technology has nothing to do with computa- This is an immense technological challenge and then they should be able to create it for themselves. dant society? If the living want to offer it to the dead, challenge resides: How to create a just and abun- selection. But this is where the real technological

Soviet failed for a number of differ My question is: Why didn’t it happen already? - - - everything else—a cybernetic control system. tion and distribution of goods, food, energy, and the entire country, which would regulate all produc- nected network of computers distributed across embarked on the construction of a vast intercon- A Soviet computer scientist, Viktor Glushkov, who made mistakes and had ulterior motives. while economic decisions were made by humans the U.S.S.R. that they would not reach communism clear to some scientists and political leaders in goods, for privilege. it became By the late 1950s tion: desire for power over others, desire for material also a cosmist … not by forcing or killing people. Of course he was cipation, education, cultural means, and so forth— one could arrive at communism only through eman- politics and social organization, whereas for him was like cheating, a kind of violent acceleration of cisely over the use of force, because he felt that it as it wasthe Bolshevik just party being formed pre- socialism and communism. He stepped away from it was a pretty close approximation. By the 1970s intelligenceartificial in the contemporary sense, the Soviet economy. While this was not precisely ciples of cybernetics to enable computers to run Glushkovthat. tried to apply prin- So in the 1960s developed cybernetics and systems theory and all Weiner,John von Neumann and Norbert who later lated into and came to German the attention of interaction between systems. scientific knowledge into very basic principles of of sciences that would organize and synthesize all This was Bogdanov’s attempt to develop a science Alexander Bogdanov around 1918, called netics are apparently inspired by a book written by Interestingly, some of the core principles of cyber Yet another side of this was human corrup­ Tektology was trans- Tektology 4

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21 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 22 humans from killing one another and making each the revived? society? Because if the living can’t do it, how could bystart creating an abundant, peaceful, nonviolent present—or even into the future—one needs to HS the soul goes to heaven after death. Perhaps this is not very different from believing that the body and transfer it into a different machine. they think they can separate consciousness from track as the Catholic Church was in the sense that form are of digital immortality probably as off- humanists and all these people hoping for some is why I think that a lot of contemporary post- in his1909Materialism and Empiro-criticism), which Empiriomonism, 1904–6—which Lenin attacked the main philosophical book by Bogdanov is titled ing with the rest of this conversation, naturally numbers, etc. It’s a kind of a (and in keep- be it interactions of atoms or neurons or pixels or all phenomena are a result of material interactions, ways of thinking—is that everything is matter and both cosmism and socialism are deeply materialist ment in is literally connected to this network. is still in use apparently. So probably your- apart utilized to regulate Soviet gas and oil pipelines and nomic system. In the end this computer system was that would have crashed an already flawed eco- into communism, or resulted in a complete disaster if it would have propelled the U.S.S.R. and the world agreements within the politburo. I don’t really know at the last moment because political dis- of certain nearly ready to be implemented, but was canceled the system was apparently fully developed and was The problem to solve first is how to keep So can we agree that to bring this into the The main principle of —and

“fuck,” “die”? We see others being slaughtered but lar song lyrics with teenagers you found—“hell,” affection, reproduce, etc. What were the most popu - as we get some time to live, feed, play a little, feel animals: we are okay with being slaughtered as long to death. We do not question it. We are like farm reflection, and yet we are for resigned the most part ing matter, humans are capable type of of a certain other living matter on this planet. Unlike other liv grammed to die on a genetic level, as is almost all how powerful the death drive is. Our bodies are pro- of human natureas part has something to do with the Left and the Right have of accepted sort killing game a model like that? society on this? What kind of script do we need to what binds them together is love. Can one model disagreements among them. They are and immortal pendently, yet there is a total union and there are no divine entities are not identical and can act inde- my head around. From what I understand, the three God is a really weird concept that is difficult to get Holy Ghost. I am not a Christian, so for me the Triune a society is the divine family: the Father, Son, and AV social dynamics? and game playing? How does one reprogram with a wide range of possible outcomes? Cooking what this is about? How about social simulations of alienatingsort device that could help understand does one need to look into? Are social physics a what if one does not want to accept either? What it is a result of unfortunate circumstances. So, Right says that it is human nature and the Left says situation are very dull and unsatisfactory: the other miserable. The explanations we get for this

I also feel that maybe the reason why both What Fedorov suggests as a model for such

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23 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 24 suddenly it comes out from the pages of old books inconceivable as a viable political system. Then manuscripts preserved in monasteries, and it was of democracy existed solely as passages in obscure succeed eventually. For many centuries the notion that time but this does not mean that this will not into the Soviet constitution. They did not succeed at before them. Biocosmists wanted to inscribe this ent right of all living and everyone who came resurrection will one day be recognized as an inher and that the right to rejuvenation, immortality, and it is possible that our views on death will change by the elites, by the oligarchs, by fascists. I think imperfect and is being challenged and subverted less in most become the places, even if it is line. The idea of representative politics has more or if this movement is more a zigzag than a straight rights are gradually moving toward equality, even took many thousands of years. Gender and racial less. Humans largely overcame slavery, even if this views of the world, but I think it is not entirely hope- what I am working on. in other words, by cultural means. I guess this is tion, through literature, cinema, art, and so forth— though education, through ideas, through conversa- lion against death. This cannot be done by force, but and fought collectively. There needs to be a rebel natural, where it is an enemy that has to be resisted ment toward a worldview within which death is not how natural. of the package—painfulpart and tragic, but some- ity of death, killing can be accepted as just another in the end. I think if one is resigned to the inevitabil seems unavoidable and because nobody escapes it rationalize this as something natural because it It takes a really long time to change people’s So maybe the first step has to be a move- - - - this kind of process—the consequences are clear. form of “terror management.” There is no mystery in actually other people “deserve” to die instead as a basically “invest” in a scheme that tells them that shielded against the risk of premature death. They population that was until now comparatively ratesof rising mortality for a segment of the white argue that the current US government is a result surplus people and try to kill them off. Many people fascist ones tend to identify surplus energy with has been “managed” by a lot of different economies: erosity or gluttony, a violent spending spree. cosmic circulation of energy, it can be a form of gen- the fascist community. Death has a function in the foundation for of community, all sorts including people have. It can be a gift, a release of energy, a the only form of currency many otherwise deprived tality. But death in the form of giving your life is also be managed using capital as a kind of fake immor capital” (or “Capital is death”). gift, and mortality, pioneered by Bataille and others. contradictory ideas about the economy, excess, the HS play out over time. organization. It is very strange ideas how certain and is embraced as the dominant model of social endlessly without choking—like Midas, who could tion: on not giving, on being able to accumulate site form of “hero” whose appeal relies on reten- in circulation. Interestingly, there is also the oppo- “generosity,” leading to some form of immortality that they are about giving your own life as an act of Economies of heroism work differently in The energy and especially the fear of death This can have many implications: death can Let’s with this proposition: start “Death is This takes us into a tangle of complex and

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25 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 26 channel death drives. of so-calledpart terror management, a means to extent, in biennials and so on. thus becomes a Art tions, dinners, philanthropy, and, to a much lesser diture. of excess A part capital is “wasted” in auc- “worthless” the art, the higher the gratuitous expen- in recent decades. The worse or rather the more why contemporary markets art have been so inflated “wasted.” According to this, we can make sense of which surplus energy/capital is redistributed and fashion, sex, and so on are different schemes by excess energy is managed. world,The art design, the death of others is not the only process by which already being immortal. even digest gold—or not even needing to eat, thus Ten percent of post-internet go artists bro-fascist, ism, where a similar fracturing to is starting happen. as we speak within contemporary forms of surreal again went to the library. This is happening today and others toward fascism, supporting and others Surrealists went toward communism supporting cultural debate; historically, we know that some Surrealism are present once again in the of 1930s and meme magic. In a way, a lot of the ingredients a new emphasis on ritual, sorcery, transgression, just one very scattered example. We can add to this digital surrealism of recent years (“data as dada”) is gence of surrealist and animist tendencies. The of concerns thatartistic time, especially a resur but is also accompanied by many of the aesthetic/ time when fascist forces are winning out once more, the time of European fascism—not only comes at a discussions—which originally culminated around in material economies. But the return of these anti-death. It shows the different functions of death Essentially, this is neither pro-death nor But according to Bataille, death and especially

- - my favorite books of his. plus energy, the sun, death, and so forth—is one of —Bataille’s last book, where he speaks about sur AV first means to fight new fascisms. tion: the fight against death. Today, to fight death of others). than spendingone’s death (or more likely, thedeaths the luxury lies in being able to spend one’s life rather baroque formlessness of death spending. Perhaps regarding its own form, but also in relation to the relation to a bare life that is deprived of any choice ing spree of death. To me it feels luxurious, both in form—the contrary of the entropy and spend- is lived . It is life plus, very essentially, Because it is actually about lived experience. It and persecution by Stalinism. Why is it relevant? account about both the struggle against fascism Homage toCatalonia, which is a sober documentary that I think is valid today is George Orwell’s 1938 many synth violins and too much death metal. theory, in Baudrillard, etc. It’s way overproduced. Too tion in—let’s call it nihilist and postmodern media of Bataille’s ideas and style, nor by their continua - attracted by the bombastic and baroque aspects bring into the picture? and circulation. What kinds of new elements do they tion and another historical push for globalization that are new in relation to the 1930s: digital disrup- the rest go into ceramics, fermentation, fairs. and art ian ethnoculturalist), 20 percent go communist, and another 10 percent go

So, basically, to apply this back to our ques- A very different document from these times And very clearly I have never been very much However, I would like to focus on the aspects This is interesting. nouvelle gauche (left identitar The Accursed Share (1949) - -

27 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 28 final obliteration. For decades it was able to exist like the Alamo—a kind of a last stand before its I am not sure that fascism is winning. To me it looks and sexism, because they kill and keep killing. But with a fight against militarism, fascism, racism, swamp of dead bodies and misery. being consumed ourselves, from being stuck in this selves from the cycle of consuming the dead and the fight against death is a fight to liberate our leaves behind. It is a horrific vision. So for Fedorov, rounded and entrapped in death and the remains it drink, breathe our ancestors, we are completely sur has died. We live in these remains, we literally eat, people, animals, plants—all the living matter that etery where everything is made up of the remains of organic layer, the soil, as a kind of cem- enormous the in which we live and the planet’s different: he sees the entire surface of our planet, energy nonviolently. as one of the wayssees art to expend this surplus energy: violence, war, sexuality, and so forth. Bataille that require expenditures of huge amounts of needs to be spent through extravagant activities below Earth’s surface. The surplus of this energy fossil fuels, which are essentially sunlight trapped this living substance, into coal, oil, gas—all these plant life, animal life, and, through the death of all safely. Energy in the form of sunlight is converted to abundance of energy, more than we can actually use ous in the sense that an incredible it gives Earth of the sun on our planet. The sun is super gener by celestial, cosmic forces, specifically the effect is very much shaped and controlled to some extent worldview of cosmists in the sense that life on Earth Certainly, the fight against death has to start Fedorov’s conception is similar and slightly It’s the one where he comes very close to the - -

- the geosphere. similar to the relationship that the biosphere has to and communication whose relationship to life will be will be transformed by an emerging sphere of reason profoundly optimistic theoryof how life ontheplanet up through the middle of the Second World War. It’s a notion of the in the decades before and Vladimir Vernadsky, a geologist who developed the One of the scientists in the cosmist movement was mer, then this could be a step in the right direction. amplify thelatter andreduce dependenceonthefor digital disruption you mention could be directed to of the living—labor, reason, love. I think maybe if the something else which seems to be fully in the realm etc.—these are all products of death. But there is thing we accumulate—food, energy, raw material, mothers … So, how to really move forward? cemetery eating the remains of our fathers and But it will be defeated, and then we are still in the and will take time and a lot of fighting to defeat. dismiss this or be too optimistic, because it’s nasty Right. It’s entirely desperate. I don’t want to just many of the other figures that have emerged on the real plan or program. It’s very similar to Trump and tive slogans that circulate widely but contain no provocawhose main talent is coming up with short - on whose behalf he claims to speak, someone completely removed from contact with the “people” solitary, pathetic figure Wilders is—someone Wilders. It’s really interesting what an isolated, view in amateur, buffoon-like. I was just reading an inter chance. But what has come out is kind of ridiculous, largely because it feels it will not have another in a veiled way and now it has come out in the open, is like an optimistic version of Anthropocene theory. Death is capital quite literally, because every- Der Spiegel with the older brother of Geert 5 Arseny says that noospheric theory

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29 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 30 You get a lot of cockroaches, which actually in terms race—say, storm troopers with tentacles for faces. That’s what happens if you try to breed a superior up. I think it’s a great metaphor for techno-fascism. gerous levels. The climate was completely fucked the oligarch space colony. Oxygen dropped to dan- the species that out to turned be best adapted to that it all failed and that cockroaches and ants were oxygen? Sustenance? Social bonds? The answer is a test for . Could they produce atmosphere. It was an oligarch-funded experiment, sustaining, including the production of food and greenhouse sphere and had to be completely self- experiment for a while. People were locked into a me: Steve Bannon actually managed the Biosphere 2 topics—there is an example that keeps fascinating against fascism needs to take place. only that this is just another arena where the fight different forms of mediated consciousness, but to say that it is not necessary to keep striving for the exploitation of affect, etc. This is definitely not idly being expanded: divisiveness, fragmentation, in social media, whose fascist potentials are rap- observe an impoverished form of the noosphere sciences and also of digital communication. We can its creation of updated fascist versions of the life besides its traditional infatuation with death—is major mutations. One of the most important— everything changing, fascism too is undergoing religious, commercial, military. And just as we see nizational formations behind these movements: implode or just go away. There are very strong orga- So unfortunately, the autocrats will not somehow the people recently killed in Turkey’s new civil war. does not inhibit an autocrat’s efficiency. Look at all HS Speaking of the biosphere—and changing Buffoons kill. Being ridiculous unfortunately

from simply exercising the sovereign right to kill its view that political power makes a biopolitical turn to the deceased. It is a commonly acknowledged the current normative expectations and extend even form of biopolitics because its goals are ahead of even resurrection. Furthermore, it is a radicalized with the administration of life, rejuvenation, and AV combat financialized techno-eugenics. this episode is an interesting precedent for how to from human guinea pigs for bankers. So was her ethical duty to protect her fellow scientists threatened by Bannon. She more or less said that it even broken. The woman that led the revolt was later by some renegade scientists. Other windows were then. point the windows At a certain were opened against Bannonandtheoxygen banheimposedback ever faster. There seems to have been an uprising country they are running. The climate is changing have already started to seal the windows of the eugenics advocated by alt-right forces. These guys foundations, minus the extreme capital techno- look at how to actually get it right, right from the are not encouraging. So one needs to go back and outcome, but since I am not a cockroach, the results ants won.) The humans just divided and fell out; of course the colony solidarity, which made them very resilient. social tactics—they practiced a form of cross- cockroaches. The ants especially had really great isolationist master race. cockroaches in a huge filtered bubble—the perfect the most superior species on Earth. You actually get of Darwinist survival abilities are probably one of

It would be easy to keep gloating over this (Perhaps I need to apologize to the ants and Cosmism is biopolitics because it is concerned Cosmism isbiopoliticsbecause itisconcerned

31 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 32 common houseplants that are able to derive energy of satellites and other orbiting space craft. Or even are able to live even in outer space on the surfaces cule tardigrades, or “water bears,” who apparently reverses its life cycle perpetually, or those minis- simply don’t die—like jellyfish the immortal that sibilities in this respect. There are organisms that life-forms on our planet suggest interesting pos- already have, only made better and stronger. Other armored body, but the biological organic body we mals. I do not mean some type of a Terminator-type does not require shelter at all—like most other ani- is to make the body stronger in such a way that it to build a lot of housing, but a more advanced way Similarly, one way to solve is housing shortages to not require food, to be self-feeding somehow. a lot of food, but another way is to adapt the body cal bodies. One way to prevent hunger is to produce more to modifications of do with certain our biologi- of raw materials, carbon energy, and so forth, and of stuffall sorts that is reliant on the exploitation the industrial production of devices, machines, and accomplish all these goals may have less to do with and so forth—basically everyone. to extend this to the dead: parents and grandparents to guarantee perpetual life for its members and then The next logical step would appear to be for society upon which the consent to be governed is founded. and death to the administration of biological life, mous shift—from the administration of punishment water and air, and so forth. This has been an enor cal care, securing food supplies, maintaining clean their life by administering health services and medi- for the health and welfare of their citizens, to extend life, to governments accepting the obligation to care subjects withoutbeingresponsible for theirhealthor The technological development necessary to - completely different happens, which is the likeliest What happens if neither happens or something be delayed or not happen. A fascinating aporia. even survival of humankind, so that would maybe ably not necessarily or include the immortality would have its own agenda. And that would prob- hand, if superintelligence was developed first, it delayed or even not happen at all. On the other tality was first, superintelligence would be much knowledge unlikely. So most probably, if immor the current exponential increase in technical cause a major cultural slowdown that would make people with old or even ancient worldviews would force a major slowing down of research. All these ligence or the resurrection of the dead? on one factor: What will we achieve first, superintel interesting. He said that future developments hinge they die anyway because of accidents.) already,immortal due to some genetic features, but surface. (He also said that lobsters are technically extensions of some kind to provide that kind of synthesize sufficient energy. They would need leaf not have enough body surface to be able to photo­ two very interesting comments. work Yesterday I talked to TSC, the protagonist from my HS of possibilities. like sci-fi, but our capacity for thought enables a lot abilities to our basic biology. I realize all this sounds pletely impossible to adopt some of their amazing code with all this life and I do not think it is com- from photosynthesis. We share some of the genetic Factory of theSun (2015), about this. He had Because the resurrection of everyone would The other point he made was also extremely First, he argued that humans actually do I completely agree about the biopolitics part. - -

33 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 34 AV smash the locked windows? outcome? Will the ants take over? Or will someone about the production of time. came across is in a small book by Valerian Muravyov on how. One possible reference to a method that I to bring people back to life. He does not elaborate and repair artifacts, but to radicalize this technology conservation, and restoration to not just maintain museums using their techniques for preservation, wouldnology work. Fedorov writes a lot about exactly how cosmists imagined resurrection tech- reached the contemporary level of reflection. field of computer science is and that it has not yet kind of medieval thinking that shows how young the a lot of confusion. Boris Groys thinks that this is a kinds of divisions between matter and spirit create the body, enter other things, and so forth. These an immaterial soul that can exist separately from the religious idea that there is a material body and programmed into various types of hardware, like thought, as immaterial phenomena that can be ing about intelligence, consciousness, memory, and because many of these ideas are based on think algorithms, etc. But this may be on the wrong track through the use of something like interpellation ness into computers and resurrecting the dead also obsessed with transferring human conscious- humanists are very with this. concerned They are ing. I think the singularity people and various post- also enable one to fly. extensions. Wings could work very nicely and could of photosynthesis or growing some type of folding face area: either by designing a more efficient form

We can imagine solutions for the lack of sur I have not found detailed descriptions of The question of superintelligence is interest - 6

