February 21, 2022
Join us on e-flux Video & Film on Monday, February 21 for the repeat screenings and wrap of From the East: Some Strange, Scary, and Funny Messages, a six-part program of films and texts put together by artist Dmitry Vilensky (Chto Delat) as the ninth edition of the online series Artist Cinemas.
From the East has featured films by Keti Chukrov, Techno-Poetry Cooperative, Tsaplya Olga Egorova, Roee Rosen, Yuri Leiderman and Andrej Silvestrov, and Želimir Žilnik; in conversation with texts by Corina L. Apostol, Jodi Dean, Uri Gershowitz, Amir Husak, Kevin Platt, Joshua Simon, and Zairong Xiang.
The films will stream through Tuesday, February 22, noon EST, available here.
Thank you for watching, and reading!
Artist Cinemas presents From the East: Some Strange, Scary, and Funny Messages
Convened by Dmitry Vilensky (Chto Delat)
Epsiode 1
Tsaplya Olga Egorova, Several Ways to Please Valya: The Room of Vickie and Zhenya
2001, 12 minutes
With a text respnonse by Corina L. Apostol
Epsiode 2
Roee Rosen, The Buried Alive Videos
2013, 36 minutes
With a text respnonse by Joshua Simon
Epsiode 3
Yuri Leiderman and Andrej Silvestrov, Birmingham Ornament
2011, 67 minutes
With a text respnonse by Uri Gershowitz
Epsiode 4
Želimir Žilnik, The Old School of Capitalism
2009, 122 minutes
With a text respnonse by Amir Husak
Epsiode 5
Keti Chukhrov, Communion
2016, 23 minutes
With an introduction by Jodi Dean and an essay excerpt by Kevin Platt
Epsiode 6
Techno-Poetry Cooperative, No Avoiding the Apocalypse!
2021, 74 minutes
With a text respnonse by Zairong Xiang
About the program
“The post-socialist space remains for the international art scene—and for the world—a largely mysterious and uninteresting place, with an absence of any legible or recognized form of “normal” histories and public politics. It is not even that Orient—invented by Europeans in the nineteenth-century and then described by Edward Said—that became a fashionable part of intellectual and academic debate. It stays outside the zone of the postcolonial interests of the West, which is accustomed to discussing situations and contexts that are historically familiar to it—whose histories have been developing with its direct participation.
Russia is certainly the most vivid example of this mysterious and opaque zone, where little is happening beyond Putin’s geopolitical game. The politics of perception and reaction brought about by the pandemic have sharpened this sense of isolation even more (the world is separated into “clean” bodies vaccinated by proper vaccines and “dirty” bodies vaccinated by the wrong vaccine—Sputnik). Out of Russia, we hear only media noise consisting of information about gas prices and pipelines; medieval stories of poisoning, torture, and disappearances; news of tank column maneuvers, strange activist deeds, and troll factories; records of excess and excessive mortality toll; etc.
Any artist trying to deal with this situation becomes a kind of hostage to it: Living in a situation of high irrationality and violence, it is quite difficult to produce and share meaning. I increasingly think that, despite its superficiality, the ubiquitous, banal, and old metaphor of Russia as a cold emptiness most accurately describes the state of our life at the moment, when everything elsewhere around the world seems to be blazing, growing, heated, worried, caring. Whereas here there is silence, recession, nonchalance, depopulation, degrowth, and the freezing and withering away of all social and political forms of life. Albeit many hot parties without masks.” (Read the full text here.)
From the East: Some Strange, Scary, and Funny Messages is a program convened by Dmitry Vilensky (Chto Delat) as the ninth cycle of the series Artist Cinemas. It ran for six weeks from January 10–February 20, 2022, 2022, streaming a new film each week accompanied by a commissioned response published in text form.
From the East wraps on Monday, February 21 with a one-day repeat streaming of all six films featured in the program, streaming thorugh Tuesday, February 22 noon EST. Watch the films here.
About Artist Cinemas
Artist Cinemas is a new e-flux platform focusing on exploring the moving image as understood by people who make film. It is informed by the vulnerability and enchantment of the artistic process—producing non-linear forms of knowledge and expertise that exist outside of academic or institutional frameworks. It will also acknowledge the circles of friendship and mutual inspiration that bind the artistic community. Over time this platform will trace new contours and produce different understandings of the moving image.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.
