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Kuxa Kanema: The Birth of Film

Feb 26, Friday, 18.00-20.00, Pushkin House; screening & conversation.

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Envisioned in the context of the Black Pushkin discursive strand, this event reflects on and discusses the importance of cinema to histories and theories of decolonisation and to the construction of postcolonial identities, seeking to understand their role and possibility in today’s political and film landscape. It does so through a screening and discussion of the 2003 documentary film Kuxa Kanema, directed by award-winning filmmaker Margarida Cardoso and led by Prof Maite Conde. 

The title of Cardoso’s film was the name of a weekly newsreel in Mozambique with which the new post-independent government of Samora Machel regained control over the moving image from Portugal as a conscious act of decolonisation. The newsreel was screened via mobile cinema units throughout the newly independent country, including in rural areas. Using archival images from the newsreel, Cardoso’s film reconstructs and reflects on the revolutionary foundations of Mozambique and on the crucial role that cinema and image-making played in constructing the new space of the postcolonial nation and its peoples. As her film shows, this national history was profoundly international, with armed and cinematic movements relying on the endeavours and assistance of other nations, including the Soviet Union. Kuxa Kanema thus reveals the necessity of the postcolonial not only as a category for the national cinemas of formerly colonised countries, but as a mode of thinking about global systems, including cinema, showing the imbrication of the postcolonial, the national and the worldly.

The collapse of socialism put an end to the revolutionary spirit of Mozambique and a new media landscape has made the production of its cinema anachronistic. While Cardoso’s contemporary film reveals this, however, it also retrieves and recirculates the physical and material traces of Kuxa Kanema in ways that reanimate its presence for contemporary viewers, presenting us with a dreamworld of the cinematic and political past. Borrowed from Walter Benjamín, the notion of a dreamworld is a poetic description of a collective mental state and an analytical concept central to the politics of modernity as the re-enchantment of the world.  The term acknowledges the inherent transience of modernity, whose constant changing opens up hope for a better future. The dreamworld, then, is not for the past but for a vision of the future that has become obsolete. 

What is at stake, cinematically and politically, in Kuxa Kanema’s afterimages of the revolution? Can its reanimation of the past provide us with a cinematic and political constellation for reanimating political cinema today? Reflecting on these questions through a reading of Cardoso’s compilation film, this talk will engage with notions of decolonial filmmaking, examining how Cardoso’s retrieval of a cinematic past forges a film based on a dialectics of the old and the new, of life and death. Can this dialectic produce new and innovative ways of thinking about the relationship between cinema and the political today, and not just for Mozambique.

Maite Conde is a Professor of Brazilian Studies and Visual Culture at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. She has previously taught at King’s College, London, Columbia University, New York and the University of California, Los Angeles. Maite is the author of Foundational Films, Early Cinema and Modernity in Brazil (2012) and Consuming Visions, Cinema, Writing and Modernity in Rio de Janeiro (2018). She is the editor of Manifesting Democracy? Urban Protests and the Politics of Representation in Brazil 2013 (2022), Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes: On Brazil and Global Cinema (2018) and Between Conformity and Resistance: Essays on Politics, Culture and the State by Marilena Chauí(2011).  

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The Roots of Brutishness

What does it mean to ‘monumentalise’ today? What can we do with the complex legacies of imperial histories imprinted in the cities’ architecture, squares, cultural institutions and museums? What should we do with the collections of the looted artefacts and dispossessed cultural heritage in the Global North?

On Friday, January 19, 18.00-19.30, the author of the award-winning book The Brutish Museums (Pluto Press, 2020), Dan Hicks, in conversation with Denis Maksimov, will address the imperialist roots of archaeology, museology, and collecting in the nineteenth century through the prism of what he calls “World War Zero” – the Crimean War (1853-1856). From Russian imperial army helmets and guns as “trophies” in the collection of the University of Oxford’s (where he is a professor of contemporary archaeology) Pitt Rivers Museum (where he is a curator) to the questions of the fate of the monuments at large, Hicks will give us a sneak peek into his upcoming book All Monuments Must Fall (Penguin, 2024), which he will present at Pushkin House in December 2024.

Book tickets here.