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- a love in the dome triangle among participants experiment in 1991 also ended badly—apparently attempt to live in the Biosphere in 1994. The original separate museum planets are a must! than Socrates or and so many others … but that we are now, or will be in the future, smarter seems discriminatory and presumptuous to think bringing back people with “ancient” thinking. It where. He stays more on the scientific side of things. the production of unrelated actions or objects else- utterances, or mixtures of ingredients can result in that the reproduction sounds, of certain movements, ferentiating this from shamanism, which and production of time. He also makes a point of dif- “evaporated” in the past. He sees this as the control reation of more complex systems, even humans who recreation conditions can result of certain in the rec- the same and this seems to imply to him that a regarded as the same water. He suggests that it is by the condensation of vaporized water can be perature is lowered. He wonders if water produced and can condense into water again when the tem - ture of 99.98°C is reached. It transforms into vapor for example, water always boils when the tempera - recur when the same conditions are reconstructed: ally), he talks about how events and phenomena about the production of time (which he means liter researcher with the ministry of labor. In his treatise of which he was released and given a job as a where they had an overnight discussion, as a result Apparently Leon Trotsky visited him in his jail cell, by Bolsheviks and sentenced to be executed. he was immediately arrested ofand was the February part Revolution. After the I think Bannon was brought in on the second Oh, and I would not worry so much about Muravyov was a theorist, a social democrat,

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35 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 36 HS just as miserable though. American scientists in the 1990s. I am sure it was up with much more discomfort than probably most Union were a bit more patient and used to putting have been successful because people in the Soviet with control over complex systems and so on. It may because of the space program and the obsession lier Soviet experiment like this, but it makes sense be stopped. I did not know that there was an ear resulted in a stabbing and the experiment had to living conditions inside than outside … side, in the future some species might have better effects. And interestingly, as climates change out- one could create micro-atmospheres and study the didn’t need to rely on computer simulations, since mostly about the effects of climate change. One universities, very interesting research took place, premises of Biosphere were taken over by different will have on the cosmosphere. from AI labs, and which unforeseen side effects this One wonders what kind of “thing” will “escape” fectly sealed, this effect would still have escaped. noosphere. Even if the sphere would have been per Biosphere as an unforeseen side effect in the wider Apprentice. So this was basically bred in the sion. Certainly Trump is nothing without from Berlusconi’s emergence out of trash televi - is modeled on similar aesthetic forms, starting one could say that a lot of contemporary politics which crew members were drawn, etc.). Probably casts and the entertainment component, including live broad- based on Biosphere 2 (which already had a large Brother The other interesting detail is that But also, most people agree that after the , arguably the first reality show,TV was Theatre of All Possibilities, from Celebrity Big Big - -

politics that understands life as anchored in material as all the other strata of universal matter? A bio- cosmos? Connected, transindividual minds, as well other elements and different spheres of the of the universe/cosmos, not only humans but also that everyone is an equal and constituent part per se. them is tied to any specific human cultural identity the universe and cosmism to the cosmos. Neither of dubious and Duginist offspring. tied to the Eurasian movement, with its ideologically described as a very culturally specific set of ideas, on. as deficient, incomplete, Western-biased, and so term “universalism” has been attacked many times course everyone is different. ered equal, period, even though we know that of brackets necessary. Everyone should be consid- inventor—and call for a reverse this term—with full respect to its original nitely isn’t. a progressive strategy for some(or not), now itdefi in the strategic essentialism may have’80s been leftist identity politics.takeover of 1980s So, while groups pretend to be oppressed minorities in a separatism, and extreme religion. All of these of different kinds in the form of men’s rights, white politics have been appropriated by reactionaries the brackets have come off and minority identity identity politics in brackets. Now, in many places in a colonial or postcolonial context, of like sort an a tactical politics of identity for oppressed people Gayatri Spivak’s idea of “strategic essentialism,”

Actually, as far as I know cosmism too has been How to create a set of positions that claims So, let’s confront this. Universalism refers to I think that right now one might need to In the last few days I was reminded of strategic

And of course, the universalism, no

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37 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 38 for everybody, including, if need be, winged ones. and their shared minds. It is egalitarian and allows recreate and reprogram the living, their relations for all these activities) is a high-tech enterprise to fashion is a pleonasm. Fashion (as a shortcut term bodily transformation or not. So, basically, cosmist pleasurable and sustainable; whether this involves form human existence into something way more etc., could of be a huge another part push to trans- fashion, dressmaking, food preparation, childcare, form. Humans are a by-product of cooking. size of our present species. It precedes our current provided the calories needed to sustain the brain created the human body as we know it. Cooking in human history that literally changed—or really build on. So these are the high-end technologies we need to domesticated, feminized, relegated to slaves, etc. love, obviously. labor of death of the soldier and banker. The labor of creating society and relations, in contrast to the and rejuvenates humanity. It is the labor of life, of whole range of reproductive labor, which recreates ally form of it. some part I mean, for example, the not mean genetics, even though it could eventu- experiments in reproductive activities. By this I do strategic universalism) as consisting of advanced nects all the dots! We have to think of cosmism (or the seventeenth century! This is wonderful! It con- cosmetique meaning order or adornment, becomes the French relates to women’s fashion? The Greek problems? ploy cosmism as an answer to current pressing currently understood as such. Is this a way to rede- and energetic processes that go beyond what is By the way, did you know that “cosmos” also

Actually cooking is the only technology , which finally becomes cosmetics in

And of course these activities were kosmos,

And

HS going to be stations, and on other planets. So, is your next film tal, transsexual, on Earth, on spaceships, on space solar, self-feeding, collectively conscious, immor cosmic particles, as minerals, as animated plants, of love, we must resurrect our ancestors: from the biosphere, has. It is life, it is also love. Because thing else humanity, and possibly the whole planet, powerful, existential force—more potent than any - extremely important. It is by far the most potent, holes, like the Nazis did with Nietzsche. Marxism, so they try to borrow something to fill the the gaps in their system, which is no match for and so forth. It seems to me that they are aware of become interested in cosmism, like the Duginists universalism,communism and its particular have partly why some right-wingers, since the fall of this claim after the fall of Constantinople. This is thinks that it inherited to the totality of the universe, to all people. The dox patriarch in Constantinople—a religious claim space. “Universal” was also the title- of the ortho the emphasis is on people rather than just place or universe literally means “populated” or “settled”— rather than cosmism … Also, the Russian word for for this movement could have been harmonism cosmos in opposition to chaos. I guess the name keenly aware of this and constantly referred to the It also means harmony. Fedorov and his circle were AV have elegance! artificial I mean, fuck intelligence artificial when you can

Yessir! What you say about reproductive labor is Yes, “cosmos” means beauty in ancient Greek. Biosphere 3? Biosphere

And it’s going to have a long catwalk! -

39 Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle Cosmic Catwalk and the Production of Time 40 journal, Technology, and ,” 6 to destroy it. of the planet, including the ability relationship over the geomass an extent that it has a controlling biosphere has developed to such sphere and hydrosphere). Yet the distinguished from the atmo- geosphere (the solid earth, as is minuscule compared to the the planet in which life can exist) view, the biosphere of (the part 5 Accelerator.” 4 University Press, 1994), 203. Burchell trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Guattari, 3 e-flux journal, no. 82 (May 2017). Accelerator: Notes for a Film,” Oleksiy Radynski, “The Great Avant-Garde Museology,” and 2 /1/ma11.html. magazines.russ.ru/zvezda/2008 by Irina Flige, i krov’ju …,” published with notes Marcon, “Kljanus’ otomstit’ slovom 1 See Boris Groys, “Art, From a geological point of See Radynski, “The Great Gilles Deleuze and Félix Zhilyaev,Arseny See “Tracing See Evgeniya Yaroslavskaya- no. 82 (May 2017). (New York:Columbia What IsPhilosophy?, Zvezda , 2008, http:// e-flux

e-flux Architecture, on January 6, 2017. A similar conversation appeared in Death without Art Elena Shaposhnikova and Arseny Zhilyaev Superhumanity, a project by

41 Elena Shaposhnikova and Arseny Zhilyaev Art without Death 42 design and have not overcome death. ably say no, because we have not yet perfected our to Fedorov or any other cosmist, they would prob- erations became possible. and the resurrectionimmortality of all previous gen- genders and sexual reproduction would end once transsexual in the sense that the need for distinct sun like plants do, and also become androgynous or exist without oxygen, derive energy directly from the such a way that it can regenerate limbs and organs, a metabolic reconstruction of our biological body in struction of society and human relations, as well as throughout the universe. nization of other planets, and human expansion advocated the development of space travel, colo- tal population will be insufficient, cosmists to resurrected this enormous support and immor- dead ancestors to life. Since the capacity of Earth ourselvesimmortal and also to return all of our ther, using our faculty of reason so as to become complete, and that our main task is to evolve fur lutionary development of humanity is far from tionaries, and many others—believed that the evo- scientists, medical doctors, activists, revolu- losophers, novelists, poets, avant-garde artists, cosmists—whose ranks included numerous phi- state of human . biocosmists, and their ideas about the unfinished of the writings of Nikolai Fedorov and other Russian question “Are We Human?”—I immediately thought Biennial) told me the subject of their show—the Mark Wigley (the curators of the 3rd Istanbul Design Elena Shaposhnikova If the question “Are we human?” were posed Biocosmists advocated a complete recon- with NikolaiStarting Fedorov, Russian When Beatriz Colomina and

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rather the opposite: we should consciously plan that we should preserve human superstition, but “real will” and a universal voice. This doesn’t mean becomes possible to reach what could be called thinking animals, with all our limitations, that it the nineteenth century. agents, they are being as naive as those activists of voice to oppressed plants or try to act as nonhuman It seems to me that today when artists try to give them and ended up helping the police arrest them. attempts failed completely. Peasants didn’t trust as members of theordinary, oppressed classes. Their ary ideas of liberation, which meant to live and work to “go to the people” in order to promote revolution- Leaders of the People’s Will advised their members wanted to act on behalf of peasants and workers. and were extremely well educated, yet nevertheless whom came from affluent, aristocratic backgrounds Volya Russian revolutionary activists from the case, again from the nineteenth century, involving not to mention endeavor. There is an interesting gether. But in my mind, this is a really tricky claim, ment insists that we try to avoid being human alto- thinking and operating. In other words, the argu- better for us to find altogether nonhuman ways of tions onto the rest of universe, and thus claim it is want to violently impose their identity and limita- define humans as inherently insane creatures who described by Marx.” One popular argument is to terms, and we don’t live under capitalism as it was possible to say: “No, we are not human in Fedorov’s cases, if we speak in nineteenth-century terms it is or rather under something more horrible. In both lar to asking whether we still live under capitalism, Arseny Zhilyaev (People’s Will) movement, the vast majority of I think that it is only within our nature as Asking this question today is simi- Narodnaya Narodnaya

43 Elena Shaposhnikova and Arseny Zhilyaev Art without Death 44 all of eternity is rather tedious. Fedorov, however, of a zombified painting artist and how we imagine it. On the one hand, an image thing depends on what we mean by life, artistic won’t report you to the police! be as futile as it seems. At least plants and animals speaking on behalf of unhappy plants may not a trick,TV but in any case talking to plants or even but I had never seen this before. Perhaps it was just abilities that some shamans are supposed to have, mesmerizing to watch. I’ve heard about similar of birds, cats, dogs, and so forth. It was absolutely of animals:sorts a rabbit, a lizard, different types animals to sleep merely by talking to them. All which a five-year-old Chinese girl was able to put ES tic life without death or aging at all? of humanity. Can you personally imagine your- artis scious event, death is one of the most crucial points want to be immortal? Because for me, as a con- nonhuman condition in art, is: Do you personally cosmism, or one who has an interest in reaching a for the contemporary who works artist with Russian about our transformations. personal, or more properly human ways of speaking ity, I’d like to go back to Fedorov and develop more cultivation and regulation. Because of this real humans probably look like houseplants in need of state intelligence services and corporations, we this transition, for overcoming? this permanent To question here is who will take responsibility for first thinkers to advocate for this. For me, the main limitations of our species. Fedorov was one of the to overcome the natural, social, sexual, and other

But to answer your question: I think every- I was recently watching a programTV in For me one of the most intriguing questions for crapstractions for -

and intelligent. teaching it our ability to be conscious, self-aware, somehow learn from the longevity of stone while than our bodies. So maybe it’s not impossible to arguably the entire universe—are not so different different. Inthissenseplanets, stars, galaxies—and the speed at which these processes occur is vastly to the same cycle of organization and decay, even if sume. Ultimately all matter, living or inert, is subject organic and inorganic matter than we tend to pre - fact that there is a lot less between should begin working on it immediately. spective, becomes a necessity and we immortality that take? Probably an eternity … So from that per the real work of art. How long would a work like cosmos reason, and that precisely this activity is it was our evolutionary responsibility to teach the So Fedorov, despite being devoutly Orthodox, felt and is very of much that a part tradition. geographical region from Japan to Scandinavia, is a kind of shamanistic sensibility to the entire from, but its not entirely unique to Fedorov. There sure where this desire to animate the world comes matter that does not already possess it. I am not and that this capacity has to be shared with all the feel, to understand, to think and to be conscious, nificant quality of human beings is our capacity to Fedorov believed that the most unusual and sig- makes up the universe to perceive, to feel, to think. vast, animistic project of teaching the matter that the spiritualization of inanimate matter: a kind of that the ultimate work is to of art work toward life he outlines in his writings, seems to suggest objects. The kind of eschatology, the horizon of simply the production of aesthetic or conceptual had a much more complex conception than of art I was reading something recently about the -

45 Elena Shaposhnikova and Arseny Zhilyaev Art without Death 46 ering the potential for further transformations. weaknesses, and ailments, while of course consid- their extant material forms, with all their flaws, emphasized the resurrection of human beings in to be overcome … And on the other hand, Fedorov versal processes, really pathetic things that need pretense, naivety, incommensurability with uni- beings with all their limits: weakness, aggression, the one hand, you can feel the misery of human the problematic points in Fedorov’s thought. On me, the supreme position of our species is one of isms capable of acting on a universal level. For ultimately be transformed into immaterial organ- time, according to Tsiolkovsky, humans should this sense death is a joyous event. But at the same are overjoyed, ecstatic to be released, and that in mos. He suggested that these liberated particles body releases atoms and molecules into the cos- moment of death, when the decomposition of our about an eternal liberation that at starts the tures” and matter itself. He wrote, for example, of a radical materialistic unity of crea- “thinking , there is a strong intuition In Russian cosmism, and especially in the ideas of the universe and that it shouldn’t be overvalued. AZ totally fantastical. materialist delirium that is both ultrarational and rock and hallucinating on peyote; it’s a kind of flight and all that. So this is not like having a pet of wars, and actually results in manned space through the Communist Revolution and a number ward at the end of the , continues a very different sensibility—one that comes for we have to keep in mind that we are speaking of I agree with you about the role of humans in I guess this all may sound a bit , but

-

big period room within a universe-scale museum. ing in this system now, is just and that one the earth tial thought was that we actually may already be liv When you described this type of organization, my ini- would be happy. Or it could be a total nightmare. be managed by intelligence artificial and everyone incomprehensible to them. The whole thing could people’s sensibilities are not invaded by sensibilities so forth … a population management system where the early capitalist period, a Stone Age planet, and the twelfth century, another planet for people from a planet populated by generations of people from set up like period rooms in museums; there could be gested in Moscow—that various planets could be this problem could be exactly what you recently sug- self-feeding, and so forth …? I think one solution to of human who may be more plantlike, genderless, from Venice, for example, react to a future generation more evolved peers. How would a medieval butcher ing the older resurrected generations and their later, ES new, resurrected lives? those older humans be able to find purpose in their cies, with immaterial or transformed bodies? Will meeting people from a much more advanced spe- after all, how would old fashioned people feel after tired of life and who may not want to return? And rect criminals like Hitler, or people who were simply problem with Fedorov’s vision: Should we resur death is better than being alive.” Here is one more is nothing good in resurrection for all. Sometimes idea of resurrecting my father?” he asked. “There was really resistant to them. “Why should I like the mism and resurrection friend, with an artist who

I once discussed the ideas of Russian cos- Clearly we can imagine many problems in mix - - -

47 Elena Shaposhnikova and Arseny Zhilyaev Art without Death 48 project. speaks about Russian cosmism as a curatorial one wants to be an object in a museum. Boris Groys cover entire planets in outer space. But not every- their epochs in totalizing installations that can or museological vision; to assemble people within instead. I see one possible answer being an artistic interested in revitalizing stars with black holes why would it need humans? Maybe it’s much more ligence in charge of universal life development, but AZ to only happen to others. It seems that the body and see images of it, but it’s something that seems to be a rather abstract concept; you read about it ation, or have lost someone you loved, death seems unless you are very ill, in jured, live in a violent situ- this was simply an age thing: when you are young, positive and desirable. At first I thought that maybe perceived as something the idea of very immortality prised by this reaction. Personally, I have always end or at best infinite boredom. I was really sur that for meant suffering without them immortality found the idea of living forever abhorrent. It seems many told of the participants me that in fact, they tional group of young in Beirut. artists In private, Philosophy of theCommon Task with an interna- ago I organized a lengthy seminar around Fedorov’s ity, particularly from younger people. A few years rejection or even hostility to the idea of immortal ES spective, don’t you? have a more controversial relation to such a per his own resurrection by future generations. But you discussion with you, Boris said that he is not against forcing you to be a curator. I remember that once in time, you will have to make choices, effectively

Yes, it’s possible to intel imagine an artificial Sometimes I also run into degree a certain of 1 If you can’t resurrect everyone at the same - - - - makes me think about the general fear of socialism. story about students who don’t accept immortality the interpretation of Fedorov’s legacy. And your AZ his thinking. gious orthodoxy, mad quality in I do sense a certain ness. Actually, for all Fedorov’s and reli- most likely it would register as some type of mad- imagine things being really different. I suspect that along these lines. I wonder what it would take to of power, heroism, betrayal, revenge, or something the plot invariably defaults to essentialist conflicts society without money and with intergalactic travel, So while it’s easy to imagine and represent life in a the problems of our current society into the future. level of the technological imaginary, while projecting istic books and films: they most often stay on the scenarios. You can see this in many popular futur edies, and inequities, and project this into future current life conditions and all its problems, trag- seems to me that most of us tend to sublimate our apparently the most imaginative of society). part It because weimportant are talking about artists— insufficiency of imagination (which is particularly is not biological or psychological, but a certain strong in our psyche. from now. In any case, the death drive is incredibly the death of the sun four and a half billion years bodies can already faintly register the energy from ing us from its future end. bang, it is possible that there are signals approach - tion from of the universe, the birth from the big has written elsewhere, since we can detect radia- settingstarts in. On the other hand, as Boris Groys does not really feel until entropy its own mortality I agree that we have a crucial point here for But maybe the more interesting side of this 2 In this sense, maybe our -

