1. In Brussels on May 1, 2019, Rick Perry, then-US energy secretary, announced that “seventy-five years after liberating Europe from Nazi Germany occupation, the United States was again delivering a form of freedom to the European continent.” And, in the twenty-first century, he

01/13 added, “rather than in the form of young American soldiers, it’s in the form of liquefied natural gas.”1 Perry was referring to a deal that would double the size of US gas exports to Europe. But from what, exactly, would Perry’s “freedom gas” liberate Europe? đđđđđđđđđđPerry’s colorful statement came as an explicit snub to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, a Oleksiy Radynski project that Russia and Germany have been pursuing since the 2010s to link the two countries directly via the Baltic seabed. The Is Data the New pipeline’s route bypasses intermediary countries like Ukraine, whose state budget depends Gas? heavily on gas transit revenues. Nord Stream 2 is expected to double the capacity of the already existing Nord Stream pipeline, increasing the volume of transmitted gas up to 110 billion cubic meters a year. Into 2020, Merkel’s government continues to defend this massive gas infrastructure project that’s been mired in controversy from the start. đđđđđđđđđđStrangely enough, most of the criticism facing the Nord Stream 2 project comes from a geopolitical, rather than an ecological, perspective.2 Its critics say that this pipeline would disproportionately increase the EU’s dependence on Russian fossil fuel exports.3 It’s also quite clear that the actual political rationale for this project is to render obsolete the subterranean, Soviet-era natural gas arteries that run through large parts of the European continent that are no longer under Russia’s control. Following Russia’s invasion and annexation of Ukrainian territories in 2014, Merkel’s government’s adherence to the Nord Stream 2 project did not cease to raise eyebrows.4 After the downing of a passenger plane over the Donbass in July 2014 by pro- Russian proxies, the ensuing sanctions against Russia did not affect the project in any way. In German public debate, the fact that the completion of Nord Stream 2 would likely cause the economy of Ukraine to collapse, a country at war with Russia, has been constantly referenced

e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 7 — m c h 2 đ O k s i y R d I s D a t h e N w G ? – but to little avail.5 đđđđđđđđđđThe intricacies of the ongoing Nord Stream 2 debate, however, miss a rather large elephant in the room. Without questioning the importance of countering Russia’s neocolonial wars in Ukraine and elsewhere, it is easy to see why the biggest problem with the new pipeline is not at all the fact that it will deprive Russia’s neighbors of their transit revenues. Such revenues, in fact,

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Smiley-face graffiti on a gas pipe at the Nord Stream 2 construction site in Lubmin, Germany. Copyright:đNordđStreamđ2 / Axel Schmidt.

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Gerhard Schröder, ex-chancellor of Germany and chairman of the board of directors of NordđStreamđ2, and Matthias Warnig, former member of the Stasi and CEO of NordđStreamđ2. Copyright:đNordđStreamđ2 / Wolfram Scheible.

