Talk by the artist Anton Vidokle - Immortality for All

On 5 March at 6pm, as part of its non-formal education programme, the LCCA Evening School, the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art invites audiences to a talk by the artist Anton Vidokle Immortality for All. The talk will take place at the Art Academy of Latvia (New Building).

In his talk Anton Vidokle will present his film trilogy (2014–2017) about the Russian philosophy known as Cosmism that has been largely forgotten. Its utopian tenets – combining Western Enlightenment with Eastern philosophy, Russian Orthodox traditions with Marxism – inspired many key Soviet thinkers until they fell victim to Stalinist repression.

During his lifetime, Cosmism’s founder Nikolai Fedorov almost didn’t publish any of his own writings, although his legacy lives on in the writings of Dostoevsky, the paintings of Malevich, the films of Tarkovsky, the pioneering rocket science of Tsiolkovsky, maybe even in the construction of Lenin’s Mausoleum, to name just a few examples.

In this three-part film project, Anton Vidokle probes Cosmism’s influence on the twentieth century and suggests its relevance to the present day. Combining essay, documentary and performance, Vidokle quotes from Fedorov and other philosophers and poets. His wandering camera searches for traces of Cosmist influence in the remains of Soviet-era art, architecture and engineering, moving from the steppes of Kazakhstan to the museums of Moscow. In Part One he returns to the foundations of Cosmist thought (This Is Cosmos, 2014). Part Two explores the links between cosmology and politics (The Communist Revolution Was Caused By The Sun, 2015) and Part Three restages the museum as a site of resurrection, a central Cosmist idea (Immortality and Resurrection for All!, 2017). Music by John Cale and Éliane Radigue accompanies these haunting images, conjuring up the yearning for connectedness, social equality, material transformation and immortality at the heart of Cosmist thought.

Anton Vidokle is an artist and editor of e-flux journal. He was born in Moscow and lives in New York and Berlin. Vidokle’s work has been exhibited internationally at Documenta 13 and the 56th Venice Biennale. Vidokle’s films have been presented at Bergen Assembly, Shanghai Biennale, the 65th and 66th Berlinale International Film Festival, Forum Expanded, Gwangju Biennale, Center Pompidou, Tate Modern, Garage Museum, Istanbul Biennial, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Tensta Konsthall, Blaffer Art Museum, Stedelijk Museum, and others.

The LCCA Evening School is a series of conversations, talks, discussions and reading workshops devoted to current issues of contemporary art as well as exploration of the recent past, including the role of social, political and ideological contexts in culture. This season will highlight themes, related to the LCCA general event programme in 2019 – social utopias, geopolitical and cultural divisions, migration and politics of memory. Its events are free of charge.