Panel Statement

Panel: St. Petersburg 3.0

0n a base of any philosophy and any technology (if we see it as a ‘prosthetic appliance’) – from the stone axe to chemical drugs and cloning – lies an ethic (axiom). Russian culture/philosophy, art, science, literature, etc. is more religious and mystical than rational. It propounds the ethical question in a very radical way. To understand what is going on in Russia these last ten years: what can be called a -schizo (contra) revolution’- total non-stop crisis of identity for everybody, the collapse of any subject or narrative etc. – it is necessary to revise the history of Russian culture in the 20th century. Without this we cannot understand the creative “schizo (contra) revolutionary’ strategies in contemporary St. Petersburg (based on economy of holy energy), which are the object of the author’s research. New accents means new names: from animal-trainer and gardener up to scientist-utopianists and holy saints. Two persons will be identified.

First A.A. Bogdanov (1873-1928) – bolshevik leader, medical scientist, economist and science-fiction writer. He created a new science – “Tectology” – some moments of which are ‘proto-cybernetic’. Everything in the world is an energy (“Machism” – from Ernst Mach).

Another figure Vl. Vernadsky (1863 – 1945) – was a geologist and creator of the theory of “Noosphere”. This theory states that culture, our reason, dreams, etc. are a part of nature (the universe) in the same way as the atmosphere, geosphere, biosphere, etc.

These theories are full of Hellenism/God/Eros as world energy – is everywhere and the iconoclastic spirit. This kind of idea we can find in Western anthropology in the study of shaman magic in the 1960s – 70s (‘Castaneda’s’ world as a conscious energy), and science-fiction (Stanislaw Lem’s “Solaris”, filmed by Andrey Tarkovsky in 1972).

• Andrei Khlobystin (Russia), Art Critic, Curator and Art Historian, St. Petersburg.