49 Elena Shaposhnikova and Arseny Zhilyaev Art without Death 50 offered by capitalism. ited plurality and playful creativity, wider than those with something of else—with opportunities unlim- Marx, or even Lenin, socialism as a goal is associated started with Stalin in the 1930s. But according to spectrum, unattractive cultural production, etc., that with its unification of everyday life, narrow political Soviet project, or The majority of people associate this term with the tion itself is not a solution for Dostoyevsky. If we metaphysical guarantee or obligation. So resurrec- ditional love for our creator that doesn’t require any sions to resurrection, but also identifies an uncon- Dostoyevsky does not just depict possible conclu- was a very bad, controversial, even criminal person. sion with his rational, atheist brother. The father In the novel the son kills his father after a discus- resurrecting my father if he was not a good person?” I mentioned earlier: “Why should I like the idea of situation that was problematic for friend the artist without God. Dostoyevsky tried to depict the same that ancestors have an inherent value in a world Karamazov, in order to test the Fedorovian notion wrote one of his most famous novels, strongly influenced by Nikolai Fedorov, and even in this context is Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who was really it’s more the other way around. talism with bright life and possible death, whereas associate with real immortality socialism, and capi- ate injustices. For some reason it seems that people collect personal data to make money and perpetu- We have intelligence services and corporations that . What do we have in the twenty-first century? all as the last necessary step for establishing social museum producing eternal life and resurrection for concept of immortality, his idea of the universal Another important thinkerAnother important who appeared real socialism, and then mainly 3 Now consider Fedorov’s The Brothers Russian cosmism, we are almost beyond death and sexual desire and death. of In the case of the art still have our bodies and their main properties, like after resolving all social contradictions, we would gender, national identity, race, etc.), and that even tradictions (the inequality between rich and poor, traditional is based on traumas art and social con- continue to exist in communist society, because thought that traditional media would artistic radical Soviet Constructivists and Productivists formed into of re-creation. the art Even the most ity, as Fedorov did, and creativity art will be trans- additional pieces of a social order based on equal career artist. of an immortal market than the unstable, perpetually unfinished legacy is probably more profitable for a speculative effective as franchises. On the other, a dead artist’s according to auction price indexes, would be very ular twentieth-century from artists the top 100 list, On the one hand, it is easy to imagine how most pop- pieces for money as newspaper serials). or journal typical novelist of that time, often wrote his master nineteenth century (and actually Dostoyevsky, like a is comparable with the popularity of the novel in the title or series. The popularity of or movie serials TV something new than to continue on with the same today, too, where it is more economically risky to try We have that exact situation in the film industry brand names live on after the death of their eponym. famous into artists brands, like in fashion when is that we can imagine the final transformation of that lead to? The first thing that comes to my mind in the contemporary scene. art What scenario could consequences of real and resurrection immortality ful task for contemporary to artists test the possible take one step back, I think that it can be a very fruit- If we consider immortality and resurrectionIf we considerimmortality as - -

51 Elena Shaposhnikova and Arseny Zhilyaev Art without Death 52 of their physical bodies. So in this way the artistic ing presence in society extends beyond the death alive now as they have ever been, because their liv one could say that Duchamp or Dostoyevsky are as ably also inhabit two different bodies. In this sense (The King is dead, long live the King!), prob artists - a political one that is indestructible and immortal a physical body that can age, get sick, and die, and immortal. Similar to kings who are said to have both ES limits? Do we need limits at all? attempts to overcome physical or mental human what do you think about contemporary artistic ing space to reflect on the medium. In this respect, to view it critically, while at the same time open- distance to observe a universal installation art and black holes. In the context of art, this gives enough and we may be able to access alternative ones via the big bang, is only one possible constellation, we inhabit exist. Our world, which appeared with to contemporary science, universes outside the one as they are by the universe, themselves?). According change the physical laws of artworks, determined universe?) and institutional critique (how can we pieces the size of the universe from within the same like that of the spectator (how can we observe art would definitely raise new questions on old topics, potentialis enormous or curator. as an artist This medium—from the big bang to immortality—there cific material or medium. When life is your artistic final goal is to of art give voice to yourself as a spe- hybridity. This is a very Greenbergian notion: that the previous lives into new constellations; a radical nect or redesign billions of independent pieces of society be? I guess its final goal would be to recon- physical sexual desire. But then what would this

I think artists areI think artists already at least potentially - will be used to resurrect people. actually building an elaborate museum archive that but at a later time it may out that turn they were ing data to fight terrorism or control a population, States. So the NSA may think that they are collect- that later around turned and attacked the United but instead they helped to create militant Islamism Union by funding religious schools in Afghanistan, doing. The CIAthought they were resisting theSoviet realize the long-term ramifications of what they are intelligence and security agencies, often don’t really sinister. But I also think oppressive structures, like sible through a vast surveillance mechanism sounds perspective, or resurrection immortality made pos- commerce to government surveillance. From this dataan enormous collector used for anything from everything—is the internet, which also doubles as universal museum—a museum that preserves more inclusive version of the museums we have now. take place, is simply a radicalized, expanded, and universal museum, where he thinks resurrection will forms the contents of most museums. Fedorov’s tectural remnants, and so on. Inevitably this is what drawings and paintings, decorative objects, archi- artifacts: works of literature, poems, sculptures, know about the past is given to us through preserved any other philosopher I know. Almost everything we he refers to so much in his writing—moreart than reasons is so central that art to his thinking and why for life through immortal is precisely art one of the that Fedorov had in mind. But I think the potential potential of overcoming death. not succeed most of the time, but always holds the mental, or temporal limits; it is an attempt that does process is always an attempt to overcome physical, As you say, the closest thing we have to a This is not exactly the kind of immortality

53 Elena Shaposhnikova and Arseny Zhilyaev Art without Death 54 a perfect, integrated for artwork Fedorov. plete. Incidentally, church architecture is a model for point requiredcertain several generations to com- could be found in church architecture, which at a scope. A historical precedent for something like this be like, not merely in appearance but in conceptual that requires several hundred years to make would take. I would be very curious to imagine what a work of complexity of the projects people tend to under at most. To some extent this must affect the degree working on something for more than five or ten years very short; it is difficult for me personally to imagine this makes the duration of any project one artistic to produce a new and different type of art. Of course ernism, and at this stage every decade is expected tional acceleration is very much in art rooted in mod- in 1912. In a way this makes sense, because genera- in Cologne,Sonderbund—of art modern , tell, exhibition—the it began with an important when the practice started, and as far as he could of research on the history of exhibitions if he knew all the printed matter and gets archived. pressure to include this information, which goes into to keep the birthday out, but there is usually a lot of of next artists birth to their names. I always ask them that so many institutions insist art on listing dates of ing all this information. In this sense, it’s interesting comforting that someone is gathering and preserv of Jesus. While I do not share their beliefs, it is kind of ever lived to Christianity in anticipation of the return they can baptize dead people and convert all who dates,birth etc., because their religion suggest that mountain in Utah with more than two billion names, archive of personal records located deep inside a information collection project. They have built a huge Recently I asked a friend who has done a lot churchThe Mormon also performs a vast - - and us in it, into the future.” of time reversal (T) symmetry, is forcing the universe According to her research, “T violation, or a violation Vaccaro that speculates about the origin of time. theory proposed by Australian scientist Joan specificity of our universal setting. There is a new But then I think that time is just the effect of the on one single throughout artwork their entire life. conservative, but I would say that only artists work interventions, for better or worse. Maybe it is too or corpus that fixes the field of possible artistic a similar way. They have a straight conceptual frame as I know, Elena, your projects can be interpreted in deeper optic than the average spectator has. As far logical line between them, but it needs a particular, another. Of course retrospectively you can draw a language; they are completely different from one Each new project has its own visual and conceptual torical scenarios by way of the viewer’s experience. work to test possible political, aesthetic, and his- that focuses on making experimental models that such a long project. I consider my practice as one AZ icate to project, an art what would you do? If scientists can make such models, why do we of even the most radical anti-narrative experiments. consciously or unconsciously limits the production ous forms or even history art itself, a demand that for the radical independence of from artwork previ- would achieve the historical avant-garde’s demand one time. If you history, impose this model on art you ner as space; each thing can only be in one place at In such a world, time can be used in the same man- which means absent of temporal flow, of coherence. violation should be symmetrical in space and time, It is almost impossible for me, too, to imagine Arseny, if you had a few hundred years to ded- 4 A universe without this

55 Elena Shaposhnikova and Arseny Zhilyaev Art without Death 56 ES limited time to do nothing? the time in the universe to do everything, or to have a jects can be too long. What do you prefer: to have all this case even life of the short contemporary pro art ­ possibility that we could just get tired and give up. In humanity to go onward in its development, and the between existing inboth aspaceandtimethat forces to that in space. a sublime feeling of monumentality in time, similar ceptual paintings, in which one gets the sense of project,the artistic there are Roman Opałka’s con- tion; or, with regard of to part time as an important in the case of Fedorov’s project of total preserva- our life and our world can have. This is what we have formation of matter; all possible scenarios that possible directions of time and its potential trans- exact opposite of this: the decision to preserve all known world of art? limit our imaginationas artists to the historically Architecture (September 22, 2016). Productive Narcissism,” 2 2015). no. 65—“Supercommunity” The Russian Case,” 1

Boris Groys, “Self-Design, or Boris Groys, “Cosmic Anxiety: I prefer without death … art But I feel that there is a serious tension Another answer to the same problem is the e-flux journal, e-flux (May 9, 3 2016). Society A 472, no. 2185 (January Space,” Asymmetry between Time and 4 Prometheus Books, 1998), 53. (1845) (Amherst,Ideology NY: Karl Marx, Joan A. Vaccaro,A. Joan “Quantum Proceedings of theRoyal The German The German

has since been completed. (March 2016). The film “Factories of Resurrection” appeared in Resurrection of Factories Anton Vidokle and Arseny Zhilyaev Immortality and Resurrection for All(2017) e-flux journal, no. 71

57 Anton Vidokle and Arseny Zhilyaev Factories of Resurrection 58 invention, so I looked it up. same thing. I realized that it was not just Groys’s when he started talking about the Then a few years ago I was doing an interview with nately I do not speak German, so I didn’t pursue it. published a book on this in Germany, but unfortu- sounded like a science-fiction novel. He said he had blood transfusions to suspend aging, and so on. It real: the resurrection of the dead on spaceships, he had invented it. The story was too good to be it sounded so macabre and vampiric that I thought around the time of the revolution. His description of told me about a very strange movement in Russia Anton Vidokle How did you to start work with this subject? initial encounter with this topic was rather unusual. across as strange or even exotic. I know that your the problematic of Russian cosmism, may come Arseny Zhilyaev you develop the work? You chose to shoot the film in Sun (2015)? Where did the idea come from? How did film AZ which has always interested me. about the motives and thoughts of the avant-garde, which seemed to explain inexplicable certain things and Soviet culture that I knew nothing about, and that this is actually a very massive layer of Russian topic since the late seventies. I slowly discovered by George Young, who has been researching this Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and HisFollowers (2012) Also useful was intensely beautiful that it hooked me immediately. Philosophy of theCommon Task, which was so The Communist Revolution WasCaused by the What I found was Fedorov’s book Can you tell me more about the origins of your The RussianCosmists: The Esoteric About ten years ago, Boris Groys Your recent films, which deal with The Architecturally, it is dominated by vast coal mines, prison and one ofenormous the first spaceports. city of Houston, in Texas, the city was both an surrounding Karaganda. of like Sort the American launching from Baikonur and landing in the steppe the Soviet space program, with most of the rockets the better-known . It was also the key site of work of labor camps known as , similar to allowed to return to Moscow or other central cities. released from camps and prisons, but who were not lated primarily by political prisoners who were was exiled to Karaganda, which was a city popu- ideas of , a biophysicist who Was Causedby theSunis based on the work and tions and ideas in depth. subsequent films addressing specific manifesta- tagonists. In a sense it’s a kind of introduction, with collage of ideas from the movement’s diverse pro- (2014), dealt with the general ethos of cosmism: a about half an hour each. The first film, tics, social organization, and so forth. science and technology, medicine, philosophy, poli- literature, poetry, theater, film, architecture, design, different dimensions to this movement, from to art the topic is just too vast, because there are so many ized that a single feature film would be impossible: research, then filming and editing material, I real length film about cosmism. But as I started doing AV to . ture and Muslim cemeteries, looks very weird even The landscape, with its Soviet industrial architec- Karaganda, Kazakhstan, a rather unusual location.

Kazakhstan was the site of a very large net- The second film, So I decided to make a series of shorter films, At first, my plan was to make one feature- The CommunistRevolution This Is Cosmos This IsCosmos -

59 Anton Vidokle and Arseny Zhilyaev Factories of Resurrection 60 artificial palm trees,artificial to blend better with the decor to devices disguised as painted porcelain vases or from things that look like Constructivist sculptures ties and later. Many types have been produced: if I ever actually saw these devices. gen. But it’s a very vague memory: I’m not really sure about the benefits of negatively charged ions of oxy- ments. From that time, I also remember something disgusting, but it’s supposed to cure of ail all sorts petrified honey. You drink it with hot milk. It tastes tar-like substance from Altai, which apparently is my health—for example, my mother used to try various remedies to improve like these ionizer lamps. I was sickly as a child and AV used for treatment? tic ones that exist. What will happen to it? Will it be device in the film is probably one of the few authen- designed by Chizhevsky was supposed to have. The seem to have the therapeutic effect that the device ionizers available. However, I heard that they do not though there are many other commercial types of are not produced in their classical, Soviet version, schools always had them installed. These days they to remember that even in the nineties, hospitals and lamps when you were growing up in Moscow? I seem AZ materials. It’s a very unusual place. tional styles, albeit all made from cheap, Soviet-era soleum structures quoting various Islamic tradi- they look like miniature cities full of manifold mau- architectural style that I have not seen elsewhere: mous cemeteries which evolved a very particular most of which are now shut down, as well as enor

Ionizer lamps were very popular in the seven- I have some vague memories of something Did you ever come across Chizhevsky’s ionizer mumiyo, which is a black, - - Earth will become the GardenEarth of Eden again: people been extinct for many millennia will return, and that the climate will improve and plants that have the effects of human activity. As a result, he thinks toEarth the climate conditions that existed before amount of carbon in the atmosphere and return According to him, this would drastically reduce the very economical and consume hardly any energy. producing factories on the planet, because they are these devices will be adopted by all carbon- into the atmosphere. bon from polluted air and to release pure oxygen Apparently, this works to remove nearly all the car air purification machines for factory chimneys. original designs and modified them to be used as It’s a small experimental factory, which developed who has worked with these devices, in Karaganda. actually found the only industrial manufacturer ourselves. By incredible luck or coincidence we is hard to find. So for the film we had to build one tion function, but the type Chizhevsky invented Many Japanese air conditioners include an ioniza- reproduce this process indoors. Chizhevsky basically created a device that would of on the ionosphere solar particles of our planet. forests. This phenomenon is related to the effect this happens on mountaintops, by the sea, and in venating effects in humans and animals. In nature, tion of blood, which is supposed to produce reju- also cleans the air. This, in turn, helps the circula- of in the air from particles positive to negative. It creates an electric field, which changes the charge nal designs. Basically, it’s a fairly simple device that they were not made according to Chizhevsky’s origi- of your home. Most of these do not work, because The owner of the company is hoping that Ionizers are rather common these days. -

61 Anton Vidokle and Arseny Zhilyaev Factories of Resurrection 62 context of your projects. relationship to and to utility in art materialism in the sun dovetails with this thinking. Tell me about your by the purely material, physical influence of the enon—as an event that could have been produced communist revolution—a complex social phenom- influence—material . The notion of the an entirely different level: through a direct, material seems to me that you are trying to approach this on or relational in one way or another. It socially engaged practices, which refer to politics Most often, brings to utility in art mind certain genuinely prefer utility over aesthesis or poesis. power of art. At the same time I feel as though you tests the limits of our belief in the transformative aspect of art, simultaneously sincere and critical, egies of hypnosis. This emphasis on the utilitarian the effect of color on the human body, and use strat - ments associated with psychotherapy. You speak of AZ by now. monument. Hopefully it has been reinstalled there of alternative monument to Chizhevsky: a functional of science and technology. They wanted it as a kind tery. After filming we donated it to the local museum which we then installed and tested at a local ceme- Chizhevsky and built a giant version of this lamp, place in the capital city, Astana, next year. include this device in the World’s Fair that will take president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nayarbayev, to food, and so forth. So he is lobbying the office of the grow plentiful fruit and we will not have to work for around naked, prehistoric plants and trees will will not need clothing anymore and we will all walk In the first two you films in this trilogy use ele- He was excited we were making a film about interesting projects was research into blood psychiatrist, by education—and one of his most death. Alexander Bogdanov was also a doctor—a health, cure ailments, and in this way postpone in areas that could immediately improve human cist and not a physician, did most of his research someone like Chizhevsky, who was really a physi- immediately deployed. Its not an accident that the sense of the prolongation of life, could be most cine as a field where the project of immortality, in art. It’s interesting that many cosmists saw medi- urrection for all, by any means possible, including impossibly difficult project and res of immortality - the desire to contribute directly and literally to the to the ethos behind cosmism, which is basically this tendency simplistic. be completely autonomous from society, I do find here. While I do not believe should that or could art utility or usefulness are very instrumental terms officials, sponsors, patrons, and politicians, and rationalize or justify their activities to government to stance adopt that a certain makes it easier to slowly forcing organizations art and some artists over the past few years, cuts in cultural funding are or appreciate. What I have been observing is that constituencies, that are difficult to understand to have immediate and direct benefits for their institutions to fund activities that do not appear art, or of a reluctance of some public on the part of insecurity about the elusive nature and value of works are really useful or are merely an expression projects.artistic It still remains to be seen if these of emphasis on the “usefulness” of some types of me that there is a tendency these days to put a lot to be described carefully right now: it seems to AV

With my films I want to come a little bit closer Utility in art is something thatUtility in art probably needs

63 Anton Vidokle and Arseny Zhilyaev Factories of Resurrection 64 break addictions. I try to use a hypnosis script at clinical hypnosis that are commonly employed to body, on your cells and organs. like the film, it can have a positive effect on your therapeutic effect on the viewer. Even if you don’t be calibrated to also produce a prophylactic and screened on an LED screen at some museum, it can So I hope that in the near future, when this film is becoming more affordable and common each year. light source, and the usage of HD LED screens is time, video projectors these days often use an LED tain frequency, accelerates healing. At the same very slowly. They found that red LED light, of a cer conditions of zero gravity, where the body heals looking for a way to heal cuts and abrasions in wounds. They discovered this accidentally, while developed by NASA to speed up the healing of skin screens because of a red-light treatment system of treatment. film can also be used for preventative or other types So basically the structural elements that make up a Sound also appears to have various medical uses. practiced since the time of the ancient Egyptians. in places lacking in sunlight. Color therapy has been about light therapy for children and people who live peutic effect on the human organism. We all know sound, and all of these means can produce a thera- to prolong life. Essentially, film is light, color, and somehow express its central desire, which is simply to transmit its ideas more accurately, I needed to tary about the history of cosmism, and that in order to me that I did not want to make a mere documen- aging and delay death. transfusion, through which he hoped to slow down Similarly, the second film uses elements of In the first film in the series, I used red So whenIwas editingthefirst film, itoccurred - Ilya uncomfortable. hybrid version of humanism, which probably makes totally leaves the project of cosmism, it is a very very much a humanist, and while humanism never reads cosmism entirely. It seems to me that Ilya is these paintings, although I suspect that he mis- the center is filled with a giant white void. I love a thin border around the edges of the canvas, while paintings, where tiny human figures form a kind of He illustrates this idea very literally in some of his this way human existence becomes very marginal. ity to a speck in the vastness of the cosmos, and in Basically, his take on it is that it reduces human- it’s as “evil” as communism, which he despises. a very negative relationship to cosmism; for him a conversation with Kabakov. However, Ilya has AV Do you think of yourself as belonging to it artistically? tell memore aboutyour relationship to thistradition? Actions Group are all present in these films. Can you Groys, and Andrei Monastyrski with Collective school. In one way or another Ilya Kabakov, Boris works by members of the Moscow conceptual AZ as long as possible and by any means possible. nate, cure, heal, improve health, and delay death for to express the desire implicit in cosmism to rejuve - would be charlatanism. But I use these techniques say that the main value of my work is medical. That and other self-destructive behavior. This is not to one of the reasons for drug and alcohol addictions used clinically to alter memory, which appears to be film I plan to use a sound technique that has been addiction to death drive. mortality—the In the next the beginning and the end of the film to break the

