Keti Chukhrov at Summer School as School 2019
20 August, 2019, 20:00
Venue: Boxing Club
Summer School as School
5 - 21 August, 2019
Stacion - Center Contemporary Art Prishtina has the pleasure to announce Film School Program: Screening and discussion of “Communion” by Keti Chukhrov, part of the Public Program of Summer School as School 2019.
Communion (2016, 23.58’, English subtitled HD video). Based on the original play by Keti Chukhrov, 2009. Translation: Stephany Sandler, Marijeta Bojovich, Kevin Platt, Bela Shayevich, Ainsley Morse. Producer: Olga Shirokostup. Video editing: Victor Alimpiev.
Performers: Vera Kuznetsova, Keti Chukhrov, Anastasia Ivanova. Camera: Sergey Shilovs. Choreography: Natalia Obelchak. Sound: Victor Timshin and TEAMSOUND STUDIO. Music: Nikolay Krasotkin. Supported by Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Moscow).
The video-play “Communion” unfolds as the clash between 3 female characters: the subaltern, unenlightened hired worker and the representatives of the cultural elite, who happen to convey the values of religion and spiritual growth, thus speaking on behalf of social authority and ethical power. The play is an attempt to reveal the hypocrisy in the institute of faith, which pretends to appropriate the rhetoric of virtue, but stems from oppression.
It questions the issue of commons in the conditions of extreme inequality paired by the social hegemony of the elites, manifested as well as an intellectual and cultural domination. Exploring the possibility of solidarity and understanding between people of different social and cultural backgrounds, the work combines elements of film, theatre, poetry, and music. Communion offers little hope, showing that cultural and religious spirituality does not help against contempt to the socially inferiors, nor solve the economic, or ideological problems we are facing.
It questions which social class today is viciously hegemonic: a populist spiritual master, or an enlightened secular leftist technocrat.
Keti Chukhrov is ScD in philosophy, an associate professor at the Department of Сultural Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. Currently she is a Marie Sklodowska Curie fellow in UK, Wolverhampton Un-ty. She has authored numerous texts on art theory, culture, politics and philosophy. Her full-length books include: To Be—To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophic Critique of Art (Spb: European Un-ty, 2011), and Pound &£ (Logos, 1999) and a volume of dramatic writing: Merely Humans (2010) and War of Quantities (2003). Her research interests and publications deal with: 1. The impact of socialist political economy on the epistemes of historical socialism, 2. Philosophy of performativity, 3. Art-systems and 4. Neo-humanism in the conditions of post-human theories. Her forthcoming book deals with the communist epistemologies in the Soviet Marxist philosophy and culture of 1960s and 1970s. With her video-play “Love-machines” she participated at the Bergen Assembly (2013)
and “Specters of Communism” (James Gallery, CUNY, NY, 2015). Her Latest video-play “Communion” was at the Ljubljana Triennial U-3 “Beyond the Globe (2016, cur. B. Groys).
Performers: Vera Kuznetsova, Keti Chukhrov, Anastasia Ivanova. Camera: Sergey Shilovs. Choreography: Natalia Obelchak. Sound: Victor Timshin and TEAMSOUND STUDIO. Music: Nikolay Krasotkin. Supported by Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Moscow).
The video-play “Communion” unfolds as the clash between 3 female characters: the subaltern, unenlightened hired worker and the representatives of the cultural elite, who happen to convey the values of religion and spiritual growth, thus speaking on behalf of social authority and ethical power. The play is an attempt to reveal the hypocrisy in the institute of faith, which pretends to appropriate the rhetoric of virtue, but stems from oppression.
It questions the issue of commons in the conditions of extreme inequality paired by the social hegemony of the elites, manifested as well as an intellectual and cultural domination. Exploring the possibility of solidarity and understanding between people of different social and cultural backgrounds, the work combines elements of film, theatre, poetry, and music. Communion offers little hope, showing that cultural and religious spirituality does not help against contempt to the socially inferiors, nor solve the economic, or ideological problems we are facing.
It questions which social class today is viciously hegemonic: a populist spiritual master, or an enlightened secular leftist technocrat.
Keti Chukhrov is ScD in philosophy, an associate professor at the Department of Сultural Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. Currently she is a Marie Sklodowska Curie fellow in UK, Wolverhampton Un-ty. She has authored numerous texts on art theory, culture, politics and philosophy. Her full-length books include: To Be—To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophic Critique of Art (Spb: European Un-ty, 2011), and Pound &£ (Logos, 1999) and a volume of dramatic writing: Merely Humans (2010) and War of Quantities (2003). Her research interests and publications deal with: 1. The impact of socialist political economy on the epistemes of historical socialism, 2. Philosophy of performativity, 3. Art-systems and 4. Neo-humanism in the conditions of post-human theories. Her forthcoming book deals with the communist epistemologies in the Soviet Marxist philosophy and culture of 1960s and 1970s. With her video-play “Love-machines” she participated at the Bergen Assembly (2013)
and “Specters of Communism” (James Gallery, CUNY, NY, 2015). Her Latest video-play “Communion” was at the Ljubljana Triennial U-3 “Beyond the Globe (2016, cur. B. Groys).