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HART2222 Contemporary Art
HART2222 Contemporary Art Unit Coordinator: Dr Darren Jorgensen
BRINDY DONOVAN
Introduction A lone cosmonaut propels himself into the unknown through a hole in the ceiling of his apartment. In the small room he leaves behind a makeshift propulsion device, a bed, his shoes and Soviet memorabilia plastered across the walls. Ilya Kabakov’s The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment (1984) provides these remnants of a seemingly impossible event for our imagination to piece together what could have taken place.
Using Gardner’s advice to understand the work “on its own terms”,1 this paper provides a philosophical interpretation of the artwork. I am opting for this approach over providing commentary on the artwork’s potential political significance, as such an analysis would rest on contestable assumptions and positivist claims about politics and history that would require more justification than what the scope of this paper could provide. The approach I am taking reflects Kabakov’s own desire for “the work of art to be unnamed and undefined as a playful, yet total withdrawal from representational space”2. As such, I will discuss the influence of the philosophy of Russian Cosmism, the concept and use of emptiness, and the role of the viewer in the making of the artwork and its meaning.
Moscow Conceptualism and APTART Moscow Conceptualism can be seen as a response to the predominant Soviet Realism of the early 20th century. The unique socio-political context of the later period of the Cold War and increasing globalisation
Ilya Kabakov, The Man who Flew into Space from his Apartment (1984), installation view.
provided artists with the intellectual material with which to produce new conceptual works. Yet, as both Samman3 and Gardner4 warn, it can become too easy to revert back to a reductionist reading through the lens of the Cold War or through a socialism/capitalism false dichotomy. For this reason, I turn to other contextual elements that appear to have informed the practices of these artists. Particularly, how Moscow
Conceptualist artists were reportedly situated in the “quasi-salon culture of the late Soviet period,”5 the intellectual culture that informed the artists and the conceptual basis of their works.
Of the Moscow Conceptualists, Kabakov is the most revered. He was part of The Experimental Group of Moscow Conceptualists working on “unofficial” art, as opposed to the “official” art of the Soviet state.6 The particular genre of art that propelled Kabakov into the spotlight, apartment art (or APTART), were installations staged and re-staged in the apartments of Moscow artists.7 As Kolodzei8 explains:
Many Nonconformist artists were inspired to escape the ideological confines of the Soviet system not by confronting that system directly but by exploring spiritual dimensions within the self, as if in a void.
The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment is Kabakov’s most well-known exemplar of this tendency. The location and space the work is situated in became important aspects of the work. The familiarity of the apartment transformed by fictional persons absent from the piece, and the tension between this emptiness and the presence that somehow emanates from it, were critical elements of these works.
The Influence of Russian Cosmism In the wake of Khrushchev-era reforms, Russian intellectual circles experienced a spiritual revivalism.9 The atheistic, scientific realism of the previous era became coupled with an interest in earlier spiritual and cosmological traditions. Of particular relevance to Kabakov was that of Russian Cosmism, a transhumanist philosophy founded by librarian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov. Russian Cosmism was a philosophical project that sought “a metaphysical vision of reality, pursuing a comprehensive theory of everything”10 and sought to overcome the limitations of human physiology, hoping to circumvent the inevitability of death and defy the laws of physics.11
Kabakov cites this particular school of philosophy as having played a vital role in the intellectual life of Russian artists, referring to it as “the Silver Age of Russian Philosophy” and describing how artists “passed [the written works of Russian Cosmists] around like sacred relics”.12 The widespread attraction to this philosophy provides crucial foundational context for understanding not only Kabakov’s work, but that of Moscow Conceptualists more broadly. Russian Cosmism’s pursuit of a “theory of everything” – totalising knowledge that encompasses the universe and the elusive self – is neither a culturally unique nor antiquated project. What makes Russian Cosmism unique, however, is its dependence and trust in scientifism: the belief that science will provide the answers.
Yet, ironically, transhumanism and scientificism are a contradiction in terms. The former is reliant on fiction and imaginative possibilities whereas the latter is historically rooted in a materialist realism. This irony is captured in the artwork. Kabakov’s cosmonaut, in his belief in humanity’s ability to overcome the laws of gravity, launches himself into space. To a realist, the man is most certainly unsuccessful in his attempt (if not dead), but to a cosmist this does not have to be an inevitability. Thus two possible ontologies emerge in the one work.
