Art without Death: Conversations on Russian Cosmism

by Anton Vidokle (Contributor), Arseny Zhilyaev (Contributor)

According to the nineteenth-century teachings of Nikolai Fedorov—librarian, religious philosopher, and progenitor of Russian cosmism—our ethical obligation to use reason and knowledge to care for the sick extends to curing the dead of their terminal status. The dead must be brought back to life using means of advanced technology—resurrected not as souls in heaven, but in material form, in this world, with all their memories and knowledge.

Fedorov's call to redistribute vital forces is wildly imaginative in emancipatory ambition. Today, it might appear arcane in its mystical panpsychism or eccentric in its embrace of realities that exist only in science fiction or certain diabolical strains of Silicon Valley techno-utopian ideology. It can be difficult to grasp how it ended up influencing the thinking behind a generation of young revolutionary anarchists and Marxists who incorporated Fedorov's ideas under their own brand of biocosmism before the 1917 Russian Revolution, even giving rise to the origins of the Soviet space program.

This book of interviews and conversations with today's most compelling living and resurrected artists and thinkers seeks to address the relevance of Russian cosmism and biocosmism in light of its influence on the Russian artistic and political vanguard as well as on today's art-historical apparatuses, weird materialisms, extinction narratives, and historical and temporal politics. This unprecedented collection of exchanges on cosmism asks how such an encompassing and imaginative, unapologetically humanist and anthropocentric strain of thinking could have been so historically and politically influential, especially when placed alongside the politically inconsequential—but in some sense equally encompassing—apocalypticism of contemporary realist imaginaries.

Contributors
Bart De Baere, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Boris Groys, Elena Shaposhnikova, Marina Simakova, Hito Steyerl, Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood, Arseny Zhilyaev, Esther Zonsheim

Published in parallel with the eponymous exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Stephen Squibb, Anton Vidokle
Design by Jeff Ramsey, front cover design by Liam Gillick

Genres: Art, Philosophy, Nonfiction

145 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Anton Vidokle is an artist and founder of e-flux. Born 1965, Vidokle lives in New York and Berlin.

Reviews

[Shannon Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love conversation
as medium

[melancholinary · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is an interesting conundrum on the speculation of the evolution of human abilities somewhere in this book; the notion of how human could make themselves as immortal as jellyfish. Instead of needing a house to protect, why not develop some sort of bio-evolution mechanism for the human to be as strong as a tardigrade. Instead of needing food to survive, why not develop some sort of adapted-digestion system so one human could consume flying bacteria, sunlight and radiation from trans-communication technology. In this sense, this is the idea that opposes Mumford's monotechnic with esoteric occult Bolshevik undertones. Also important to be noted that Russian Cosmism could also conceptually approached as a museology process. Nikolai Fedorov lives!

[Hector · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was so lame it was sad. I give it one star for the title, because it promised oh so much, and another for the title tie-in (we love a good title tie-in). But I gotta say it did not deliver. I mean, they WERE conversations on Russian Cosmism, but they felt more like annoying bad podcaster talks where they are trying to always yes-and or one-up each other. Nobody has any real criticism or diverging views from the podcast-host-author Anton Vidokle.

I have to admit that when M got this book home I did not know in the least what Cosmism was and I just thought it was about a Cosmology of the people who inhabit what today is Russia, but in art. But it was soomething else entirely. However I did hear about Cosmism some days before I started reading. Even if I did not align with it (I am very looking forward to the time of my earthly dissolution), it seemed to me a very interesting angle of conceiving humanity, death and what's beyond. But this book didn't do it justice, the conversations stayed very shallow, everyone praising this or that other guy on how Progressive or Misunderstood (tm) their ideas were.

And it was sooo self-referential! It reminded me of the sides of "art" (as something commercial/intellectual/elevated) that I hate. Names, -isms, and more names and -isms and -orys. I don't know who these people are, and I do not know about their movements or styles. I can research about them, sure, but if I am reading a book in the metro at 8am, I wanna be able to understand what it is talking about, and if it just continues to throw names at one, one is bound to get lost

Finally, there was very little to no critical views on Cosmism. The ones that were there, were basic and repetitive (if resurrection becomes a thing, what happens if we resurrect the mustache man?!), and/or were quickly solve by a couple of paragraphs of conversation. Like none was willing to poke a little bit beyond and let the problematic be problematic

So yeah, not a book for me. Pretentious in the bad sense of the word, meaning too full of itself, and self-important and a bit sycophantic. Not recommended. If you want to learn about Art in Cosmism/Cosmism itself, look it up on the internet idk

[GreyAtlas · Rating 1 out of 5]

THIS WORK CONTAINS TOLKIEN AND RAND SLANDER. the rest is ok, but 1 paragraph earned it 1 star. Esther Zomhiemwhatever commited a felony.

of people as mediocre as Rand’s simplistic writing.
That’s why I was enormously surprised when I
learned much later how great an influence her books
had on the American political and economic elite:
the novels are basically written on the level of teenage
heroic fantasies of omnipotence, and are full
of grudge. So it’s still pretty incredible to me that
such mediocre writing had this toxic effect on several
generations of people who came to occupy key
corporate and government positions. It’s as though
the President of the United States is being secretly
guided by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (which is arguably
a far better book than The Fountainhead).


NO. NO NO NO NONONONONONONONONONONONO HOW DARE SHE. CRIMINAL. I AM OFFENDED.

[Vietzsche · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Progeny of Fedorov