12.21.20 / 21:31:41 EST fuel gross corruption schemes, like those that the Russian Federation, one of the world’s define Ukraine’s political process, and guarantee largest exporters of fossil fuels and, according to the concentration of exorbitant wealth in the most estimates, the owner of the largest stock of hands of oligarchs.6 Nor is the biggest problem reserves of natural gas on Earth. This particular the fact that Nord Stream 2 will provide the list of “threats and challenges” also happens to Russian autocratic elite with another powerful coincide more or less with a number of actions tool to subvert European politics. The real that are necessary to undertake if humanity is problem is that this tool, just like its countless 04/13 serious about its survival on the planet. As it counterparts, undermines the future of planet becomes increasingly evident that the future of Earth by bringing the irreversibility of climate humankind depends on its ability to switch to a change one large step closer. And this time, global economic model that would make the placing the blame squarely on Russia is clearly industrial burning of fossil fuels obsolete, the not an option. mere hope of such a switch – however distant it đđđđđđđđđđWith Germany’s ex-chancellor Gerhard might seem at the moment – is now officially Schroeder as a manager, and Mathias Warnig (an recognized as a threat to the regime that governs ex-Stasi officer with a long-standing connection Russia. Clearly, the Russian political model to Vladimir Putin) serving as the CEO of the values the future of fossil fuel and capital flows project, it is not surprising that the German over the future of the innumerable species government values its Nord Stream 2 (including humans) whose existence is commitment more than its widely anticipated threatened by climate change. A question worth green transition. In a truly Orwellian move, Nord asking, then: Is the Russian government actually Stream 2 presents itself as an environmentally being, perversely, more straightforward than friendly initiative that will help decrease carbon most other governments about the fact that they emissions from oil and coal, fossil fuels that are, are ultimately accountable to entities such as it is claimed, much dirtier than natural gas. This gas, oil, and their derivative petrocurrencies, argument is refuted by ecologists who assert rather than to the members of human society that, despite being relatively “cleaner” than who voted them into power? much of the existing carbon infrastructure, đđđđđđđđđđWell before Trump came to power, it was projects like Nord Stream 2 would increase the abundantly clear that the global carbon-based structural, long-term dependency on fossil fuels capitalist model is incompatible with the futures to such an extent that a transition to a carbon- of democracy and of the environment. Despite free economy – something that the Earth’s the broad scientific consensus on the grave biosphere needs much earlier than we plan to effects of the fossilized economy on the institute – might actually never occur. planetary climate, and despite the cautious đđđđđđđđđđAt the time of this writing, the construction intergovernmental half-measures to prevent a of Nord Stream 2 has been halted due to US catastrophic scenario (like the nonbinding Paris sanctions against the project, which will most Accord of 2015, which the US government has likely merely delay the pipeline’s completion by already opted out of anyway), “extreme” fossil about a year. But why is it that the only real form fuels investments continue to surge.8 Of all the of opposition to Nord Stream 2 comes from the fringe ideologies and discarded ideas that the power that would simply prefer to cook the Trump presidency has brought into the planet with its own “freedom gas”? mainstream, climate change denialism could probably have the most lasting and damaging 2. impact on the future of humankind. Of course, In May 2017, Russian president Vladimir Putin Donald Trump’s “climate skepticism” is far more signed an executive order titled “On the Strategy publicized than that of his Russian counterpart of Economic Security of the Russian Federation and political patron – even though the effect of until 2030.” This order includes a list of ongoing the latter could be more fundamental, given “challenges and threats to the economic Putin’s global support of fossil fuel kleptocrats security” of Russia identified at that time. High and right-wing conspiracists, Trump included. on the list – number six of twenty-five points – is Like Trump, Putin has repeatedly questioned the a threat formulated as follows: “Changes in the e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 7 — m c h 2 đ O k s i y R d I s D a t h e N w G ? human-made nature of climate change, and went structure of global demand for energy resources as far as to ridicule the use of alternative energy and their consumption patterns; development of sources like wind turbines for the alleged harm energy-saving technologies and reduction of their vibration may cause to worms, urging them material consumption; development of ‘green to “come out of the ground.” (The US president, technologies.’”7 meanwhile, focuses on turbines’ apparently đđđđđđđđđđThis statement warrants closer attention. murderous effect on birds). Again, this It’s not difficult to see why the “development of unprecedented (and scientifically baseless), ‘green technologies’” is an existential threat to disproportionate concern for subterranean,

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Participants in the Baltic Sea Day Environmental Forum 2017 couldn’t care less about the ecological aspects of Nord Stream 2. Copyright:đNordđStreamđ2 / Anatolij Medved.