This (non)duality can be identified again also in the name of the work. The Russian title of the work uses the word “cosmos” whereas the English translation uses the term “space”.13 This difference has significance. The ancient Greek roots of the term “cosmos” connotes a place that is “not a spiritual but a material otherworld.”14 In other words, it is “positive” space. Yet, post-space exploration, we know that the cosmos (i.e. space/the universe)
is mostly empty. “Cosmos” thus becomes an allencompassing term. The cosmos is expansive yet it is also empty. The (non)duality of the term and what it aims to reify is one lens through which we can read this work.
Emptiness and Subjectivity Cosmos and emptiness are at once dichotomous and synonymous terms. Like the stillness before an explosion and the quiet that follows it, this tension is captured in Kabakov’s work.
The concept of “emptiness” plays a significant role in understanding this work. In emptiness there is potential. Emptiness acts as “a powerful ‘creative/ deconstructive’ force in Kabakov’s presentation of reality”.15 It is “both nothingness and a subject to be scrutinized.”16 This can be felt in the artwork. In this “empty” installation, it is the absence of the cosmonaut that is the presence that is felt. It is this absence that provides the material for the imagination to engage with the work, or, in other words, for the viewer to engage in “productive subjectivity,”17 to see the work as art and to construct its meaning.
In installation art such as APTART, the viewer is situated both outside the work, but also becomes of the work. Whereas a painting on the wall is delineated from the world outside of it by its frame or canvas edge, installation art often blurs this distinction. One must inevitably experience the work in an embodied way. The three-dimensional forms have a presence that emanate outwards, leaving the viewer feeling at once both part of, yet separate from, the artwork. In this way, Kabakov’s installationbased works are deeply dependent on the phenomenal subjectivity of the viewer. In an “empty” installation, there is no “centre” in the way we would typically be able to pinpoint what is contained within a painting frame to be the work of art. Instead, in an artwork like The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment, as Kabakov18 explains:
This centre is actually nominal. The viewer him/ herself forms a centre by concentrating on his/ her own personal fantasies. The viewer’s own attention and his/her own personal reaction forms the intellectual centre, because there is no physical centre.
The empty space left behind remains full of presence and the absence of the cosmonaut paradoxically becomes the object of view. The work becomes actualised in our imagination, and the way we interpret it and the story we tell to fill in the gaps becomes part of the artwork.
Conclusion It is this instinctual tendency to place the person at the centre of meaning, even in absence, that I find so interesting about this piece. The transhumanist ideals of Russian Cosmism places humanity at the centre of the cosmos, and it this ideal that becomes the philosophical basis of The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment. Underpinning Kabakov’s work is a tension and paradox that is at once evasive yet selfanswering. The artwork is simultaneously empty yet full of meaning as the viewer’s subjectivity becomes a necessary and inseparable part of the artwork. The absence of the cosmonaut leaves the viewer only an afterimage of a seemingly absurd or impossible fictional event, yet it is through emptiness that the viewer finds significance and meaning.
Endnotes 1. Anthony Gardner, Politically Unbecoming: Postsocialist Art against Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), 15, quoted in Nicoletta Rousseva, “Art on Its Own Terms,” Art
Journal 75, no. 1 (May 2016): 117. 2. Nicoletta Rousseva, “Art on Its Own Terms,” Art Journal 75, no. 1 (May 2016): 119.
3. Nadim Samman, “The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov,
Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant‐Gardes,” Third Text 25, no. 2 (April 2011): 230. 4. Gardner, Politically Unbecoming, quoted in Rousseva, “Art on Its
Own Terms.” 5. Samman, “The Experimental Group,” 230. 6. Ibid. 7. Peter Osborne, “The Kabakov Effect: ‘Moscow Conceptualism’ in the History of Contemporary Art,” Afterall 42, no. 1 (Autumn/
Winter 2016): 117. 8. Natalia Kolodzei, “Cosmic Inspirations and Explorations by
Soviet Nonconformist Artists,” Leonardo 54, no. 1 (February 2021): 93. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid, 92. 11. Alessandra Franetovich, “Cosmic Thoughts: The Paradigm of
Space in Moscow Conceptualism,” e-flux 99, (April 2019): 4. 12. Kolodzei, “Cosmic Inspirations,” 97. 13. Boris Groys, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew Into Space From
His Apartment (Afterall Books, 2006), 9. 14. Ibid. 15. Kolodzei, “Cosmic Inspirations,” 96. 16. Gardner, Politically Unbecoming, 74, quoted in Rousseva, “Art on Its Own Terms,” 119. 17. Osborne, “The Kabakov Effect,” 117. 18. Ilya Kabakov, “Public Projects or the Spirit of a Place,” Third Text 17, no. 4 (December 2003): 406.
ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE & URBAN DESIGN
