chtodelat news

In this op-ed piece for OpenSpace.ru, philosopher and Chto Delat member Alexei Penzin reflects on the curious fate of Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital in contemporary Russia.

*****

The expression “symbolic capital” is all the rage in Russia. It is perhaps the only term in Pierre Bourdieu’s entire social theory that has found its way into everyday usage. A Google search returns something like a million and a half links to the term in various languages.

Not long ago I had occasion to ponder the usage of the concept. The Chto Delat group and the Forward Socialist Movement carried out a collective action against the plans of Gleb Pavlovsky’s Foundation for Effective Politics to invite French leftist philosopher to Russia. Badiou heeded the arguments of his Moscow comrades and refused to come to the Russian capital at the bidding of this pro-Kremlin organization. Afterwards, the Internet was filled with accusations that Chto Delat and Forward had simply wanted to cause a fuss and raise some “symbolic capital” in the process.

This take totally nullified the intentions, political motives, and internal debates of the people who took part in this action. Everything was reduced to an instrument for raising that elusive substance known as symbolic capital (fame, reputation). The activists were told that they hadn’t done anything special. You’re just like us, their critics said; you’re out to get what everyone else is after, only you use different means and work in a different area. (more…)

No More Reality
[Crowd and Performance: demonstration, public space, use of body]

Step 3: SHARED FOLDER

Shadow Cabinet Project Space

De Appel Institute for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam

July 4−September 7, 2008

Project curated by: Claire Staebler & Jelena Vesic

Video/audio installations: Fia Backstrom and Sharon Hayes

Video screenings: Johanna Billing, Susanne Burner, Marcelo Exposito, Inventory, Ligna, Radek Community, R.E.P Group, Skart Group, Hito Steyrel, Annika Strom, Dmitry Vilensky, Henry VIII Wives (in collaboration with Horkestar, Vladmarx, BGYSS, WoO, Milos, Jelena and Ana

Magazines, books, newspapers, posters, leaflets: Susanne Burner, Chto Delat, Sam Durant, David Ter-Oganyan,  Roman Ondak, R.E.P Group, Bruno Serralongue, Annika Strom, Phillipe Parreno, Version

++ No More Reality library, Video self-service, Take away corner

From the popular settings of art history we can recall two faces of the crowd: the first, recognized as the holder of political will (demonstrations or revolutionary masses), appearing in many historical or allegorical paintings, and the second one - more neutral and more dispersed, usually connected to the representation of the city, modernity and urban life. Of course, the crowd is never neutral…  Apparently nameless bodies, anonymous minds and ordinary settings are always producing narratives and images related to the dominant politics of public spaces. Even impressionist chronicles that tend to be a ‘disinterested’ mass scenes are not only the random frames of the street life. As records of early modernity, they basically announce the standardization of the city crowd, the early control of public space and the regulation of the behaviour of the masses in the street.

Is that the only perspective?

Standing out as an individual in the crowd becomes the most important aspect that constitutes identity today. It becomes a recognizable sign of successfully realized authorship, originality and authenticity. But, the perspective of this claim can be observed as just another aspect of a new “experience economy”, where lifestyle industries are transforming the individual into a unique “commodity personality”.

In the culture of the spectacle, everybody is a performer.

The transformation of cultural and political space during the 1990’s encompasses different mechanisms of control of public space and, at the same time, establishes propaganda of guarantee and security. Spectacular reports of mass events and war scenes or violent demonstrants are turned into aestheticized images, which feed our imagination. These images we start to love and enjoy the same way we enjoy action movies, horror movies and disaster movies. They tell us that the horror is somewhere else and that we can freely surrender to the visual pleasure and the feeling of security.

Capitalist modernization of society and gentrification of core city areas across the world is taking place parallel with the entrenching and widening of political control of public spaces. The introduction of surveillance technologies and new regimes of behavior are induced through simultaneous processes of privatization of public space and new forms of division between the spheres of private and public.