12.21.20 / 21:31:41 EST nonhuman entities – inanimate, like oil and gas, problem afflicting oil-producing states to other or animate, like worms – provides clues as to the limits of carbon democracy?”11 As natural gas actual allegiance of a certain public servant overtakes oil’s previous status as the most named Vladimir Putin. important fossil fuel of the current century, this đđđđđđđđđđMost commonly, the Russian political model inquiry should be extended. Will oil-based liquid is the object of human rights–based, modernity make way for a data-based, gaseous postcolonial,9 or liberal-democratic criticism of postmodernity? what the Putinists themselves call “the illiberal 06/13 đđđđđđđđđđWhat follows is an attempt to “follow the model.” In order to make sense beyond the carbon itself,” by tracing and collaging its various redundantly anti-communist “post-sovietology” footprints within histories of ideas, technology, in the vein of “Cold War 2.0,” these perspectives and popular culture, in an effort to grasp the should necessarily be supplemented with (or evasive substance of natural gas through the no- sublated in) more universalist – that is, less-evasive field of the social imagination – ecological – modes of critique. It is well-known informed by the Cold War and the current that the infrastructure for the extraction and geopolitical attempts at its reenactment. transportation of fossil fuels – mainly, the oil and đđđđđđđđđđIn 2017, The Economist famously claimed gas pipelines that cover the Eurasian continent – that “data is the new oil.” At the time, Wendy form the basic source of the economic and Chun’s response to this statement was: “Big data political survival of Putinism. Moreover, those is the new COAL. The result: global social networks guaranteed the emergence of a change. Intensely energized and unstable particular political regime, which arose in the clouds.”12 Still, both coal and oil are likely to 1990s on the ruins of the and decline as energy sources. Another question solidified in the early 2000s – largely due to high worth asking, then, is: what if data is actually the prices of oil and gas on the global market. new gas? đđđđđđđđđđSurprisingly, Russia’s catastrophic climate policies are largely ignored in most critical 3. accounts of the looming ecological disaster. The first-ever computer hacker to feature in a Naomi Klein’s verdict in This Changes Everything Soviet film appeared in a political drama called (2015) – that capitalism is incompatible with the Deal of the Century (1985). In one scene, this survival of planetary ecology – is nowhere more American hacker (played by popular actor obvious than in the case of Russia’s current Valentin Gaft) struggles to break the computer capitalist model. Still, Russia is conspicuously security system of a Soviet trade mission in absent from Klein’s critique: in This Changes Germany, in his effort to prevent the signing of a Everything, Russia is only mentioned twice; the gas contract between West Germany and the collapse of the USSR also gets two mentions. For USSR. The film is generously interspersed with the ecological critique of capitalism to become a documentary news footage of the Reagan truly global political front, as Klein urges, administration’s attempts to prevent the deal Russia’s disproportionate exemption must be that would allow the export of Siberian gas to overcome. West Germany. Those attempts did, in fact, đđđđđđđđđđGiven the overwhelming importance of oil in happen, but they failed to halt a decades-long the twentieth-century economy, political and process that ultimately led to the emergence of economic theorists have given this kind of fossil the Soviet Union – and later, of Russia – as a fuel a great deal of attention. In many cases, this major carbon empire. scrutiny is informed by the notion of the “oil đđđđđđđđđđIn 1970, the Soviet Union and West Germany curse,” that is, the tendency of oil-rich states to signed the contract that inspired the film. The evolve into autocracies: internally oppressive, contract was preceded by a decade-long global externally aggressive, and overall inefficient. dispute following the discovery of This notion has of course been unfavorably unprecedented reserves of natural gas in Siberia. applied to Russia and the fossil fuel lobby that is The Soviet Union lacked the technology to running the country, along with Iran, Venezuela, construct the pipeline system needed to Nigeria, and other states “cursed by oil.” In transport the gas to consumers, while West

Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 7 — m c h 2 đ O k s i y R d I s D a t h e N w G ? Germany – whose industry was capable of Oil, Timothy Mitchell exposes the limitations of providing these pipes – began showing interest the “oil curse” theory. Instead, Mitchell in helping the Soviets build this system. West undertakes a study of “democracy as oil – as a Germany’s offer of assistance with construction form of politics whose mechanisms on multiple came with the condition that the new pipelines levels involve the process of producing and using would penetrate the Iron Curtain and that carbon energy.”10 Mitchell’s book seeks to Siberian gas would flow to the West. Throughout answer a critical question: “Can we follow the the early 1960s the US government fiercely carbon itself, the oil, so as to connect the opposed the idea, and in 1963 then-chancellor

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A munitions clearance operationđonđthe Nordstream 2 pipeline route, which runs in close proximity to World War II chemical weapons dumping grounds. Copyright:đAxel Schmidt.

