Chto Delat? David Riff Alexei Penzin Artemy Magun Lolita Jablonskeine Keti Chukhrov Alexander Skidan Kirill Medvedev Jean-Luc Nancy Nikolay Oleynikov David Harvey KMSEL Dmitry Vilensky Boris Kagarlitsky Fredric Jameson Jean Fisher Giorgio Agamben Natalya Pershina-Yakimanskaya (Glyuklya) Vlad Sofronov Olga Yegorova (Tsaplya) Zanny Begg Jaques Ranciere CHTO DELAT? WHAT IS TO BE DONE? IN DIALOGUE [reader] extreme ideological distortions. “Reason always ex- 1. A DECLARATION ists, though not always in a reasonable form,” Marx OUR PRINCIPLES: SELF-ORGANIZATION, says in the next sentence. The “communist decoding COLLECTIVISM, SOLIDARITY ON POLITICS, of reality” (a term invented by Dziga Vertov) would mean deciphering these garbled histories of struggle The Chto Delat? platform unites art- (2008) for human freedom; not just explaining the workings ists, philosophers, social researchers, KNOWLEDGE, AND ART on the fifth anniversary of the Chto Delat work group and histories of the current mechanisms of oppres- activists, and all those whose aim is sion, but what we are already doing here and now to the collaborative realization of criti- Comments by Dmitry VILENSKY (DV) & David RIFF made in 2010 make these very mechanisms into the instruments for cal and independent research, pub- our emancipation. lication, artistic, educational and we stand for a distribution of the aside, only to capture them later on, or zones that activist projects. All of the platform’s wealth produced by human labor and it develops, fixes, and abandons. We need to work 5. initiatives are based on the principles all natural resources that is just and in these “interstices” once capital flees to re-imagine FAITHFULNESS TO THE INTELLECTUAL AND ARTISTIC of self-organization and collectivism. directed towards the welfare of ev- what Marx meant when he says that every old society AVANT-GARDES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY These principles are realized through eryone. is pregnant with a new one. the political coordination of working We are internationalists: we demand DV: yes, it was the most contested point in our We recognize the importance of twen- groups—the contemporary analogue the recognition of the equality of all internal discussion and it is important to follow its tieth-century avant-garde thought of soviets. The projects undertaken people, no matter where they live or development. Perhaps we should have spoken of a for the rethinking and renewal of by any of these groups represent the where they come from. dialectical totality of contradictions... the leftist philosophical and politi- We are feminists: we are against all cal tradition. We believe that in order entire platform and are closely co- 4. ordinated with one another. At the forms of patriarchy, homophobia, for this renewal to happen we need a same time, the existence of the plat- and gender inequality. THE COMMUNIST DECODING OF CAPITALIST maximally open, non-dogmatic ap- form creates a common context for DV: Another aspect of this paragraph on principles REALITY proach that presupposes a critical re- interpreting the projects of its indi- helps to sort out some local aspects of leftist politics The person who is genuinely free, ception of ideas, concepts, and prac- vidual participants. in a situation when such a basic things like interna- who lives in the fullness of their be- tices that have formed outside the We are likewise guided by the prin- tionalism, feminism, and equality do not go without ing, is a person who is alive to vari- framework of doctrinal Marxism. Our ciple of solidarity. We organize and saying. It helps to make a clear break with leftist na- ous sciences and disciplines, who urgent task is to reconnect political support mutual assistance networks tionalist, some traditional leftist organizations based critically examines themselves and action, engaged thought, and artistic with all grassroots groups who share on hierarchy and patriarchy. the world. However, the narrow spe- innovation. the principles of internationalism, One thing we have decided not to tackle in this dec- cialization of scientific knowledge in DR: These affirmations of the avant-garde’s im- feminism, and equality. laration is the issue of democratic centralism and the capitalist society places knowledge portance seem a bit too vague in retrospect. Every- DV: Everyone has long ago given up wracking their possibility of its reconsideration as one of old fash- in the service of the dominant class. one claims the avant-garde as his or her legacy. It is brains over the question of whether it is possible to ioned but still very interesting method of collective Individual research serves private important to differentiate these claims against other elaborate precise rules for organizing the work of a work combining the principles of participation and interests, while research of society, claims. One such point of difference would not just lie collective. It is now quite rare to come across a new representation. Our structure based on the