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Putin's 'Sistema'

The transformation of the Russian political system under Putin for almost a quarter of a century raises questions about the factors of its longevity and the implications of its ageing. In this invigorating conversation, Alena Ledeneva, UCL’s Professor of Politics and Society, and Vladimir Pastukhov, Honorary Senior Fellow at the UCL School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, will unpack ideas about Putin’s sistema that often lead to misunderstandings, misinterpretations and over-complication of the modus operandi of informal governance in Russia. Denis Maksimov will moderate the event.

Alena Ledeneva is a Professor of Politics and Society at the University College London and a founder of the Global Informality Project (in-formality.com) and The Global Encyclopedia of Informality (2018). She graduated from Cambridge University (Newnham) and authored Russia's Economy of Favours (1998), How Russia Really Works (2006) and Can Russia Modernize? (2013).

Vladimir Pastukhov is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He is an author of the so-called "constitution by concepts", a written code of unwritten rules that define the actual substance of life in Russia. He holds a doctorate in political science and is a visiting fellow at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

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Modernity's Promises and Discontents

Keti Chukhrov, Undead (2022), HD video, stereo sound, 35′, still, courtesy of the artist.

Pushkin House is excited to welcome the prominent contemporary philosopher and cultural theorist Keti Chukhrov, ScD, who, over two days, is going to share her thoughts on decolonial and anti-imperialist agendas; first giving a lecture on Thursday, November 16, and after facilitating a workshop on Friday, November 17.

This is an exciting opportunity for anyone interested in questions about the legacy of modernity, the diversity of contemporary geographical axes of decoloniality, and imperialism’s essence with a fresh perspective. These complex issues will be deciphered engagingly by Chukhrov with the facilitation of Denis Maksimov, Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programming.

Recent decolonial theories and cultural practices insist on stepping out of the time of modernity, as it is equated with the time-space of colonial expansion. Modernity is understood as a period of the West’s optimistic reliance on progress, which fueled its economic and political domination, historically conditioning imperialist ambitions. The attempt to reach the temporality of the expanded present is usually made to re-store non-modern practices and indigenous ways of life. However, the question remains if the Global South or the East are necessarily traditional. Didn’t these countries themselves produce their own modernities? Are the indigenous forms of life free from hierarchies and discrimination? Finally, what should we do about the similarities between the decolonial and the right-wing critiques of Western modernity?

Posing these questions, the talk will go through the anti-colonial critique of Modernity and its satellite concepts – such as the Enlightenment, the Reason, the Universal, culture, and revolution, and provide comparative inquiry on each of them with the juxtaposed views by Walter Mignolo and Theodor Adorno, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Jacques Derrida, Édouard Glissant and Vladimir Bibler, André Lepecki and Chantal Mouffe.

The workshop Can Culture Exceed Empire in Which It Emerged? will bring concrete examples from poetry, music and film to open up the discussion further.

You can attend one or both events - book tickets here.

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The Battle over Mazepa

Mykola Ridnyi, "The Battle over Mazepa" (2023), 20', still, photo: Ivan Dikunov.

Following the end of the Cold War, the idealised vision of the possibility of a polished, uniform world without antagonisms has contributed to the fiction of post-political societies and 'the end of history'. Yet political agonism, as theorist Chantal Mouffe highlighted in her book "On the Political," not only persisted but flourished along contested history, present and possible future. 

Mykola Ridnyi's film project "The Battle over Mazepa" is the centrepiece of his exhibition at Pushkin House and John Hansard Gallery, joint commissioners of the work. It takes up the figure of Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1639-1709) as a case study of romanticising political agonism. Mazepa is a complicated historical figure who has been seen as a national hero by the proponents of creating an independent Cossack state in what is roughly contemporary Ukraine and as a traitor by the emerging Russian empire. Ridnyi, in collaboration with Professor Susanne Strätling, picked up two conflicting artistic portrayals of Hetman's life in literature — Lord Byron's Mazeppa (1818) and Alexander Pushkin's Poltava (1828-29). While Byron envisions Mazepa as a youthful romantic hero seized by love, Pushkin portrays him as an ailing traitor to the Russian empire.

