“Science for the Masses” by Marius Ritiu at Verbeke Foundation
public sculpture “Science for the Masses” by Marius Ritiu; plexiglas, led lights, wood, iron bars, iron pipe, 3 330 x 90 x 333 cm (images - courtesy of the artist and Verbeke Foundation)
Historiography of icons is a peculiar subject: their appropriation hardly can be deemed off ideology. Marius Ritiu’s public sculpture at Verbeke Foundation originates from the chance, when the collector found three incomplete McDonalds light signs at a lightbox repair shop in Belgium. Strong iconography of one of the most recognisable commercial signs in the world creates very particular visual, social and political associations. In the linguistic tradition of conceptual art and following the subject of the artist’s current research of the abandonment, memory and symbology in his native Romania, Ritiu strips the actual semantics of the sign and demonstrates the bare propagating power using the strategy of re-appropriation. In this gesture he achieves to stay in a fine position on the line of neutrality in regard to surface-laying ideological and activist struggles and exposes invisible layer of the power of language, symbology and association in visual culture: to watch is not enough to see.
Transformation of “MMM” into “E = mc^2” talks to the thousands casual passers-by via highway in a complex way and at the same time in a direct form. First, they are attracted by the recognisable symbol of feeding the masses with high nutritional (and questionable dietary) value at the low price. In the end of the day, we humans have a lot in common with Pavlov’s dog. But a closer look at the familiar symbols reveals that their initial association had been subverted by something that is so much more fundamental and universally revelational, but at the same time taken for granted and therefore almost invisible. Albert Einstein genius turned the world upside down less than a century ago and laid the foundation to the world we are living in now. Equalisation of “food for the masses” with “science for the masses” is one of the core promises of revolutionary avant-garde, both then and now. Ritiu’s sculpture brings this proximity to a climax and does what the art ought to do: disturbs the comfort of the mundane normality of the horizon of Antwerp’s neighbourhood.
There is nothing beyond language, said Jacques Derrida. But there is a limitless flow of potentiality to be unlocked in the language codes by those who dare to challenge the familiar and have the courage to question conventional meaning and become creators of the alternatives.
text by Denis Maksimov
Interview for “It’s an Artful Life”
“As co-founder of the Avenir Institute (www.avenirinstitute.info/) and having worked all around the world as a curator and analyst, Denis Maksimov has an incredibly deep perspective on the interchange of politics and art, as well as the intellectual impact of arts in daily life“. - Gillian Rhodes
Listen the interview here.
too much as not enough, vol. 1
a group exhibition feat. feat. Marina Alexeeva, Maria Arendt, Ludmila Belova, Vita Buivid, Alexandr Dashevsky, Laura Dekker, Lee Edwards, Andrey Gorbunov, Amir-Nasr Kamgooyan, Boris Kazakov, Alexandra Mazur-Knyazeva, Ivan Plusch, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Alexandr Shishkin-Hokhusai, Ivan Tuzov
Artist, curator, dealer, provocateur and polymath Marcel Duchamp is a Pandora of art history for some and John the Baptist of modern and contemporary art for others. Among many disruptions of the order and normality of what was set to be called ‘art’, in 1935 he created Boîte-en-valise, or box in a suitcase, a portable miniature monograph including sixty-nine reproductions of the artist’s own work. In the following years, he created other editions of the boxes, with varying content and luxurious touch, including a special edition for long time friend Peggy Guggenheim. Is it a portfolio of artist’s work or an individual piece of work, or maybe both? As enigmatic as ever, Duchamp was not meaning to provide a definite answer.
An inaugural exhibition at Shtager Gallery in London unites under the same roof in a compact space not only one, but multiple group and solo ‘exhibitions’. The conceptual gesture of Duchamp is peculiar in the contemporary context of commercialisation, gentrification and scarcity. How many narratives and stories can strategically fit in a small experimental space?
