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Creamier
Petersburg, Russia
Chto Delat CHTO DELAT IS: Olga Egorova/Tsaplya (artist, St Petersburg), Artiom Magun (philosopher, St Petersburg), Nikolay Oleinikov (artist, Moscow), Natalia PershinaYakimanskaya/Glucklya (artist, St Petersburg), Alexei Penzin (philosopher, Moscow), David Riff (art critic, Moscow), Alexander Skidan (poet, critic, St Petersburg), Oxana Timofeeva (philosopher, Moscow) & Dmitry Vilensky (artist, St Petersburg).
For Kant, the question, ‘What ought I to do?’ was the foundation for thinking about ethical action. For Lenin, some centuries later, the question was formulated somewhat differently; his Chto delat? (What is to be done?) has been the rallying call for Leftist intellectuals ever since. The name adopted by the assembly of artists, critics, philosophers and writers that make up Chto delat originiates from neither, but from a novel by the nineteenth-century Russian author Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
Perestroika Songspiel Angry Sandwitch people or in a ‘Praise of Dialectic’ 2005. Video still. Nikolay Oleinikov, Tsaplya and Dmitry Vilensky
Perestroika Songspiel, 2008. Production still from video. Gluklya, Vladan Jeremic, Rena Raedle, Tsaplya and Dmitry Vilensky. Composer: Mikhail Krutik
Partisan Songspiel. A Belgrade Story, 2009, Production still from video. Olga Egorova (Tsaplya), Vladan Jeremic, Rena Rädle, Dmitry Vilensky and Natalya Pershina (Gluklya). Composer: Mikhail Krutik
They first used the title for their newspaper in 2003, when members of the then unnamed group orchestrated an event (somewhere between a demonstration and an art performance) called The Refoundation of Petersberg. Chernyshevsky’s novel, about the first socialist workers’ organizations in Russia, is still read by Russian school children today, even if it remains largely unknown elsewhere. Of course, Lenin’s later and more famous use of the question did not escape the members of Chto delat, but the fact that they derived their name from a lesser known ‘local’ story is significant since it hints towards the double role they play: representing a certain history while overcoming common preconceptions in order to act as international translators. As a collective that vaunts the possibilities and particularities of collaborative authorship, their endeavours bridge art, activism and political theory with a membership that can expand or change depending on the needs of a specific project. Whatever the constellation, the group’s defining feature is an intention to think through and redefine the terms of political engagement for cultural practice today. Their publication of an English-Russian newspaper, often produced in the context
of art projects or conferences, but importantly also distributed at social forums, political rallies and demonstrations, remains central to their larger project. But rather than their ideas being hypothesized in a purely discursive way, for Chto delat it remains crucial that their reflections also take on the concrete form of films, performances or installations, thus engaging with and reactivating the forms and history of the artwork. Projects such as Angry Sandwich People or in a Praise of Dialectic (2005), a protest taking the form of a theatrical happening in an urban space drawn from a Bertolt Brecht poem, or Activist Club (2007), modelled on Alexander Rodchenko’s 1925 prototype for an unrealized ‘Worker’s Club’, are not so much formal replications of the originals on which they are based as attempts to activate their utopian potential: namely, the imagining of a public space where aesthetic experience comes together with political activation, consciousnessbuilding and social gathering. Chto delat’s two most ambitious projects to date, Perestroika. Victory Over the Coup (2008) and Partisan Songspiel. Belgrade Story (2009), are both highly histrionic filmed renderings of Brecht’s idea of ‘alienation’ in theatre. Mixing the genres of the comedy-musical with the classical form of the Greek
tragedy, complete with a chorus and a dramatis personae of certain known ‘types’ such as the liberal, the nationalist, the intellectual, the corrupted politico, the greed-driven tycoon and the dead revolutionary, the projects explode a bomb of wit, sarcasm and scathing political critique.
Chto delat’s projects so far, speak volumes about the group’s playfulness but also about its demand for the audience to take a position Not only constructing absurd caricatures but also deliberately advancing equivocal positions regarding the hypocrisy of the transitional societies of Perestroika Russia or post-war Serbia, these, like all Chto delat’s projects so far, speak volumes about the group’s playfulness but also about its demand for the audience to take a position. In the process, they manage an exceedingly rare thing: the activation of a more politically engaged public, inside the art world and out.
100 Contemporary Artists
Activist Club, 2009. Site-specific installation, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven. Architecture: Dmitry Vilensky. Murals: Nikolay Oleinikov.
Experiences of Perestroika, 2008. Installation view, ‘U-turn: Quadriennale for Contemporary Art’, Copenhagen, 2008. Murals: Nikolay Oleinikov
curator — elena filipovic
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