Talks
Dmitry Vilensky
Art making at the time of Emergencies – Between despair and hope. The short history of Chto Delat collective
2 May 2025, 6pm
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What does it mean to make art in the midst of political, social, and existential crises? How can artistic practice remain critical while remaining deeply caring?
In this talk, Dmitry Vilensky—artist, educator, and founding member of the Chto Delat collective—offers a personal and political reflection on the group’s evolving journey. From its early days in the early 2000s to its present work across disciplines and borders, the history of Chto Delat is inseparable from the waves of activism, intellectual engagement, and political unrest that have shaped its course.
We ask: How can we confront the urgencies of our time through artistic means? What does it mean to “criticize with care and care with critique”? And how do we sustain collective practices in the face of fragmentation and repression?
Drawing connections between key moments in contemporary history and the collective’s own practice, the presentation explores how art can respond to a state of ongoing emergency—not by retreating, but by offering tools for resistance, imagination, and solidarity.
Dmitry Vilensky (born in Leningrad in 1964) is an artist, educator and cultural environmentalist with no art degrees. He elicits situations and relationships. No one knows what he is up to right now: perhaps he is editing a new issue of Chto Delat’s newspaper, or maybe administering the Chto Delat Mutual Aid Fund, or editing a film, or talking with the participants of the School of Emergencies, or making a set for a new play (or installation), or preparing another Mad Tea Party… Most likely, he is doing all this and dozens of other activities at the same time, surrounded by various comradely compositions of bodies and minds in Chto Delat Emergency Project Room in Berlin, at Zoom and in many other…
See more at www.chtodelat.org and https://emergency-project-room.art/
This event was part of Let’s Talk About… Anti-Democratic, Anti-Queer, Misogynist, Antisemitic, Right Wing Spaces and Their Counter Movements project.