12.21.20 / 21:31:41 EST Adenauer had to ban German pipe exports to the Eastern Europe. USSR. Still, part of German industry cherished đđđđđđđđđđIn public, Glushkov held that his Druzhba the plan, and in 1970 the pipe ban was overcome. network was an example of a perfect marriage of After the deal was signed in Essen in 1970, it was cybernetics and ecology, claiming that colloquially called “gas in exchange for the pipes.” Russian historians unequivocally refer to we’ve developed methods that allow for the this contract as “the deal of the century.” This use of contemporary computing machines was the first in a long series of deals between 08/13 to predict the behavior of all kinds of Western powers and the Soviet Union that, after ecological systems, to model all future its collapse, has led to the emergence of an options for the development of these autocratic system based on a ruthless systems, and to discover the solutions that extractivist attitude to the Earth’s resources, would allow us to find the right compromise facilitated by transcontinental oil and gas between the economic needs of the people transportation networks. and their natural need to preserve the đđđđđđđđđđThose networks – the world’s longest at the environment.14 time – required unprecedented technological expertise, and in this regard the Soviet Union During closed-door meetings, however, he could not count on Western technology (as it did delivered much darker accounts of his fossil fuel with the German pipes). In the Soviet TV series networks, claiming that they were not Acceleration (1984), a group of cybernetic economically feasible due to the inevitable scientists are tasked with computerizing the exhaustion of oil resources.15 natural gas transportation network after the US đđđđđđđđđđGlushkov’s cybernetics had its roots in the blocks delivery of some needed technology. In Cold War reception of Norbert Wiener’s one of the scenes, the cyberneticians discuss cybernetic theories, which proliferated in the this gas network as a self-regulating living USSR soon after Stalin’s death. However, organism. One of them proposes the concept of Glushkov’s vision of cybernetics as a tool for the “animation/resuscitation of the mastering nature stemmed from a strand of equipment.”13 In other words, they recommend philosophical thought that had much deeper reframing the gas network as an intelligent being roots in the Soviet context. It’s hard to ignore the with a subjectivity of its own, carrying billions of affinity between Glushkov’s vision of cybernetics cubic meters of natural gas to be emitted into as a mode of total socialist management and the the atmosphere – a truly post-humanist utopia “universal organizational science” of Alexander of a Soviet kind. Bogdanov – philosopher, natural scientist, and đđđđđđđđđđThis animation or resuscitation of the gas militant Bolshevik. Bogdanov coined the term network wasn’t an outlandish fantasy on the part “tektology” to describe his totalizing vision of a of the filmmakers. In fact, the plot of neopositivist science outlining the universal Acceleration was loosely based on the life story principles (those of organization as opposed to of Viktor Glushkov, a pioneering computer disorganization) that underlie every known scientist tasked with building oil pipeline phenomena in the universe: from galaxies to networks, among other things, after his bold idea human societies to bacteria. Bogdanov radically of an information network for the USSR was undermined not just the distinction between shelved, and his groundbreaking research on natural sciences and the humanities, but also socialist artificial intelligence was put on the between theory and practice – a stance later back burner by authorities. Glushkov was a adopted by Glushkov, who claimed “unity of leading figure in Soviet cybernetic science, a theory with practice” as a founding principle of science that he claimed had to be applied to his cybernetic science. The latter’s position also each and every sphere of socialist society. He shared with Bogdanov’s tektology the belief that declared that cybernetics allowed for the natural, social, and technological systems transformation of “the social sciences into exact function according to the same organizational sciences.” As a result, he claimed, society as a principles, which may be scientifically identified whole would function as one gigantic cybernetic and put to purposeful use. organism running on feedback loops and e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 7 — m c h 2 đ O k s i y R d I s D a t h e N w G ? đđđđđđđđđđFor Bogdanov, nature was “changeable,” socialist self-regulation. In 1970 – the same year following knowledge of the universal rules of of the “deal of the century” – top party officials progress that he had offered to the Bolsheviks downsized Glushkov’s idea for an overwhelming (no wonder that McKenzie Wark, in her 2015 book information-management-and-control network Molecular Red, regards Bogdanov as a Soviet to a series of smaller-scale, disparate network prophet of the Anthropocene). Bogdanov’s work projects. For the better part of the 1970s, he was on tektology, published in the Soviet Union busy computerizing the Druzhba (Friendship) oil throughout the 1920s, was no doubt a major pipeline network that carried Siberian oil into influence on the Bolshevik project of

12.21.20 / 21:31:41 EST 09/13

Construction corridor for the Russian onshore section of Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Copyright: NordđStreamđ2 AG / Agiteco.đ

