Arseny Zhilyaev Read Bio Collapse
Arseny Zhilyaev is an artist based in Moscow and Venice. His projects examine the legacy of Soviet museology and the museum within the philosophy of Russian cosmism.
Cosmists regard progress not as a goal or an end in itself, but rather as a necessary sacrifice that is an integral part of humanity’s struggle to survive and evolve. Real development, they believe, can only begin after humanity triumphs over death and learns how to resurrect the dead. This vision suggests that the future becomes the reconstruction or restoration of the past, and the arrow of time bites its own tail.
Challenging our understanding of “design” by engaging with and departing from the concept of the “self.”
In more than 60 texts, first published on-site at 56th Venice Biennale, artists and writers trace the negative collective that is the subject of contemporary life.
Cosmism, a Superhumanity symposium at Princeton University School of Architecture
“Russian Cosmism: A Work of Art in the Age of Technological Immortality” at the Museum of Modern Art
Conversations with today’s most compelling living and resurrected artists and thinkers address the contemporary relevance of Russian cosmism and biocosmism.
Almost a decade before the revolution, Bogdanov depicted a postrevolutionary Marxist museum in his science-fiction novel Red Star from 1908. “I imagined there would be no museums in a developed communist society,” exclaims Bogdanov’s astonished protagonist upon his arrival on Mars, home to a highly advanced Communist civilization. The museum has indeed survived, but its function has been modified. The museum is no longer a bourgeois ghetto, a repository for all the delusional hopes for the resolution of social contradictions. The liberating force of proletarian revolution has dissolved class divisions as such, and art, once an autonomous professional sphere, has been integrated into the everyday life and work of humanity.
Avant Museology symposium at Brooklyn Museum and Walker Art Center