In your films there are many references to Well, this project was largely started through

65 Anton Vidokle and Arseny Zhilyaev Factories of Resurrection 66 ments from the Russian government and by Russian interest in the cosmos as evidenced both by state- tanism. On the other hand, there is clearly a renewed mism is synonymous with obscurantism and charla- of Nikolai Fedorov and his followers. For them, cos- the Soviet space program as well as the philosophy mainly from the liberal intelligentsia, regarding heard numerous sarcastic remarks about cosmism, and is now usually used as a derogatory term. I have Subsequently, the label “weak cosmist” went viral, accused rather facetiously of being “weak cosmists.” web journal, the entire editorial team of an independent political cussion of cosmism in Russia. This started when couple of years there has been quite a public dis- AZ although I am not exactly sure what that is. I think I come from something else artistically, the analysis of language and systems, and so forth. is rather hermetic and based on post-, Moscow conceptual tradition in any way. Most of it ists, but I really do not think that I belong to the in the series, with his consent. I admire- these art of Monastyrski’s actions from 1979 in the next film first film, and will actually restage a version of one that some of the ideas did influence him. actually reading Fedorov in the late seventies, and again and this time around he told me that he was But just a couple of months ago, I spoke with him time, he said that it had nothing to do with his work. to ask Andrei about Fedorov and cosmism. At the material, a young named Anastasia artist Ryabova, one of the researchers who was helping me gather ure. When I started working on this project, I asked You may have heard that during the past I refer to both Ilya’s and Andrei’s work in the Andrei Monastyrski is a very different fig- Russian Planet, was fired, having been

there is quite a bit of curiosity. meates Fedorov’s ideas and cosmism in general. So kind of poetry and wild imaginative power that per across the world does not help this. ideological camp, and the current political situation There isn’t really all that much sympathy from either that all things Russian are still secretly communist. of communism, while people on the Right suspect Russia because they think it ruined the possibility where I spend most of my time, leftists dislike of things that are Russian. In and America, Furthermore, there degree is a certain of suspicion of meteorites,sorts monsters, aliens, and so forth. from outer space to destroy and humanity: Earth all popular movies about something horrible coming people view with a bit of fear. Just think of all the this. And the cosmos is also something that most and so forth. So people are often ambivalent about sion against nature, god, the essence of humanity, that the desire for is a sin, immortality a transgres - seems that it’s very ingrained in almost all cultures topics and have always provoked controversy. It and resurrectionImmortality are very ancient disbelief. Like: this story is too strange to be true. dismissive or hostile yet. Just perhaps a bit of AV perceived in a more international context. projects on the cosmos and Russian cosmism are Interstellar Russian phenomenon, as the success of movies like Can’t Live withoutCosmos . I guess this is not only a been nominated for an Oscar this year, is called Russian cartoon of the last few years, which has culture at large. For example, the most successful

But I do feel that many people respond to the I have not encountered anything particularly suggests. I am curious about how your

We We -

67 Anton Vidokle and Arseny Zhilyaev Factories of Resurrection 68 documentary films by Klushantsev. Can you tell me there is a similarity between your films and these than educationalartistic or documentary. I feel problems, which despite the ban still feel more film essays about the cosmos and various scientific ries. But he went on to make more than one hundred was only allowed to make educational documenta- and he was banned from making feature films; he in the U.S.S.R., his international success backfired advanced way. Unfortunately, as was often the case in contemporary cinema, in a more technologically some of the techniques he invented are still used first director to use special effects in cinema, and its original author. Apparently, Klushantsev was the to thePrehistoricPlanet—and without mention of titles—The Planetof PrehistoricWomen and on to become an international hit under different Another one of his films, Stars influenced Stanley Kubrick and George Lucas. space. Many people think that his film directors to make films about the exploration of text of your films. Klushantsev was one of the first mentioning works by Pavel Klushantsev in the con- well as Soviet science-fiction films, I can’t avoid Russian television in the eighties and nineties, as tific questions. On the other hand, having watched complex narrative about theoretical and scien- landscapes shot from a great height) with a rather combine nearly abstract images (for example, audience. And finally, it’s because of the way you the Brechtian sense and the direct address to the of mimetic acting, your use of estrangement in put on research. It’s also because of your rejection of the content of your films, and the emphasis you Firstly, this is because of the collage-like structure Situationist experiments and the French New Wave. AZ Your films about cosmism make me think of Planet of theStorms, went Road tothe Voyage

theoretical or philosophical topic that is difficult to little bit of both. A lot of times, these films address a at the same time they are not fiction. They are a within the documentary or journalistic genre, while interesting for me is that these films do not fall and really interesting to watch. What is particularly or Tarkovsky, but they are remarkably imaginative ema, and they do not compare to Pasolini or Godard really “great” films in the sense of the history of cin- with my work. So I looked them up. None of them are colleaguescertain said that they have similarities Union, and I only discovered them recently because ber seeing them when I was growing up in the Soviet have never been allowed otherwise. imental, expressionistic essay films, which would Sobolev for example, were able to make wildly exper as feature films. filmmakers, So certain like Felix ject to the same kind of scrutiny from the censors this was perceived as a lesser genre, it was not sub- this type of educational material. Perhaps because work at special studios set up for the production of film studios, like Mosfilm or Lenfilm, but were able to tosupport develop their ideas within the feature- filmmakerscertain who could not get or permission films for mass audiences were a kind of a refuge for say about Klushantsev, these scientific/educational highly developed in the U.S.S.R. Similar to what you from the sci-fi genre, which was really embraced and European cinema. These films were a bit different which does not quite have a parallel in American or films,” something unique to the Soviet film industry, the genre that used to be called “scientific-popular AV history of cinema? Who did you learn from? more about who you feel affinity with in terms of the

To be honest, I actually do not really remem- I think the films I make accidentally fall into -

69 Anton Vidokle and Arseny Zhilyaev Factories of Resurrection 70 AZ exhibitions.well within art actually very suitable for the kind of films that work minutes. In this sense, the format of these films is are not feature length, to but short—twenty thirty interesting, complex, abstract ideas. Usually, they film, yet they are narrative and communicate very reduce to the kind of story one needs for a narrative become factories of resurrection. resurrect the past. In this sense, museums should images, but also preserve and recover life itself— would not merely collect and preserve artifacts and museums needed to be radicalized such that they past), but rather cares for the past. He felt that progress (which for him implies an erasure of the insofar as it’s the only place that does not produce the museum is a key institution in society, unique from Fedorov’s essay about museums. For Fedorov, and Resurrection for All, and it is based on passages Tretyakov Gallery. The film will be called Zoology, collection and the modern of the State at the Museum of the Revolution, the Museum of AV museums. Is that true? film in this series in Moscow, and it will be about stand correctly, you are planning to shoot the next

One last question about the future. If I under Yes, the next film will be shot in Moscow, Immortality -

Chaos and Cosmos Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle

73 Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle Chaos and Cosmos 74 transhistorical sensibility. The history of men, in the artworks of Malevich, you always perceive a works of Khlebnikov and Mayakovsky, but also in beginning of the twentieth century. In the poetic pared with the Italian or French vanguard of the all its forms, has a strange barbarian flavor if com- Franco “Bifo”Berardi nineteenth century. relevant now as it may have been at the end of the death. In this sense it strikes me as something as and killing, no hunger, no disease, no aging, and no monious society where there are no more wars organization, politics, and so forth: to build a har throughmos on Earth art, science, poetry, social that followed him, the project was to achieve cos- harmony. For Fedorov and many Russian cosmists cosmos. Like cosmetics, cosmos means beauty and position, obliteration. The opposite of chaos is blur, which is chaos. Chaos is death, war, decom- subjects—turns into an undifferentiated muddy everything—time, space, distinct objects and you describe movement at very high speed, when Work (2009) there is a very beautiful passage where biopolitics. I remember in your book ity, resurrection, social organization—essentially out towhen this turns be more about immortal space travel, and are maybe slightly disappointed mism, people expect me to talk about rockets and a lot of times when I speak about Russian cos- ritorial notion pointing away from this planet. So take it to refer to outer space—to be merely a ter sense that most people, particularly in the West, cosmism is actually a bit of a misnomer, in the appears to be overtaking the world right now ... on cosmism by talking about chaos, since chaos Anton Vidokle We could our conversation start The Russian vanguard, in The Soulat

- - - gins of language: this is the precondition of also in the protohistorical dimension of the ori- the historical dimension of war and revolution, but guage evolution. Asia and Europe meet not only in the deep stratifications of a thousand years of lan- based on contemporaneity, but is also rooted in because his trans-linguistic delirium is not only “King of Time” and “President of the Planet Earth” lution. In his poetry, Khlebnikov names himself compared with the background of natural evo- its violence and its brightness, always has to be ments undergo when trying to overcome the painful the process of recomposition that chaotic frag- are semipermeable. Therefore osmosis refers to in biological systems, as biological membranes centrations on the two sides. This is a vital process direction that tends to equalize the solute con - into a region of higher solute concentration, in the molecules through a semipermeable membrane Osmosis is the spontaneous movement of solvent pharmacist, sketches the concept of “chaosmose.” philosopher who was also a mechanician and a in the philosophical discourse when Guattari, the awareness, particularly in Russia, and emerges ers of the century, surfaces and poetic in artistic observed by the political and philosophical think “Cosmic Breath” and “Historical Breath,” scarcely deeper implications than may appear at first glance. cosmist sensibility, however, has much larger and before and immediately after the revolution. The all over the Russian cultural landscape and artistic Futurism of the same epoch. barbarian but also more farsighted than Italian French Symbolism, and Russian Futurism was more Russian Symbolism was more than earthbound Actually the (osmotic) relation between This is why a cosmist sensibility is perceivable Zaum. - 1

75 Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle Chaos and Cosmos 76 Chaos to the Brain,” one of their most beautiful texts. the subject of chaos. The title of the chapter is “From they doitnow, andinspeakingof agingthey introduce They have never done this before, to my knowledge; conclusion, they speak of the experience of aging. last book, theme that Deleuze and Guattari developed, in their sensible organism. effects that chaos provokes in the conscious and stimuli is exploding. brain is growing older, the amount of info-nervous on the surrounding world. While the average human etry is losing its definition, and it projects this loss and less precise. The aging brain’s neuronal geom- agent of chaos, because the brain is growing slower in its relationship with the brain. The brain is the only chaining in itself, but also and most drastically from the chaotic perception of the world that is not Protected from what? They want to be protected The aging philosophers want to be protected. constantly lose our ideas. receive sudden jolts that beat like arteries. We whether it is too long or too for short time. We This is the instant of which we do not know ingness they traverse, without nature or thought. the immobility of the colorless and silent noth- coincide. They are infinite speeds that blend into ties, the appearing and disappearing of which we no longer master. These are infinite variabili- by forgetfulness or precipitated into others that off, that disappear hardly formed, already eroded thought that escapes itself, than ideas that fly chaos. Nothing is more distressing than a We require just a little order to protect us from What is chaos, by the way? Chaos is the last What IsPhilosophy? (1995). In the book’s 2 overwhelmed by chaos than Shakespeare, of course. one has better expressed the sentiment of being too fast for our ability to decode and remember. No attention sphere) is too fast: too fast to decipher, ment (particularly the information that invades our say “chaos” we mean that the surrounding environ- Chaos is essentially a problem of tempo. When we age: loss of energy, loss of speed, mental confusion. chaos. Aging is a distinctive mark of the postmodern dementia, loss of memory, Alzheimer’s, and … and care for them, and about the expanding sphere of common that it’s getting more and more difficult to is almost totally squared, and old people are so ered wise by default. But now the pyramid of age rare experience that an elderly person was consid- whole and the individual brain of each of us seems tury of the third millennium, the human brain as a Certainly now, in the second decade of the first cen - tation, a different language, a different rhythm. and his fury require a different system of interpre- beyond our understanding, only because his noise know. The idiot may be saying something that goes thing that is not translatable in the language we meaning. But the idiot is possibly speaking of some- intend to signify in the proper sense of structured tory, by the way) is a tale told by an idiot, who does special relationship with signification. Life (and his- Chaos implies sound and fury, but it also implies a Signifying nothing. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, And then is heard no more: it is a tale That struts and frets his hour upon the stage Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player Out, out, brief candle! In past centuries growing old was such a 3

77 Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle Chaos and Cosmos 78 N. Katherine Hayles edited a book about chaos system to engage in spontaneous self-organization. thermodynamics, up to the point of allowing a can take place without violating the second law of entropy is so high that local decreases in entry They calculate that in systems far from equilibrium, of a new order, of a new configuration of meaning. to see chaos as the prodrome and the condition see chaos as a dispersion of meaning; they prefer structures) have a different approach: they do not various books about chaos theory and dissipative tion. Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers (authors of temic) structure to interpret the incoming informa- and because of the inability of the internal (sys- tion of the external (environmental) information, ing environment because of the internal accelera- system grow unable to interact with the surround - pens inside a system, when the relations within the that spread everywhere in the system. Chaos hap- interior order is unable to control the perturbations sometimes events become chaotic because their outcomes. According to Gleick’s 1987 book have tried to define the concept with divergent Gleick to Ilja Prigogine: physicists and philosophers spread elaboration in the last decades, from James concept of chaos has been at the center of a wide- and our intimate rhythm of interpretation. The between the encompassing environmental rhythm we also refer to the attempts of reconciliation we receive as if they were “sound and fury.” But exorbitation of the surrounding semiotic flows that ferent complimentary movements: we refer to the the surrounding environment. human brain (system) is outpaced by the rhythm of surrounding universe. That means only that the to be overwhelmed by the accelerating pace of the When we say chaos, then, we mean two dif- Chaos,

the environment. system in its attempt to find a new balance with dispersion versus chaos as a restructuration of the ferent visions of chaos are outlined: chaos as and order in literature and science, where two dif- composition of chaos. be viewed as a technique for re-syntonization, as a search for a new rhythm of our respiration. may Art may change into an attitude of re-syntonization, of a can be one of panic, of painful disorientation, but it follow the rhythm of what is happening, our reaction intellectual entities. both material together”)—of and purely“taking sidered a captor (from cept (conceptum, a form of concept creation. Etymologically speaking, a con- The same applies to philosophy, as the activity of they say. not take place without an affinity with the enemy,” new equilibrium. “The struggle against chaos does friend, and as the condition for as a perturbation a taneously defining chaos as an enemy and as a an aleatory function and chaoid variables. that becomes Nature, and from which it extracts tem of coordinates and forms a referenced chaos variety; but science takes a bit of chaos in a sys- or from which it extracts a chaoid sensation as form a composed chaos that becomes sensory, takesArt a bit of chaos in a frame in order to chaos—neither foreseen nor preconceived. […] tutes, as Joyce says, a chaosmos, a composed yields the vision or sensation, so that it consti- is not chaosArt but a composition of chaos that In their texts, Deleuze and Guattari are simul 5 When we feel that our mind is unable to 4 cum-capere, which means coepere) can be con- 6

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79 Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle Chaos and Cosmos 80 looks for a rhythm tuned on the cosmic environment. and the osmotic vibration of the organism that is the opening of the ordered system to chaotic flows term coined by Guattari and the title of his last book, history and individual existence. Chaosmosis, the simultaneously isthedimensionthat exceeds human historical level. Cosmos, in fact, is the order and position that happens at the existential and the Cosmos is the background of this process of recom- the umbrella. Poets are cutting the tissue of the and their world is written on the underside of selves under the umbrella of their limited language, are the limits of my world.” writes in the ing about a famous sentence by Wittgenstein, who Reading these lines, I cannot keep away from think light a vision. free and windy chaos and to frame in a sudden tear itself, open the firmament to let in a bit of poets, artists, make a slit in the umbrella, they and write their conventions and opinions. But on the underside of which they draw a firmament putting up an umbrella that shelters them and what produces poetry: people are constantly In a violently poetic text, Lawrence describes the three planes. ways. The brain is the junction, not the unity, of the planes that cut through the chaos in different chaos? We call Chaoids the realities produced on would thinking be if it did not constantly confront become Thought, mental chaosmos. And what refers back to a chaos rendered consistent, A concept is a chaoid state par excellence; it People are constantly sheltering them- Tractatus: “The limits of my language 8 7

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museums should do: rather than merely preserve to be naked. Fedorov felt that this is precisely what heal and rejuvenate people. Everyone would need then becomes something of a clinic or hospital to tic or an actual therapy. The gallery or the museum organs. In principal this could work as a prophylac- that will actually work on the body: on your cells and tive it might be possible to develop a kind of film basically light and sound, and from this perspec- and sound can do to our bodies. Formally, film is vitamins. It’s actually quite amazing how much light Ultraviolet light helps the body produce necessary can apparently rejuvenate skin, heal wounds, etc. ous ailments: for example, type of red a certain light use of different types of light and color to treat vari- and so forth. There are other therapies that make result in improvements in brain functions, memory, contact. So this light flicker and sound resonance aging brain that prevents neurons from making helps reduce the blockage that occurs in a sick or the 40 Hz frequency spectrum—a kind of flicker— ently vibration produced by sound and/or light in researchers at MIT have been working on: appar of Alzheimer’s with sound and light. It’s something seems there is now a technology to treat symptoms explain: for example, you mention Alzheimer’s—it been fantasizing about a rejuvenating film. Let me but I suspect it can also be a kind of medicine. I’ve AV of human history). beginning—since the cosmic primeval conditions of the hidden possibilities (lying there since the ning of the unchaining (or disentanglement) action is literally apocalyptic, and it is the begin- unbearable vision of the true firmament. Their umbrella and their cutting action discloses the

Yes, can be a kind of cut in the umbrella, art

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81 Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle Chaos and Cosmos 82 were constantly dying. He also wrote about the largely political prisoners in Stalin’s camps and built them for miners in penal colonies, who were produced negatively charged ions of oxygen. He ionizers were like suns—chandeliers artificial that devices to improve circulation and breathing: these around this research, and built specific therapeutic psyche. He developed a rather elaborate theory as the effect of solar and cosmic rays on the human (which is connected to breathing of course), as well particular, he was with blood concerned circulation worshiped the sun. However, rather than breath in by Alexander Chizhevsky, a Soviet scientist who AV death in the same year. text, Guattari speaks of chaosmic spasms in his last for every kind of physical disorder. Interestingly a problem of breathing, and asthma is the template the organism inrelation to thecosmicrhythm. It’s all the cosmic prana— an asymmetry in the rhythm of a disorder in the relation between one’s atman and ness and suffering. Disease is in fact the effect of prana (cosmic respiration) is the background of ill osmosis between atman (individual breathing) and cosmic respiration, which Indians call prana. The organism and the surrounding environment, and the the relationing concerns between the individual ism, but in a broader sense. The problem of heal symptoms of Alzheimer’s or rejuvenate an organ- that you mention: light and sound helping to relieve a therapeutic practice. Not only in the literal sense FB radicalized to preserve and restore life. and restore artifacts and images, they should be

