Dmitry Vilensky / Chto Delat?
Dmitry Vilensky (born in 1964) lives in St. Petersburg. Artist and educator.
In 2003 initiated the platform "Chto Delat/What is to be done?" Editor of the newspaper of the same name (also makes graphic artwork and lay-out for the newspaper - www.chtodelat.org). Works mostly in a frame work of interdisciplinary collective practices in a mediums video, photography, text, installations and social interactions, participant of many international and Russian exhibitions. Published numerous essays in art catalogues, journals and newspapers in Russia and internationally, and has lectured widely.
He is a commissar and chief tutor of a School for Engaged Art in Petersburg and as a guest teacher has taught in several institutions and programs in 2007, such as the Staedel Schuele, Frankfurt am Main, Critical Studies Program, Malmo; Tranzit School, Budapest; Copenhagen Royal Art Academy, Goldsmith, London; Tromsu Art Academy and many others.
He has participated with Chto Delat in their recent exhibitions including: Art turning Left, Tate Liverpool 2013; FORMER WEST: Documents, Constellations, Prospects, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2013; 10th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, 2012; Chto Delat in Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kuntsthalle, Baden-Baden, 2011; Chto Delat Perestroika: Twenty Years After, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, 2011; Ostalgia, New Museum, New York, 2011; Study, Study and Act Again, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, 2011; and The Urgent Need to Struggle, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 2010.
Selected recent publications:
Art, Politics & Society in Russia at the Turn of decade,
Dialogue with Arthur Zmijewski
published by Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw, 2013
Caring Culture: Art, Architecture and the Politics of Public Health;
SKOR, Sternberg Press, 2011
To think (film) politically Art and Activism between Representation and Direct Action
WEITH NOTEBOOK 1/ (Editor Jelena Vesic), Zagreb, 2011
A Cookbook for Political Imagination,
Published by Zachęta National Galery of Art and Sternberg Press, 2011
08 TB, Taipei Biennial Reader, Taipei Fine Art Museum, 2009
Land of Human Rights, Reader,
published by Rotor, Revolver Publishing, 2009
Invisible Borders,
Lille 3000, Stichting Kunstboek, 2009
Maska 121-122, Re-projecting radical futures, Spring 2009, Ljublina
Intersections: At the Crossroads of the Production of Knowledge, Precarity, Subjugation and the Reconstruction of History, Display and De-Linking
(Löcker Verlag), Vienna 2009
Dmitry Vilensky interviewed by Lolita Jablonskiene, Spaces for Art, Political Learning and Subjectivation,
Printed Project, Issue 10, 2008
Interview with Gerald Rauning,
Afterall Nr. 19, 2008
Organising Realism, newspaper and online magazine,
Frankfurter Kunstverein, 2008
Rethinking Marxism A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, Volume 20, Issue 3 2008
Interview with Marina Grginic,
Rearticulatsia Nr3, 2008
Chto Delat (What is to be done?) is a collective of artists, critics, philosophers and writers that was founded in 2003 in St Petersburg in order to integrate political theory, art and activism. It organises art projects, seminars and public campaigns that can take the form of videos, plays, radio programmes, posters and murals. Ever since its formation the collective has been publishing the Russian-English periodical What is to be done?.