The artist and the academic worked with young contemporary spoken word artists to stage a rap battle, which actualises the subject's nerve in the context of the ongoing physical and informational Russian war against Ukraine. The vernacular codes of oral storytelling offer a fresh perspective and critical ground for the conversation about the nature of political agonism. Video interviews with the performers and posters with an agitation-style historical background on the figure of Mazepa constitute other parts of the show, spreading across Pushkin House spaces. As Mouffe concludes, "It is in our power to create the practices, discourses and institutions that would allow… conflicts to take an agonistic form. This is why the defence and the radicalisation of the democratic project require acknowledging the political in its antagonistic dimension.”[1]

[1] Mouffe, Chantal. On The Political. Abington & New York: Routledge, 2005, p. 130.

Visit the exhibition and watch the film at Pushkin House until January 27, 2024, and follow the announcements about the discursive events on the website.

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Play and Vernacular Reversals of the Heroic in Maria Ruzaikina’s Interdisciplinary Artistic Practice

For the Heroic Works International Bookbinding Competition in 2017, she created a spectacular hand-tanned leather binding Epics with gold and silver incisions for the book “Bylini” (1918) by Boris Sokolov. The complexity of the technical execution of the work matches the conceptual framing of the project. “Bylini” delves into the rich culture of Slavic oral storytelling and presents the collection of the most prominent narratives from the vernacular culture. Assembled and published in the aftermath of the revolution, which toppled the imperial regime and opened a space for the possibility of radically democratic culture, the work focuses on the vernacular tellings of the stories and the meaning that it conveyed for the generations of inhabitants of the villages. Ruzaikina“s spectacular leather-incised work is playful and emotional. It depicts the wondrous monsters of the Slavic folklore — Firebird and Zmei. The lustrous gold details make them into heavenly creatures, twisting the perception of fearsome into subjects of desire. Ruzaikina estranges these monsters, in Sara Ahmed”s sense of the verb, defamiliarises them and creates a distance that opens new possibilities for interpretation. The artist masterfully places this agency in dialogue with Sokolov’s book attempt to explore the vernacular roots of wondering about the narrative, not othering or controlling someone through it. The radiant sun disc-eye pupil, as if in the restitution of the pluralistic polytheist naturalism, unites the creatures with its rays while the serpent tale, as if a tree trunk, grows from the foundation of the work, indicating regeneration and cyclical origins of storytelling.

Full text.

Image: “Epics,” leather, onlays, 23k gold, acrylic painting, 2016. Courtesy of the private collection.

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Precarious Elements Terraforming: Hollow Earth, Stifled Fire, Thin Air, Thick Water

🔮 Fortune Teller is proud to present a solo exhibition of Liva Dudareva hosted by P.E.T. Projects (Kerkyras 87, Kypseli, Athens).

opening – July 15, 18.30-21.30, lecture performance – 20.00

exhibition view – July 16-22 by appointment

Extractive processes broadly define our current relationship with the material world following the domination of the capitalist accumulative mentality. What will become the basis of material reality in the future? Different entanglements of non-humans and their environment after the Anthropocene are inevitable in the presence of manufactured minerals.

We have never been modern, as Latour observed. The philosophy of the human condition tends to go in circles. What if our futures have happened, were predicted and waned in the distant past? 

Liva Dudareva questions the relationship between humanity and the environment in the context of the long-standing dichotomy of natural and artificial. Her practice and works imagine the materials that could be commonplace in ‘nature’ centuries from now, when plastic, radioactive waste, liquid crystals and sequestrated carbon of contemporary anthropocentric existence will eventually merge with the landscape in unison. What is the cultural and social significance of imagining this inevitable mutation of techno-wastes and beyond-human ecologies? Is there a place for sublime or “beauty” as a category? 

Inspired by arguably less anthropocentric archaic philosophies of searching for the fundamental element of being, which defines the essence of life, the exhibition consists of four chapters: Plastic, Plutonium, Liquid Crystals and Carbon. The different exhibition chapters are a unique survey of Liva’s various ongoing artistic research projects. The selection of works – sculptures, installations, ceramics and prints – form a dialogical space where the possible futures of planetary ecology is envisioned without ideological filtering of desire, which is in itself distorting the picture of plausible reality. 