12.21.20 / 21:31:41 EST “revolutionizing nature,” as Oksana Timofeeva warfare. names the Soviet effort of “diverting rivers, đđđđđđđđđđBy that time, massive amounts of Siberian blasting mountains, making animals speak: the natural gas were being exported to Western idea was to transform the Earth by means of Europe, and new contracts signed in the wake of technology in order to make it, as Andrei the Soviet–German “deal of the century” were Platonov says, more ‘kind to us.’”16 Bogdanov’s proliferating. This caused consternation amongst tektology is also cited as a major (albeit, US officials, who saw this German strategy as uncredited) influence on Ludwig von 10/13 suicidal: not only would Europe’s access to Bertalanffy’s general system theory, the energy be dependent on Soviet gas networks, but cybernetic theories of Ross Ashby, and the the latter could also, according to some military writings of Norbert Wiener himself – via the experts, be used to fuel the Soviet army in case German translation of Tektology, published in of European invasion. The Germans themselves, 1926. For instance, it’s been pointed out that in though, had adopted a more dialectical- Tektology, Bogdanov described the notion of materialist approach to the problem of Soviet feedback, crucial for cybernetic science, using a natural gas. different term of his own coinage: “bi- đđđđđđđđđđOtto Wolf von Amerongen, chairman of the regulation.” In the Soviet Union, Bogdanov’s German East–West Trade Committee from 1955 writings were officially denounced as idealistic to 2000, later recalled the logic behind the deal: perversions of materialist dogmas. His tektology “The gas pipe through the continent is, if you only made a comeback in the postwar decades, wish, an instrument that not only makes us as it was incorporated into Western cybernetic dependent on the Soviet imports, but also, vice science and reimported back to the USSR in a versa, renders their ‘crane’ dependent on the vertiginous transcontinental give-and-take of West.”19 In his conversations with German ideas. chancellor Ludwig Erhard, von Amerongen đđđđđđđđđđThe abridged English translation of introduced the political dimension into this Tektology starts with a claim that’s actually dialectical vision: “If we are linked together absent in Bogdanov’s original – at least in such through our gas pipelines, this will mean much straightforward terms: “In the struggle of more than the sale of pipes or the purchase of mankind, its aim is dominion over nature. gas. The will also lead to a positive change in the Dominion is a relationship of the organizer to the political picture in the Soviet Union.”20 organized.”17 Still, this entangled paraphrase of đđđđđđđđđđWhat kind of change would that be, and how Bogdanov accurately reflects the perception of would it be achieved? Von Amerongen: “I was his ideas by later practitioners. When Glushkov always sure that this deal had introduced proposed building a computer network for the another constant medium of communication, a total management of economic and information reliable bridge for further development, or to be flows, he was setting out on a truly tektological more precise, the rebirth of the traditional endeavor. When the Soviets were building the German–Russian connections that were lost in transcontinental networks for fossil fuel flows, the course of decades after the October coup in they were guided by the idea of “changeable” Russia in 1917.”21 nature. Few could see the direction this change đđđđđđđđđđWith gas as a medium of communication, was taking. what kind of message did its networks convey? At stake was no less than the legacy of what von 4. Amerongen (an ex-Nazi) referred to as “the In the summer of 1982, a gas explosion of October coup.” In the 1980s, with the Soviet unprecedented proportions was said to have economy failing while (and, in fact, because of) destroyed the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline. In his the lucrative fossil fuel export deals proliferated, 2004 memoir At the Abyss, Reagan party elites were faced with the chance to put administration official Thomas Reed claims that this enormous wealth to personal gain. The top- this explosion was caused by Canadian down collapse of Soviet Communism was, among equipment added to the pipeline – sabotage via other things, the result of a successful attempt a Trojan horse tactic. (Post-)Soviet experts, on by the party apparatus to privatize the enormous the other hand, vehemently deny that this e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 7 — m c h 2 đ O k s i y R d I s D a t h e N w G ? profits derived from the extractivist economic explosion ever took place.18 They claim that the model in its transition to capitalism. The Trans-Siberian gas pipeline network could not be message delivered by the Western elites to their hacked at the time, because it was not yet Soviet counterparts – “abandon communism for computerized to a sufficient degree. Given the your personal profit!” – was conveyed through lack of evidence related to this purported the medium of natural gas.22 explosion, it seems that the gas network hack đđđđđđđđđđIn the post–Cold War world, after the “end took place in the realm of information, rather of history” – which is gradually morphing into the than through technology – a case of information end of a habitable climate – is a project like Nord

12.21.20 / 21:31:41 EST Stream 2 designed to serve as another channel accused of plotting a terrorist attack as a of constant communication? With US sanctions protest against the annexation of Crimea by against Nord Stream 2 strangely appearing as a the Russian army. Detained in Crimea, reenactment of the Reagan-era sanctions Sentsov and Kolchenko were then against the Trans-Siberian pipeline, are we kidnapped and transported to the Russian definitively stuck in a final historical loop, a dead Federation, where, in defiance of all judicial end in which the only real resistance to this norms, the two were stripped of their politically and environmentally devastating 11/13 Ukrainian citizenship and put on a show project comes from a no-less-devastating trial that found them guilty – despite the competitor whose only solution is: burn absence of evidence, and on the basis of “freedom gas” instead? Abandon the planet for forced confessions by two other tortured your personal profit! – this is the message political prisoners. Sentsov and Kolchenko conveyed by virtually every communications were sentenced, respectively, to twenty and medium in this echo chamber, be it the medium ten years in prison camps. In Russia, this of an underwater gas pipeline or a liquid natural trial had been instrumental in silencing any gas terminal.23 possibility of dissent against the 2014 đđđđđđđđđđBut if carbon infrastructure is a medium of occupation of Crimea and Russia’s sparking communication, then it can be – like any other of the war in East Ukraine. This silencing such medium – disrupted, subverted, and especially targeted artists and cultural hacked. This is where, to quote Nick Dyer- workers: the scapegoating by the Russian Witheford, the dominant structures are most secret services of Oleg Sentsov, who had vulnerable today: “If we’re going to look at the worked in Crimea as an auteur filmmaker, equivalent of something that was like strike was conspicuously random, as if its sole power, we need to look to hacking, we need to meaning was to send a message to other look at the new vulnerabilities of capital that lie artists: stay away from politics, for this can in its transportation and logistics networks, we happen to anyone. In a similar vein, the need to look at the possibilities of the conviction of Olexander Kolchenko was interruption of its various types of energy flows: meant to introduce a purely Orwellian both electrical and otherwise.”24 But who would dimension into this process: a committed be the agent of this strike power? anti-fascist, he, along with Sentsov, was đđđđđđđđđđOne recent development in the extraction accused of participation in a far-right industry provides a glimpse of what form this Ukrainian group. The imprisonment of agent might take. In January 2020, Russian Sentsov and Kolchenko led to a swift Gazprom announced a major decrease in its deterioration of cultural and artistic links monthly production of natural gas. The reason for between Russia and Ukraine, with this decrease? Unexpectedly high temperatures numerous Ukrainian artists and cultural in gas extraction areas.25 workers boycotting any Russia-related đđđđđđđđđđPostscript: This is a revised version of an projects. As a counterpart to this boycott, essay that was intended for publication in the since 2015 I’ve been practicing a strategy of Almanac of the Center for Experimental accepting invitations from Russian non- Museology, but it was withdrawn by the author state institutions with the purpose of after it was censored by the publisher, V-A-C hijacking public debate and staging Press (). The fragment excised by the interventions based on the cases of editors is reproduced here in full: Sentsov and Kolchenko. While working on this particular essay, I was surprised to The moment at which this text is written is discover that no special intervention of this crucial and greatly impacts what I have to kind would even be needed in this case, as say in the following paragraphs. I’m writing my research trajectory had actually brought these lines on the fortieth day of Ukrainian me to a point that reflects the context of film director Oleg Sentsov’s hunger strike, Sentsov’s case with unexpected clarity. while he is held in a Russian prison camp in While this research is focused on the

the Arctic. Sentsov demands the immediate e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 7 — m c h 2 đ O k s i y R d I s D a t h e N w G ? manifold ways that the exploitation of release of all political prisoners from natural resources, primarily natural gas, Ukraine currently jailed in Russia. Before he affects cultural and political developments was kidnapped by the Russian Federal by boosting colonial and authoritarian Security Service during the military practices, Sentsov is holding his hunger occupation of the Crimean Peninsula in strike in a town called Labytnangi in the May 2014, Sentsov resided with his family Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region in in Crimea. Together with the anti-fascist Russia’s Far North, which is where one of eco-activist Olexander Kolchenko, he was the world’s largest gas fields is located.