Chaosmosis—the 1992 book that precedes his What you describe is similar to views held I agree may on the idea that art be intended as - - voke unease, panic, mental disconnection. And it that music has an influence on the body. It can pro- rhythm has to be emphasized here. It’s well known rhythm into the social psychosphere. psychosphere—how to inject flows of harmonic and as engineers) is how to heal the contemporary a painful mutation, and our problem (as artists of the media into the psychosphere is provoking mind. point is here: My starting the penetration fluxes that are currently reformatting the human flows materialize into the electronic and digital humanity. In the media age that we inhabit, cosmic the influx that cosmic flows have on the history of relation between matter and psychic energy— FB harmful are particles on their way to Earth. milk: apparently milk goes sour immediately when harmful solar emanations. This sensor worked using of sensor that would us to alert psychologically sun shelters worldwide, and he also devised a kind could be prevented by building a network of special epidemics.” Chizhevsky felt that these epidemics the sun, one of which he thought caused “psychotic that appear to be in sync with the cyclical activity of later wrote, psychosocial he outlines certain phases war news very closely. In the thesis and papers he officer in the Russian army, so he also followed the for astronomical observations. His father was an Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, so he had a small telescope correlations, but was already very friendly with He was a teenager when he first studied these tions appeared, fighting intensified on many fronts. War that when sun spots, flares, and coronal erup- was triggered by his insight during the First World effects of solar radiation on human history, which The relationship between semiosis and I would say that the common problem is the

83 Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle Chaos and Cosmos 84 tent. You write about futurist poetry as witchcraft, cal therapeutic impact on the level of narrative con- AV and actually is the polysemicity of the poetic sign. of the poetic word that you may call ambiguousness, for meaning. Meaning comes from the oscillation ter whose vibration is essentially aimed at searching same philosophical concept of poetry as verbal mat- atmospheres if you want, but they from start the the point of view of their aesthetic choices, of their and Symbolism may appear quite different from guard is remarkably consistent at this level: Futurism and the sound of words. I think that the Russian van- dence between deep-rooted prelinguistic emotions language amounts to a search for the correspon- semiotic science, is based on the consciousness that sical as it may be when considered in terms of scientific) imagination. The concept of Zaum, whim- Krucenich) it is grounded in scientific (or pseudo- but in some cases (as in the case of Khlebnikov and is emphasized up to a point of mystical , the inmost tempo of the universe. poetic word as a rhythmic transformer—a key to ing cosmos. clearly And Mallarmé conceives of the rhythm and the natural sphere of the surround- referring to this relation between poetic forms and breathing. Baudelaire spoke of “correspondence,” deeply inscribed in the psycho-physical rhythm of respiration, which is not only metaphorical, but is consciousness of this proximity of poetry and France and in Russia, has been marked by the the cosmos. The Symbolist experience, both in tonic correspondence between the organism and to slow the acceleration of panic, and find a syn- can also be a way of reactivating bodily energy,

I also think there physiologi can be a certain - In Russian Symbolism, this correspondence

FB many of your body’s functions. directly with your unconscious, which regulates in your conscious mind, but it could communicate ing, if it produces any feelings or thoughts particular peutic way: it does not matter if you find it interest- hypnotic script for a film that could work in a thera- weeks without any effort. So I can imagine a kind of took me by surprise. I did not smoke for about two am not aware of at all. This was so blunt that it really but is communicating with my unconscious, which I because she is not addressing my conscious mind, work, but it does not matter what I think or believe tist said that she knows that I do not believe this will So I was rather skeptical. Then suddenly the hypno- full of stuffed-animal toys of trinkets. and all sorts was a bit hard to do at first because the office was warned me to try to suspend my disbelief, which for whom the treatment was successful. My friend office in Miami recommended by friend, an artist hypnotist to try to quit smoking. It was a very small , drugs, smoking, and so on. I once went to a scripts used to break harmful addictions like alco- hypnosis, particularly the type of clinical hypnotic the closest we come to spells in rational language is modernist spells—they are really beautiful. I guess trate this system, and they do look very much like the future. I’ve seen some of his drawings that illus- have devised a mathematical system for predicting which is also quite magical in origin, and claimed to Khlebnikov was a mathematician by education, sense of people like Khlebnikov and Krucenich. as spells or incantations. I agree with this in the the present landscape of the world is essentially understand it is a very political questioning, because ity of deciphering and navigating chaos. As you can My present questioning is about the possibil -

85 Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle Chaos and Cosmos 86 is unable to understand what happens in the depth technique useless, has turned and political analysis For these reasons and a I think that politics as an art know before they explode in our sphere of action. too many distant conflicting events that we cannot sion. Furthermore their actualization is affected by and dwell essentially with the unconscious dimen- intentions are influenced by countless media flows age of globalization we must acknowledge that their actualization rational and predictable, in the tion that intentions are essentially conscious, and While political theory was based on the presump- methodology for investigating this social becoming. ible complexity of projects and actuations? expectations. What should we do in a similar irreduc- vidual, but a combination of different impulses and project. Furthermore every subject is no longer indi- so the outcome will not be linear with any individual esis) of ends. Every subject is pursuing his/her aims, cess of the contemporary heterogeny (or heterogen- radical indetermination of the hypercomplex pro- based on linear predictions is unable to grasp the of the future? Well, yes and no. Yes, political theory to extract meaning and to produce an imagination conclusion that the human mind has grown unable lost credibility and interest. Should we accept the no analysis is exhaustive, and political science has political catastrophe, no prediction is trustworthy, newspapers about the daily business of the current fast. In such a situation, as you can verify reading ous, and the speed of information circulating is too of social cells, because variables are too numer social segments will go, and the next combinations not determine nor predict the direction in which the mind to elaborate. Analytical investigation can- chaotic, in the precise sense of being too fast for My answer is that we need a post-political - something looks like a bird, it must have something ing things that was common pre-Renaissance: if words, they are using an approach to understand- volume makes it all appear to be noise. In other of all this information, because otherwise the sheer using pattern recognition as a way to make sense recorded and collected. More and more they are interpret amounts of the enormous data being are basically at a loss as to how to understand and Franco! Hito Steyerl speaks about how analysts AV substances that social psychomancy tries to survey. tinuously disrupted and reshaped by the immaterial rational goals, and conscious motivations are con - understand what happens there: shared meaning, tory of the world cannot be fully grasped if we do not resentments dwell in that sphere. The political his- collective mind: fears, expectations, desires, and repulsion. Psychomancy of mapping is the art the sphere and organized by the forces of attraction and flows of imagination that roam the social psycho- dom sphere of events: mental events evoked by the a random methodology for interpretation of a ran- don’t take me too seriously. Social psychomancy is organisms and techno-linguistic automatisms. So more and more as swarms: compounds of pulsating the rhizomatic unconscious of crowds that behave ing history of humankind from the point of view of play from time to time in order to inspect the ongo- manteia) is not a science, it’s just a game that I “social psychomancy.” Social psychomancy (psycho- imagining what is happening next. I call this art nique for navigating social transformations and possible future. of social becoming or to imagine something of the

I think that we new need a new tech art—a - Of course I take you extremely seriously,

87 Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle Chaos and Cosmos 88 nective mode has penetrated and reshaped every among conscious and sensitive organisms. The con- the format of enunciation-reception-interpretation of the digital network has produced a mutation of sinaesthesis: immersion in perceptual universes. accessible archive of simulated in full phere allowing interaction. Web 3.0 will likely be an net. who enjoy the privilege of accessing the digital vade the psychosphere of a large of humans portion creation of simulated environments is going to per tion. cycle of chasing after the elusive flurry of informa - faster, so he is always feeling late, in an endless user remains a spectator to a flow that is faster and started an affect of continuously running after: the the informational cycle produced by the net has enlarges and escapes away. The acceleration of way that the more we get close, the more the field entire field of knowledge, and flies over it in such a ous flyover: the subject cannot fully experience the The digital net allowed the condition of continu- web in which duration will take the place of flyover. flyover—to the web 3.0 dimension: the immersive 2.0 dimension—the dimension of acceleration and FB psychomancy makes perfect sense. stock-market fluctuations. From this point of view terrorists, and Wall Street use it to firms predict is using this form of thinking to identify and find from a rational perspective, yet apparently the NSA plex web of similitudes. It’s nearly schizophrenic very diverse things are connected through a com- a bird-shaped shadow or a stone. In this worldview to do with birds, even if it’s just a cloud formation or Web 2.0 enabled access to a boundless infos- The current production of interfaces for the Twenty-five years of increasing pervasiveness I think that we are shifting fast from the web

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computer engineers and life designers? to imagine, but that has been imagined for us by live the life that we are unable to live and not even question. Can we experience experience? Can we perceives and projects is thrown into conceptual ence as a singular adventure of an organism that ments of shared simulated experience. Here experi- immersive web we environ can now access virtual - projection of perceptual environments. In the way to sinaesthetic experiences and to the shared experience is deserted. The immersive web gives leads more and more to loneliness, as the bodily precariousturns and often painful. munication. So the experience of the erotic body nuances and to the ambiguity of conjunctive com- the individual tends to lose sensitivity to existential discreet changes of states of a numerical nature, in a digital environment, accustomed to react to cal impoverishment of affective reactivity. Grown has undergone a sensorial deprivation, a psychi- purely functional impulses, the agent of language in the software. the present, even if a replicable present, inscribed acceleration and will oblige the user to go back to nent immersive net of web 3.0 is going to stop this persistent condition of being out of sync. The immi- experience. Broadband and the fast web puts us in a by computational environments which simulate tion: cognitive activity and sensorium are attracted are now entering into a new phase of digital muta- in the nervous system of human communication, we with sensuous conjunction. social molecules unable to conjoin, incompatible semiotic line of exchange up to the point of making Actually, precarious connective existence Having been thrown into an environment of After the wave of penetration of the digital net

89 Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Anton Vidokle Chaos and Cosmos 90 therapeutic potential could of become really art pain—more chaos. And here I think the medicinal, produce more and more psychotic disorders and conversion of reality into the terms of a game will about the issue of mental health. I agree that this out over time? attempt at engineering, and how it actually plays cisely in the space between someone’s design, an tion of space travel. Maybe human life exists pre- largely unrealized for the moment, with the excep- human body on a universal scale, and it too remains design and engineering of society, nature, and the cosmism is also something that advocates for the other than what was intended. In this sense Russian ized projects, and designs that produce something inhabit: a space shaped by failed plans, unreal unexpected results. This is probably the reality we implode. A lot of times they also produce completely or corrupted, or simply get so complex that they tually fail, deviate from their goals, are derailed nothing goes according to plan: all designs even- what kind of music? What kind of architecture, what kind of assembly, Perhaps the question is of what kind of design: and are able to have at least a little bit of happiness. all, this is already a fact and we are still breathing problem is not so much that life is designed: after sense we may actually be used to this. Maybe the recorded history, maybe even before. I think in some living in this condition since the beginning of engineered, designed world and probably have been social, or economic, etc. We are already living in an of design, whether it’s architectural, political, actually live in are usually an outcome of some form AV

What you say also makes me think more We should also keep in mind that usually I think that whatever circumstances people

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and good humor. afraid and in the dark, could be likeart a ritornello that all can sing when for organisms that perceive andproject. Maybe such capable of performing as a psychic prophylactic tion films that I suggested earlier, we need artworks urgent. Perhaps inaddition to thephysical rejuvena- Macbeth, act 5, scene 5. 3 University Press, 1994), 201. Burchell trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Guattari, 2 Krucenich. —Ed. Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Russian Futurist poets such as language creation carried out by ments in sound symbolism and 1 William Shakespeare, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Zaum are the linguistic experi- (New York:Columbia What IsPhilosophy?, to create a spark of courage 8 7 6 Philosophy?, 204. 5 Press, 1991). (Chicago: University of Chicago Dynamics inLiterature and Science Chaos and Order: Complex 4 Ibid., 203. Ibid., 208. Ibid., 204, 206. Deleuze and Guattari, N. Katherine Hayles, ed., What Is

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Foundation, Moscow. a collaborative project between and the Colta.ru V-A-C first took of the place as part This dialogue, published on e-fluxConversations, June 13, 2016, Museum the of Theology the Is Art Contemporary Boris Groys and Arseny Zhilyaev Center for Experimental, Museology

93 Boris Groys and Arseny Zhilyaev Contemporary Art Is the Theology 94 of the Museum ally has increasingly positioned itself as a place for dematerializing crematorium, the museum actu- international archive, or even, in some sense, of the of the internet and its assumption of the role of an porary museum. It would seem that, with the advent this, I wanted to ask your thoughts on the contem- research purposes, just like a book. Picking up on where each could artwork be checked out to use for eled after the libraries of scientific institutions, gested launching a series of exhibition halls, mod- of a flexible “museum on hinges.” Osip Brik sug- Museological Conference,” argued for the creation the discussions leading up to the “First All-Russian mally open to change. This is why Nikolai Punin, in cating for the creation of a museum that was maxi- destruction of of the past, the art they were advo- colleagues may not have been calling for the total survive any negation. While the artist’s less radical of the image. That is to say, an image that is able to the artist, an image of destruction the permanent but also, as you have noted in your own writing on ing not only an image of the absence of an image, took on the role of a kind of prophet-arsonist, creat- cultural workers. In his own work, Malevich himself which can then be given out on request to active compressed into a didactic pill of powdered ash, relevance within the current context—that is, to be for the work of a dead artist, then, is to find some should be saved to life itself. The only possibility to judge whether this or that from artwork the past for museums to down, be burned leaving the right Museum.” As we know, in this text calls the artist Kazimir Malevich’s famous text from 1919, “On the museum—specifically the relationship laid out in of of artists the historical avant-garde to the versation with a question about the relationship Arseny Zhilyaev I would like to our con- start the ashes remaining after was cremated. the art It museum could be replaced with an installation from all, Malevich even says that, in this scenario, the be thought of more as a kind of consolation. After proposal to of down the past burn all the art should ability to be understood. In this sense, Malevich’s might also disappear or, to a lesser degree, lose its pear without a trace—the same way their own art garde, get their fear that museums might disap- artists, from including artists the radical avant- longer able to be perceived as such. This is where Without this history, the avant-garde is simply no is precisely the history of breaks with the past. history of art, as it is shown in European museums, of the avant-garde would have lost its visibility. The ally been cremated, then the historical originality and Futurism. in museums had actu- If all the art a gradual transition from Cézanne through Cubism rary (to and Suprematism him) art as the result of repeatedly described the genealogy of contempo- world is written on our hands.” Malevich himself “we are the face of our times” or future of“the the This is where we get those famous formulations like medieval art, the Renaissance, Baroque, and so on. had itsown persona, itsownstyle—antiquity, artistic structed on a simple principle: each historic epoch teenth century. These museum displays were con- displays as they had evolved by the end of the nine - of , which was given form in museum would have been impossible without the tradition more specifically, of Futurism and Suprematism— that the project of the avant-garde—or, let’s say, Boris Groys past to how Malevich described it. the more enshrining the status of the work of the organizing educational or discursive activities, all Here I need to say, first and foremost,

95 Boris Groys and Arseny Zhilyaev Contemporary Art Is the Theology 96 of the Museum cal engagement. for one’s neighbors, social responsibility, and politi- ativity) leads to an interest in good deeds, care soul’s salvation (or as a product art of bodily cre- of historical Christianity: the loss of hope for a the trajectory is reminiscent of art of the trajectory transformation of the church into a club. In general, formation of the museum into a club echoes the ings, lectures, performances, and so on. This trans- act as organizers for film screenings, poetry read- their appeal as a place to visit. Museums today tality is entirely eradicated, museums will retain a means of achieving this worldly, secular immor But even if the belief in museum conservation as Roman aqueducts, where water no longer flows. erations will treat these things the way we treat tion are cables and other equipment. Future gen- internet, the only things left in this kind of situa- lying in the ground, they will be excavated. With the their value even after catastrophes—if they are when the hardware is still relatively intact. and restoring lost data is possible only in instances forget anything, but on the other hand, recovering hand, it is an accepted idea that computers never cultural memory remains problematic. On the one archiving of art. But the internet’s ability to stabilize today it plays the role of the main medium for the consistently materialist view of things. remedy seems most plausible only if you maintain a if anything, of all culture in the future. But such a the prospect of the total disappearance of art, and, medication for the excessive despair brought on by to a pharmacy. What we are talking about here is is no accident that he compares this installation At the same time, museum objects preserve If we are talking about the internet, then yes,

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of Revolution. or, in the post-Soviet context, artistic the Museum this can be found in museums of focus a nonartistic conceptual realism.” In my opinion, the prototype for tion the most frequently applied medium of “post- message, making the documentary installa in turn - ument as the primary material carrier of the artist’s assigned to it, which precipitate the use of the doc- the same thing, but for the institutional boundaries make this process possible. Contemporary does art art, as well as the context of the social relations that the specific features of the production process of to installation use the space of the art to analyze to tices of from artists the 1970s ’80s, who started standing comes close of to art the conceptual prac- changes made in response to it. This kind of under sequent documentation, and the representation of gests the possibility of active intervention, its sub- as passive reflection, thecontemporary version sug- the nineteenth century, which was structured more the first decade of the 2000s. Unlike the realism of “postconceptual realism” to of describe Russian art “Specters of Communism,” you propose the term AZ and his “Experimental Complex Marxist Exhibition,” museologists, particularly Aleksei Fedorov-Davydov suited to the description of the experimental Marxist exhibitions. As I see it, this term remains more garde, as well as their experience creating didactic the 1920s, the second wave of the Russian avant- describe the self-reflexive practices of painters from cept of “conceptual realism,” the curator was able to Trotsky and Stalin” (2008). By drawing on the con- “Struggling for the Banner: Soviet between Art ism was in Ekaterina Degot’s text for her exhibition find terminology to link with real- The first time I encountered an attempt to In one of your recent curatorial projects,

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97 Boris Groys and Arseny Zhilyaev Contemporary Art Is the Theology 98 of the Museum that by the end of the 1920s in the ,that by the end of the 1920s communist materialist ideology. However, it is clear the sympathy of avant-garde toward artists the for instance a portrait or a landscape. This explains smeared with paint, but as something else entirely, itself not as what it is, which is a piece of cloth artwork—for instance, a painted canvas—presents ofthe of the past; the art the traditional tioned their realism and materialism in contrast to airplane. In this sense, the avant-garde posi- artists bit as real as a rock or a tree. Or as a tractor, or an its real presence in the world. A work is every of art foremost a material object, which directly manifests avant-garde insisted that the work is first of art and consideredartists themselves to be realists. The BG a relationship even exists? Gallery, practices and the artistic of today—if such the Museum of Revolution or the State Tretyakov of the creators of Marxist exhibitions, whether in ism”? That is, the relationship between the practice “conceptual realism” and “postconceptual real a line tracing the possible relationship between the production of contemporary art. Could you draw realism,” you actualize aspects characteristic of to conceptualism. In the case of “postconceptual features—“conceptual realism” as a precursor historicalon a particular period and its specific as well as documents reflecting their place in reality. mobilizing a maximum spectrum of media, artistic a strict allegiance to the medium of painting, instead importantly, Fedorov-Davydov’s installation refused conceptualism and institutional critique. Quite ture, it is closest to the future critical practice of created at the beginning of the 1930s. In its struc- We shouldn’t forget that the avant-garde It is obvious that Degot’s argument is focused -

sphere of those years, these kinds of characteristics alist stage. Understandably, in the ideological atmo- sphere of bourgeois art—what’s more, to its imperi - exhibitions inscribed the avant-garde within the “ is the flip side of the bourgeoisie.” These bition halls, one could find text along the lines of of Imperialism”—sound problematic. In these exhi- same, their titles—for instance, “Art in the Epoch as the Nazi “Degenerate Art” shows, but all the were not on the same level of incriminating exposé racial characteristics. Of course, Soviet exhibitions and the avant-garde were presented in terms of the Nazis in Munich in 1937, in which infamous exhibition “Degenerate Art,” organized by These exhibitions are sometimes compared to the class-determined shared by the artists. object as a sign, or rather, as a symptom of certain ning of the 1930s, they interpreted the avant-garde then, “vulgar sociological”) exhibitions at the begin- crux of the matter. ism.” However, these synonyms only obscure the real onyms like “conceptual realism” or “romantic real and is instead substituted with shame-faced syn - fallen out of use. It apparently seems to be too toxic concept of “socialist realism” has almost entirely of socialistart realism. In recent years in Russia, the object with the ideological symbol crystallized in the sphere of art. This replacement of the avant-garde the Soviet stores, but it could also be applied to the ance of matter. Of course, he meant this in regard to triumph of materialism would lead to the disappear Andrei Bely had already observed that in Russia the as this kind of symbolic system. Back in his day, by socialist realism, which presented itself precisely This is why the avant-garde started to be replaced things began to be displaced by ideological signs. As for those Marxist (or, as they said back - -

99 Boris Groys and Arseny Zhilyaev Contemporary Art Is the Theology 100 of the Museum Kabakov’s the artist’s side, we have to mention Ilya and Emilia Exhibition” of ’31. As an example of a breach from Fedorov-Davydov’s “Experimental Complex Marxist curatorial experience, then we can single out both sides. least, attempts to breach—these boundaries from history has examples of breaching—or, at the very freedom, the latter a type of sovereign freedom. Art artistic; the former is a manifestation of institutional ference between the curatorial installation and the in this context,which is important about the dif- have often referred to another of your statements, through decontextualization and demystification. I within the curator’s narrative, he produces the work ist: through the inclusion of this or that artwork in relation to the “iconophilic”- position of the art rary curator assumes the role of the “iconoclast” Iconoclast” (2006), you argue that the contempo- particular, in your seminal text, “The Curator as also make frequent reference to this division. In most pressing questions in contemporary art. You the artist’s position and the curator’s is one of the AZ of a mole, or the tail of a peacock. class- or race-determined nature—like the burrows was shown only as an indirect manifestation of his denied the right to have a position altogether: his art the position of the artist, but that was the artist the position of the curators did not coincide with school with it. garde from Soviet art, taking the vulgar sociological exhibitions preceded the final ousting of the avant- did not promise anything good. Historically, these If we want to talk more about the Soviet The debate around the delineation between The issue with these exhibitions is not that Alternative Historyof Art (2005). In the the form of a street intervention, built from a solemn omy). It’s true, unlike the Kiev exhibition, which took (Exhibition of achievements of the national econ - about a year ago in the Ukrainian pavilion at VDNKh Evidence: Donbass, 365 Days,” which opened response to a similar Russian exhibition, “Material with fact. In some sense, this was a symmetrical an extreme, combined the Constructivist aesthetic shall we say, curatorial installation, which, taken to facts, the Kiev officials needed to put together a, in order to prove- the authenticity arti of certain just want to draw attention to the observation that presume the authority to judge political matters, I captured in Donbass and Lugansk. I’m not going to tary equipment of Russian origin, which had been “Presence,” which presented its audience with mili- in the center of Kiev, there was an exhibition called sion in the guise of an “artwork.” Not too long ago museum pretending to present freedom of expres- me—the unprecedented institutional activity of a I came across a phenomenon that was new for context, however, we see the opposite tendency. for representing history. art In the contemporary on the ideological system providing the framework Kabakovs’ project, it involves taking a critical stance is extremely free in all its manifestations. As for the tariat ultimately striving for a classless society that democracy of the dictatorship as part of a prole- the real overthrow of the boundaries of bourgeois the proletariat following the revolution—that is, model exhibition practice after the role played by sion in the U.S.S.R. centered on the attempt to positions. But at the end of the 1920s, the discus- present trend of unifying the curatorial and artistic of similar examples, pointing to an increasingly contemporary context, you can find no shortage Let me give you an example. Quite recently,

101 Boris Groys and Arseny Zhilyaev Contemporary Art Is the Theology 102 of the Museum Affirmational art, in other words just repeating what have no chance of reaching mass-media outlets. toopportunity formulate and present positions that lies primarilyof art in the fact that it provides the for reaching its audience. The political significance tion of official propaganda, which has other options space shouldArtistic not be used for the distribu- So the question here is: What did they want to say? to them was simply to say what they wanted to say. Ilya Kabakov or Thomas Hirschhorn. What mattered Harald Szeemann or their installations with those of weren’t comparing their exhibitions with those of mentioned, then more likely than not, the curators tions like that Ukrainian one and Russian one you time, the use of various media, etc. But as for exhibi- in terms of the organization of space, the viewing exhibition compares with other curatorial projects has a distinct aesthetic value, relative to how that then he inevitably must assume that his exhibition this. But if the curator is working in the sphere of art, curator’s own position. There’s no way to get around individual artworks to mere examples illustrating the project reduces practices individual artistic and BG positions in today’sand artistic contemporary art? prospects are there for mutations of the curatorial it. In this context, what do you think: What kind of ideological system, but, on the contrary, to reinforce torial installation, not to the dominant undermine and the legitimizingthe artwork power of the cura- taneously drawing on both the sovereign freedom of examples can be understood as deviations, simul scenes seen in Museums of the Revolution. Both use of the theatrical effects of the dioramic staged to to the Soviet of museology the 1920s ’30s—made series of readymades, the Moscow display—in a nod It goes without saying that any curatorial - to the natural world. At the same time, Fedorov’s for being too human, too paternalistic in its relation contemporary to art a harsh critique—particularly dency to its limits, subjecting the cultural aspect of ceptual reflections can bring the contemporary ten - sense,a certain this type of naturalization of con- of a possible exhibition context and its features. In to Fedorov), gives way to speculation as the topic urrected (i.e., the results of true creativity, according potential sites for the eventual relocation of the res- which was developed for the purpose of selecting the study of celestial bodies and their movements, institutional critique or conceptualism. After all, to medium, the artistic similar to the practices of be understood as a reflection of the relationship observatory on the foundation of museums—could in the cosmos—particularly in the creation of an were to go further, in this instance an interest idea of resurrection as a kind of curating. But if we AZ what they wanted, how they worked, etc. that weasserts know who the artists “really were,” problematic nature of traditional history, art which tional quality of the figure of reveals the artist the from description—to be, in fact, fictitious. The fic- seems to be hiding, disappearing, or slipping away and installations. And it is this figure that always is described and reflected in the Kabakovs’ albums of himself. the artist It is this figure of that the artist shift the focus from practices artistic to the figure history.cal art For the Kabakovs, it is fairly typical to type of exhibition, artist as in its approach to canoni- of Art, it is critical not so much in its approach to a intervention, does not make any sense. can already be seen and heard without any artistic I was struck by your interpretation of Fedorov’s Returning to the Kabakovs’ Alternative History

103 Boris Groys and Arseny Zhilyaev Contemporary Art Is the Theology 104 of the Museum the understanding of time in different epochs of without purpose is for mankind. If we look back at to recognize how new the experience of progress century, it has lost all its purpose. I think we need of progress is this: over the course of the twentieth central feature of the contemporary understanding determines the motion and rhythm of our time. The inevitable role in the technological progress that BG future universe’s Museum of Russian cosmism? opinion, should the contemporary human play in the answer would you propose? Or what role, in your the style of both Rococo and Conceptualism. What coexistence in one contemporaneity of paintings in fromof art extremely distant eras—for instance, the question of future shock, the combination of works be put in the context of Fedorov’s aesthetics as a upgraded bodies of their sons? This question can fathers to encounter the significantly different, exists today? That is, how will it feel for resurrected of overcoming the human body in the form that it do we do with the claims regarding the necessity both of the soul and of the physical body. But what in the earthly world and should offer a restoration to the promises of religion, should actually happen also arise with resurrection itself, which, contrary in supplanting anthropocentrism. Complications continued evolution, which should eventually result creation, while still referring to the inevitability of universe, thus preserving his place as the crown in leading role in the eventual transformation of the On the one hand, Fedorov insists on mankind’s inherent in the very philosophy of the common task. an agent of the changes taking place in the universe. proposal undoubtedly preserves the role of man as The main problem in the New of Era art is its It seems to me that there is a contradiction other genres precisely because it can accommodate the novel as the genre of genres, dominating over all accidental. In his day, Friedrich Schlegel defined between the museum exhibition and the novel is not rots and decomposes. Of course, this comparison tale, the syntactical structure of their dialogue also rotting corpses in a cemetery. Over the course of the centers around conversations between different a clever metaphor in Dostoyevsky’s “Bobok,” which the ideal place for such encounters, Bakhtin finds rate their historical eras. In describing the novel as Duchamp’s urinal beyond the boundaries that sepa- there the of the Pharaoh can meet with for transhistorical reunification beyond the grave— death of God, the museum remains the only place early on. They also recognized early on that after the radical novelty of this situation was apparent quite we are speaking about Russian traditions—the without any chance of escaping it. this resembles the Chinese principle of Tao, but movement from nowhere to nowhere. In some ways, munist ones. What is left is an absurd, meaningless the promises related to it, including even the com- onto this concept of linear time, but discarded all of beyond time. technological Modern civilization held of all living beings in the end times—life after and promise of universal, transhistorical reunification severed cyclical time, offering instead the Nietzsche in his myth of the eternal return. Biblical Nostalgia for those times was aptly described by life, since everything in that life would be repeated. he would experience all that could be experienced in quite comfortable; a man knew that in his lifetime did until the emergence of biblical linear time, was Living in cyclical time, as practically all of humanity human civilization, it was either cyclical or linear. For acute minds like Fedorov or Malevich—if

105 Boris Groys and Arseny Zhilyaev Contemporary Art Is the Theology 106 of the Museum theology remainstheology theology. institutional critique). But, of course, negative mean a negative (or, theology to put it another way, of the museum. And, with few exceptions, we museum. In fact, contemporary is the theology art time, the site of those projections has become the you could say that both in the New Era and in our where they are projected. And at this point, yes, and contemporary obsessions, as about the site talking not so much about the realization of modern would encounter similar problems. Here we are not surprising that Fedorov, as well as his readers, preserved in the resurrected bodies, and so on? It is after the end of history, if sexual organs are to be fathers wrote? Or what happens to children born itory of an infinite mass of feces, as one of the holy heaven, over the course of eternity, become a repos- the problem of defecation in heaven; wouldn’t instance, he raises the question of how to resolve by Giorgio Agamben in his book Several of these paradoxes have been addressed such great despair for the authors of these writings. doxes of corporeality in the that produced times, we would encounter the numerous para- describing earthly resurrection following the end sculptures of Dieter Roth. brokenand arms off up to the rotting chocolate decay—from ancient sculptures with their noses in different phases of its historically conditioned the same time, an installation can include a body raphy, interactive internet installations, etc. And at all media: painting, sculpture, film, video, photog - teenth century. An installation can accommodate lation plays the same role as the novel in the nine- all others within it. In our time, the museum instal If we were to return to the medieval texts The Open (2004). For

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Cosmic Doubts Cosmic Arsenyand Zhilyaev Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle,

109 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts 110 and we have to treat them with care. I do not say ent purposes. Some ideas are versatile and potent, can be channeled differently and can serve differ reaction—an intellectual affect. However, affects whimsical, is superficial, but it is quite an expected on first approximation, for looking “strange” and it. Embracing cosmism for what it appears to be ment, but there behind are concerns particular barbarous coasts.” Perhaps this is a forceful state- one’s desire to “sail forbidden seas, and land on subject of Russian cosmism may still be driven by of ideas. In the Western world, touching upon the side effect, and in this case it is the exoticization uted unevenly, any kind of empowerment has a find it quite problematic: when power is distrib- situation seems to be reasonably good, but I still contribution to cultural diversity. Generally, this cultural heritage, celebrating its uniqueness and encourage people across the planet to praise their in the humanities and a recent trend of “glocality” religious thought. Nowadays both a decolonial turn tion, representing nothing but religious or quasi- is subordinate to the Western philosophical tradi- has been a view that Russian to evoke suspicious exuberance. For years there current, Russian cosmism has recently started that, although remaining a marginal philosophical Marina Simakova can you please elaborate on this? ous worry for you. Did I understand you correctly and tened and oversimplified, and that this was a seri- paradoxical and delirious qualities were being flat- larly in Western Europe, you felt that some of its has started circulating outside of Russia,- particu Russian cosmism, you mentioned to me that as it Anton Vidokle Marina, last time we spoke about Yes, I have the impression

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as an operation of careful reverse translation. interpreting Russian cosmism in our era can be seen of Western into modernity the Russian context. So and in a sense was an extremely creative translation out ofborn international dialogue and exchange, one has to realize that Russian cosmism itself was nity. Yet, to successfully undertake this translation, inherits the hegemonic language of Western moder an allegedly global language that, unfortunately, cosmism into the language of contemporaneity— tal terms, the task is to carefully translate Russian challenge, if you like. To put it into more instrumen- whole. It is a vicious circle, really, or a theoretical to look at the history of philosophical thought as a times. At the same time, in order to do this, one has Western and Russian intellectual junctures of those contradictory elements as embedded both in the nature of cosmist philosophy, tracing each of its thon. to It is important keep in mind the synthetic Russian cosmism as something native and autoch- what purpose? sell these ideas, to whom, under what plea, and for and socioeconomic forces: Who would possibly areMy primary concerns real political interests appropriation, commodifies ideas, and sells them. about the fact that exoticization promotes cultural tradition and progress. This wariness is not only of the world and establish a peculiar link between projects that presuppose a radical transformation made. This is especially relevant for retro-futuristic coveries (and rediscoveries) after they have been to be careful with what is happening to dis- certain be brave, daring, inventive, and so on. But we have comes to theory, I definitely believe that we have to “with caution” since I do not think this way; when it This is why I find it necessary to stop treating -

111 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts 112 sive. One wants to overlook and all the misogynistic because in some ways it’s so futuristic and progres- cosmism the temptation to do this is very strong, is even a name for this tendency: presentism. With or reflects your present-day concerns. I think there that you pick and choose only that which relates to dency to curate historical material in such a way ists whose work I most care about. what could have possibly motivated- some of the art like for the first time I could to start make sense of of Fedorov, Bogdanov, Svyatogor, and others, I felt Soviet avant-garde. So when I came across writings cosmism in the analysis of of the Russian the art or art. Similarly, there are no references to Russian explore thisdimensionofandcontemporary modern ans and museum curators seem very reluctant to is deeplyart intertwined with religion, histori art - forth. It’s strange that while historically so much of of influences directly related to theosophy and so abstraction comes from in art a very specific set influence is extremely blatant, because arguably artists. I am really unsure why this is. Some of this influential on the production of Western European nineteenth century, all of which were extremely to the occult, spiritualism, and of the example this history contains very few references American institutions and historians.North For historyart—a largely written by MoMA and other that is not addressed by the canonical history of about the avant-garde art, and modern something art. There was always something oblique for me but rather something that specifically relates to search for new theoretical or philosophical ideas, attraction to Russian cosmism was not so much a that maybe because I am an artist, for me the initial AV

The other thing I want to mention is a ten- I agree with you to a large extent. But I think the point of view of Western . turn, because both interpretations are imposed by est cannot be due only to “glocality” or a decolonial it seems to me the reason for this renewed inter nearly disappearing for half a century or more. And cosmism is becoming visible again at this time after tage. It’s to very important try to understand why of the Russianthis peculiar part philosophical heri- probably determines our contemporary interest in nections to the present historical moment, which wash its “vices” will only lead to severing its con- be included and reflected on. An attempt to white- with Marina that ideally all of its complexity should and ratherimportant sensitive question. I agree cosmism and its internal contradictions is a very Arseny Zhilyaev deal with this aspect of cosmism in your work? ist critic of modernity. Marina, Arseny, how do you strange to present this complex figure as only a left- Fedorov had, but on the other hand it would be a bit the Slavic nationalism or monarchist leanings that modernity. On the one hand I do not want to amplify sufficiently translate Fedorov as a leftist critic of ate criticisms was an opinion that the film does not without as much filtering, and one of the immedi- the last film I used whole passages from Fedorov focusing more on its progressive implications. In to present side of cosmism—perhaps a particular a collage of passages from variousauthors, selected cosmist material, the first two scripts were more of thought. When I started making my films based on more inventive version of a secular, socialist line of ences and translate all this as simply a different, also very tempting to remove all the religious refer that are quite common for authors of that period. It’s anti-Semitic passages, or other reactionary views The contemporary reception of - -

113 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts 114 highest form of the creation of the new is the most Fedorov’s actual position. “revolution” with “resurrection,” then we arrive at only the revolution is able to stop. If we replace like a freight train speeding toward the abyss, which take on history in which technological progress is we call capitalism. Noys refers to Walter Benjamin’s cannot be a goal in itself, which solves the problem the thinking of Benjamin Noys. For Noys, progress critique of accelerationism, and similar in spirit to shows that Fedorov’s actual position is closer to the accepted by the Left. Nevertheless, a closer reading works of the discourse that are criticized and yet deserves to be taken seriously: it falls within frame- popular reading of his legacy. This interpretation erationist thinking, and by now this has become a recently positions him as a forerunner of accel in the Western intellectual context that happened bring it in proximity to the field of theoretical fiction. the poetic and literary qualities of this body of texts be perceived in a similar vein, particularly because Cosmism, with all of its seeming inconsistencies, can or one-sided descriptions simply failed to grasp. a comprehensive event, which the more partisan ity could produce a truthful representation of such sive and reactionary sentiments within Russian real an honest image of the totality of both the progres- transformation most faithfully. Why? Because only it is precisely Tolstoy’s oeuvre that describes this ing of the essence of political transformation in 1917, many ideological doubts and a lack of understand - class backgroundparticular of Tolstoy, as well as his Russian Revolution. Lenin writes that despite the which he speaks of Lev Tolstoy as a mirror of the In Fedorov’s project of the Common Task, the One of the first attempts to include Fedorov There is a famous written article by Lenin in - - ties that come with this territory: without an open seems to me that this is one of the responsibili - political work with cosmism’s contradictions? It on the possibility of productive philosophical or of Russian cosmism. that something similar happens with the reception and its commitment to the communist ideal. I feel has to be severed from its connection to Marxism tive, but in order to be appropriated by the Right it from the Left, such a position appears too conserva- genre of socialist realism. If viewed superficially and the deterioration of the realist tradition in the with its petty bourgeois arrogance and negation, leftist critique of both the modernist avant-garde, state and technical higher art school), articulated a Lifshitz, having studied at VKhUTEMAS (the Soviet project of a reconstruction of Marxist aesthetics. Lifshitz, whose entire life’s work was devoted to the legacy of the Soviet Marxist theoretician Mikhail ist Dmitry Gutov, which recuperates the intellectual thing similar occurs in the thirty-year project- of art reading cosmismintheinternational context: some- political persuasions. This problem is not limited to quieter than the loud demands of radicals of all voices from the past. and political dimensions are lacking many forgotten speculations about the future and its technological standards themselves. actual discursiveness inherent to these intellectual ten and strip the specificity of both the theory and service of leftist intellectual standards, can flat - of conservative aspects of Russian cosmism, in the died. Here we have an example of how an exclusion complete resurrection of the past, of all that has Marina, can I ask you to articulate your view In times of crisis such voices are usually much In general, it seems to me that contemporary

