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Art without Death: Conversations on Russian Cosmism
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
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
- GenresArtPhilosophyNonfiction
145 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
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About the author
Anton Vidokle
30 books4 followersAnton Vidokle is an artist and founder of e-flux. Born 1965, Vidokle lives in New York and Berlin.
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 19, 2018
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!
June 5, 2024
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.
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.
March 3, 2025
The Progeny of Fedorov
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews