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. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊCarlos 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. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAnton 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 Russia. 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 z opinion. n i a h ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIrmgard Emmelhainz: Here is another l e question to start from: What is Russian m m cosmism? E d r ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAV: I am starting to think that there may be a g no such thing as a unified intellectual movement m r I that can be called “Russian cosmism.” What d n s a c exists is a particular tradition comprising i e t l e k numerous works by a diverse group of people – h o t d s i philosophers, scientists, artists, filmmakers, e V A n t political activists – whose ideas overlap because o s t i n all of them were interested in defeating illness m A s Ê o and death, as well as exploring possibilities of 0 C 2 : 0 t living and traveling in the cosmos. But many of r 2 A e f these people had contradictory views and ideas. n o u j k ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe name “Russian cosmism” is something r o — that was coined very late, in the 1970s. When W 0 1 a 1 these ideas were first developed a century s # a l g earlier, nobody used such a name. These two a n n i r d words first appear together in a Soviet u l i o j u encyclopedia of philosophy. Somebody wrote an B x - u l d f entry for “Russian cosmism” and the name o - e G 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 12.22.20 / 10:44:03 EST 02/11 Film still fromÊAndrei Tarkovsky'sÊ1972 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 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIE: What would be some examples of defeated and eradicated by all means possible. diverging visions within what is considered to be ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIE: Cosmist ideas and socialism are utopias Russian cosmist thinking? that overlapped in time, and maybe it can be said ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAV: 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 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAV: 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, ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊUnlike most philosophical, political, or whereas for Fedorov death is the greatest social theories, which tend to give art relatively A replica ofÊSputnik 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 black square painting by revolution), in cosmism art is equal to science, Alexander Rodchenko, 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, Solomon Nikritin 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 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊI suspect there can also be a cosmist spiritualization of the universe, which he also reading of the futurist opera Victory over the Sun, 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 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTatlin’s famous Monument to the Third Yaroslavsky, and others.4 International is angled parallel to the planetary ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIE: Malevich’s Black Square is interpreted in tilt of earth.10 Various Soviet architects from this canonical modern art history as an emblem for period used new proportions for the design of abstraction via suprematism. 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 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAV: 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 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThere 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.Ê 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? ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAV: 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.