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Home , Kazimir Malevich, Solomon Nikritin, Victory over the Sun

The following text is an edited transcription of a conversation that took place within the context of the Art and Science Aleph Festival hosted by the National Autonomous University of Mexico in May 2020 via Zoom because we were unable to gather publicly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As part of the festival’s program, Anton Vidokle’s trilogy of

01/11 films about Russian cosmism was translated to Spanish and screened for the Mexican audience. đđđđđđđđđđCarlos Prieto: I think it’s best to start this conversation by speaking about the role that Russian cosmism could have at this moment of crisis created by the Covid-19 pandemic. đđđđđđđđđđAnton Vidokle: Yes, a conversation about immortality acquires a lot more meaning when Anton Vidokle and Irmgard we are in the middle of a pandemic and so many Emmelhainz people are sick and dying. I think this present moment is a bit similar to the original context that triggered cosmism: all the epidemics, God-Building as droughts, and famines in nineteenth-century . But now there is also the fear of a Work of Art: planetary ecological collapse and extinction, and in this context the idea of resurrection becomes much more urgent. There is also a certain Cosmist hopelessness produced by the decline of reason and social progress, both of which have been Aesthetics encountering countless setbacks in recent decades. All of this makes the delirious optimism of cosmism meaningful and moving, in my opinion. đđđđđđđđđđIrmgard Emmelhainz: Here is another question to start from: What is Russian cosmism? đđđđđđđđđđAV: I am starting to think that there may be no such thing as a unified intellectual movement that can be called “Russian cosmism.” What exists is a particular tradition comprising numerous works by a diverse group of people – philosophers, scientists, artists, filmmakers, political activists – whose ideas overlap because all of them were interested in defeating illness and death, as well as exploring possibilities of living and traveling in the cosmos. But many of these people had contradictory views and ideas. đđđđđđđđđđThe name “Russian cosmism” is something that was coined very late, in the 1970s. When these ideas were first developed a century earlier, nobody used such a name. These two words first appear together in a Soviet encyclopedia of philosophy. Somebody wrote an entry for “Russian cosmism” and the name

e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 — 2 đ A t V i d k I m g E h z G o d - B u i l n g a s W r k f A t : C m e h c stuck. But it’s actually a misnomer because it gives cosmism a nationalist reading, while the ideas of cosmism are probably the most universal ideas I have ever come across. Cosmism has bigger ambitions than nationalism: when it speaks of resurrection, it’s for everyone who has ever lived on earth. In a sense resurrection is meant not only for humans, but for all living organisms: all life deserves to be

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Film still fromđAndrei Tarkovsky'sđ1972 movie Solaris.

12.22.20 / 10:44:03 EST eternal. You cannot get much broader than that. tragedy and evil in the world, and it needs to be đđđđđđđđđđIE: What would be some examples of defeated and eradicated by all means possible. diverging visions within what is considered to be đđđđđđđđđđIE: Cosmist ideas and socialism are utopias Russian cosmist thinking? that overlapped in time, and maybe it can be said đđđđđđđđđđAV: Nikolai Fedorov, who first developed that they converged in the Russian avant-garde. these ideas, was a deeply religious Orthodox If we consider “cosmist aesthetics” to propose a Christian. For him, resurrection and immortality synthesis between art and science, knowledge are the most central aspect of cosmism, its 03/11 and creativity, how can we reinterpret the “common task.”1 The other main theorist of Russian avant-garde? How could art advance the cosmism is Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the self- goals of cosmism, be it space travel or taught scientist who first developed the immortality? mathematic formulas necessary for a spaceship đđđđđđđđđđAV: Sometimes I think that cosmism would to leave the orbit of this planet.2 Tsiolkovsky’s not be so interesting if it had not happened view on death was totally opposite to Fedorov’s. against the background of the revolution. The For him death was an ecstatic, euphoric event: nineteenth century was notorious for numerous he thought that death/entropy is the moment utopian movements. Some were based on when the atoms that make up our bodies are religion or the occult, and others on socialist liberated from a finite form, and that they are utopias. There were many such groups and happy in this moment of emancipation. Following ideologies in almost every country in the world at Aristotle, Tsiolkovsky believed that atoms can the time. Had it not been for the revolution in experience happiness and sadness. This is Russia and the total radicalization of society, related to panpsychism, a very ancient, animistic cosmism would likely remain a kind of peculiar worldview which holds that all matter is capable but insignificant development. But the mixture of of feeling and thinking.3 This kind of thinking also cosmism and communism, and the acceleration appears to contradict Tsiolkovsky’s own fervent that occurred in Russia just before and after the belief in science and rationalism. In any case, revolution, were like pouring fuel on a fire. death for Tsiolkovsky is a joyous event for atoms, đđđđđđđđđđUnlike most philosophical, political, or whereas for Fedorov death is the greatest social theories, which tend to give art relatively

