• Nikolay Smirnov / Pernod Ricard Fellowship 2018
  • Nikolay Smirnov - Universalism stolen, hidden and retur­ned:Left-wing Eurasianism and Postcolonial Theory
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    Nikolay Smirnov / Pernod Ricard Fellowship 2018

    In residency from April to May 2018 and in February 2019

    Nikolay Smirnov (born in 1982) works as an artist, a geog­ra­pher, a curator and a researcher regarding spa­tial prac­tices and rep­re­sen­ta­tions of space and place in art, science, museum prac­tices and everyday life. He recently devel­oped the con­cept of spec­u­la­tive geog­raphy as a tool for local studies.
    He grad­u­ated from the Rodchenko Art School, Geography Department of Moscow State University, and The School of Contemporary Art Free Workshops MMOMA. Co-curator of the pro­jects Metageography and Permafrost (Arctic Biennale, Yakutsk, 2016), Nikolay Smirnov has been nom­i­nated for the Innovation Award for a Curatorial Project.

    Nikolay Smirnov, Left-wing Eurasianism, 2017

    UPCOMING EVENTS

    SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 3 P.M. - 7 P.M.

    Open studio of Nikolay Smirnov (Pernod Ricard Fellow) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Noémie Bablet, Clémence Estève, Violaine Lochu, Paola Quilici, Ana Vega
    Statement

    STATEMENT

    “In 1926-1929, Paris and Clamart became the base of the left-wing Eurasianism, the center of activ­i­ties in printing and dis­tri­bu­tion of left-wing eurasianist books, leaflets, jour­nals etc. Left-wing Eurasianism sup­ported the rev­o­lu­tion of 1917 and the Soviet Union and con­sid­ered their doc­trine the ‘second soviet ide­ology’. Their leaders (Petr P. Suvchinsky, Lev P. Karsavin, Dmitry P. Sviatopolk-Mirsky) devel­oped ‘Marxist Eurasianism’ as com­mu­nism plus mesto-razvitie (lit­er­ally ‘place-devel­op­ment’, an Eurasianist con­cept asserting a close con­nec­tion between place, land­scape and society). Left-wing Eurasianists pub­lished 35 issues of Eurasia in Paris, where they devel­oped orig­inal views on rev­o­lu­tion, socialism, Marxism, reli­gion, the young Soviet state, its cul­ture and phi­los­ophy in dialog with other émigré polit­ical forces.
    I want to inves­ti­gate the French and Parisian con­text to create a spec­u­la­tive museum of left-wing Eurasianism, to rep­re­sent its con­tra­dic­tory ideas; knotty activ­i­ties, up to the con­nec­tion with the Soviet secret ser­vices; meta-geo­graph­ical con­nec­tions between the land­scapes of Paris and Clamart and left-wing Eurasianism, from both his­tor­ical and con­tem­po­rary per­spec­tives.
    Also, I sup­pose that it can be pro­duc­tive to look at left-wing Eurasianism as on rad­ical artistic activity.

    Indeed, Eurasianists’ ideas res­onate with con­tem­po­rary issues. They ini­ti­ated a dis­course on post­colo­nialism, con­demned Eurocentrism and ini­ti­ated the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of non-European cul­tures in a non-aggres­sive, anti-western and anti-global way, standing for a dia­logue of civ­i­liza­tions. And of course it is a ‘pro­duct of Russian exile’, a thought born in remote meta-geo­graph­ical con­nec­tion between Russia and Paris, Clamart.”