How can I tell it has been done?

Hacktivism or conventional reverberation of protest with the aid of moving images? The ICA nests the Russians group Chto Delat? show in whose perspective, the moving image plays an intense role in political action and activism. What is to be done they ask, what is to be done with the philosophical and cultural heritage, what is to be done with Dziga Vertoz, Goddard, Marx to achieve a type of moving images that move and shake the social, political and cultural decision-making process? They ask: What is to be done? I ask: Why is to be done this way? Their works in the lower gallery of the ICA are almost all film-based. Perhaps they share a belief with Pudovkin in that The film is the greatest teacher because it teaches not only through the brain, but through the whole 1 body. Mindbody/bodymind entering a dialectics with the moving images in hope of reverberating movements (movement of thought and body working together). I imagine film being thrown into the battle ring of fighting dogs. The body of film and body of viewer voraciously devouring each other, one biting on the flesh of other, but pradoxically, even though there are fighting, they are not in conflict or opposition. The cry that one releases is engraved in the vocal cords of the other. Circling their tails, the tension of movements increases, they both charge at once, rolling in a cloud of dust, intellectual residues are chipped off their furry backs in an attempt to reach a synthesis. And what is to be done with the winner if there is none? If when the dust cloud dissipates there is one creature standing in the circular ring, a cerberus, its three heads facing the social, artistic and political attitudes that need to be taken, actions that need to be acted upon. So is the experience of the Chto Delats film, Tower Songspiel, its body a curious creature, an inbreed of Russian social, artistic and political stances, contemporary or inherited (the Churchs role as political agent and their shapeshifting representatives asigned decision-making power; the corporation and its capitalist role in claiming servitude of the artist through the force of the market; the political representative and his support grounded on his personal wish of buying a new yacht, the silent and restless security chief ready for physical action; and finally, the miniature, dispersed voices of several social strata of Russian society). The body of spectator, one of curios nature as well: bursts into laughter when irony overwhelms the screen and is suspended pondering when the hibridity of a Russian musical parody shown in an English space, to Asian, East and West Europeans, North or South Americans comes into presence. As spectator, you are streching your back on the soft cushions of the small amphitheatre designed by the group and the smell of freshly painted PVC or other easily dismantable material runs through your dilated nostrils. What does the person next to me understand from this? What do I understand from this? Does he get the references? Do I? Coming from a post-communist country, I start seeing similarities with situations in Romania. I start having a sense of superiority of understanding the hidden messages, I start charging into the flesh of

the film; but I cant stop wondering: is this experience the same for the person next to me? Is this too deeply rooted in cultural references that others just wouldnt get it? Paradoxically, the open irony should be accessible to any viewer but somehow, it is this sort of comedy of language and situation that makes me think there should be much more to it, something that only a person from a country that has experienced a communist regime could understand. Presumably, this stems from an exposure to the technique of subversive affirmation, in which the incongruity of elements put together had the role of creating parody but unveiling a painful truth beyond humour. That truth is the call to action, its the subversive message that, exposed and understood, is supposed to stir a visceral sense of self and community, a need for active engagement. Its the beginning of the metamorphosis, the merging of the two bodies (of film and spectator) into the Cerberus, its three heads ready to defend the beliefs. I would say that the carnivalesque nature of the body of film, in its assortment of characters and hibridity of situations is deeply subversive. But what/who does it subvert? Capitalism, the PR Manager of Gazprom, the contemporary art world, the Church? At the end of the film, an oversized black phone in the centre of the discussion table rings. The disembodied voice at the end of the line is not even heard, the commands are reproduced through the PR Manager: the voice overthrows everyone; they are being fired. Are they to be replaced with others in their roles? It is not said. It is a question of what is to be done, but more pressingly, by whom? By a Cerberus: one body and three heads attached to it, working together for the safeguarding of a common corpus of interests and not as detached serpent-like entities, each following its own interest by any means possible. I read Richard Birketts essay on the film in Roland Magazine. He mentions in the conclusion: () yet the piece does not directly aim to suggest a necessary conduct of counter-activity in relation to this particular episode. Rather, it highlights the very lack of cohesive criticality or shared civic position within post-socialist, nouveau-capitalist Russia, and by extension a broader problematic of how those willing to contest virulent lines of power and exploitation organise and collectivise around this goal.2 He did get it, and hes English. Perhaps it took longer for me to internalise the meaning. But the fact is, the body of film spoke it to my body whilst watching. Perhaps it was done this way because of films capacity to speak to the whole body. Perhaps the person next to me had become a Cerberus. Perhaps I stepped down from the red amphitheatre too fast to tell.

1Waddington, Two Conversations with Pudovkin, Sight and Sound, Winter 1948-9, vol. 17, no. 68:161 in Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of film: the redemption of physical reality(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, first published 1960) 2Richard Birkett, Chto Delat? Instances of Fruitful Criticism, Roland. The ICAs Magazine, Issue 7, September-November 2010, p. 14 http://www.chtodelat.org/