A replica ofđSputnik 1, the first artificial satellite in the world to be put into outer space: the replica is stored in the National Air and Space Museum. Photo: Wikipedia Commons/Public Domain.

12.22.20 / 10:44:03 EST little significance other than something abstraction at all. In fact there were many black decorative or propagandistic (like artists squares that followed Malevich’s iconic designing T-shirts and posters for the painting.6 There is a painting by revolution), in cosmism art is equal to science, , which includes small, technology, medicine, and social organization: its colorful circles that look like planets and stars.7 transformative capacity is valued on par with all There is also a whole series of black squares by other key fields that shape humanity. In fact, in which a pill-shaped object –

Fedorov writes about immortality and 04/11 perhaps a spaceship or a satellite – gradually resurrection as a work of art, and space travel enters the black space.8 becomes a tool to be used towards a đđđđđđđđđđI suspect there can also be a cosmist spiritualization of the universe, which he also reading of the futurist opera , calls an art project. This seems to have where Malevich’s Black Square first appears as resonated with artists, and it generated quite a part of the stage set.9 What is implied by this response – first in poetry and literature, in works work, if not literally spelled out, is that a victory of avant-garde, futurist poets such as Velimir over the order of nature represented by the sun Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchyonykh, Alexander also heralds a future victory over death. Svyatogor, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Alexander đđđđđđđđđđTatlin’s famous Monument to the Third Yaroslavsky, and others.4 International is angled parallel to the planetary đđđđđđđđđđIE: Malevich’s Black Square is interpreted in tilt of earth.10 Various Soviet architects from this canonical history as an emblem for period used new proportions for the design of abstraction via . How could we buildings, which were based on distances from reinterpret it through the lens of cosmism? the earth to the moon and to other planets in the đđđđđđđđđđAV: Black Square is a peculiar painting. On solar system, as an attempt to bring terrestrial the one hand it has become synonymous with a structures into a greater harmony with the kind of a nonobjective, reductivist, geometric cosmos. By the way, the word “cosmos” means abstraction. However, there is another way to see “harmony,” not “space.” It also means “beauty.” this painting: simply as a mimetic representation đđđđđđđđđđThere is a passage in Malevich’s writing of the black sky at night.5 In this sense it’s not an where he speaks of suprematist compositions as

The Caracol Tower, Chichen Itza, Mexico. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.đ

12.22.20 / 10:44:03 EST satellites, anticipating the Sputnik, which was are linked in order to act directly in society. Can launched in 1957: you elaborate? đđđđđđđđđđAV: Cosmist aesthetics are really peculiar. The suprematist machine, if it can be put For one thing, in Fedorov’s writings there are that way, will be single-purposed and have many different definitions of art. He writes about no attachments. A bar alloyed with all the art all the time. It’s unusual. As I mentioned elements, like the earthly sphere, will bear above, for Fedorov immortality is art and the