The artist suggests we all think about the material basis of our existence: what comes after realistically unattainable purity of “ecology”, and how can we conceptually process the apparent hybridity of human terraformed nature and the philosophical search for the fundamental basis of the planet? 

The opening of the exhibition on July 15 will feature a collaborative lecture performance, A Convention, a Ritual, an Invocation, by Liva Dudareva and Denis Maksimov-Gupta, starting at 20.00, which will activate the exhibition space and the discourse of the exhibition in a tradition of the Fortune Teller openings.

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Hydropolitical: Water Sovereignty, the Imaginary and Gaiapolitics

It’s a wrap! 🧑‍🏫 four days of intersectional speculative workshops and discussions about the political agency of water in the context of the geopolitical occupation of the imaginary around the militarised and polluted waters of the ancient Elefsina — thinking towards the fluid, open-ended and complex gaiapolitics 🌊🌍💦

Organised in the framework of #FuturingWaters conceived by @jmarketou and commissioned by @2023eleusis

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“The past is more critical than dreams about better futures.” ✨

My “(Counter-)Speculation as a Queering Agency” in “Speculation” volume (2023, available now) of #DocumentsofContemporaryArt ed. by #MarinaVishmidt and published by @whitechapelgallery & @mitpress — in the collective reflections on faking alternatives in an all-encompassing discourse of objectifying/‘servicifying’ everything that ‘is’ and especially (!) what ‘is not’ by #PiRaMMMida composed of @goldzamt (M), @mariamileeva (M), #DavidRoberts (R) et moi (M) 🔺💥🔻

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“Recycling Beauty” was a treat for an eye and a brain, but ‘we need to talk about Kevin(s)’ @fondazioneprada — (1) re/up-cycling of aesthetics is an omnipresent and transcultural phenomenon - why the overwhelmingly repetitive majority of cases are Western European? (2) this phenomenon is also transmedial; the explicit focus on sculpture and absence of painting, manuscripts, etc., appears slightly reductive (3) it seems more and more apparent that the division of art and fashion, «котлеты и мухи», is way more complicated than it appeared at the programme’s inauguration - the epidermic depth of some inquiries and prevalence of flashiness of content over the complexity of context leads to the impression of ‘brain salad with strong visual dressing.’ (4) finally, on a pedantic note, the misspelling is forgivable for those who lack budgets and are short on attention to detail and should be fixed asap as it is noticed — but ‘Instanbul’ is there on the last day of the exhibition. With all that said, thank you again for another luxurious meal of aesthetics and noetics, but I wish you to think profoundly and self-reflectively about ‘instanbulisation’ (pardon for neologising) and ways of preventing it by widening the curatorial and research pool (at Fondazione Prada) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpPexkroW1z/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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“Buy with your heart, not with your ears: this is very important advice,” @pedrinhobarbosa says when I ask him what he’d like to say to young collectors. If you ask a philosopher who they’d like to meet, the most common answer is Plato. But what if genuine pearls of wisdom are right under our noses?“ 🧠👁️ Read our conversation on grey matter in art collecting via @conceptual_fine_arts 📰 (at Conceptual Fine Arts) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnfGeNJoicj/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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A great example of artist-curatorial practice in working with visibilisation of the complex archival material: the aesthetics and politics of the history of Tibetian struggle for retaining independence amongst the jaws of competing imperialisms; the conundrum of hopelessness in repeating circles of subjugation, which evokes everpresent question — what is (and can be) done? 🏴🌐🏳️ 👏🏻 #RituSarin, #TenzingSonam & #NatashaGinwala (at Kochi, India) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmYscySp20Q/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Istanbul Biennial as neither-political-activism-nor-really-art limboism and crisis of visuality (or confusion): addressing regional and global ecological, social and political catastrophes in archival aesthetics and activist noetics — but seems to me apparent that visibility in a niche echo chamber (despite, presumably, providing psychological relief) has little to do with political potentiality of action. Beyond that, by posing as something that can (should) impact politics, might it (as rather a hindrance) fill the space of political struggle as a simulacrum of action? 📸 “Disappearing Roots,” #SamsulAlamHelal (at Barın Han) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckyj_QIIqLa/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts after 10 years: surreally questionable Guillermo-del-Torisation of museum space (author-less seemingly decorative blobbing camels from couch, ass in the floor, random leg coming from the wall, nose with the snot in the ceiling, giant animal skull and rock as hiding caves for children (?), etc.) of multicultural city with a disappointingly monocultural presentation (#JeanMichelBasquiat is the only noticed artist of colour & no Jewish or Islamic art registered, despite the sizes of the respective communities in the city) of the rich collection with Christian aesthetics & upper middle class conservative white people pains in focus 🛋️👁️🖼️ (at Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjSxQ7sD7KX/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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📣 New programme with @curiousmuse_org 🤳🏻 In the simple and laconic audio lecture course “10 ideas that broke the world,” I will outline a thought-provoking take on the impact on our lives and the history of the genesis of the concepts, which society often perceives as “natural” — from patriarchy and dogma to capitalism and bureaucracy👂🏻🧑🏽‍💻🎓 Sign up on the #CuriousMuse website - https://courses.curiousmuse.org/10-ideas-that-broke-the-world - to be the first to hear about its launch 🚀 (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjNt1LCDJ05/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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🔮 Tomorrow, October 1, Saturday - in Athens! ❤️‍🔥 Finissage and the last performances, “To Half Sell a Duck” by #DavidBernstein at @keiv.athens presented by @hellofortuneteller. Don’t miss the contemporary ἀοιδός in humorous, profoundly deep and truly inspiring action! 🗣️✨🗯️🎶 (at KEIV) Book your timed slot to attend by filling this form - https://forms.gle/jkM3Lfs5TkRa13paA

