The New Dead End #17. Summer School of Slow Orientation in Zapatism

Chto Delat? is a collective of artists, critics, philosophers and writers founded in 2003 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where it is still based today. Its work has centred on research into and the interpretation of Zapatista ideas and their influence on different European communities. This installation, for instance, seeks to link the Zapatista present day to the centenary of the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and to reflect on what has occurred since that time, resulting in a work which oscillates between performativity and alternative pedagogy.One of the videos documents the experience of co-existence between an Indigenous group from the Lacandon Jungle and seventeen Russian youths. They trained to put into practice the Zapatista way of life, on the fringes of genuine Indigenous experience, and how a group of Europeans/Russians, with their cultural and historical background, would imagine changing their lives and society in harmony with the Earth. Another of the pieces, Mapa de una orientación lenta sobre el Zapatismo (Map of a Slow Orientation on Zapatismo), is a kind of standard-bearer which builds an affective cartography conceptualising material practices, of work and life, as a place from which to situate the contribution of rebel peoples in the artistic and organisational process. The materials in the display cases and on the walls allude to the dynamics of learning and the mise en scène of lived experience across two weeks with these communities.     

Lola Hinojosa Martínez