the life of perfections, so that each 05/11 labor of resurrection is a work of art. There is an constructed suprematist body will be overlap with Marxism: the belief in the included in nature’s natural organization transformative, nearly alchemical power of and will form a new sputnik; it is merely a human labor to produce something that is matter of finding the relationship between greater than the sum of its parts, in this case a the two bodies racing in space. A new return of life. sputnik can be built between earth and the đđđđđđđđđđAt the same time, Fedorov speaks of moon, a suprematist sputnik equipped with temples as works of art, because they are all the elements, that moves in an orbit, inherently interdisciplinary and combine forming its own new path.11 architecture, painted representations, sculpture, music, and words of the liturgy – like a Malevich’s Architectons, the sculptural works he Gesamtkunstwerk. According to his thinking, was making around 1923, are supposed to be temples are linked with museums and designs or prototypes for space stations that observatories, because these are all places would orbit earth containing bodies of the dead, where memories are preserved. This is because preserved at zero gravity in the coldness of outer documents, manuscripts, and images – space for eventual resurrection. memories – were kept in temples and đđđđđđđđđđIE: How is this history of art linked to your monasteries, as were the remains of ancestors. trilogy? Museums also preserve human and animal đđđđđđđđđđAV: What attracted me to cosmism initially remains, so temples and museums are also and motivated me to make these films is that cemeteries. Ancient temples often contained while I have always admired and have been astronomical observatories, for example in influenced by the legacy of the avant-garde, Mesopotamia or in Mesoamerica. So for Fedorov there was always something very oblique about all of these are one institution that is also a work it: a certain limit beyond which I could not make of art, which should be radicalized so as to sense of these works. What is the strange energy produce art in the form of a returning of life. that animates them? How did they come into đđđđđđđđđđAstronomical observatories are also being? What do they actually represent? The important because the horizon of cosmism does conventional art historical explanations were not stop with achieving immortality; it also calls never quite satisfying, and to understand these for the totality of the universe to become one, works only in terms of Marxism did not account unified, interconnected, immortal, and conscious for much of the strangeness that I was sensitive organism. Like the sapient ocean in Stanisław to. Reading Fedorov and other cosmist authors Lem’s Solaris, but much bigger: an organism clarified a lot of things about these works for me. which includes all that exists.12 This is to be đđđđđđđđđđBecause so few people know about constructed by the labor of immortal humans, cosmism, I felt that I needed to do something to who will have all eternity, the resources of the share these ideas. At first I thought about cosmos, and the technology of space travel to curating a show, publishing a book, or organizing teach all the dead matter that comprises the symposia. But I was worried that an academic, bulk of the universe to become conscious, to historicist approach would flatten all this feel, and to think. Knowledge of astronomy is incredibly imaginative content. So I tried to essential not only for space travel and present some of these ideas in a short play, navigation, but also in the sense that the act of which was not very good, but the script worked looking at the stars should not be merely passive much better for an essay film. Curiously, I didn’t gazing, but should produce regulation focus much on art and the avant-garde in the e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 — 2 đ A t V i d k I m g E h z G o d - B u i l n g a s W r k f A t : C m e h c (harmonization) of the universe, like a trilogy – only a little in the third film, which was manifestation of the “spooky action at a partly shot at the . I also did not distance” which is a phenomenon by which one focus very much on the space program either. I particle can effectively “know” something about think what really touched me once I got more another particle instantaneously, even if those familiar with cosmism were the ideas two particles are separated by a great distance. themselves, so the films are more about ideas đđđđđđđđđđ“There is no substance which cannot take than objects or artifacts. the form of a living being. The simplest being is đđđđđđđđđđIE: In cosmist aesthetics, art and science the atom. Therefore the whole universe is alive

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An Alibaba LED facial mask promotingđ"skin rejuvenation therapy" and "anti-aging wrinkle removal."đSee https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32618827583.html.đ

