1. Documents, Constellations, Prospects
        2. Contributions
        Dissident Knowledges, Learning Play, Performance, Discussion

        Where Has Communism Gone?, 2013

        Chto Delat?/What is to be done?

        21 March 2013

      1. The hero of the novel Chevengur, written by Russian revolutionary writer Andrei Platonov (1899–1951), wakes up in the middle of the night with the question: “Where is socialism?” He then begins to search for it as if it were an object that once belonged to him. It might be that we are now awakening from a (neoliberal) “dream” in a similar manner. Not that the discussions about communism have been absent from the art world; yet what we have witnessed since the fall of “real socialism” or “communist regimes” is rather what Chto Delat? cites as “an exhausting machinery of actualization and commodification of the idea of communism.” We need to move beyond it, Chto Delat? suggests, to address the desire of communism which “cannot but be shared, since it keeps in itself a ‘common’ of communism, a claim for togetherness … which cannot be privatized, calculated and capitalized, since it exists not inside individuals but between them.” In order to attempt to construct this space among individuals and to search for communism differently, Chto Delat? convenes a group of volunteers with whom they can debate or leave be to engage with one another, all the while rehearsing a learning play for the duration of a week. Where Has Communism Gone? is then staged for, and further debated with, the public.