An Apparatus to Animate Lost and Blackened-Out Texts.

On the night of February 24th 1852 Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol burned the second volume of his bestselling “epic poem in prose”, Dead Souls. Only fragments of the text have survived this famous act of self-censorship. The Purgatory, as the second part was titled, is the central text that will be re-animated in the Darkroom Apparatus and re-contextualized in our times.

The installation also includes a reading by the Novosibirsk actors Wladimir Lemeschonok and Lawrentij Sorokin. They will enact an unpublished text by the Russian artist Pjotr Pawlenski, while the philosopher and political theorist Dr. Oxana Timofeeva, the philosopher Igor Chubarov, Berlin-based media theorist Dr. Wladimir Velminski and the “Blue Noses” artist Konstantin Skotnikov, discuss the current state of Pawlenski´s art in a kitchen gossip.

An Apparatus to Animate Lost and Blackened-Out Texts.
concept: Hannah Hurtzig, script: Marian Kaiser, camera: Philipp Hochleichter, editing: Eric Menard,
Presenting: „Dead Soulds“ second volume, burned by Nikolai Gogol and „The interrogation“ by Pjotr Pawlenski.
A project by Mobile Academy Berlin & Goethe Institut Novosibirsk, May 2016