12.22.20 / 10:44:03 EST and there is nothing in it but life,” writes Museums, as we understand them now, came Tsiolkovsky in a monograph entitled The Monism into being during a very violent time: the French of the Universe (1931).13 Despite their profound Revolution and all the subsequent wars, colonial difference in their relationship to death, both expeditions, and so forth. Undoubtedly our Tsiolkovsky and Fedorov imagine a living, contemporary museums embody this violence, sentient cosmos. While this is largely a and this urgently needs to change. scientifically inspired insight for Tsiolkovsky, for đđđđđđđđđđHowever, Fedorov is not glorifying that side

Fedorov it is an art project. 07/11 of a museum as an institution. In fact, he clearly đđđđđđđđđđIE: If we can thus relate cosmist aesthetics says that a museum should not take, but should to the task of bringing about immortality (and preserve and return life. I do think that the resurrection for all), can you elaborate on how in cosmist museum he writes about is something the first part of your film trilogy, Immortality for substantially different than the museums we All, there is a section in the film that claims to have now. First, his museum is a museum of have agency on the viewer’s mental and physical everything. The curators of the cosmist museum health while we see red flashes on the screen? would not be concerned with the question of đđđđđđđđđđAV: When I was working on the first film in selection or what kind of history to write, but the trilogy, I came across a discovery made by would be more like the medical staff in a hospital NASA scientists in the 1990s that a certain type who, at least theoretically, have to make an effort of red light produces a healing effect on living to save the life of every single patient, everyone tissue.14 NASA had a specific problem: in the in need of help. condition of zero gravity, tissue heals very slowly. đđđđđđđđđđIE: Can you explain the role of the dog and So if you’re on the space station or a spaceship, the mummy in the film? What are they doing, even a minor paper cut takes a long time to heal. wandering around the museum in the film? The Red light in a frequency of 680 NM, emitted by apparition of the dog running around the LED diodes, expedites the healing of skin. museum is very moving because it’s like he Irradiation by this red light makes wounds heal comes from the afterworld to announce everyone much faster. Following NASA, the cosmetics else’s resurrection. The mummy, too, is coming industry adapted this technology for skin back to life. rejuvenation therapy. The military also adopted đđđđđđđđđđAV: Both the dog and the mummy are red light therapy for special forces soldiers, references to Ancient Egypt. The dog is a because there is a similar need to heal wounds Pharaoh Hound, one of the oldest breeds that quickly in combat. still exists. They are like living artifacts – they đđđđđđđđđđFilm is essentially sound, light, and color, so have been around for nearly five thousand years. I thought it might be possible to use these They look exactly like the of the Egyptian healing properties to suggest a kind of a god Anubis, the god of the dead. He invented therapeutic or prophylactic effect. Now, I don’t embalming and mummification. The reason I want to claim that my films have healing powers; wanted to have this dog in the film is to have a they are not going to cure Covid-19 or cancer. It’s living animal run through a zoological museum, more of a suggestion or a desire that an artwork filled with taxidermy animals. It’s also a could also incorporate a healing, therapeutic reference to the dog of an artist whose work I function, which is in keeping with cosmist admire: Andrei Monastyrski.15 He is a conceptual aesthetics. artist who pioneered performance art in đđđđđđđđđđIE: You shot Immortality And Resurrection in the 1970s. I used a text passage from one of For All in museums in Moscow and elsewhere in his key works in one of the films. Russia. And in the context of cosmism, the main đđđđđđđđđđThe mummy is a reference to Ancient Egypt, enemies are death, decay, and entropy. For where concern with eternal afterlife radically Fedorov, death needs to be reversed. Can you dominated the social and economic organization talk about how resurrection and conservation, of their civilization. Everything in life was and imagination and memory, relate in this film subordinated to eternal life after death. It is also and in your interpretation of the role of the a reference to Lazarus. In Russian icons, Lazarus cosmist museum? Bearing in mind that in the is often represented as a mummy. There is a

West museums mean precisely death and e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 — 2 đ A t V i d k I m g E h z G o d - B u i l n g a s W r k f A t : C m e h c strange detail in these paintings: other people petrification. who are present at this resurrection scene are đđđđđđđđđđAV: Museum ethics are a really important trying to stay away from him or hold their nose territory to consider, particularly in light of all the because he stinks. His body has been rotting. plunder that passed for archeology, the killing of đđđđđđđđđđIE: Cosmism has been heralded as a sort of animals, the murder of indigenous people, whose alternative in a sense that it’s remains ended up in museum displays, and many different from Western modernity because it’s other unconscionable, unacceptable things done not grounded in eliminating or overcoming the in the name of “science” and “progress.” past in the teleological march toward progress.