Duchamp anticipated and contributed to the institutionalisation of many forms of presentation within and beyond artistic fields with his radical and daring innovations. Curriculum Vitae and a personal statement are the standard of self-presentation now. The radical nature of his heritage is timeless and in the currents of crises in contemporaneity, becomes actual and even urgent.
Attention deficit alongside the culture of acceleration lead to us to necessity to be more effective in literally all aspects of modern life. The functions of the museum, gallery, artist-run and independent project spaces are merging with each other in search of new meaning as the social and political conditions of artistic production are evolving towards new, seemingly tougher, but possible just different frontiers. Revisiting in this context the most influential ideas of the age of manifestos is more than necessary.
A portable exhibition is presented here in the form of an intellectual vortex: it drags the viewer into its own laws of matter, gravity and light. Just like it is in the space of contemporary media, where the increasing number of simultaneous voices create more autonomous images of subjective real.
By placing the artists in an experimental, multiversal and hardly comprehensible conversation, a strategic cacophony, there is an emergence of the question about what we observe in the constantly accelerating societies: is too much the new not enough?
'too much as not enough’, curated by Denis Maksimov, is the first exhibition in an upcoming yearly cycle of research in contemporary miniature art practices in Shtager Gallery (Studio 24, 87 Crampton Street, London, SE17 3AZ ). Vol. 1 will run from May 18 till May 30 with the opening on May 18, 19.00, by the lecture by Denis Maksimov on Duchamp, acceleration, radical forms of presentation, experimentation & ‘too much as not enough’ series (RSVP: shtagergallery@gmail.com).
Shtager Gallery moved from the cultural capital of Russia, St Petersburg, to one of the global art capitals, London, the UK, in 2017. Founder of the gallery Marina Shtager has been working in professional art world since 2006 in the roles of director and curator. She founded Shtager Gallery in 2014. Elephant & Castle is an experimental art space conceived by Shtager Gallery in cooperation with Morris & Associates in 2017.
State of Noland
image - Avenir Institute
What is the State of Noland?
It is a condition of not aligning with nation state and particular geopolitical territory as well as possible formations of practical replacement of nation-state functionality with rhizomatic (“rhizome” - is a modified subterranean stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes), pastiche, assemblage alternatives. Nation state is a modern fiction, a child of Thomas Hobbes “Leviathan” and birth of nationalism in 19 century. None of the existing countries on the political map of today fulfil the requirements of the concept of nation state in political theory. Can we imagine the rhizomatic organs without the body (functionality without the current system frame), inverting and developing ideas of Antonin Artaud in theatre and and Gilles Deleuze in philosophy and applying it to politics?
by Denis Maksimov
The lecture was given in the programme of “EUROVISION” event at Centre culturel Brueghel in Brussels on April 20, organised by Giuseppe Porcaro (Head of Communications, Bruegel) and included contributions of Teresa Cos (artist and researcher), Ryan Heath (Senior EU Correspondent, POLITICO) and Giacomo Filibeck (Deputy Secretary General of the Party of European Socialists).
Listen to the audio recording here.
Boaventura De Sousa Santos in conversation with Denis Maksimov: state, nation and alternatives
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, image source
The conversation between Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Denis Maksimov about nation state, it’s contemporary condition and evolution in the context of the challenges of 21 century.
Can a state exist without a nation? Can functions of a state be replaced by other entities? Some quotes from the conversation:
“Nation state is a modern fiction.”
“State builds its own erosion by privatisation.”
“We need not alternatives - we need alternative thinking about alternatives.”
“Institutions are used extra-institutionally to control them. Trump legislates by Twitter.”
“We reproduce the state in the process of undoing it.”
Boaventura de Sousa Santos is a sociologist and legal scholar. He is Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as the director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra. He has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, democracy, human rights, social movements and the World Social Forum. His most recent publications include If God Were a Human Rights Activist (2015), Epistemologies of the South. Justice against the Epistemicide (2014), and Toward a New Legal Common Sense: Law, Globalization, and Emancipation (2002).
Rana Dasgupta in conversation with Denis Maksimov: multiculturalism, hegemony and nation state
Rana Dasgupta, image source
Conversation between Denis Maksimov and Rana Dasgupta took place in the context of the event “Now is the Time of Monsters. What Comes After Nations?” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany, on March 24, 2017.
How the global hegemony is shifting in the currents? What are the possible futures of multiculturalism?
Some quotes from the conversation:
“There is a vacuum on the level of internationalism, nation state being too small and too big at the same time”
“We talk about homogeneity, but we actually leave in a very fragmented space… The fact that the world is far more strange than it was 30-40 years ago”
“Multiculturalism is a nationalist project: there is French, American, British, etc. It is a state technology, that is designed for avoiding conflicts inside of the nation”
“The world is electing leaders, that are declaring war on liberalism”
Rana Dasgupta is a novelist and essayist. His texts focus on issues of home and homelessness as well as rootedness and motion in a globalized world. His novel Solo won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2010. His latest book, Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First-Century Delhi (2014), is a non-fiction exploration of his adopted city of Delhi, and, in particular, the changes and personalities brought about there by globalization. Dasgupta is Distinguished Visiting Lecturer and Writer-in-Residence in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.
Imperialism post-ex-ante
Avenir Institute. “Imperialism post-ex-ante”, lecture-performance/installation, Sao Paulo (BR), 2017
The lecture-performance took place at the opening of the exhibition of Avenir Institute “Against the Future” on February 16, 2017. The exhibition is a result of the residency of co-founders of the Institute, Denis Maksimov and Timo Tuominen, at Atelier Fidalga (Residência Paulo Reis) in February-March 2017.
video of the lecture-performance
text, published by Avenir Institute in the aftermath of the lecture
The Far Present
Moscow Art Magazine #99, cover page
Цитата из вступления главного редактора Виктора Мизиано: “Впрочем, «планетарное сознание — это не открытие наших дней, оно заявило о себе уже давно, но время от времени подавляется волнами капиталистической глобализации», и при этом «чувство укорененности … в мире как смысловой целостности» неизменно сопровождало ста- новление современности (Д. Максимов и АСИ «Далекое настоящее»). Отсюда для отечественного контекста референтным оказывается наследие «русского космизма» (Н. Дмитриев «Русская планета…»; А. Жиляев «Вторые пришествия…»; С. Гуськов «Космизмы большие и малые»), а для западного таким, в частности, может быть «экологическое движение, достигшее расцвета в 1960– 1970-е годы и сформировавшее современную экологическую повестку» (Д. Столяров «Цивилизация стерильности, или Бессмертие утопии»). Но в то же время, открывая для себя органическую телесность мира, мы не должны забывать, что мало с ней совместимая рационалистическая абстракция капитала отнюдь не сошла на нет (А. Тоскано «Ландшафты капитала»), как и то, что единство мира обеспечивается сегодня так же и информационно-технологическими процессами, телесность которых виртуальна, создается дизайном и самодизайном (Б. Гройс «Продуктивный нарциссизм») ”.
A conversation between Denis Maksimov (Avenir Institute) and Agency of Singular Investigations, pp. 80-90
Against the Future
Avenir Institute. “Against the Future”, publication (limited edition, signed), 2017
The publication contains mind maps of futures thinking terminology and the selection of the texts, written by the Institute in 2015-2016 in different contexts, where the terms are directly or indirectly employed.
The aesthetic form of the book is a “working paper”: the reader is invited to deconstruct the book physically, intervene with her comments, writings and doodles; share pages or parts of the book.
Contemporary art in a dialogue with socio-political realities
Dichotomy of Vorstellung/Darstellung in Gadamer’s hermeneutics was a point of departure in analysing art market, financial & stock market, political ideology and regimes of aesthetics in relation to “political”.
The lecture was given for The Modern Education and Research Institute in Brussels in December 2016.