2+2 Practing Godard (2009)
I was inspired to make this film after the police forced me to delete video footage of the OMON (special police unite) raid on our seminar in Nizhny Novgorod. I was struck by their brazen confidence that they could erase things from people’s memory as easily as you can delete a video image. This film is meant as a response to their challenge. It shows that we can not only document the crimes of the authorities for posterity, but also shape our own space of interpretation. We can recreate our own histories, in which the deeds of the police will be remembered as shameful acts against society.
Dmitry Vilensky
Film idea and directing
идея фильма и режиссура:
Dmitry Vilensky // Дмитрий Виленский
Script and film crew / Сценарная и съемочная группа:
Oleg Zguravlyov, Nikolay Oleinikov, Kirill Medvedev, Dmitry Vilensky
Олег Журавлев, Николай Олейников, Кирилл Медведев, Дмитрий Виленский
Camera /// Камера:
Dmitry Vilensky // Дмитрий Виленский
Монтаж /// Edit:
Dmitry Vilensky // Дмитрий Виленский
With the participation of
In film played /// в фильме снимались:
Andery Amirov // Андрей Амиров
Alexander Kuritsin // Александр Курицын
Anna Tolkatcheva // Анна Толкачева
Andery Nosov // Андрей Носов
Diana Sakaeva // Диана Сакаева
Oleg Zguravlev // Олег Журавлев
Nikolay Oleinikov // Николай Олейников
Marina Prochorova // Марина Прохорова
And many others who hide their names
и многие другие, которые не хотят быть названными
The film is the result of collaboration between
этот фильм сделан при тесном взаимодействии между
Соц. Движение «Вперед» и платформой
Socialist Movement Forward / Вперед
аnd platform “Chto Delat” / «Что Делать?»
The Chto Delat? wall newspaper is an art project by Dmitry Vilensky, based on the paper version of this or that issue of the newspaper in print.
The wall newspaper is an installation object based on the metal offset sheets used in the process of printing a real newspaper. Elements of a metal construction kit for children are mounted onto these offset plates.
In the way, the real newspaper gains a third dimension, making for a means to demonstrate and visualize the lines of tension and flight in graphical and textual space.
The wall newspaper is published in one language depending on where it is shown.
Three issues of the wall newspaper have appeared so far, two of them in English. They were shown at the exhibitions “Contested Spaces in Post-Soviet Art” at the Sydney Mishkin Gallery, New York, “People’s Choice” at Isola Art Center, Milan, “Black Square Prize Show” at Central House of Artists, Moscow, and “Actualization Space” in Hamburg.
Wall newspaper #1: Spacemaking
4 printing forms aluminum (size 960×620 mm) with fixed objects dimensions variable
Installation at Syney Mishkin Gallery, New York was realised for the exhibition Contested Spaces in Post Soviet Art, curated by Elena Sorokina.
Two chairs and a table are included for the free distribution of Chto delat No. 12: “(Im)possible Spaces.”
Idea and realisation: Dmitry Vilensky
The graphic for these objects was based on combinations in a form of collages the sketches made by St. Petersburg artist Grigory Jushenko and different architectural graphics and plans of development of urban structures.
The text for this project was related to the theoretical discourse of production of public spaces and include the quotes from David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Paolo Virno and many others.
The idea was to face the viewer with the visual confrontation between texts and objects that was embedded in a form of a spatial fight.
Wall newspaper #2 Potentialities. Beyond Political Sadness
Century of Manifestos. Play for a few Actors
A film by Dmitry Vilensky
Music by Mikhail Krutik
Century of the Manifesto from chto delat on Vimeo.
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Sandwiched (2004)
A film by Dmitry Vilensky based on the action in public space realized by the workgroup Chto Delat?
A group of Saint-Petersburg artists, intellectuals, and writers came out into one of the central city squares, to become, for a while, the
“sandwichmen” and “sandwichwomen”. Each of them put on two advertising signs. The front one was empty. Language on strike. On the rear sign there were written various puzzling questions concerning the meaning and dignity of labour. The sandwichmen and sandwichwomen were handling newspapers to the passers by. The newspapers were also empty, except for their last page, where all the questions were listed together.
The film is based on the video material of these action and also include the fragments of the interviews made with real the “sandwichmen” and
“sandwichwomen” on the streets of Petersburg that reflects their descriptions of their working conditions and their place in society and
labour structures.
the questions put on placards:
Are you being exploited?
Are you exploiting somebody?
Is exploitation inevitable?
Did you dream of this job when you were a child?