No More Reality [Crowd and Performance: demonstration, public space, use of body] examines the new possibilities of collective thinking and collective acting in the public space. It is a theoretical-practical platform, which gathers a group of artists, activists, theorists, curators, magazines and radio broadcasters, investigating performative aspects of the crowd in the streets and the political implications of body practices in the public space. No More Reality is developing in stages starting from 2005. Exhibitions, publications and discussions accompanying this process are conceptualized as fragmentary situations and steps in the research, rather then the final projects with the fixed and definite conclusions.

For the third step of the No More Reality project the curatorial team is opening up their folder of the research materials, creating the display in the form of a small-scale documentation center. Showing the art installations created for specific sites, together with video and audio records, catalogues, books, posters and leaflets, transforms the exhibition space into the environment in which the content can be examined and reflected rather than passively consumed. The selection of the artworks presented here also sheds the light on the variety of tools used for different manifestations like slogans, flags, t-shirts, free newspapers and flyers, offering an insight into the aesthetics and vocabulary of the contemporary protest.

The title of No More Reality is inspired by the title of a performance organized by Philippe Parreno in 1991, No More Reality (Demonstration).

The American journal “Rethinking Marxism” is celebrating the anniversary of its foundation with a special issue that focuses on the revival of Marxism in Russia. This “symposium” was edited by Yulia Tikhonova and contains texts by Vlad Sofronov, Chto delat (with Jacques Ranciere), David Riff, Alexei Penzin, Evgeny Fiks, and Olga Kopenkina, as well as an editorial by Yulia Tikhonova.

We have posted this issue in the library of our site. You can access it here.

Chto delat’s Dmitry Vilensky is taking part in a big conference on museums at the MACBA in Barcelona. Find the program of this conference below.

Musée d’art ancien, Département d’art moderne.

Rethinking cultural organizations in the new cultural economy

Symposium

June 12 & 13 2008

6pm to 9pm Macba auditorium

Led by George Yudice, with the participation of Ana Carla Fonseca Reis, Maurizio Lazzarato, Stephen Wright and Gerardo Mosquera

MACBA Independent Studies Program (in the context of the course Economy and Culture taught by George Yudice)

Within the framework of Transform and Translate Culture 2000

By analyzing the factors that constitute the new “cultural economy,” defined by the replacement of industrial production by the production of immaterial goods and services as the base of economic growth, this symposium proposes a critical reflection about the effects of this “new era in capitalist development.” We will analyze the effects of this new era on the privatization of culture in the cultural and creative industries, on urban renewal, in the workplace, on intellectual copyright and in the realm of art. We will examine how the cultural economy interacts with the public sector and how the concept of cultural public service itself has evolved.

The structure of the symposium will be that of an open discussion departing from the short statements of the invited speakers; we hope to have an active debate as opposed to formal lectures.

(more…)

On May 11, 2008, students from Petersburg’s New Street University performed the action Religion Is Stomatology on the front steps of Our Lady of Kazan (Russian Orthodox) Cathedral. The action was meant to protest the Russian Orthodox Church’s increasingly aggressive claims to political influence and cultural hegemony in Russian society. These newfound hegemonic aspirations are actively cultivated by the Russian political elite, as demonstrated not only their enthusiastic support for the church’s own actions and initiatives (partly described in the press release, below), but also by their appearances at Easter night services (broadcast live on several national TV channels) and by the role accorded to church hierarchs in such state ceremonies as President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent inauguration.

During the action, one of the students attempted to read the poem “Religion Is Stomatology,” which we have translated, below. Meanwhile, his classmates prostrated themselves on the steps of the cathedral in a fit of religio-dental ecstasy. Various parishioners and other God-fearing types forcibly attempted to disrupt the action. Fortunately, NSU students were able to leave the scene of their “crime” unharmed by the faithful.

Religion Is Stomatology
In the beginning was the word, but only for the few,
And therefore the word was with them and them alone.
The majority was simply not allowed to open their mouths,
And therefore they didn’t know any other words. (more…)

Pavel Arseniev: A Poem of Solidarity and Alienation

We remember, we preserve our faithfulness to the event.
Forty years like forty days.