12.21.20 / 21:31:41 EST There, reduced to the position of homo Oleksiy Radynski is a filmmaker and writer based in sacer, Sentsov is challenging the regime . His films have been screened at Oberhausen from the very heart of Russia’s natural gas International Short Film Festival, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), DOK Leipzig,đBar Laika by empire. It is an extremely dire, but e-flux,đand Kmytiv Museum among other venues, and somehow, still strangely hopeful received awards at a number of film festivals. His texts coincidence which reinforces the intuitions have been published inđProxy Politics: Power and that brought this text into existence. Subversion in a Networked Ageđ(Archive Books, 2017),đArt and Theory of Post-1989 Central and East 12/13 Europe: A Critical Anthologyđ(MoMA, 2018),đBeing As of March 2020: Oleg Sentsov survived his Together Precedes Beingđ(Archive Books, 2019), and hunger strike, which lasted for 145 days. He and inđe-flux journal. After graduating from Kyiv-Mohyla Oleksander Kolchenko were released by the Academy, he studied at Ashkal Alwan’s Home Russian government in a prisoner swap in Workspace Program (Beirut). Radynski is a participant September 2019. of the Visual Culture Research Center, an initiative for art, knowledge, and politics founded in Kyiv, 2008. đđđđđđđđđđV-A-C press is a project of V-A-C Currently, he is a BAK Fellow at basis voor actuele Foundation, cofounded by Leonid Mikhelson, kunst, Utrecht. head of Novatek company, Russia’s second- largest natural gas producer, based in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region where Oleg Sentsov was held illegally. đđđđđđđđđđ× e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 7 — m c h 2 đ O k s i y R d I s D a t h e N w G ?

