Another video in German with Francis Hunger and Inke Arns.

After the premiere at History has left the building (Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund), the show at the III. Biennial for Young Arts, Moscow, and the Monitoring Exhibition at Kulturbahnhof Kassel in the frame of the 29th Film and Video Festival, Kassel, this is already the forth time in 2012 that the work is on show.

More information about the Tolpa installation …

With an essay by Inke Arns, a picture essay by Till Gathmann and Francis Hunger, work descriptions by Fabian Saavedra-Lara, materials by Francis Hunger and photos documenting the exhibition at the Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund.

Title: History has left the Building
Editors: Inke Arns, HMKV
Graphic design: Till Gathmann, Leipzig
With contributions by: Inke Arns, Fabian Saavedra-Lara, Francis Hunger
Year: 2012
Language: English/German
Size: 16 x 22 cm, 104 Pages, hard cover
Publisher: Spector, Leipzig
ISBN: 978-3-940064-50-9

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In his installation Tolpa, Francis Hunger edits and comments on different scenes from films by Dziga Vertov, a historical Soviet film director and contemporary of Sergei Eisenstein. Man with a Movie Camera (1929) belongs to his most famous works. For his installation, Hunger also uses original material from two other, less known films entitled Enthusiasm (1930) and Three Songs About Lenin (1934). From these three films Hunger only edits scenes that depict masses of people, re-organized through categories: city, everyday life, workers, demonstration, army, grief.

The commentary is only present, like in silent films, as inserted text. The texts describe a dialogue of two fictitious characters about different conceptual approaches to write a stage play about Vertov.

The two invisible protagonists also talk about the mass scenes, yet these only form the starting point for a conversation about the fate of the Russian avant-garde in the early 20th century, as well as the theories circulating at the time, which were located between science, utopia and art, such as those of the nowadays nearly forgotten biocosmists. By confronting the artistic and cultural movements of that time, whose repertoire and utopia was not limited to economical questions, it can be seen just how attractive the promise of communism initially must have been for people from diverse milieus.

For instance, the biocosmists aimed at resurrecting the dead in order to bestow them with the justness of Socialism. Their line of thought saw the human being as a body which can be manipulated at will, if one has the necessary, advanced technology to do so. In contrast to the idea of the resurrection of the immortal soul in Christianity, the biocosmists wanted to govern bodies in a museal sense. Instead of the grace of God, the state would function as a curator. By programmatically conquering death, time was controlled and became eternity – similar to the way the bourgeois museum, rejected by the avant-garde, creates permanence. However, resurrecting all ancestors would naturally cause a problem in terms of space: in turn, this problem became the pragmatic starting point for the Soviet space programme and the ideas of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Soviet rocketry pioneer. They were formed by the basic necessity of having to colonise new planets, where the resurrected could be settled.

In light of these discourses, Hunger addresses the question why and how the avant-garde, which once enthusiastically advocated the Russian revolution, was side-lined by Stalin. The art of the avant-garde as an instrument for state propaganda proved to be too hard to understand – very much unlike Socialist Realism that was declared in 1934 – and thus any kind of artistic experiment became resented.

Fabian Saavedra-Lara, 2012

Photography: Hannes Woidich

Francis Hunger‘s radio play The Woman who never flew into Space reflects on a forgotten episode of the Soviet space programme: Although (the fictive) Irina Evgenina Shukova obviously appears to be better prepared and qualified for the first flight of a female cosmonaut in a Vostok spacecraft, Valentina Tereshkova is given preference for this historic mission in 1963. Applying methods of speculative research, Hunger deals with the possible reasons for this decision (based on historical facts) and the significance that human spaceflight had for the technological development of the Soviet Union.

The story is inspired by the historical figure of Valentina Ponomaryeva, who was promised a space flight by the leaders of the Soviet Union. Her mission, however, was cancelled, after the moon became the new goal for the competing space powers of the US and the USSR. She is the woman who never flew into space.
Francis Hunger reconstructs her case based on research conducted beforehand, which included an interview with Ponomaryeva.

In his work, Hunger discusses the case against the backdrop of the then prevailing socialist ideology – with technocrats preferring that candidate who would fit the propagated female ideal more closely. Hunger‘s radio play shows formal similarities to the didactic plays of Brecht, where the plot is pushed forward through dialogue and commented by the Choir of Dead Space Travellers, in reminiscence of the classical Greek tragedy.

Hunger‘s method is not purely documentary: historical facts and investigative research merely form a point of departure for an artistic narrative which crystallises various questions: how does an emancipated woman act in a Socialist society whose ideological programme officially recognises equality, yet at the same time upholds an out-dated female ideal for the purposes of propaganda? (The soft features and the pleasant nature of Tereshkova seem to complement the humble smile of Yuri Gagarin far better than the inquisitive determination of the young mother and pilot Ponomaryeva. For both, the first male and the first female in space, were intended to be used as multipliers for Communism, representing the superiority of the Soviet people.) Approaching a seemingly utopian goal, only to fail shortly before, with no fault of one’s own – what does it mean to handle this situation?

