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In What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet? Madina Tlostanova traces how contemporary post-Soviet art mediates this human condition. Observing how the concept of the happy future-which was at the core of the project of Soviet modernity-has lapsed from the post-Soviet imagination, Tlostanova shows how the possible way out of such a sense of futurelessness lies in the engagement with activist art. She interviews artists, art collectives, and writers such as Estonian artist Liina Siib, Uzbek artist Vyacheslav Akhunov, and Azerbaijani writer Afanassy Mamedov who frame the post-Soviet condition through the experience and expression of community, space, temporality, gender, and negotiating the demands of the state and the market. In foregrounding the unfolding aesthesis and activism in the post-Soviet space, Tlostanova emphasizes the important role that decolonial art plays in providing the foundation upon which to build new modes of thought and a decolonial future.
List of contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction. A Futureless Ontology? 1
1. The Decolonial Sublime 25
2. Decolonial Aesthesis and Post-Soviet Art 33
3. A Woman Who Has Many Selves and Takes Over Many Spaces: A Conversation with Liina Siib 65
4. Beyond Dependencies: A Talk with Vyacheslav Akhunov, the Lonely Ranger of Uzbeck Contemporary Art 84
5. Reflecting on Time, Space, and Memory with Afanassy Mamedov 106
Conclusion. People Are Silent . . . 119
Notes 129
References 135
Index 141
About the author
Madina Tlostanova
Summary
Madina Tlostanova traces how contemporary post-Soviet art mediates the post-Soviet human condition through analyses of art and through interviews with artists and writers, showing the important role that radical art plays in building new modes of thought and a decolonial future.