Is work a woman thing?
Is work a man thing?
Is work a common thing?
Does work make you free?
Your boss needs you?
Your team needs you?
Your president needs you?
Who needs you anyway?
Who does not work, is not?
Are you afraid of the authorities?
Are the authorities afraid of you?
Let us be afraid together?
Happiness through labour?
Happiness through money?
How much does happiness cost?
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Toni Negri Speaks. Multitude or Working Class? (2003)
A film by Dmitry Vilensky, 28 min., 2003
Multitude or Working Class?
Paris La Villette – Le Trabendo – 14 Nov – 14h-17h
This film is based on the record of Negri speech at the 2nd European Social Forum in Paris. His speech was a part of the debates run between Negri and Alex Calinicos.
I was focused only on the speech of Negri and a crowd that very emotionally followed it.
We all agree to the fact that we want to fight capital and renew the world. But I think this ain’t conceivable as a poetical process. Because the name ”multitude“ is not a poetical notion, but a class concept. When I talk about multitude as a class concept, I talk about the fact that workers today work in the same and in different ways compared to those they worked some centuries ago. The working class and its class composition are quite different in the distinct periods that followed each other since the beginning of the industrial age.
Antonio Negri
See full transcription of the conversation
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Screaming (2003)
A film by Dmitry Vilensky, 2003
Part of the video installation “Negation of Negation”
This video was made at the demonstration organized by European Social Forum in Paris in November 2003, and is shown on one of the two monitors on the back side of the screening wall.
“In the beginning is the scream. We scream.When we write or when we read, it is easy to forget that the beginning is not the word, but the scream. Faced with the mutilation of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness, a scream of horror, a scream of anger, a scream of refusal: NO.”
John Holloway, Change the World without Taking Power
The films shows different way of almost all existing traditional demonstration’s chanting slogans in Europe. Due to the cut of the film this activity in film is shown in condensed, almost comic form mixing moment of pure exaltation and concentration. symbolizes
In the construction of the installation this activity symbolizes the role of multitude with its features based on affects, linguistic production and virtuosity in action.
Dmitry Vilensky
Production Line (2003)
A film by Dmitry Vilensky, 8:10 min, 2003
Part of the installation “Negation of Negation”
This film was made in the Gorky Automobile Plant in Nizhny Novgorod, which was build in 1929 by Henry Ford and has since been Russia’s leading car manufacturer.
In ‘Production Line,’ it was important for me to reflect the most basic work activity (work on an assembly line), forcing the audience to look at workers once again after a long break. Approaching the proletariat is important on a symbolic level; in a society dominated by financial speculation and service, the notion of physical labor itself has been forced to the periphery, but work goes on, and never really vanished from post-capitalist society.
The film is based on the parallel montage of the faces and hands of the workers who work on the assembly line on the one hand, and total shots of the factory entrance, as workers leave the factory during the changing shift.It is important to note that the film focuses on conveying the tension involved in the work process, which becomes especially clear if you compare their faces during work and after work. Though work on the assembly is obviously mechanical and demeaning, we can see that the worker gains dignity through concentration and communication while working. At the same time, when the workers leave the factory, they lose their individual quality and become a grey, faceless mask.
Dmitry Vilensky
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Next Station Byelorusskaya (2003)
A film by Dmitry Vilensky, 2003, 11 min., looped
This film shows the homeless people sleeping in the ring lines trains of the Moscow underground. Some of them are fixed at the moment of the departure from a station, others at the moment of the arrival to a station. The sound track is edited in such a way that the announcement of the one station repeats permanently, thus, there is a feeling that homeless people endlessly leave and come back to one and the same station.
Dmitry Vilensky
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Lenin (2001)
a film by Dmitry Vilensky, 2001, 5:40 min., looped
Once Vladimir Mayakovsky has written that representatives of all peoples will come eternally to Lenin’s Mausoleum. In film we see, how visitors of Moscow are photographed on the background of Lenin’s Mausoleum. They accept traditional for the “memory photo ” poses, wishing to be immortalized near of the symbol that lost any historical meaning to them.
The spectator observes the whole gallery of the different social types. The film fixes a situation of occurrence of a photo. All participants are taken from a position of the photographer and he/she is also fixed from a back. We watch that nowadays people are united with rituals of a consumer society, and have not any pathos of participation in a history.
Sound: Bells on Sapasskaja Tower, before the hours time. In result of the looping of a short sound fragment there is a feeling of stopped time – the most traditional metaphor of a photography.
Dmitry Vilensky