115 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts 116 be posed here. The first set can be broadly defined sci-fi culture. by the idea of space exploration or fully immersed in think—none of us, including those who are driven even thought the way a cosmist should probably a politician. I would dare claim that we have never this word—whether an artist, an astrophysicist, or define what is meant by “space” when someone uses did manage to enter space. In fact, we do not usually phrase Bruno Latour—although human subjects Cold War era. We have never been cosmists, to para - way and mixed with political technologies of the progress conceived in a pragmatic, down-to-earth project a space race resulting from a concept of space technologies, the latter rendered the cosmist ideas significantly influenced cosmonautics and mist movement. Even though some of Tsiolkovsky’s been any method of cosmist speculation, or a cos- capital T, using Althusser’s words). There has never as cosmist theory in a strict sense (a Theory with a cosmist umbrella afterward, there is no such thing despite the whole cast of authors united under the of potential cultural insurgency. But it did not work: antidote against dogmatism of any kind—a grain about cosmism, too: it seems to contain a serious of reactionary attitudes. This is what I personally like tus of the new Soviet canon, as well as with all sets has always been at odds with the repressive appara- and work present a unique example of thinking that MS beginning of this conversation. religious mysticism that you worry about at the exoticism, or slide into a leftist techno-utopianism/ ject, it is difficult to avoid the kind of simplification, discussion of the political complexity of our sub- So for me, there are three sets of questions to I like your comparison with Lifshitz, whose life gone through such a monstrous metamorphosis, seems to give a simple explanation for why life has violence andrage. Yet, unlike other authors, henever where cosmism failed: inhuman, full of mundane naturalistic manner, Zaltsman describes the world slight touch of cruel absurdity. In his exaggeratedly unique combination of naivety and depth with a These literary writings are indeed remarkable: a ered (they were never published during his lifetime). prose and poems have been just recently discov from being a painter, Zaltsman was also a writer; his froman artist Philonov’s analytical school. Apart give you an example: Let us take Pavel Zaltsman, promising in the domain of contemporary art. I can ture, and I suppose that such an approach may be ductive way of approaching any kind of futurist cul was this failure exactly?” I believe this is a very pro- does it mean for us that cosmism failed, and what failed, or was bound to fail, to the question “What to shift the focus from the question of why cosmism in a historical perspective. For instance, I propose ment of our futuristic/memorial imagination taken political history to the trajectory of the develop- history in a very general sense—from social and work,artistic or political activism? referring to practices of (quasi-)scientific research, deriving from different theoretical approaches and ferent modes of utopian fiction, a grand fantasy cosmism as a collective project art as such, as dif- these contradictions? Or should we treat Russian how explains, substantiates, or even sublates all of comprehensive theory from it—a theory that some- struct theoretical grounds behind it, or deduce a a speculative fiction, as you call it, can we recon- What does it mean to think as a cosmist? If it is just as cosmist thinking, or even cosmist epistemology. The second set of questions is related to our - -

117 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts 118 subjects as the future of humanity, spirituality, theory of everything” that randomly blends such in order to avoid reducing cosmism to a “general any? These questions have to be answered carefully could be found in these theories and practices, if to cosmism. But is it really so? How much cosmism Valley—all of this can be seen as somehow related advocates of technological singularity in Silicon social studies, so-called post-secularism, and even ist movement, new materialism in philosophy and be working with relevant themes. The - of Russian cosmism but who eventually out to turn artists, and everyone who might be totally unaware be interesting). But foremost I mean researchers, sure such people exist, and talking to them could synthesize (by an elixir of immortality the way, I’m consider themselves to be cosmists and attempt to verted), and why. I’m not talking about people who these elements were transformed (or even per of our practicepart today and which have not, how intoturned reality, which of them have become a elements of cosmists’ utopian visions have been most obvious. I think it is necessary to study how Soviet avant-garde artists. tial interest in cosmism as a powerful source for the related to what you, Anton, are saying aboutyour ini- which is very important. This is probably partially project (and its failure) as an integral of history, part Zaltsman and vice versa, we can see the cosmist works. I guess when we look at cosmism through what one experiences while reading Zaltsman’s Although he does not state this explicitly, this is that nobody noticed, a shipwreck of all hopes. other. Another force is responsible: a catastrophe have altered the way people live and treat each and he blames no one. Not only civil war or hunger The third set of questions is probably the -

would take a long time. Some experimented with nological development necessary for such a thing to me that most cosmists realized that the tech- own lifetime. While this was an aspiration, it seems mists” expected to resurrecting start people in their the primary goal. mos is very important, but somehow secondary to the dead are resurrected. My feeling is that the cos- overpopulation that would present itself ifandwhen rather more like solutions to a practical problem of space, exploration of other planets, and so forth, are mism” is a bit of a misnomer. Movement in cosmic is instead and resurrection—so immortality “cos - that the cosmos itself is not the primary goal, which organized political movement. It also seems to me not disciplined members of academia or a well- society, comprising a kind of a socialist bohemia— extremely unstable people living on the margins of futurist poets and artists, many of whom were also by biocosmists in the 1920s. These were primarily tostarts be used deliberately several decades later, refer to himself or his circle as “cosmists.” The name tual tradition. I seriously doubt that Fedorov would other than the actual protagonists of this intellec- ments, has been coined after the fact and by people name “cosmism,” similarly to most names of move- AV and what it is not. to present a strong argument of what cosmism is, speculation on religious phenomena, it is necessary tech-savvy scientific art, or with contemporary framework fitting any kind of project that deals with taking cosmism as an unambiguous theoretical paramount considerations for artists, too: instead of and technological progress. To my mind, these are

I am also pretty sure that none of the “cos- We should probably keep in mind that the

119 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts 120 activist reading of his ideas about the fight against Fedorov was adamant about a literal, urgent, and despite all of the poetic quality of his writings, as lacking a practical success, at least at this time: son that makes me want to characterize cosmism of communism … However, there is a specific rea- We probably can’t even say this about the project project, at least not finality. in the sense of a certain realized project. I am not sure we can call it a failed we can probably speak about cosmism as an un- AZ imaginary—this is not a failure by any means ... medical techniques, type of political and a certain poetry, literature, art, cinema, scientific inventions, ally raise the dead, but they produced amazing Similarly with cosmism: granted they did not liter the world look different is a failure in any sense. new language for pictorial expression that makes here.)art I do not think that developing a whole sense? (I am primarily speaking of in modernism Mondrian? Kandinsky? Malevich? Failed in what like failure of modernism.”“the Who failed and how: it’s probably the easier one of the two. that was achieved. But look, I think technologically ondary goal—space travel—was actually the one by future generations. It’s interesting that the sec- delay death and probably hoped to be resurrected resurrect another human being. They merely tried to really expected to themselves or become immortal anyone of the first or second generation of cosmists charged ions of oxygen, and so on, but I doubt that blood transfusions, through irradiation by negatively abstinence from sex, through special diets, through aging, and so forth, through “white marriages” and different ways of trying to increase life span, to slow I disagree with both of you. On the one hand, I also always had an issue with formulations -

them into a mystical providence. In this sense, of their literal meaning and intent, and transforms Solov’ev reiterates Fedorov’s ideas, he strips them urrection. However, it is commonly held that while and finally lead to a collective, creative labor of res - become the basis for brotherly and sisterly relations should develop into something greater: it should transcending the egoism of individuated bodies, dation of the divine connection between people, the full potential of love. Instead, love as the foun- and sexual relations, which he thought narrowed about the necessity to overcome distinct genders itual disciple of Fedorov, reiterates Fedorov’s insight Love Solov’ev, as is the case in his book in writings of the religious philosopher Vladimir the project of the Common Task that can be found more pragmatic, literal, and practical quality of type of dilution in poeticcertain images of a much ways; the point is to change it.” losophers have only interpreted the world, in various close to Marx in his by an actual realization. In this sense Fedorov is very clearly of great importance, they must be followed the avant-garde. which later also entered production the artistic of life creation implicit in Russian religious philosophy, resurrection. This desire continues the tradition of and became a creation of life: should become a art would enable it to transcend its mimetic status or representations, until there is a technology that is forcedArt to make do with fictional likenesses bility of returning a dead person to material form. opinion, from is born the reaction to the impossi- death and a material resurrection for all. Art, in his (1893). Solov’ev, who considered himself a spir An example of this can be the criticism of a So while insights artistic and inspiration are Theses onFeuerbach:phi- “The The Meaningof -

121 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts 122 tice, type of unconditional, and a certain limitless tendencies from the perspective of and jus- implies to me ideas about actual, contemporary of surveillance and control. To think as a cosmist internet, or from security services using it as a tool ing a profit through the museum”“total that is the is currently largely shaped by corporations mak alter the nature of our relations with this field which artistically, because it seems that cosmism could situation. This question is very interesting for me what cosmism could contribute to this particular ences may be difficult to find, we can speculate on from Silicon Valley to cosmism. While direct refer also reasonable to consider the relationship of folks than networks of data centers? In this context it’s museums collecting the myriad things of the world could be more similar to Fedorov’s conception of disseminate information about our bodies. What smileys and likes, we will be using the internet to automated, perhaps in the near future, instead of healthcare are gradually becoming successfully to biometric information. As medical services and This data includes everything from visual images tion about nearly every living person every second. which accumulate massive amounts of informa- usually cite are IT corporations and secret services tion of the Common Task? Examples of this that I we are speaking about an applied, practical realiza- ideas? How can we speak of this as a failure even if numerous examples of realized aspects of Fedorov’s look at the world we are living in now, don’t we see have failed. in terms of its activist component—both appear to reorganize the totality of life—as well as cosmism, extent, while the avant-garde, with its ambition to can be consideredmodernism realized to some But here I have a second objection: If we - - combination “Russian” and “cosmism” appears in an documents she found, the first usage of the word eral different versions of what happened. Based on Fedorov Library, separate research. According to the director of the under what circumstances; this subject requires we don’t actually know who came up with it and regarding the name “Russian cosmism.” At this time AZ meaning proves the opposite. current usage of the word may be misleading, its project of change of the dominant order. Although unites them is the intention to propose their own it came to social and political ideas, but what still of order should be established, especially when course, any cosmist had his own idea of what kind way harmonious certain as an opposite to chaos. Of universal order, a totality of relations organized in a the word fits just right—as it is known, cosmos is a misnomer since the origins of the term show that I do not quite agree that the word “cosmos” is a have been voluntarily united in one circle. However, of different backgrounds, lifestyles, and attitudes described that way, and especially that the authors really surprised if they were to find out that they are as you mentioned. Some of them would have been themselves as cosmists, except for biocosmists, of Russian cosmists had never thought of naming mism.” Most of the authors included in the cast that Fedorov himself did not use the word “cos- MS what other arguments could do this. perspectiveas a certain on life, then I don’t know If this is not an attempt to map cosmism positively that surpasses the boundaries of humanity. By the way, I know a pretty interesting story Going back to the terminology: yes, it is true

Anastasia Gacheva, there are sev -

123 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts 124 mations. the positive view Vernadsky had of these transfor popular concept of the Anthropocene, is precisely caused byearth human activity—and the currently and ’40s that reflected geological changes to the oped by Vladimir Vernadsky between the 1920s ferences between the noosphere—a concept devel catastrophic, etc. For example, one of the main dif- tural production is by definition dark, pessimistic, are discussing, because the mainstream of cul or “unfashionable” characteristics of the topic we This is yet another of the potentially problematic of that cosmism is an answer to the nihilistic crisis something rather similar, if indirectly, when he says creative potential of humanity. Boris Groys writes reflects optimism and a belief in the unlimited In any case, as it happened: even the term itself losophers interested in cosmism was very narrow. immortalism, it seems to me that the circle of phi- technology went hand in hand with research on Gacheva suggests that the development of space the accomplishments of the revolution. Although raise suspicions of religiosity lack in or a certain and resurrection,than immortality which could convenient ideological meeting as a certain point the politics of that time, the cosmos was more space program of the 1960s. It is possible that given popular in connection with the success of the Soviet in 1970. It is likely that this umbrella term became in the byarticle R. A. Galtseva about Vladimir Vernadsky important characteristicimportant of Russian cosmism. cal judgment of such an intervention, is yet another on the other hand suggests a refusal of philosophi- position in favor of an active intervention in life, and one hand suggests a refusal of the neutral scientific

Western philosophy caused by the death of God. Soviet PhilosophicalEncyclopedia, published 1 This change of perspective, which on the - - - than the cosmist philosophy as such. closer to the transhumanist talks we witness today the dominant classes can live forever. I think this is templates is for a moment when immortality sale, so Shop.” Dedicated to the bourgeoisie of Vienna, it con- across a funny biocosmist poem called “Immortality patible with the heritage of cosmism. I recently came among young tech-entrepreneurs are totally incom- of the so-called libertarian popular body-modification technologies. Any expressions moting and promising exclusive access to creo- and and companies proabsent in all these bio startups - subject and the object). Such an attitude is definitely sion, and his experiments, in which he was both the Bogdanov’s conviction in the good of blood transfu- times it resembles moral obligation (just think of so intense and a commitment so fierce that some- their thoughts and experiments driven by an interest noia. What is striking here radicalism is a certain in mistic way, without any tones of conspiracy or para- makers of biopolitics, but conceived of it in an opti- porary fashion, these people were early thinkers and with life regulation. Describing it in a more contem- ing about different life-forms and experimenting progress. celestial bodies: the one of tradition and the other of a bridge across the universe of time connecting two figure humanattitudes toward thepast andfuture as development of humanity; it was also needed to con- lative idea—an idea that guides and justifies the that resurrectioncertain served Fedorov as a regu- their Fathers adapt to a new kind of reality? I’m most What would they do with them? How would they help crazy that they wanted to resurrect their ancestors? me about Russian cosmists: Were they really that tion. This is one of the things that people usually ask MS I totally agree with Anton’s view on resurrec-

As for other cosmists, they went on think -

125 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts 126 could strongly identify with, and make it both the for the future (or fantasies, if you like) that one it). Cosmism “failed” in terms of a set of theories so intense and subtle that we could no longer trace some point (or its diffusion into practice became ect that unfolded in history, but was interrupted at cosmism is very different: it did not become a proj- go on and transform it as a project. In this sense and it is exactly their adherence that makes them many people who are adherents of psychoanalysis, ideas are being developed and realized. There are many although used in different modes. Its key comprehend our reality—an approach shared by various theories and authors; it is an approach to unfolding and uninterrupted project that includes services. I mean that psychoanalysis represents an tion to a whole industry of psychological consulting its impact on Surrealist art, neither its contribu- say psychoanalysis was successful I do not mean all very much alive. And cosmism is not. So when I structuralism was successful. These traditions are successful. Psychoanalysis was successful. Post- ful. Lutheranism was successful. Marxism was I seriously doubt it. Early Christianity was success- cosmists believed, even in a new, modernized way? who truly believes at least half of what any of the culture and science. But is there a person on Earth the effect cosmism had on people who worked in true, and by no means do I want to underestimate of cosmism—that is, to its aftermath. This is all ments that were conducted under the influence language that was invented and those experi- those remarkable styles in literature and art—the are pointing out different objects of culture, or you oppose the fact of failure that I insist on, you course, but I’ll clarify why I’m suggesting it. When As for failure, the latter is a strong word, of sal harmony and more about physical space travel. cosmism—there too it’s probably less about univer and so on. I think it is a similar situation with bio- from this period, it’s all about planets and galaxies, in mind—if you look at the titles of his paintings Ivan Kudryashev, though, definitely had outer space would have probably liked the name. Painters around beauty and harmony, and in that sense Fedorov AV in this journey of “resurrecting” cosmist ideas. this enterprise should probably point be the starting would be bewildering for anyone. The rationale of or an alternative—name for it now. This uncertainty be found, and what might be the most appropriate— moment we don’t know exactly where cosmism can trying to address oneandthesameissuehere: at this incredibly interesting task. reminiscences of it. This would be a challenging and with its practical implications and contemporary the constitutive elements of cosmism as a program overcome this rupture in its history—to connect interrupted state. On the contrary, it is possible to mean that the cosmist legacy would remain in its together with its discontents. Besides, it does not that it will enable us to comprehend cosmism better understand these inner “contradictions”— suppose that the lens of “failure” will enable us to resonates with what you are saying, Arseny. Also, I nonetheless—an outline of the Common Task. This versions and different amendments but a program scientific program—a program that had different source of affect, butalsoasanethical, political, and of cosmism not only as a source of inspiration or a build one’s own project. I find it necessary to speak subject of interest and the platform upon which to

Marina, of course you are right: cosmos means Generally speaking, I think the three of us are

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127 Marina Simakova, Anton Vidokle, and Arseny Zhilyaev Cosmic Doubts 128 all. We can only speculate about what could have a wonder that we have anything left to consider at destruction was very comprehensive, and it’s really manuscripts were confiscated and destroyed. The squads; were books and art taken out of circulation; nists ended up in labor camps or in front of firing government in the 1930s. Almost all its protago- you say it was interrupted—suppressed by Stalin’s or worse. And specifically in terms of cosmism: as seems ideas have a kind of a tenacity, for better this after its total defeat in the last world war? It cism at the moment—who would have expected are of seeing something sort like a return of fas- try or perhaps the whole planet at some point. We not manifest as a normative system in some coun- am not so sure that conditions it will given certain talk about the failure of Marxism but personally I organization, the normative system. Many people it actually becomes the dominant system of social been a failure historically. Then, in a strange turn, have seemed like a total utopia, and had already cept, they would have laughed at you—it must centuries if democracy was a viable political con- would have asked anyone in the ninth or fourteenth preserved in isolated monasteries. Probably if you democracy lay as passages dormant in manuscripts Athens several thousand years ago, the concept of example democracy—following its defeat in ancient opment of society, things look a lot less linear: for longer-term effect ideas on the devel of certain at the risk of repeating myself, if you think about the one with Hito Steyerl around the same topics, and Parallel to this conversation we are doing another other things … tural influence and Bogdanov’s sci-fi novels, among This may have been the effect of Tsiolkovsky’s cul But I want to speak more about failure. - - this belief. don’t think I am the only person who has on Earth abolition of death, is an idea I can believe in. And I that the central premise: a universal fight for the formative in the present. Having said this, I do think twentieth century—are too historicized to be trans- while amazing and transformative for the early opinion—poetic, literary, and pictorial languages, cosmist aims. Its most developed aspect in my confronted in order to reorganize society to achieve tion of how existing power structures need to be or political theory: there is not a sufficient descrip- think it has not developed sufficiently as a social Being an artist, I cannot help much with this. I also arguments on are outdated or have been disproven. update. Much of the scientific ideas it bases various paradigms for its concepts, needs a significant ence, as one ofwhich the principal is important suffers serious handicaps: its relationship to sci- develop as, for example, psychoanalysis has. been accomplished had cosmism been allowed to Le Roy, along with the Catholic French mathematician Édouard 1 The term was proposed by the Because of this long interruption, cosmism at the Sorbonne in 1923–24. geochemistry that Vernadsky gave Chardin, on the basis of lectures on philosopher Pierre Teilhard de

