Cosmism—A Superhumanity Symposium

Thursday, November 30
6pm 
Introduction to Cosmism—A Superhumanity Symposium

6:15pm
Keynote Lecture: Boris Groys: “Becoming Cosmic”

7pm
Anton Vidokle: Introduction of film This is Cosmos 

7:15pm
Screening: This is Cosmos (2014)

Friday, December 1
10am
Anton Vidokle: Introduction of film The Communist Revolution Was Caused by the Sun 

10:15am
Screening: The Communist Revolution Was Caused by the Sun (2015)

11am
Robert Bird: “How to Keep Communism Aloft: Labor, Energy and the Model Cosmos in Soviet Cinema”

11:30am
Nikolaus Hirsch: “Museums of Immortality”

1:30pm
Arseny Zhilyaev: “Optimists of the Future Past Perfect”

2pm
Maria Chehonadskih: “The Stofflichkeit of the Universe: Aleksandr Bogdanov and the Soviet Avant-garde”

3:30pm
Anton Vidokle: Introduction of film Immortality and Resurrection for All!

3:45pm
Screening: Immortality and Resurrection for All! (2017)

4:30pm
Roundtable discussion: Boris Groys and symposium participants
 

Robert Bird is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures as well as Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. His primary area of interest is the aesthetic practice and theory of Russian/Soviet modernism, focusing on Russian film and video art. He is currently completing the manuscript for his book Soul Machine: How Soviet Film Modeled Socialism. He is the co-curator of Revolution Every Day (September 2017) on Soviet graphic art and moving images at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. His upcoming project Revolutionology examines intellectual revolution across a variety of media, spaces, and historical moments.

Maria Chehonadskih is a philosopher and critic. She received her PhD in philosophy from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London. At the center of her work are Soviet epistemologies across Marxist philosophy, literature, and art. Her texts on Soviet philosophy, art theory, and post-Soviet politics have been published in journals such as Radical Philosophy, South Atlantic Quarterly, Moscow Art Magazine, and Alfabeta2. With Ilya Budraitskis she co-curated the exhibition Shadow of a Doubt (2014) at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, dedicated to the problem of conspiracy. Chehonadskih lives and works in London and Moscow.

Beatriz Colomina is Professor of History and Theory at the School of Architecture and founding director of the program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University. She has written extensively on questions of architecture, art, sexuality and media. Her books include Are We Human? Notes on an Archeology of Design (Lars Müller, 2016), with Mark Wigley, The Century of the Bed (Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2015), Manifesto Architecture: The Ghost of Mies (Sternberg, 2014), Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X (Actar, 2010), Domesticity at War (MIT Press, 2007), Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (MIT Press, 1994), and Sexuality and Space (Princeton Architectural Press, 1992). She has curated a number of exhibitions including Clip/Stamp/Fold (2006), Playboy Architecture (2012) and Radical Pedagogies (2014). She is curator with Mark Wigley of the third Istanbul Design Biennial (2016). 

Boris Groys is a philosopher, essayist, and media theorist. Having taught in Philadelphia, Münster, and Los Angeles, he became in 1994 Professor of Art History, Philosophy and Media Theory at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. In 2009, he was appointed Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University. He has published widely on the subject of the Russian avant-garde and was curator of the exhibition Dream Factory Communism at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in 2003/04.

Nikolaus Hirsch is a Frankfurt-based architect, editor and curator. He was the director of Städelschule and Portikus in Frankfurt and currently teaches at Columbia University in New York. His architectural realizations include the Dresden Synagogue (2001), Hinzert Document Center (2006), Cybermohalla Hub (Delhi, 2008–12), an artist residency at The Land (with Rirkrit Tiravanija) and “Museum of Immortality” (Mexico City, 2016). Hirsch curated numerous exhibitions at the Portikus, the Folly project for the Gwangju Biennale (2014), and Wohnungsfrage/Housing Question at HKW Berlin (2015). Hirsch is the co-founder and editor of the Critical Spatial Practice series at Sternberg Press and e-flux Architecture.

Anton Vidokle is an artist and editor of e-flux journal. He was born in Moscow and lives in New York and Berlin. Vidokle’s work has been exhibited internationally at Documenta 13 and the 56th Venice Biennale. Vidokle’s films have been presented at Bergen Assembly, Shanghai Biennale, the 65th and 66th Berlinale International Film Festival, Forum Expanded, Gwangju Biennale, Center Pompidou, Tate Modern, Garage Museum, Istanbul Biennial, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and others.

Mark Wigley is a Professor of Architecture and Dean Emeritus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He is a historian and theorist who explores the intersection of architecture, art, philosophy, culture, and technology. His books include: Derrida’s Haunt: The Architecture of Deconstruction; White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture; Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire; and Buckminster Fuller Inc. - Architecture in the Age of Radio. He has curated exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, The Drawing Center, the Witte de With in Rotterdam, and the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. In 2016 he co-curated the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial with Beatriz Colomina on the theme Are We Human? - The Design of the Species - 2 seconds, 2 days, 2 years, 200 Years, 200,000 years. His most recent book, written with Beatriz Colomina, is Are We Human? - Notes on an Archaeology of Design (Zurich: Lars Müller, 2016). 

Arseny Zhilyaev is an artist based in Moscow. In recent works he has examined the legacy of Soviet museology and the museum in Russian Cosmism. Among others, he has published articles in e-flux journal. Zhilyaev is editor of Avant-Garde Museology (2015). His works have been shown at the Gwangju Biennale, Liverpool Biennale, and at the Ljubljana Triennale as well as at exhibitions including at the Centre Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo, Paris; De Appel, Amsterdam; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris and San Francisco; and at the V-A-C Foundation in Moscow.