12.22.20 / 10:44:03 EST A Russian icon from theđNovgorod schoolđThe Raising of Lazarus, 15th century. 72 x 60 cm. The , St. Petersburg, Russia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.

12.22.20 / 10:44:03 EST But for cosmism, progress means resurrecting pharmaceutical interests have become class the dead and bringing them into the present so interests. If cosmism’s goal is to maintain life, they can live literally in the future. And that’s true what would be its way out of biopolitics, democracy and equality in terms of what it transhumanism, and genetic engineering? means to preserve the past. In the tradition of đđđđđđđđđđAV: Healthcare and medicine are a very Western modern thought, to compensate for the central preoccupation in cosmism. In fact, many loss of the past we invent ideological or of the people involved were either medical historical grand narratives and memorializing 09/11 doctors or scientists working on research that mechanisms. In a critical reading of Western has biomedical implications, like Alexander , this destruction of the past means Bogdanov and his experimental blood the destruction of humanity’s link to the world, transfusions, or Alexander Chizhevsky and his that is, the meaning of human life in the world. research into the ionization of air.16 Interestingly, What is also destroyed is the link to the sacred. the plasma treatment that is the only successful Cosmism has in common with Western treatment for Covid-19 right now is something modernity the elimination of God, the sacred, very close to what Bogdanov was working on in and any spiritual meaning of humanity’s link to 1926, and the ionizers that Chizhevsky invented the world. But differently than in Western can be very useful in disinfecting public spaces modernity, the meaning of human life is the from the virus, while we are still waiting for a eternal preservation of human life. That is to say, vaccine. For all its imagination and grand ideas, in cosmism, what gives life meaning is to want to cosmism is also deeply concerned with practical live forever; comfort is not located in past interventions in daily life. traditions (as in memorializing mechanisms in đđđđđđđđđđI think for me cosmism is first and foremost Western modernism). What truly matters is a project of God-building eradicating disease, increasing human life (богостроительство).17 In this sense spans, space exploration, human enhancement, immortality, resurrection, and space travel are attaining immortality by whatever means is most not ends in and of themselves, but are means accessible. In sum, the meaning of cosmist life is towards a greater goal. God-building was a very to transcend. This leads us to space travel, which important idea in Russia at the turn of the materially means transcending our dependence century that some of the key communist leaders on the earth (our bodily needs) to survive. But also embraced before and after the revolution. this sort of overcoming of life or the material For example, Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first aspects of life corresponds with some dystopian People’s Commissar for education in the Soviet materializations of cosmism, like cryogenics or Union, who so empowered the avant-garde after transhumanism or downloading our brains into the revolution, supported and wrote extensively machines, which are all phenomena and on this idea.18 God-building was inspired by ideologies linked to the dream of overcoming Ludwig Feuerbach’s “religion of humanity,” biological barriers toward immortality and which, in turn, is probably inspired by the against entropy through technology. Yet, from a strange secular religion Robespierre invented to feminist point of view, we cannot transcend our replace Catholicism, following the revolution in reproductive needs (proof of that is that in outer France.19 space we need to recreate an earthly đđđđđđđđđđ“For the sake of the great struggle for life … environment in order to survive); from an anti- it is necessary for humanity to almost organically capitalist point of view, transcendence is a war merge into an integral unity. Not a mechanical or against life which we can link to the neoliberal chemical … but a psychic, consciously emotional destruction of healthcare. Is there a twist in linking-together … is in fact a religious emotion,” cosmism towards rethinking these dystopian writes Lunacharsky in Religion and Socialism in outcomes of negating life itself in the search for 1908. By the early 1920s, the anarchist, poet, transcendence? I think it was Fedorov who said and founder of biocosmism Alexader Svyatogor we need to self-energize and not depend on our organized the Church of Free Labor in Moscow, environment to transcend. The modernist human with the support of the government as an miracle of transcendence via technology and attempt to create a new secular religion that science has been achieved at a heavy cost – not e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 — 2 đ A t V i d k I m g E h z G o d - B u i l n g a s W r k f A t : C m e h c would help build communism and cosmism. only eugenics and social Darwinism but also đđđđđđđđđđI think what Fedorov proposed a few climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, decades earlier is exactly the same project, water depletion, pollution, mass extinction, albeit on a universal scale: when the entirety of slavery, and diet-related diseases, just to name a the cosmos will be made sapient, united, and few of the side effects. We have reached the capable of thought and emotion, it will point where care of the human body has become effectively be the same as God. However, this is a geopolitical drama, as public health fundamentally different from any kind of infrastructure has been decimated and corporate transcendence: cosmists aimed to transform