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and Kunsthalle Wien. © the authors Antwerp; V-A-C Foundation, Moscow; Witte de With, Rotterdam; jointly published in 2017 by M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art A version of this interview appeared in the book Wahlverwandtschaft Esther Zonsheim De Baere,Bart Arseny Zhilyaev, and How toGather,

133 Bart De Baere, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Esther Zonsheim Wahlverwandtschaft 134 was the fact type that was an artist doing a certain interesting to me, in addition to the actual content, historical books on aesthetic theory. What was very lection as the first title in a new series of largely research and proposed that e-flux publish this col with Fedorov’s ideas, I was fascinated by Arseny’s cosmism. Having just made my first film that dealt include writings by Nikolai Fedorov, the founder of a book about avant-garde museology, which was to mutual friend, and Arseny told me about his idea for Nevertheless, I was very intrigued with his activity. was impossible for me to get away from the kitchen. told me that I should go and see his project, but it Presnya Historical Memorial Museum. Many people in the formartwork of a discursive structure at the his Pedagogical Poem project, which was also an and beyond. At the same time Arseny was doing with numerous and theorists artists from Moscow discussions, and presentations at this restaurant time. We also organized a series of daily lectures, a gallery, where it was possible to pay for food with based economy, we set up a temporary restaurant in currency that we issued. To this time- jump start could exchangein the arts labor using a time-based (2009), which was basically a network where people Moscow working on an e-flux project, mer of 2012, albeit very briefly. At that time I was in Esther Zonsheim what are the basic aspirations you share? German languageGerman calls is it based upon? Can it be seen in terms of what the trajectory as a declaration of a future intent. What This seems to be not so much a conclusion of a past of a long-term cooperation between the two of you. DeBaereBart A year or so later we were introduced by a In public announcements you speak I first met Arseny in the sum- Wahlverwandtschaft? Time/Bank 1 If so, - ization, always implying a materialist, critical, and in the existing context—but is always seeking real art. Her approach may seem too radical, impossible Esther holds a very constructivist attitude toward true. Just as any cosmist or historical avant-gardist, utopian impetus,” but that wouldn’t be absolutely been there all the time. I am tempted to say “the Esther created, I realized the cosmic impetus had Later on, when I went deeper into the history of what cosmism, but was in line with its basic instincts. in Kassel—the project was not directly relevant to seen at that time was or two by then, but no specifics. The last thing I had she had been working on Russian cosmism for a year another planet. such stories sounded like something happening on Russian town with no trace of contemporary life, art trial. For someone who had just moved from a small against Art(2007), showing screenshots of the mock several times and talked about the project a conference where Keti Chukhrov mentioned e-flux when I moved from Voronezh to Moscow. I attended in person … I guess the first time was in 2007 or so, projects Esther was engaged in even before we met Arseny Zhilyaev gion: the Free Labor Church. and founder of biocosmism and a radical new reli- Alexander Svyatogor—a futurist poet, anarchist, new film we are now planning based on writings of produced more ideas for new projects, such as a sations and exchanges with Arseny, which, in turn, this book, which is now in print, led to many conver wanted e-flux to this. support The collaboration on something rare in our field these days. So I really of serious historical and editorial work, which is Much later, I met Esther in Moscow. I knew Naturally, I had seen a number of Time/Bank at documenta 13

A Crime

- -

135 Bart De Baere, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Esther Zonsheim Wahlverwandtschaft 136 culture is the use of polarizing antagonism as a Manichaean way. A basic operation of European a tendency to approach dualism negatively, in a were gatherings of two people. Europeans have of the dual. Some of the most fruitful gatherings work on cosmism was very present—was the notion Moscow Biennial in 2015—at which your the 6th BB so far, and I do hope this is just the beginning. interest. We have initiated a number of joint energy. Iwatch Esther’s creative intuitionwithakeen cosmism bolstered this disposition with a lot of laborative projects, and a deep interest in Russian positively disposed by our nature to engage in col book, and it took off from there. I think we are both my home city of Voronezh. I was connected to by the funny twist of his life with involved in a project on Fedorov’s curatorship, which formuseology publication and I had been already been preparing a collection of works on avant-garde dred-plus years. Anyway, by the day we met, I had situation has not changed too much over these hun- then-accepted limit of art’s ambitions. Actually, the more, Fedorov’s project went drastically beyond the that the avant-garde pinned on the arts. What’s the museum was the quintessence of the hopes At some point, I realized that in Russian cosmism and speculations on the future of this institution. were inspired, in particular, by Marxist museology the transformation of life. Originally, my projects from doing research on the museum and its role in toward the common goal. And I feel totally comfortable with such an attitude even pragmatic perspective of her own prospects. An unexpected question that emerged from Then we had a lengthy collaboration on the In my case, my interest in cosmism came projects - should consider common interests, and described a example. She refused to agree that rational egoism theory largely using Chernyshevsky as a negative ofthe ideology the American dream, developed her of the twentieth century, who contributed a lot to United States), one of the most influential writers Alisa Rosenbaum, before her immigration to the an American spinoff. considers others. and supports self-interest. Rational egoism is an egoism that if we are mathematically guided solely by our own our profit without regard to common interests, even Lacan, among others. That is, we cannot maximize the famous “prisoner’s dilemma” used by Jacques on common interests. This principle lies behind point their personal well-being begins to depend inherently act in their own self-interest, but at some thinking in Russia. The theory implies that people Done?Is toBe , a pivotal book for Leninism and free rated in Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s 1863 novel instance, the theory of “rational egoism” is elabo- aim to eliminate oppositions and establish unity. For traditions and individual philosophical ideas, which tion is probably at odds with Russian democratic bourgeois democracy based on rivalry and competi- AZ over the singular? If so, why? the individual. Do you feel the dual to be preferable basis from which to address the world, rather than cultures do, think of (man and woman)”“two as the And cultures may, as apparently many Amazonian ral forms with one expressing “us, the two of us.” though, such as Arabic or Slovenian, have two plu- antithesis/synthesis triad. Several languages productive combustion engine, through the thesis/ Interestingly and unexpectedly, this story gets Yes, indeed, the prevailing Western model of

Ayn Rand (Russian national What

137 Bart De Baere, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Esther Zonsheim Wahlverwandtschaft 138 to say that this was a rather pathetic gathering ing student, so he invited me to join his cult. I have a sign of appreciation: he thought I was a promis - to the discussion of Rand’s ideas. It was apparently attend a small reading group in his studio dedicated postmodern, neoclassical sculptor—invited me to dent in New York, one of my teachers—a kind of think about this … which such antagonism may arise. It’s interesting to without alienation, and thus no externality from in communism it’s the emancipated quality of life identify love as the means of coexistence, similarly will hold such antagonism: while religions tend to together. I also do not think that communist society a very interesting and inspiring model of how to be gularity. I am not a Christian, but I think that this is are individuated entities, yet remain a kind of sin- ment between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who in which there is no antagonism and no disagree- Another modelistheDivine Family—the Holy Trinity, democracy, but I really hesitate to agree with this. seem to think that antagonism is a prerequisite for sure antagonism is always productive. Some people always has to be antagonistic, and I am also not EZ and temporal coordinates. between mankind and the universe in their spatial nal by outlining the horizons of a prospective unity twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. termined the excesses of neoliberalism of the late at no end. In fact, viewpoint prede this libertarian - that strong people should go all the way and stop the submergedsupporting tenth, etc. She argued strike of the ruling class who could no longer afford Regarding Ayn Rand, stu when I was- an art I am not sure that the dialectical method Russian cosmism renders this termi- BB aliens. inclusive, arguably even extending to animals and already died. His project of the Common Task is all- abandon the weak, the old—even those who have one. In his thinking, there is no ethical possibility to implored that one should live is antithetical to Fedorov’s ideas, who specifically ably a far better book than byguided Tolkien’s the President of the United States is being secretly corporate and government positions. It’s as though eral generations of people who came to occupy key such mediocre writing had this toxic effect on sev of grudge. So it’s still pretty incredible to me that age heroic fantasies of omnipotence, and are full the novels are basically written on the level of teen- had on the American political and economic elite: learned much later how great an influence her books ing. That’s why I was enormously surprised when I of people as mediocre as Rand’s simplistic writ- already been created. work. I’m pretty sure the relevant prototypes have military cyborgs interconnected by a wireless net- the most immediate application of telepathy will be magic in the eyes of previous generations. I guess net, 3-D printers, and space flights—would be pure like the telephone, radio, and TV, let alone the inter impossible. Many inventions familiar to us today— AZ future? mented. Do you feel telepathy holds potential in the Biennial, with remarkable effects, which they docu- Moscow with telepathic drawing during the 6th Fabrice Hyber and Honoré I would note that Rand’s cult of selfishness We can never be absolutely sure Lord of theRings (which is argu - The with and for every- Fountainhead ). δ’O experimented something is - -

139 Bart De Baere, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Esther Zonsheim Wahlverwandtschaft 140 communications, and so forth. A digital telepathy … happen with the invention of the internet, wireless feel that such a phenomenon is already to starting of reason would transform this planet. Some people emergence of the informational, telepathic sphere and the noosphere in the 1930s ’40s, and felt that the athy, I really don’t know. actually seems possible. If you mean magical telep - technologically speaking, some type of telepathy ally took place. This was several months ago. So, tific experiment and a transfer of information actu- brain waves. Apparently it was a successful scien- different of the world parts via computer-encoded sion of thoughts and images between two people in was just reading about the first an article transmis- EZ EZ where we should go? Can cosmism help us? diversity and yet transcend national borders. Is this ceivable alternative that may cultivate a localized the question arises as to whether there is a con- of origin to both the Tsarist and Bolshevik empires, Trubetzkoy to think of an alternative for his space the desperately refined attempts of Prince Nicolai of Eurasianism in the interbellum, and especially tion with cosmism. When focusing on the origin BB sliver of surface on one small planet. conceive of territoriality and geopolitics based on a surable and we are all in it, so it’s a bit absurd to ies and aim for the cosmos. The universe is immea- should just leapfrog over issues of national boundar ion, and has more dangers than benefits. I think we Eurasianism. It’s not much of in my opin - an ideology Vladimir Vernadsky was already writing about It depends on what you mean by telepathy. I You remember my Historically Eurasianism had a tense rela- reservations about

- AZ of all that has been laid to waste by time. about production of the new, but rather a rescuing responsibility to not leave them behind. So it’s not dead, but merely wounded, and for Fedorov it is our bring back our ancestors. In this sense they are not other conceivable tool to bring back the past … to technology, art, social organizations, and every truly died until we have exhausted reason, science, back and sees a field of potential. Nobody has empire, ideology, destroyed by time—Fedorov looks of failures—with every construction, organism, most thinkers see the past and history as a series EZ excluded from this equation? a project about future life, but is future life itself not as a seeking out of the fathers. Cosmism may be the fathers, with reason not as an abstraction but of the museum as the resurrection by the living of for All (2017) by Anton Vidokle evokes the task institutions.film Immortality and Resurrection The government, in that case, is only a caretaker of its ing, and everyone who will ever live. Even the everyone who ever lived, everyone who is now liv- extended view on constituencies, encompassing BB verse makes any territorial dispute solvable. national states as such, since the size of the uni- ceeds from overcoming the problem of territory and Russian government. In its extreme, cosmism pro- has already been successfully appropriated by the an instance of radical protofascism, which, besides, AZ standing of history, somehow close to that of Walter Yes, Fedorov has a very interesting under For Fedorov, the past is the future. Where The Irish thinker Edmund Burke had an I agree with Esther here. Eurasianism today is

-

141 Bart De Baere, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Esther Zonsheim Wahlverwandtschaft 142 the human being. inhumanistic theories, at least when it comes to ideas seem more optimistic to me than the existing particular, by Boris Groys. On the whole, Fedorov’s you prefer, a curator’s vision. This was described, in urrection is unable to evolve or, without artistic if terms of contemporary art. The mechanism of res - gencies in Russian cosmism, and this is also true in plenty of space for future life with all of its contin- by the cosmist Alexander Gorsky? Thus, there is or have light-powered phallic pupils, as envisaged with the people of the future, who may be bodiless past, with all their corporal inhibitions, match up And, most importantly, how will the people of the contributed to the evolution of Homo sapiens? will happen to plants and animals, which obviously confined to a historical period of its own? What of one generation to another? Will each planet be erations, a key question is: becomes the place for settling resurrected gen- was already pointed out by Fedorov. If the cosmos and corporal conflicts within our species. This which are not restricted to overcoming the social resurrection, we have to solve a heap of problems, here and will continue. Before we achieve universal when mankind admits evolution does not stop of human beings. The path to future life will open faith in the endless transformational capabilities was largely inspired by the theory of evolution and tism. We shouldn’t forget that Russian cosmism ing mix of radical techno-utopism and conserva- in Fedorov’s philosophy, which is an overwhelm- rushing backward. Similar patterns can be found an emergency brake of progress—a locomotive with revolution. Revolution, in its turn, of is sort Benjamin, who believed that history only began

What will be the ratio

matter be included into the notion of constituencies, action, transformation a certain of life.” Should all that does not is no art produce “there a certain Resurrection for All, featuring Arseny, states that any means possible, including art.” project and of immortality directly and literally to the impossibly difficult mism was formulated as desire to contribute“the BB ing and bringing him back to the mundane world. debt to Christ and redeem his sacrifice by resurrect- Christianity, mankind should be able to pay their been articulated clearly before. If we talk about about the logic of resurrection, although it has never those who were partly human in nature. This is also will be resurrected, including gods, beginning with Ideally, time and the history of the whole universe equipment, software, computer viruses, and so on. nitely raise the question of the evolution of technical all other molecular compounds too. We should defi- extended to involve animals, plants, bacteria, and resurrection project consistently, it should be AZ from sunlight. We should learn from plankton. the energy they need for their life processes directly for energy. Plankton already do that: they generate feeding, we will stop consuming other forms of life EZ why and how? included in the notion of constituencies and if so, and plants had also been invited. Should they be News curators of the Moscow Biennial during her BB broadcast (2015), she asked whether animals In a recent interview, the ethos behind cos- I would add that if we implement Fedorov’s Absolutely. As soon as we learn to be self- When Alevtina Kakhidze interviewed the resurrection for all, by Immortality and Present

143 Bart De Baere, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Esther Zonsheim Wahlverwandtschaft 144 AZ extends even to the dead. he deeply believes in radical social equality that that despite this, Fedorov is a true socialist because as godless and not based on love. It can be argued critical of socialism, primarily because he saw it talism. On the other hand, Fedorov was expressly this sense it echoes the Marxist critique of capi- consumer commodity production, and so forth. In of uneven distribution of resources, the triviality of wasteful nature of market economy, the unfairness essentially anticapitalist, primarily because of the EZ political forms over others? may an orientation toward the future prefer certain political preferences does cosmism suggest? And ups have been strongly linked for a long time. Which Purdy argues that visons of nature and political set- BB It’s a very ambitious project that he came up with … becomes conscious, we will be selfsame with God. our artwork. And when the entirety of the universe beings we with the cosmos as will all be artists the main role and function of art, so as immortal to feel, think, perceive, etc. For Fedorov this is also makes up the universe conscious: teaching it ways activity will consist in making all the matter that who ever lived, and learn to live in the cosmos, our mism. Once we achieve immortality, resurrect all EZ calls it, that should be empowered again? or is it rather the “human world,” as Hannah Arendt for the poor,” expressing ideas similar to what was There is an opinion that Cosmism is a materialist philosophy that is In his book Yes. This is precisely the eschatology of cos- (2015),After Nature Jedediah Fedorov was “a Marxwas “a translates as “elective affinity.” —Ed. 1 urrection and social development. power instead of pursuing the common goal of res- day big data being used to make money and hold nothing more appalling for him than to see and the distribution of information. There would be of cosmism advocated for freedom of knowledge soon find himself in Snowden’s position. The father lar. I have no doubt that if he lived today, he would authorities of his time, whether religious or secu- plenty of contradictions with what the concerned toward the common goal. Fedorov’s ideas held for the ancestors, enlightenment, and hard work tion could only be achieved through love, respect philosopher believed that real social transforma- lence, despite his anticapitalist orientation. The accept Marxism because of its revolutionary vio- as Esther has already mentioned, Fedorov did not later advocated in liberation theology. However, The term Wahlverwandtschaft present-

145

Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. clerk in the social bureaucracy in European Graduate School. professor of philosophy at the Gestaltung Karlsruhe, and a Staatliche Hochschule für Senior Research Fellow at the Studies at , Professor of Russian and Slavic garde. He is a Global Distinguished specifically the Russian avant- on Soviet-era and literature, art internationally renowned expert critic,art media theorist, and (Semiotext(e), 2015). ist. His most recent book is media theorist, and media activ- Autonomia movement, is a writer, figureimportant in the Italian Radio Alice in Bologna and an Antwerp. Museum of Contemporary Art porter. He is director of M HKA, lives in Berlin. and published in essays and translations have been early Soviet literature. Her critical cal theory, cultural studies, and interests include Marxism, criti- London, and Paris. Her research porary philosophy in Moscow, Petersburg. She studied contem- cultural critic based in Saint And: of theEnd Phenomenology Translit. Bart DeBaereBart Marina Simakova 1911–1965, worked as a Elena Shaposhnikova , is a philosopher, essayist, Boris Groys founder of the famous Franco “Bifo” sup- critic and art is an art is a filmmaker and writer who Hito Steyerl is a Russian researcher and Colta.ru,

Berardi,

Openleft.ru,

Experimental Museology. cofounder of Moscow Center for Zhilyaev lives in Moscow and is a and museologist,An artist e-flux journal. Moscow Oblast. War I, she moved to Noginsk, in Brest-Litovsk. Following World ca. 1890–1983, was born Esther Zonsheim, was in 1984 in born Voronezh. Arseny Zhilyaev and an editoris an artist of Anton Vidokle

149 e-flux journal Art without Death: Conversations on Russian Cosmism 152 www.sternberg-press.com D-10243 Berlin Karl-Marx-Allee 78 Caroline Schneider Sternberg Press www.e-flux.com/journal contact [email protected] For further information, TALAS, Brooklyn Spanish Marbled Papers Italian Restauro Series Marbled Paper Hand MarbledGerman Paper French P Marbled Paper Marbled interiors: Photo: Tony Hisgett, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-2.0, 2012. Teck Suite of Galleries, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Detail, 24 × 15 × 10 cm. Part of the rock and mineral display at the Malachite, Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of Congo. Cover photograph: BUD Potsdam Printer Jeff Ramsey Design Mark Soo Mike Andrews Copyediting andproofreading Mariana Silva Kaye Cain-Nielsen Managing editors Anton Vidokle Stephen Squibb Brian Kuan Wood Julieta Aranda Series editors Sternberg Press Publisher of reproduction in any in whole or in part form. © 2017 e-flux, Inc., Sternberg Press. ISBN 978-3-95679-352-3 withoutDeath:Art Conversations onRussian Cosmism

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