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Painting the City: Aesthetics and Politics of a Public Wall

with Olga Migliaressi-Phoca and Inga Meldere, moderated by Denis Maksimov-Gupta date: September 27, Tuesday, 19.00 - 21.30, followed by a reception 

venue: Finnish Institute in Athens, Zítrou 16, Athens, Greece

The event will also be available through Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85409780491?pwd=dFRHaXlIRldrT3N2MDZYbk92Ymw0UT09 

From ancient Mycenaeans to contemporary Athenians, decoration and writing on the walls have been ubiquitous. Murals, inscriptions, paintings, mosaics, graffiti - as well as interpersonal messaging - the medium of inscribing in the public space is vast. By exploring the practices of two visual artists from distant geographies, we will look into engagement with the city's public space in contemporaneity. In the conversation, we will focus on artists' engagement with historical and cultural values through ideographs, symbols and signs. The projects from Olga's and Inga's respective artistic practices are the foundation for the conversation about the relevance of contemporary art for understanding the public wall's politics and aesthetics as it is being transformed into a canvas. 

Bios

Inga Meldere is a Helsinki-based visual artist. She studied at the University of Latvia and the Art Academy of Latvia. Between 2013 and 2014, Meldere was a researcher at Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. She graduated from the Painting MA programme at the University of the Arts in Helsinki in 2021. Trained as a restorer, she is particularly interested in colour and pigment. Her work is often inspired by the motives from mural painting originating in the ancient Mediterranean. She describes her work as being about art practices and painting methods. Interested in what she calls "the mood of a painting", Meldere narrates these fragments into her works with care and precision, following their lead until they reach a focus. Inga spent a week at the Finnish Institute in Athens researching murals and pigments from the ancient Greek world in the city's archaeological museums.

Athens-based visual artist Olga Migliaressi-Phoca was awarded her MFA in Photography & Related Media at Parsons, The New School for Design in New York, in 2009. Before that, she completed her Foundation Studies in Art & Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and obtained her BFA in Fashion Photography at the London College of Fashion. Her multimedia work actively engages with the public space. As a part of her practice, she collects inscriptions on the walls of buildings for collages and other multimedia work. She also employs irony in addressing the omnipresence of neon signs, advertisements and another branding. She has exhibited her work in solo and group shows in art spaces and museums in Greece and abroad. 

Finnish Institute

The Finnish Institute at Athens conducts and promotes the study of Greek archaeology, history, language and culture from Classical to modern times. The second-oldest Finnish institute abroad, it conducts its own research and archaeological fieldwork projects in various parts of Greece.