12.22.20 / 10:44:03 EST rather than transcend. For Fedorov, the force Irmgard Emmelhainzđis an independent translator, that enables this transformation is love, and writer, researcher, and lecturer based in Mexico City. perhaps this is the twist. He also referred to this Her writingsđon film, the Palestine Question, art, cinema, culture, and neoliberalism haveđbeen as a work of art. translated into several languagesđand presented at an đđđđđđđđđđ× array of international venues, includingđthe Graduate Thanks to Hallie Ayresđfor transcribing the conversation and School of Design at Harvard (2014);đthe Walter annotating it, and to Carlos Prieto for organizing the Zoom Benjamin in Palestine Conference (2015);đthe New conversation as well as translating Anton Vidokle’sđfilms to School and the Americas Society (2016);đSBC Gallery, Spanish. 10/11 Montreal (2016);đthe Curatorial Summit at the School of Visual Arts, New Yorkđ(2017);đand the Munch Museum,đOslo (2018).đHer book Jean-Luc Godard's Political Filmmaking was published byđPalgrave MacMillan in 2019.

Anton Vidokleđis an artist and an editor ofđe-flux journal. e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 — 2 đ A t V i d k I m g E h z G o d - B u i l n g a s W r k f A t : C m e h c

12.22.20 / 10:44:03 EST đđđđđđ1 made use of basic geometric Monastyrski (born 1949) Fedorov (1829–1903) worked as forms to convey spiritual and founded the performance art a librarian at the Rumiantsev artistic feeling. group Collective Actions to Museum (now the Russian State experiment with modes of Library). A collection of his đđđđđđ7 spatiotemporal practice. essays was published Affiliated with the constructivist posthumously by his followers in movement, Rodchenko đđđđđđ16 1904 under a name The (1891–1956) worked in graphic A writer, philosopher, and Philosophy of the Common Task. design, photomontage, and revolutionary, Bogdanov This book outlined the basic photography as a means of (1873–1928) cofounded (with tenets of cosmism, underscoring social commentary after the Lenin) the Bolshevik party. He the imperative to work toward Russian Revolution. 11/11 also founded the Institute for resurrection and immortality for Hematology and Blood all. đđđđđđ8 Transfusions in 1925–26 to A painter and exhibition research and experiment the đđđđđđ2 designer, Nikritin (1898–1965) biological potential of blood Cited as the grandfather of the founded and lead multiple transfusions to aid in eternal Soviet space program, research initiatives focused on youth and rejuvenation. He died Tsiolkovsky’s (1857–1935) the biomechanics of movement after injecting himself with the plethora of scientific research within the theatrical arts. blood of a student infected with and philosophical musings laid malaria and tuberculosis. the groundwork for astronautic đđđđđđ9 Alexander Chizhevsky theory and modern rocketry. Written by Kruchyonykh in , (1897–1964) studied the effects Tsiolkovsky studied under Victory over the Sun illustrates of the sun and ionization on Fedorov for three years at the an endeavor to eradicate reason biology. Through research with Rumiantsev Museum. and time by deposing the sun. electrically charged chandeliers, The opera was met with violent Chizhevsky discovered the đđđđđđ3 criticism when it premiered at beneficial effects on living Panpsychism rests between ’s Luna Park in beings of negatively charged dualism, which distinguishes 1913. ions in the air. between the mind and matter but presents a fractured đđđđđđ10 đđđđđđ17 understanding of how the two Associated with the Developed by the Bolshevik interact, and physicalism, which constructivist