Embrace Your Antithesis
Interview with Slavs and Tatars
Victoria Kravtsova
4th February 2020
Victoria Kravtsova
In a 2013 Colta.ru article, you were attributed “a revolutionary spirit that is then however defeated”, turning you into “idealistic dreamers”. A quote from another article says: “all-pervading pessimism with the irreversibility of changes taking place in society is characteristic of “Slavs and Tatars”. At the same time, another quote from the same text gives you a very aspirational air of “giving voice to the defeated”. Who, would you say, are you – pessimistic dreamers? Those aspiring to breathe hope into the most marginalized?
Slavs&Tatars
We are not pessimistic – that’s certain. The question of defeatism... it is an interesting way to rethink and question the positivism which underlies a positivist Anglo-American order. And this defeatism, it is not an ethnic quality of Slavs, of course, it is a provocation to say this, but it is definitely a cyclical view of time. First, there is no teleology, there is no immediate or necessary march towards progress. And you can see this in anything. Let me give you one example: in the 17th century Poland there were more elected Muslim representatives of the Sejm, of the Parliament, of Duma than there are in any European country today. So, that already deflates an idea that we are now making progress, or we are more emancipated. We don’t believe in this.
Victoria Kravtsova
One of the main feelings that one gets when engaging with your texts and your art is the feeling of ambiguity, as all the narratives and cultural codes are products of hybridization. If we relate your work to my context, the most Russia-related piece of your exhibition Made in Dschermany is the piece called Bicephalic where you combine the Russian schizophrenic geopolitical identity with gender binarism. The question would be – if we would not have to choose between either or - self or the other – what would such reality look like? And is such reality possible - where we do not fall into binary thinking?
Slavs&Tatars
Absolutely. What is so liberating about the discourses of transsexuality or transgender is the idea of, whether it concerns you personally or not, the possibility of blowing up this whole epistemological framework of Enlightenment’ binary thinking – like you said, either or, one or the other. And we believe in this kind of accumulation, cause accumulation is the best way to resist this kind of binary thinking. Even with identity politics, it is about taking on a certain identity – not a certain kind of mask. But really, if you devote yourself to different cultures or to different affinities, they will eventually be in conflict. That’s a fact. For me, it is Iranian, and Russian, and American. And they all are in conflict and you have to resolve those conflicts. You can only do it by imploding the idea of a single identity or a single subjectivity. You have to transcend those sorts of conflicts.
Victoria Kravtsova
Would you say that the main characteristic of the contemporary world you want to confront with is binary thinking?
Slavs&Tatars
That’s one, absolutely. That’s more of a fundamental question, that’s something in art that is not only critical, but also phenomenological. It has a tool that scholarship doesn’t, as scholarship, regardless how you read it, is an analytical process. Art at some point can also be analytical, but it cannot remain analytical. It is really through other practices like spiritual, belief, ritualistic practices, that you can move beyond this binary thinking. And art could be one of them – does not have to, but it is one of many options, in fact.
Victoria Kravtsova
So a way to escape binarisms would be to engage in something ritual or spiritual. Within the framework of decolonial thinking, this escape is found in indigenous spiritual practices. However, fascination with indigeneity is also problematic. How do you find a balance in your practice?
Slavs&Tatars
Other than art there are many affective practices, sensuality is one of them, spirituality is also one way to frame it. The question is: how do we overcome the fetishization of the other?
Victoria Kravtsova
Yes, exoticizing those practices and subjects.
Slavs&Tatars
There are many answers. One, a very basic way is to do multilingual research. As we know, people who read the news in one language are no longer informed by one narrative. It is now no longer enough to read even ten newspapers if they are all in the same language, you are not going to get the all-encompassing information. You also have to do research in more than one language, like any scholar would tell you, ideally, in a primary language, and additionally in the second and the third. Another way is a kind of methodologically doing research, which is the idea of having a very intimate relationship to the material. Intimate in terms of not having a critical distance, but instead establishing a very sweaty, very close relationship to it, almost fucking your material, breaking the material, suffocating the material, but also giving it this swing of respect and disrespect. You have to respect, but to respect is to disrespect, and to disrespect you have to respect – so it is kind of a constant swing between the two, you know?
Victoria Kravtsova
And in this sense, how would you describe your own research? We know that you have cycles when you at first read different academic material and then actually go “into the field”. What do you do there, in the field? How does your stance differ from, for instance, one of an anthropologist?
Slavs&Tatars
We ask stupid questions to the very smart subject matter. Scholarly research is either esoteric or remote. And then we take this “high scholarship” and really bring it to a very pedestrian level and try to examine them. That means speaking to people locally which means a lot of practice – for instance, when we were doing research on syncretism in Central Asia, we visited many of the parallel Muslim shrines with pilgrims and practised at the shrines. So you have to engage with the faith if you are studying the faith, you have to do it… in a very lived experience. I mean, as long as it is possible, for a very defined period of time.
Victoria Kravtsova
The piece “Morgenländer” portrays Germany as an oriental, not necessarily a Western nation. As you said, German Orientalism was different from British or French Orientalism(s), as it had a more academic and esoteric intimate relationship to the Orient. Originating from Russia, I also found it interesting when you said that Russian Orientalism might have been a largely German import. However, for instance, the identity debate has always been more complex and controversial in Russia. How do these Orientalism(s) differ then and what is the connection to the absence of the East/West debate in German society?