Return to your classrooms:
They are fireproof.
No, a spark will not set them ablaze.
All measures have been taken,
More or less in earnest. (more…)

The following article was originally published (in Russian) on the website of the Forward Socialist Movement. The translator has slightly altered the original text to reflect certain developments that have taken place since the text was written.

◊◊◊◊◊

The (New) Street University, which was founded this year in Petersburg, is one of today’s most interesting and encouraging phenomena in the educational sphere. We asked Pavel Arseniev, one of the participants of the initiative, to tell us about it.

Despite the fact that the current state of education in Russia has provoked bewilderment among many people, until recently students have not organized to defend their rights. The situation at the Moscow State sociology department and the widely covered protest actions by the OD Group have apparently led to nothing, although the protestors took their case to the Public Chamber, where a special commission of experts affirmed the justice of their accusations. Afterwards, it once again became clear that it was both necessary to struggle and that it was impossible to change the situation from top down. The closing of the European University also provoked the ire of students from other universities. The fire inspectors managed to arouse Petersburg’s student population, which until then had mostly been silent and totally amorphous. After hitting the streets with parodic protest actions like the laying of a firehose at the foot of the Lomonosov monument or the folk burlesque play about the closing of “European Aniversity,” the students finally arrived at their natural vocation—education, which, given the fact that the university was closed, also necessarily took to the streets and became a genuinely collective enterprise. (more…)

Kirill Medvedev

“Literature Will Be Scrutinised”: The Individual Project and the New Emotionalism

In distant Soviet times, I found Bertolt Brecht’s statement that “for art, not being a party member means belonging to the ruling party” the height of absurdity. Nowadays, this line has a different ring to it. It sounds okay. In any case, it makes you think.
—Lev Rubinstein (in Grani.ru)

In order to talk about democracy (people power) we have to give the word “conviction” a new sense. It should mean: to convince people. Democracy is the power of arguments.
—Bertolt Brecht, Me-Ti: The Book of Changes

The principal symptom of the cultural situation in today’s Russia is the crisis of the liberal-intelligentsia consciousness and its schism. For over fifty years the consciousness of this stratum consisted of two main components. The first component was the intelligentsia’s well-known anti-statism, its sense of empire (inherited from the revolutionary intelligentsia) as a repressive force. The second element, on the contrary, was inherited from the statist intelligentsia that had produced the famous Vekhi (“Landmarks”) almanac in 1909: the cult of private values and a hatred of everything “leftist,” everything that called the “bourgeois” into question; that is, a mindset that sanctified inequality and exploitation as the order of things. For the Vekhi crowd itself, this hatred was aggravated because they had dallied with Marxism in their youth. For the Soviet and post-Soviet intelligentsia, this hatred was stirred by their own genetic origins among those very same “socialists,” “destroyers,” and “lefties” who had planned and carried out the Revolution. While it was natural that it rejected Soviet (“imperial,” “collectivist”) reality, this type of consciousness became unbelievably hypertrophied. It was this stratum—a hodgepodge of dissidents, moderate frondeurs, crypto- or latent anti-Soviets—that captured the position of cultural hegemon in the nineties on the crest of a general anti-totalitarian wave and the collapse of the Soviet bureaucratic model. It was this stratum that rediscovered the culture that had been wholly or partly forbidden by the Soviet authorities. It was this stratum that set the tone in the press of those years. Using innocent slogans that seemed logical at the time, it was this stratum that threw its ideological weight behind the notorious reforms of the nineties. (more…)

The publication of our special issue BASTA! has generated a lot of interest in Russian leftist and liberal circles. Hard on the heels of the issue’s presentation, in late February, the Russian politics web portal Polit.Ru interviewed two Chto Delat co-founders, Dmitry Vilensky and Artemy Magun. They discussed the newspaper’s history, the current conjuncture in Russia, and the differences between western and Russian leftism. Below, we present our readers with part one of a two-part interview. We hope to publish part two in the next week or so. (The original Russian text of the interview can be found here.)

“We Are Westernizers Who Struggle Against the Local Westernizers”
A Conversation with Dmitry Vilensky and Artemy Magun, Part I