Crit Cross #18

Art and the hidden desire for Capitalism in Anticapitalism: A Conversation with Keti Chukhrov

This Crit Cross looks at art writing and the question of engagement with Keti Chukhrov, an art theorist, academic and play-wright based in Berlin and Moscow. Her latest book Practicing the Good. Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism published with University of Minnesota Press/e-flux in 2020 deals with the impact of socialist political economy on the epistemes of historical socialism. It attempts to reveal the hidden desire for capitalism in contemporaneous anticapitalist discourse and theory. The conversation, facilitated by Klaus Speidel, will focus on the expiration of the contemporary art’s institutional power - based on Chukhrov’s text “Evil, Surplus, Power: the three Media of Art”, published in E-Flux Journal - and the expansion of the performance practices into wider social and critical context as featured in another paper “Institutes of Performativity. Towards an Institutional Ethics” and the wider context of art theory, critique and art writing.

Crit Cross #18 is organised by Verein K and in partnership with Depot – Kunst und Kommunikation and it will take place in English at Depot - Kunst und Diskussion.

Keti Chukhrov holds a ScD in philosophy. She is a visiting professor at Hochschule der Künste in Karlsruhe and a professor at the Department of Сultural Studies at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. From 2017 to 2019, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK. She has authored numerous texts on art theory and philosophy. Her full-length books include: Practicing the Good. Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism (UNMP, 2020), To Be—To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophic Critique of Art (European Un-ty, 2011) and Pound &£ (Logos, 1999), as well as a volume of dramatic writing: Merely Humans (2010). Her dramatic work and video plays were featured at Steirischer Herbst (2019, 2022), Bergen Assembly 2013, Ljubljana Triennial 2016, Kiev Biennial 2012.

Crit Cross. A Forum on Art Criticism is an open discussion group of current critical writing, organized four times per year by Verein K in Vienna with the aim to create a platform for sustainable art- and sociocritical dialogues in Vienna.

For questions and suggestions please get in touch at critcross@verein-k.net