Chto Delat?’s 48 hours seminar-commune /// obshezitie (*) and Learning play

Where has Communism Gone?

2-3 February 2011
SMART Project Space

with the participation of: Dorian Batycka, Jimini Hignett, lado Darakhvelidze, Petra Vacková, Anton Kats, Ehsan Fardjadniya, Hanan Benammar; Catherine Grau, Maiko Tanaka, Selçuk Balamir, Ruchama, Yelena Myshko, Jessica Dill, Yelena Sorokina, Jesper Alvaer; Koert Jobse, Eugen Georg and others (very sorry for missing someone)

Chto Delat? participants: Olga Egorova (Tsaplya), Artyom Magun, Oxana Timofeeva, Natalya Pershina (Gluklya), Dmitry Vilensky, Alexander Skidan

Video Lecture by David Riff

Film Scene from the film Homeland of Electricity by Larisa Shepitko

Music Isaak Dunaevsky from the film “Captain Grant’s kids”

*Obshezitie / seminar-commune is a series of 48 hour seminars initiated by the Chto Delat? collective and the Socialist Movement “Vpered” in 2009, dedicated to the idea of political subjectivation through collective practices, and aimed at breaking the conventional formats of discussions and conferences and promote a dialogical, conflictual and personal relationship to knowledge production. An enormous number of events occur within cultural and political spheres that aim to address ideas around collectivity and the politicized subject. Lectures are read, seminars are conducted and exhibitions installed, but nothing is really at stake at most of these events; there is no feeling of shared struggle and no sense of solidarity is established. We should try to make it otherwise!

For this seminar at SMART there is an urgency to address what is Communism, if there is any sense to draw on this ideology again and whether the concept of communism has any relevance to contemporary cultural practices?