movement, sector of the Russian Social offers a unified conception of (1885–1953) Democratic Labor Party, God- the world but lacks an worked at the intersection of building was an enterprise that explanation for the emergence architecture and sculpture, proposed appropriating the of consciousness. Panpsychism guided by a utopian belief in the religious mechanisms of advocates for a vision of the synthesis of art and technology. , ritual, and myth and world in which mentality and Conceived as the headquarters repurposing them as vehicles for consciousness are innate and for the Communist International, pro-communist propaganda that ubiquitous. the Monument (commonly aggrandized science over the known as “Tatlin’s tower”) was supernatural. đđđđđđ4 envisioned as a spiral iron A key member of the Russian framework surrounding a glass đđđđđđ18 Futurist movement, Khlebnikov’s cube, cone, and cylinder stacked A Marxist revolutionary, (1885–1922) poems and plays atop each other and rotating at Lunacharsky (1875–1933) are characterized by different speeds. Though a occupied the role of People’s experiments with linguistics and model of the tower was Commissariat for Education translogical language. Together exhibited at the Congress of the from 1917 to 1929, during which with Khlebnikov, Kruchyonykh Soviets in 1920, the Soviet time he oversaw an outpouring (1886–1968) is credited with government’s disdain for of avant-garde artistic inventing zaum, a transnational nonfigurative art impeded the production. language rooted in linguistic structure from ever being deconstruction and sound realized. đđđđđđ19 symbolism. The founder of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) biocosmism, Svyatogor đđđđđđ11 expanded on theories of (Alexander Agienko) (1886–1937) , historical materialism and championed the belief that “Suprematism: 34 Drawings,” atheism by offering a critique of death was the source of social published on December 15, religion as the outward injustices and global 1920. projection of human nature. antagonisms. Zabolotsky (1903–1958) cofounded the đđđđđđ12 avant-garde group , a The Polish science fiction writer collective dedicated to and philosopher Stanisław Lem absurdist, futurist, and (1921–2006) published Solaris in modernist art and aesthetics. A 1961. The novel concerns a proponent of biocosmism, group of scientists and their Yaroslavsky’s (1896–1930) failure to understand the inner writings extended the definition machinations of the sentient to include immortality for all planet Solaris. living beings. Highly critical of the Bolsheviks, he was đđđđđđ13 eventually executed in the Contrary to the theory of Solovki prison camp. dualism, monism posits that reality and all its phenomena are đđđđđđ5 reducible to one unit or principle This argument stems from Boris with no independent parts.

Groys’s writing on the subject, e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 — 2 đ A t V i d k I m g E h z G o d - B u i l n g a s W r k f A t : C m e h c elaborated in the 2017 exhibition đđđđđđ14 “Art Without Death: Russian See Harry T. Whelan, “The Use of Cosmism” at HKW in . See NASA Light-Emitting Diode https://www.hkw.de/en/progra Near-Infrared Technology for mm/projekte/2017/art_without Biostimulation,” ntrs.nasa.gov _death_russian_cosmism/start https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search .php. .jsp?R=20030001599.

đđđđđđ6 đđđđđđ15 Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Credited with cofounding founded the avant-garde art Moscow conceptualism, movement suprematism, which alongside Ilya Kabakov,

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