This Is Cosmos
Director
Anton Vidokle
USA / 2014
30 min.
/ Original version with English subtitles
Original language
Russian
Based on the ideas of Russian philosopher, Nikolai Fedorov, Anton Vidokle’s film was shot in Siberia, Crimea, and Kazakhstan. Fedorov, like others, believed that death was a mistake, “because the energy of cosmos is indestructible, because true religion is a cult of ancestors, because true social equality is immortality for all.” Fedorov was one of the Cosmo-Immortalists, a surge of thinkers that emerged in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They linked Western Enlightenment with Russian Orthodoxy and Eastern philosophical traditions, as well as Marxism, to create an idiosyncratically concrete metaphysics. For the Russian cosmists, cosmos did not mean outer space: rather, they wanted to create “cosmos” on earth. “To construct a new reality, free of hunger, disease, violence, death, need, inequality – like communism.”
Anton Vidokle is an artist, curator, and filmmaker. He lives and works in New York and Berlin. Following THIS IS COSMOS in 2015, he has been represented with four other works in the Forum Expanded film program and exhibition.
Funded by:
