nezhnost / tenderness from chto delat 2020
a video performance by Chto Delat collective realized by Nina Gasteva, Tsaplya Olga Egorova, Nikolay Oleynikov and Dmitry Vilensky, May 2020, different locations
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The collective Chto Delat (What is to be done?) was founded in early 2003 in Petersburg by a international workgroup of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Berlin with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism.
Since forced emigration of the most of members of the collective due to political prosecution in Russia for its anti-war position in 2022 the collective continues its activity as Chto Delat International and build community in exile and cultivate new forms of collective practice based on open protocol participation. These ideas are implemented at the activities of Chto Delat Emergency Project Room in Berlin.
Chto Delat is not an art institution, it is not a formal organization based on the production relations – it is kind of family or kin based on friendship and mutual support. But we try to produce some sense, solidarity and mutual support in this absurd world. It is an art tool for killing hate.
Chto Delat International core group includes Tsaplya Olga Egorova (artist), Artiom Magun (philosopher), Nikolay Oleynikov (artist), Natalia Pershina / Glucklya (artist), Alexey Penzin (philosopher), Alexander Skidan (poet and critic), Oxana Timofeeva (philosopher), Dmitry Vilensky (artist) and Nina Gasteva (choreographer). Former members of collective are David Riff and Thomas Cambell.
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The group was constituted in May 2003 in St. Petersburg in an action called “The Refoundation of Petersburg.” The name of the group derives from a novel by the Russian 19th century writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky, and immediately brings to mind the first socialist worker’s self-organizations and feminists’ co-operatives in Russia, which Lenin actualized in his own publication, “What is to be done?” (1902).
The artistic works of Chto Delat are always based on deep, interdisciplinary, participatory and collective research and implies non-academic forms of knowledge. The collective has established a long collaboration with different activists groups, social movements, think-tanks, univercities and different international art institutions
The activity of Chto Delat artistic cell is realizing across a range of media: video films, theater plays, total installations, murals etc. It includes art projects, seminars and public campaigns. The works of the collective are characterized by the use of alienation effect and irony, surreal scenery and it is always analyses of a concrete social and political struggles.
From its inception, the collective has been publishing an English-Russian newspaper focused on the urgent issues of cultural politics in post-soviet space, in dialogue with the international context (last issue published in 2022).
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In 2013, Chto Delat initiated an educational platform—School of Engaged Art and a social center called Rosa’s House of Culture in Saint Petersburg. Since 2017, the Chto Delat together with colleagues from Germany, founded the not-for-profit association in Berlin Chto Delat e.V. which allows to expand its work through institutional international funding.
All incomes from projects, grants, royalties, donations and sales of artistic work is accumulating at the Chto Delat Mutual Aid Fund and then is redistributed for the support of the different activities of collective and for the benefits of larger community of activists and cultural workers.
The activity of Chto Delat was supported with grants from the Foundation for Art Initiatives, Prince Claus Foundation, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Moscow and with project-based production funding.
In 2014 the collective withdrew from the participation in Manifesta 10 in Petersburg as a local protest against the Russian military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea and with this act has triggered a debate on the participation and boycott of art events. (see “I can’t work like this – a reader on recent boycotts and contemporary art – Manifesta 10” by Ágnes Básthy, Lianne Mol, and Joanna Warsza)
The collective becomes part of Journal of Journal, Documenta 12, Kasel (2007); the fellows of the 11th edition of Gwangju Biennale in 2016; Garage Museum Field Research Program in 2017; Philipp Otto Runge, Residency and Stipendium in Hamburg, 2013, Participants of Former West (2010 – 2014) and it was shortlisted for Visible Art Award in 2017.
The institutional activity of Chto Delat is supported between 2017 and 2024 by the grant from Foundation for Arts Initiatives
Represented by KOW Berlin and Apart gallery Rome.
Recent exhibitions include:
2023 – Family (of Choice). Those Who We Are, Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, Germany; Signals: How Video Transformed the World Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City 2022 – The Whole Life. Archives & Imaginarie, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin 2021 – Actually, the dead are not dead; Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea; – What Makes Another World Possible? Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia; – And if I devoted my Life to one of it’s feathers Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna 2020 – 1 Million Rosen für Angela Davis Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden; Becoming A Collective Body MAXXI, Rome, 2019 – Everything That We Have in Common Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje, North Macedonia; – An Opera for Animals Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong; – Revolution From Without… The 8th Floor, New York City, 2018 Proregress: The 12th Shanghai Biennale China; The Modern Art: 1960–2000. Restart, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; 2017 MUAC (The Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo), Mexico (solo show 2017); KOW BERLIN (solo show 2022, 2017 and 2015), San Paulo Biennale (2014); Art, Really Useful Knowledge, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2014); Art Turning Left: How Values Changed Making 1789–2013 – Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2013); FORMER WEST: Documents, Constellations, Prospects,, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2013); 10th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2012); Chto Delat in Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kuntsthalle, Baden-Baden (2011); Chto Delat Perestroika: Twenty Years After: 2011–1991, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2011); Ostalgia, New Museum, New York (2011); Study, Study and Act Again, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana (solo show 2011); The Urgent Need to Struggle, Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2010).
The works are part of the collections:
The Museum of Modern Art , New York; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Museum Reina Sophia, Madrid; Le Centre Pompidou, Paris; MUDAM, Luxemburg; MoCA – Skopje, North Macedonia; Tretyakov Art Gallery, Moscow; MUAC (The Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo) Mexico City; KIASMA, Museum for Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; Museum of Conteporary Art, Belgrade; CAAC, Sevilia, Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Skopje, North Macedonia and others.
The full archive of the activity of Chto Delat is part of the archive’s collection of The Garage Museum, Moscow (purchased in 2022)
The catalogue of the show “When we thought we knew all the answers, Life has changed all the questions” – exhibition took place at Sevilia, Spain in May 2017 and Mexico City from November 2017 till March 2018 at The Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, also known as MUAC
Chto Delat poster timeline from the catalogue published by Seccesion, Vienna (2014)
Chto Delat catalogue published by Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2011)
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