Art Without Death: Conversations on Russian Cosmism

According to the teachings of Nikolai Fedorov, a nineteenth century religious philosopher and progenitor of Russian cosmism, our ethical obligation to use reason and knowledge to care for the sick extends to curing the dead of their terminal status. The dead must be brought back to life using advanced technologyresurrected not as souls, but in material form. This book of interviews and conversations with artists and thinkers seeks to address the relevance of Russian cosmism and bio‑cosmism in light of its influence on the Russian artistic and political vanguard as well as on todays art‑historical apparatuses, weird materialisms, extinction narratives, and historical and temporal politics. This collection of untraditional exchanges asks how such an encompassing and unapologetically humanist strain of thinking could have been so historically and politically influential, especially when placed alongside the politically inconsequential apocalypticism of contemporary realist imaginaries. Contributions by Bart De Baere, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Boris Groys, Elena Shaposhnikova, Marina Simakova, Hito Steyerl, Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Esther Zonsheim.