Art without Death: Conversations on Russian Cosmism

by Anton Vidokle, Arseny Zhilyaev, Hito Steyerl

Today, many of us can remember the disappeared indigenous cosmologies as parts of ourselves, lost to colonialism, industrialization, communist revolutions, and capitalist wars. Many names have been given to ideological or historical grand narratives to soothe the pain of loss, to register those losses and render them searchable, but these memorializing mechanisms still fail to register the pain of losing something much larger that cannot be named—a deep relation to the world, to the cosmos, and to ourselves that gives us strength and sovereignty without need for any other earthly power of right or dominion.

What if another kind of modernity had been developed which was even more radical—so much so that its forward arrow actually sought to conserve and preserve previous lifeworlds against the ravages not of vanguardist reforms but of time itself? And reanimate those worlds. It would project a different kind of modernity altogether, beyond right or wrong sides of history, without victors and victims.

Genres: Art, Philosophy, Nonfiction

158 pages, Kindle Edition

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