nexus of research based on the universality of on the surface of form (for a figurative avant-garde manifesto or declaration. The cult of spontaneity, different initiatives can be consider to certain extend critical utterance, is not supported realism, against an abstract avant-garde formalism), reactivity, and tactics—the rejection of readymade as experimentation with this principle. institutionally. but would go deeper, concerning the modernist ideol- rules—is the order of the day. Tactics, however, is DR: In my view, the term “leftist” is too wishy-washy. We affirm that there is only one form ogy of the avant-garde as such. The cult of irrational- something less than method. Only by uniting tactics The (im)possibility at stake here is the emancipative of knowledge—knowledge that en- ism, the tendency of art toward formalist objectifica- and strategy can we arrive at method. Hence it is a potential of communism under post-communist cir- ables the discovery that the calling of tion mixed with a near animist relation to the world good thing to try one’s hand at writing declarations cumstances. So why this vague “leftism”? I guess we human beings is to be free with other of things, the cult of art’s deskilling, and the celebra- from time to time. opted to use the word not only because it sounds less human beings. Critical knowledge tion of the New, where innovation becomes a means should not be a commodity, and its to itself: these are moments of modernism that we DR: But why now this declaration? I think it marks threatening than communist, but because even left maximally widespread distribution— might reject, not just historically, but also in our own an important point in Chto Delat’s evolution from liberal ideas about the regulation of the workday, ba- enlightenment and education—is the time. They often serve as an autonomous politics of collective to counter-institution. We are trying to sic human rights, health insurance and so are today cause of each intellectual and cul- bohemia, later exhibited as a social alibi. Maybe the translate things we learned to (dis)agree upon over presented as impossibilities, while feminism and in- tural worker. This synthesis of theory more interesting moment of the avant-garde is when the last years into a broadened context with new con- ternationalism are expropriated by the ideologues of and practice, knowledge of the world it turns its back on modernism, when it turns back stituents; to outline the principles of counter-institu- the new imperialism. It is very important to reclaim and its transformation, we call the to realism, to revolutionary classicism, where it tries tional behavior very different from the extremely hi- all these moments and to find the strength to insist communist decoding of capitalist re- to capture idealist aesthetics for materialist goals, erarchical and exploitative institutions that produce that true gender equality and internationalism are ality. when it understands the entire legacy of classical art the social relations of the art world today. The main only possible in the frame of a broader change, for We repeat along with Marx: “We do as the watershed for an “aesthetics of resistance.” use of such an admittedly utopian endeavor is argu- example. not say to the world: Cease your strug- Maybe this is the most important discovery of the ably that it shows us how far we have to go to realize gles, they are foolish; we will give you avant-garde: art as means not of critiquing art, but our dreams of solidarity. That, and not the outlining 3. the true slogan of struggle. We merely as capturing it by effecting the communist decoding of “rules,” is the whole point of writing declarations show the world what it is really fight- of art history. in the first place. CAPITALISM IS NOT A TOTALITY ing for, and consciousness is something DV: yes this is a crucial topic for our group and I DV: These are the basic principles of the structure We believe that capital is not a totali- that it has to acquire, even if it does not suggest to refer to the special issue of our publication of the platform - I would also call them as ideal ty, that the popular thesis that “there want to.” (Letter to Arnold Ruge, Sep- Debates on avant-garde (2007) structure of work that unfortunately in reality func- is nothing outside capital” is false. tember 1843.) tion differently. The main problem is the lack of col- The task of the intellectual and the 6. DV: The thesis that there is one knowledge repeats lective initiative, the growing passivity of the most artist is to engage in a thoroughgoing the famous theses of Alain Badiou “There is just one CLASS STRUCTURE of the participants. So at the moment the platform unmasking of the myth that there are world.” We constructed it because we believe that functions more as the space of identification, as a no alternatives to the global capital- One of the basic problems of theory there is hardly any sense in using the proud word kind of identity that marks all people who are openly ist system.