Slavs&Tatars
Of course, there was a difference. It is indeed important to note that German Orientalism was more theological and academic because it was not as instrumentalized as French or English because of the political realities of the German nation-state and its late arrival at imperialism.
And what’s for the identity East/West debate, the reason that it is not really taking place in Germany is the fact that that the “Eastern” non-rational side has been tainted by national socialism. So it has been as if they have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Everything which was cursed by national socialism – let’s say philology, Heidegger, non-rationalism in German thought – it was all sort of tainted somehow. We think it’s important to acknowledge the fact that it was instrumentalized, but you can’t say that philology is responsible for national socialism and we can’t discuss it anymore.
Victoria Kravtsova
And how would you compare these history politics? In Russia, it sometimes seems that events from long ago are still with us here and now (like the “Great Patriotic War”). How would you then compare it to, for example, Poland? Or Baltic states? I think they have a more or less similar relationship to history.
Slavs&Tatars
Definitely say that history is being shamelessly instrumentalized for national identity’ building in Baltic states or in the Central Asian states, the states that have not had a long history of a nation-state. Poland is more complex because it has a long history of a nation-state and it also was an empire - what we often forget. So Poland’s lack of reconstruction of its own history seems to me more problematic. It was doing it quite well until about 10 years ago when it was even a bit triumphalist and neoliberal. It was really marketing its Solidarnosz revolutionary spirit to the rest of Eastern Europe like “look, how we can do it, we can transform the civil society – let us teach you”. I think they spoke too soon, of course.
Victoria Kravtsova
Quoting you, “The likes of Virilio and Baudrillard would never acknowledge that there are such things as universal values. We have no qualms in embracing this notion, no matter the difficulty or challenges”. What are these universal values?
Slavs&Tatars
Universal values are values of, for example, comradery and companionship, meaning collective solidarity. Universal values… they are from the larger to the smaller. For example, not splitting the dinner bill in 15 different ways. Universal values are also allowing for questions that are shared amongst different faiths. Questions of hospitality, welcoming the foreigner, both in a literal and in a symbolic way: a foreigner meaning the actual refugee or the migrant, but also allowing the foreigner within oneself – allowing for you to other yourself or for you to be othered. Universal does not mean everyone has to share them. Universal means Cosmic. Whether people share them or not, that’s their loss or gain, but it is not a region-specific, ethnic-specific, faith-specific idea. These are the things you find in Buddhism, in Greek Orthodox Christianity, Islam, or you find them in urbanized people as you find them in rural people. So they transcend these kinds of confines.
Victoria Kravtsova
What is your way of living these values? How to practice engaging with a difference in a productive way on a personal, not on a metaphysical level?
Slavs&Tatars
We believe in “embracing your antithesis” – engaging with the things that are seemingly most opposite from you. This means, whether in your personal or intellectual life really engage with those people that a very different from you. Because the distance you have to travel to find a sense of commonality is where the most rewarding experiences come from. I don’t mean enemies, I mean people who are very different from one’s own way of thinking, one’s own way of being. So, it is about a sort of modelling or fashioning a form of relationship with them, cause that’s where dialogue and true engagement comes from – and not from like-minded people.
Victoria Kravtsova
In your practice, do you by any means try to counter the tendencies of contemporary art towards becoming elitist and detached from the general public?
Slavs&Tatars
When you sharpen your point, the problem is that your audience also becomes narrower and narrower, your public becomes narrower. The sharper the language becomes, the more radical it becomes, the more it alienates people. The question is – how can we sharpen our language, but in a different way – widening its scope, allowing for generosity and access, but still radicalizing our position? We are not interested in speaking only to a narrow audience, but neither we are interested in dumbing down, let’s say, to reach a larger one. But what we do here in our space in Berlin – in this ground-floor, retail, Gewerbe space, where you can just step in from outside… we want to engage more in very small steps with the public. We’re in the midst of institutionalizing, if in a rogue sense. Last year we launched a residency and mentorship program for young arts professionals from our region: the first four were from Belarus, then Armenia, Georgia and soon eastern Russia. And we’re opening the Pickle Bar in the summer with KW. As artists based in Berlin, we don’t want to be using the city as a kind of safe haven going elsewhere to make our living and come back to a sort of hideout. We want to actually expose ourselves, have a relationship with the city. So these are the small, but concrete steps that we are doing to move beyond the institutionalization of art. We will always continue to do exhibitions, and we are very grateful to institutions, but I think we all agree that is not enough.
Victoria Kravtsova has studied International Relations in St. Petersburg and Berlin. In Berlin she is active in NGO projects in Eastern Europe, co-organizing seminars and exchange programs in the fields of environment, human rights, gender equality and civic education. Victoria receives a scholarship from Heinrich Böll Foundation and is engaged in writing her thesis “Between the ‘posts’, out of the void” where she traces the travels of the contemporary feminist discourses to and from Central Asia.
Slavs and Tatars is a faction of polemics and intimacies devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. The collective’s practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, books and lecture-performances.