DIALECTICAL LANDSCAPE: TOWARDS ANTIPOSITIVIST NATURALISM OF NATURE
Museum of Museums, Venice (November 2024)
The genre of painted landscapes or land art, teetering on the edge between the natural and the artistic, can be viewed as a battleground of conflicting political positions. In empirical neo-Darwinian aesthetics, it aims to reveal the origins of human aesthetic sensitivity to nature through the survival strategies of our ancestors. In idealist and poststructuralist traditions, the value of the natural is reduced to its ability to reflect human thought, concepts, or cultural codes. But how can we rethink nature while avoiding the extremes of «spiritualisation» and naturalisation?
The term cultural landscape, initially introduced in opposition to the original landscape, undermines the foundations of this dichotomy. Theodor Adorno interprets it as the traces of early urbanism that shape the organic development of nature both before and after human intervention. Considering that scientists acknowledge human influence even on the Amazon rainforest, any view of nature can already be regarded as mediated by culture. At the same time, culture is rooted in evolution and partially subject to natural laws. The movement of tectonic plates, the breakdown of ecosystems, or deforestation shape humanity’s living environment. Thus, the concept of Kulturlandschaft challenges the notion of «pristine» nature as a Western colonial and extractivist construct. Instead, it proposes approaching the environment as the result of co-creation between human and non-human agents, excluding human domination.
In his presentation, Andrey discussed a research project on the anti-positivist aesthetics of the artistic and the natural beauty, as well as his artistic practices related to the dialectics of dominance and submission between humanity and the environment.
VISIONS OF VENUS. THE SPACE AGE OPTICAL UNCONSCIOUS
diffrakt | zentrum für theoretische peripherie e.V. (April 2024)
Outer space has long served as a screen for political, gender and familial projections. For capitalist hegemony it was a realm for colonisation and resource extraction, for «actually existing socialism» it was supposed to represent a space of solidarity and equality. Due to its proximity to Earth, Venus acted as a macabre sister in a sibling rivalry with the Sun. Venus became the ultimate cishet male fantasy as it was feminised or even portrayed as a dreadful vagina dentata in both mass-cultural and scientific representations.
Venus, the brightest object in the sky, ignited the beginning of space odysseys and also marked the culmination of the space race. After penetrating the underbelly of its mysterious atmosphere and capturing its surface for the first time, the longing to discover other forms of intelligent life within reach have relinquished and earthlings were confronted with cosmic loneliness. The fate of space exploration in the 21st century is to be a private enterprise, tourist attraction for the ultra-rich, destination for the cosmic «white flight».
The primary impetus behind «venusianism» – the attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible — is the thirst for knowledge and the desire to observe distant planetary landscapes. However, this scopophilic impulse has never been neutral but was driven by the visual colonisation of uncharted territories. The exploration of Venus cannot be separated from what Paul Virilio called the industrialisation and militarisation of the optical field. The series of missions to Venus known as «Venera» (Venus), produced in the USSR between 1962 and 1983, were part and parcel of a military-industrial complex and imperialist techno-science.
Yet, the story of Venus is also a tragic tale of «suicide cameras», in the words of Harun Farocki: envoys for the human sensing body. Dressed in full metal jackets, the «Veneras» from the first to the sixteenth model were destined to experience adverse climatic conditions and doomed to imminent death. These victims of technological progress, who brought so much invaluable data, receive, however, insufficient recompense. Could one finally acknowledge the agency of spacecraft, rockets, orbiters, or landers and feel compassion for Venera’s own feelings? Is it possible to release outer space from ideological projections and demilitarise perception?
Andrey Shental will share his research from family archives on optical space exploration as well as space age-inspired mass culture. After showcasing examples of Soviet educational films and international sci-fi cinema, he will present the director’s cut of his video project about the 13th Venera mission. The screening will be followed by a conversation with the media scholar and independent curator Elena Vogman.
META AND POST POST: ON THE RETURN OF GRAND NARRATIVES
New Holland, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art lectures (August 2021)
Traditionally, science was interested in a fundamental and multi-perspective study of reality and philosophy in understanding the world as a whole, while art invented big form (such as the classical novel). In the second half of the twentieth century—after the defeat of fascism and the general disillusionment regarding the Soviet project, the idea of the «end of grand narratives» became popular. Science split into separate disciplines, philosophy dissolved into theories and studies, and art fell apart into separate heterogeneous individual practices that seemed impossible to summarise. At the same time, we witnessed a counter-trend—interdisciplinary syntheses, the search for universals, systemic descriptions, and all-encompassing narratives. In the 1960s, contemporary art produced the new meta genre of installation, followed by the super-art form of megalomaniac curatorial projects.