The cosmonauts and astronauts catapulted into space by the Soviet Union and the US during the Space Race were dead persons who by coincidence, should the experimental technology actually function, would return to life after a successful landing: manned space travel was and still is that risky. The very limited space in the Wostok and Mercury capsules of that time reminds of steel coffins, catapulted into nothingness by a controlled explosion. Death was accepted in the name of the collective or free creative genius in order to reach the great goal and demonstrate the superiority of the respective political and societal system. The trauma caused by the shocking live images of the exploding Challenger space shuttles is still present.

The Choir of Dead Space Travellers not only appears in the radio play, but also as part of the installation. In his installation, Francis Hunger reminds of the often nameless victims of space flight on both sides of the former Iron Curtain. Hunger dedicates a portrait to each killed cosmonaut or astronaut. The portrait’s front is covered in black velvet and the actual image of the space travellers is on the backside. Instead of seeing the faces of the dead “heroes”, we see the black void of cosmic space. The pictures only reveal the individual faces during set up and take down of the exhibition.

Together with the black shape in the exhibition space reminding us of the Vostok capsule, the black portraits turn into a silent requiem for the victims of the technical progress of two competing ideologies. At the same time, Hunger’s installation, drenched in deep red light, is the stage for the radio play The Woman who never flew into Space, in which the voices of the dead Soviet cosmonauts come through to us as echoes from the past. They tell their story, intervene and comment the on-going events.

Fabian Saavedra-Lara, 2012

Photography by Hannes Woidich

The creation of this work was funded through a stipend by Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen.

Francis Hunger‘s work Sieg der Sonne (Victory of the Sun) refers to the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century and quotes symbols from the labour movement. The title is a variation of the Futurist opera Victory over the Sun (1913) of Aleksei Kruchonykh (text), Mikhail Matyushin (music), Velimir Khlebnikov (text) and Kasimir Malevich (stage design). The opera “forms a concentrate of the avant-garde‘s analytical concepts, which were understood as an antithesis to the idea of the symbolist Gesamtkunstwerk.”[1] It aimed at  the dissolution of the old institution of Russian theatre and formulated a statement for a new kind of theatre. In the story, “strongmen” have managed to imprison the sun in a house made of concrete. The opera is an anticipation of future developments in two regards: the belief in technological progress on an ideological level, and, on an aesthetic level, the proclamation of Suprematism in art, indicated by Malevich’s stage design. Glaring spotlights on Malevich‘s stage replaced the sun and thus made away with one of the Symbolist’s most important aesthetic items.

“Kasimir Malevich’s Black Circle on White Background”, explains Francis Hunger, “is deeply linked to the development of this opera, but can also be regarded as a symbol for the sun – or rather, its negation.” The sun is, at the same time, a symbol for a social utopia, for the glorious future of the victorious labour movement which was often referred to in window adornments in socialist cities. The form of a sphere also reminds us of the first satellite, Sputnik – a turning point in the technological development in the capitalist as well as in the socialist societies. “If one thinks of Sputnik as merely a sphere, it is an suprematistic object. The antennas however add functionality, and thus it becomes constructivist.” (Dragan Živadinov)

21 April – 22 July 2012
Opening: Friday April 20th, 2012, 19:00

Curated by Inke Arns (HMKV, Dortmund)

In the spring of 2012, the HMKV shows on the 3rd floor of the Dortmunder U – Centre for Art and Creativity two solo exhibitions by Suzanne Treister and Francis Hunger entering into a dialog with each other.

Francis Hunger: History has Left the Building

The first institutional solo exhibition by German artist Francis Hunger (*1976, Dessau) deals with the question of what’s left of communist and modernist utopia. Issues of gender as well as the development of technology and society are intertwined in complex installations. The artist comments on (unconscious) desire, disappointment and trauma.

Featuring the works:

• The woman who never went into space (2012)
• Tolpa (2012)
• Victory of the Sun (2011)
• Song for Henry Ford (2011)
• History Exhaustion (2009)
• The Setun Conspiracy (2005)
• Humankapital (2003)

More Information

Performance Dates for the Setun Conspiracy: April 21./22., May 12./13., June 02./03. and 23./24, July 21./22

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The radio play consists of five parts, with each part headed by the Choir of Dead Space Travellers and will become part of a larger, room filling installation. Here you can have a glance into recording the radio play that tells the story of the rise and the fall of that woman, who could have been the first woman in space.

• Irina Ewgenina Schukowa (cosmonaut aspirant) – Sofia Flesch Baldin
• Valentina Tereschkowa (first woman in space) – Bettina Friedsmann
• Committee president – Matthias Hummitzsch
• Committee member – Daniel Dublier
• Nikolai Petrowitsch Kamanin (cosmonaut training chief officer) – Axel Thielmann
• Old soldier – Hans Georg Türck
• Young soldier – Andreas Grasse
• Doctor – Thomas Weber
• Kyrill Schukow (Irina’s son) – Heiner Kock

Thanks a lot to everybody who made that possible. Special Thanks to the HMT Leipzig for the recording studio and to Ulrike for putting me in touch with Vocalconsort.