Essays
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Essays
WHY I PAINT AMERICAN COMMUNISTS?
Recently, I've been asked on several occasions why I paint portraits of American Communists now, in 2006. Those who questioned me, including members of the art community (most of whom were politically on the Left as a matter of fact) pointed out that there is still hidden discursive dangers in addressing Communism today and that the New Left must continue to divorce themselves from the past of Communism, let alone the present-day Communist Party USA -- a discursive living dead.
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RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE POST-SOVIET ARTIST
The programmatic and conscientious rejection of responsibility as instrumental in the process of cultural production constitutes perhaps the most characteristic feature of post-Soviet art. In the countries of the former Eastern bloc, a tendency of the 1990s and 2000s has been to deny responsibility operational legitimacy in artistic practice and violently push it out as incompatible with and foreign to the post-Soviet context, eagerly privileging its diametrical opposition – irresponsibility – as the only appropriate and fitting for the contemporary moment.
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POST DIASPORA: STATEMENT AND PREMONITION
Over the last six months, the term "post-diaspora" has often been applied to the generation of post-Soviet artists and intellectuals who had moved to the West in the 1990s after the collapse of the Berlin wall in the age of discussions on globalization and the general demoralization of the local. The post-diasporic generation is highly inhomogeneous: the representatives of post-diaspora include both subjects that have "settled-for-good" in the West (the post-Soviet version of the local Western Other) and "temporarily-displaced" nomadic individuals, who are at times virtually undistinguishable from traditional colonial travelers.
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POST-DIASPORA: NOTES ON THE SECOND WORLD'S EXILE, POSTMODERNISM, AND DIASPORA NATIONALISM
A question of paramount importance must be raised once again before one can open a discussion on the subject of the post-Soviet diasporic condition and the cultural production of the post-Soviet diaspora. This question is of a rather geographical nature, namely, Where is the Second World to be found now in 2003? Has it dissolved and disappeared into oblivion now that its political and social structures have been discredited and disintegrated and its cultural production proclaimed nonparadigmatic? I would like to argue that perhaps it's not in the vast lands of Eastern and Central Europe that one should be looking for the ghostly remnants of the Second World. For it has moved . . .
more>>
Essays
WHY I PAINT AMERICAN COMMUNISTS?
Recently, I've been asked on several occasions why I paint portraits of American Communists now, in 2006. Those who questioned me, including members of the art community (most of whom were politically on the Left as a matter of fact) pointed out that there is still hidden discursive dangers in addressing Communism today and that the New Left must continue to divorce themselves from the past of Communism, let alone the present-day Communist Party USA -- a discursive living dead.
more>>
RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE POST-SOVIET ARTIST
The programmatic and conscientious rejection of responsibility as instrumental in the process of cultural production constitutes perhaps the most characteristic feature of post-Soviet art. In the countries of the former Eastern bloc, a tendency of the 1990s and 2000s has been to deny responsibility operational legitimacy in artistic practice and violently push it out as incompatible with and foreign to the post-Soviet context, eagerly privileging its diametrical opposition – irresponsibility – as the only appropriate and fitting for the contemporary moment.
more>>
POST DIASPORA: STATEMENT AND PREMONITION
Over the last six months, the term "post-diaspora" has often been applied to the generation of post-Soviet artists and intellectuals who had moved to the West in the 1990s after the collapse of the Berlin wall in the age of discussions on globalization and the general demoralization of the local. The post-diasporic generation is highly inhomogeneous: the representatives of post-diaspora include both subjects that have "settled-for-good" in the West (the post-Soviet version of the local Western Other) and "temporarily-displaced" nomadic individuals, who are at times virtually undistinguishable from traditional colonial travelers.
more>>
POST-DIASPORA: NOTES ON THE SECOND WORLD'S EXILE, POSTMODERNISM, AND DIASPORA NATIONALISM
A question of paramount importance must be raised once again before one can open a discussion on the subject of the post-Soviet diasporic condition and the cultural production of the post-Soviet diaspora. This question is of a rather geographical nature, namely, Where is the Second World to be found now in 2003? Has it dissolved and disappeared into oblivion now that its political and social structures have been discredited and disintegrated and its cultural production proclaimed nonparadigmatic? I would like to argue that perhaps it's not in the vast lands of Eastern and Central Europe that one should be looking for the ghostly remnants of the Second World. For it has moved . . .
more>>
