An Extended Lecture by Anatoly Osmolovsky and Alek Petuk
This lecture-performance will comprise two elements. The first is a paper by the artist and art theorist Anatoly Osmolovsky that is methodologically based on the Infernal Dictionary by Jacques Collin de Plancy, a 19th-century demonological treatise that has been frequently republished, and on a materialist typology of human personality disorders from the perspective of contemporary medicine and scientific knowledge. These two frameworks will be applied to 1990s Russian art, including works by Alexander Brener, Dmitry Pimenov, Oleg Kulik, and Oleg Mavromatti.
The second element is a let’s play of the official DLC (downloadable content) for Dark Souls Remastered called Artorias of the Abyss. Through his gaming avatar, artist Alek Petuk will fight one of the Four Knights of Gwyn, Artorias. After the fall of the Four Kings in to the Dark, the knight’s task was to battle with dark souls. However, he could not deal with the threat from Oolacile Township and was swallowed up by the Abyss. We meet a beaten and possessed knight, but one who remains terrifying.
Авторы
Alek Petuk
(b. 1984, Ukhta) is an artist, founder of the art group BKB, organizer of the independent festival Kuzlefest, member of the community Soundartist.ru, and founder of the Coincidental Institute. He lives and works in Moscow.
Anatoly Osmolovsky
(b. 1969, Moscow) is an artist, art theorist, and curator. He is the founder of Moscow Actionism. He received a stipend from the Berlin Senate and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, 1995). He was the founder and leader of E.T.A. (Expropriation of the Territory of Art) Movement (1990–1992) and coordinator of the revolutionary competing program Nezesüdik (1993–1994). He is the organizer and rector of the BAZA Institute (Moscow) and organized an art criticism laboratory (2019–2020). He participated in the Venice Biennale (1993, 2013) and documenta 12 (Kassel, 2007). He lives and works in Moscow.