Beyond the Internalized Multitude Reflections on the Workgroup Chto delat

Abstract

Chto delat (“What is to be done” ) was founded in 2003. In 2003, many things that have become painfully clear today were only hypotheses. But one thing was certain: Moscow Actionism and its interventions had taken on an instrumentalizing, depoliticizing logic. Artists were opting for “resistant” acts of disappearance rather than overt “revolutionary” displays. Of course, the charged texture of the 1990s lingered. But on the whole, a political understanding of art had returned to itself as a potentiality, personalized as psychological ritual and group therapy, or reified as a material sensibility. The “trip out of town”, always an important gesture for the late Soviet and early post-Soviet underground, now seemed to be regaining actuality. Chto delat was founded in an action that attempted to transform this pathos of exodus into an overt demand for repoliticization. On the eve of Petersburg’s pompous anniversary celebration, a group of intellectuals and artists set out to found a new “center” on the outskirts of town, carrying placards that said they were leaving. Nobody noticed. In 2003, it was already clear that at some point, there would be an industrialization of contemporary art. There was a massive re-instatement of collectible art, and a strong return of figurative painting with artists who had emerged from the squats of the 1990s such as Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Valery Koshlayakov, or, most importantly, Dubosarsky and Vinogradov. At the same time, Dubosarsky and Vinogradov displayed what one could call a “proletarian sensibility” to the potentiality of the art scene and its micro-communities. This sensibility also had an economic dimension, and fuelled ambitious exhibition projects that contributed significantly to the gentrification of the following years.