12.21.20 / 21:31:41 EST đđđđđđ1 ion.org/atlas-of-transformat Labetskaya, Lukyanov, Slobodin, Frédéric Simon, “‘Freedom Gas’: ion/html/p/postcolonial-post - and Shpakov, “Truba v US Opens LNG Floodgates to soviet/is-the-post-in-postc beskonechnost,’” emphasis Europe,” EURACTIV, May 2, 2019 olonial-the-post-in-post-sov mine. https://www.euractiv.com/sec iet-toward-a-global-postcolo tion/energy/news/freedom-gas - nial-critique-david-chioni-m đđđđđđ22 us-opens-lng-floodgates-to- oore.html. When discussing carbon europe/. infrastructure, Aleksander đđđđđđ10 Etkind claims that during the đđđđđđ2 Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Cold War gas was as essential to One notable, albeit decidedly Democracy: Political Power in the state as oil was to belated, exception is found in Age of Oil (Verso, 2011), 5. 13/13 capitalism. Since it was much Maria Haensch, “Green Group harder to stockpile gas than oil, Challenges Nord Stream 2 đđđđđđ11 gas was transported based on Permit in Germany,” Montel Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 6. long-term guaranteed contracts, News, March 5, 2020 which, according to Etkind, https://www.montelnews.com/d đđđđđđ12 made it an ideal resource for the e/story/green-group-challeng See . Furthermore, es-nord-stream-2-permit-in-g https://twitter.com/whkchun/ he writes that liquefied gas ermany/1094429. It's also status/927576076796203008. changed the political economy curious that most of the of gas: it could now be stored available ecological criticism of đđđđđđ13 and sold according to need – Nord Stream 2 focuses mostly In the original Russian: that is, gas became a market on the damage done by the “одушевление оборудования.” commodity. Aleksander Etkind, pipeline to the Baltic seabed, Priroda zla: Syrie i gosudarstvo rather than the problem of đđđđđđ14 (Evil nature: Raw materials and increased emissions as a result As quoted in the film Plenyat' the state) (Novoye Literaturnoye of the project. Zadachey Nebyvaloy Obozreniye, 2019). (Kievnauchfilm, 1982). đđđđđđ3 đđđđđđ23 See, for example the Rethink đđđđđđ15 In the context of Russian Nord Stream 2 Campaign Victor Glushkov, “Pro political economy, data is quite https://rethinkthedeal.eu/. ekonomicheskuyu kibernetiku. literally the new gas: the Doklad na zasedanii Prezidiuma superprofits acquired through đđđđđđ4 AN USSR” (About economic fossil fuel exports make it See, for instance, this document cybernetics: Report at a meeting possible for the Russian state to by Rethink Nord Stream 2 of the Presidium of the Academy fund its massive disinformation https://rethinkthedeal.eu/wp - of Sciences of the Ukrainian campaigns around the globe, as content/uploads/sites/4/201 SSR), sound recording. well as high-profile hacking 9/10/Brochure-A4-Germany-EN- operations, troll armies, and Web.pdf. đđđđđđ16 proxy militias. Gas is exported to Oxana Timofeeva, “Ultra-Black: foreign consumers whose đđđđđđ5 Towards a Materialist Theory of payments are then converted In December 2019, a contract on Oil,” e-flux journal, no. 84 into malicious data, unleashed gas transit between Russia and (September 2017) upon those consumers Ukraine was extended for five https://www.e-flux.com/journ themselves. more years, which helped to al/84/149335/ultra-black-tow avoid a full-blown “gas war” of ards-a-materialist-theory-of - đđđđđđ24 the kind that happened in 2009, oil/. Nick Dyer-Witheford, but still looks more like an “Cybernetic Revolutions and attempt to extend the agony. See đđđđđđ17 Surplus Populations,” lecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wik Alexander Bogdanov, Essays in delivered at The School of Kyiv, i/2009_Russia%E2%80%93Ukrain Tektology, trans. George Gorelk October 25, 2015, Q&A. e_gas_dispute. (Intersystems Publications, 1980), 1. Thank you to David đđđđđđ25 đđđđđđ6 Muñoz Alcantara for See The fact that a certain Ukrainian inadvertently drawing my https://meduza.io/news/2020/ natural gas company, of all attention to this translational 02/02/dobycha-gazproma-v-yan things that Trump messed with, misunderstanding. vare-upala-do-minimuma-za-tr found itself at the epicenter of i-goda-iz-za-neozhidanno-tep the recent impeachment đđđđđđ18 loy-pogody?utm_source=telegr proceedings, speaks volumes of An essay refuting Reed’s am&utm_medium=live&utm_campaign=live. the unprecedented political hypothesis was cowritten by importance of post-Soviet none other than Viktor carbon infrastructure. Glushkov’s daughter, Vera Glushkova: V. D. Zakhmatov, V. V. đđđđđđ7 Glushkova, and O. A. Kryazhich, See http://kremlin.ru/acts/bank/ “Vzryv, kotorogo … ne bylo!” (An 41921/page/1. explosion that … wasn’t!) http://ogas.kiev.ua/perspect đđđđđđ8 ive/vzryv-kotorogo-ne-bylo-5 81. Arthur Nelson, “’Extreme’ Fossil Fuel Investment Have Surged đđđđđđ19 Under Donald Trump, Report Ekaterina Labetskaya, Fedor Reveals,” The Guardian, March Lukyanov, Alexey Slobodin, and 28, 2018 Yuri Shpakov, “Truba v https://www.theguardian.com/ beskonechnost' Khronika samoy environment/2018/mar/28/extr bol'shoy sdelki v rossiysko-

eme-fossil-fuel-investments- germanskoy istorii” (Pipe to e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 0 7 — m c h 2 đ O k s i y R d I s D a t h e N w G ? have-surged-under-donald-tru infinity: A chronicle of the mp-report-reveals. largest deal in Russian-German history) đđđđđđ9 http://www.vremya.ru/print/3 See, for instance, David Chioni 739.html. Moore, “Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post- đđđđđđ20 Soviet? Toward a Global Labetskaya, Lukyanov, Slobodin, Postcolonial Critique,” PMLA and Shpakov, “Truba v 116, no. 1 (January 2002). beskonechnost.'” Available at http://monumenttotransformat đđđđđđ21

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