Today, it seems that grand narratives in art might be making a return with meta reflexive practices that tend to produce narratives on behalf of other phenomena and persons—imitating the speech of art historians, taking on the curating function, devising philosophical systems, and working with the quasi-scientific discourse. Artists write personal mythologies, fictitious histories, and quasi-museological studies. Andrey Shental will share his observations on the return of grand narratives to art, offer his explanation of their spread and a critique of relating practices, drawing on several works by Russian artists.
Curator: Ekaterina Lazareva
MUSEUM INVIGILATOR OR PERFORMER? ON CONFUSION BETWEEN ARTISTIC PRODUCTION AND NON-ARTISTIC LABOUR
Rosa’s House of Culture, Gift and Labour in Art and Culture conference (December 2019).
In his paper Andrey Shental, speaks about his experience as a gallery intern, when he was forced to do unpaid manual labour under the guise of being included into sacrosanct space of art institution.
Moderator: Roman Osminkin
FROM DISCOURSIVITY TO MATERIALITY: IS A NEW ONTOLOGY OF ART POSSIBLE?
NCCA, Theoretical Studies in Cultural Anthropology (2017)
Andrey Shental questions the possibility of new ontology of art, demand for which became apparent while poststructuralist paradigm has been exhausted. New ontology of art is oriented towards physical presence. Today artists are interested in penetrating into the depth of tangible objects, they investigate biochemical composition of artistic and non-artistic materials, process of (re)distribution of synthetic cells and technical liquids, neuro-chemical conditions of human perception, mediated by digital interfaces. In his paper author will try to answer the question: can we indeed speak of «material turn», demanding new research methodologies, or art still remains in the «post-conceptual condition»?
Curator: Keti Chuhkrov
HOSTING THE INHUMAN: SESSION IV
Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2017)
In the framework of the 4th session of «Hosting the Inhuman» participants of the project discussed their works and artistic representation of the «inhuman». Participants: Egor Rogalev, Alexei Bogolepov, Andrey Shental, Valya Fetisov, 2017
RE-DIRECTING: EAST. Conversation # 1: Anna Ilchenko & Andrey Shental
CSW Zamek Ujazdowski / A-I-R Laboratory, Warsaw (2013)
The presentation will focus on the definitive changes that occurred in the early 90s such as the emergence of unrestrained market forces («shock therapy»), development of a new institutional framework and educational system in the arts that attempted to include Russian artists in the global art network. In this context, there is a need to demarcate the difference between art of Yeltsin’s (1991-99) and Putin’s (1999-present) epochs and to question the notion of so-called «post-soviet condition» — a traumatic and long-lasting process of transition from communist state to the constitution of neoliberal society.
In 2011-2012 numerous protests against election fraud marked the end of post-soviet transition and emergence of new political consciousness. Supported by «creative class», the protest movement stimulated a redefinition of the role of art within Russian society: art historians called to de-artify political protests; artists responded to the protest action in various ways; curators became «companions-in-arms» and «artivism» groups operated on the verge of art and politics. Therefore, Russian art community attempted to reconfigure cultural production, according to the current social and political situation.
A subsequent subject of the presentation will be complications of art education in Russia, describing the difference between Institute of Contemporary Art (neo-formalism) and the Rodchenko School (socio-political art). Simultaneously, the commercialisation and neoliberalisation of the academic system instigated creation of alternative modes of education (and politicisation) that emerged as a critique of this state of affairs.
Identification struggles, that became visible as part of the wider protest movement, since then have developed their own modes of operation and require a separate discussion. Young feminist artists and curators were heard due to media scandals and post-colonial art gained academic and institutional support, whereas the absence of adequate LGBT and queer studies was retroactively constructed through fictitious re-politicisation of certain artists of the 90s. This tendency would be articulated and questioned in its relation to a more general struggle for «social justice».
Yury Albert from Artistic-political Point of View
Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2013)
Participants: Oleg Aronson, Sasha Novozhenova, Dmitry Gutov and Andrey Shental. Moderator: Ekaterina Degot
INTERVIEWS:
By Agata Iordan on Post-Soviet Pop-Music, Aperto No. 3
By Zlata Adashevkaya (Philosophical Battles) on New Cosmologies lecture project, Dialog Iskusstv No. 3, 2017
By Sergei Guskov on Philosophy Club for Winzavod 10 years catalogue
By Alisa Schneider on fungi for Syg.ma
By The Village, 2017