The Secrets of Our Age – Russia Through the Prism of Hallucination
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: May 11, 2016, 19:00 – 21:00
A week before the opening of an exhibition by the Russian artist and graduate of Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts Pavel Pepperštejn at Ostrava’s PLATO centre for contemporary art, we will explore, among other things, his as yet unpublished novel. Entitled The Secrets of Our Age, it sees Pepperštejn describe the reality of Russia in a manner unparalleled in previous literature.
The perception of reality through altered states of consciousness has a long tradition in Russian Modernism but also in medieval writings and later Soviet and post-Soviet projects by radical artists and performers, as well as, of course, in shamanic, psychoanalytical, hypnotic and other methods of treatment. In his literary and visual art cycles, Pepperštejn links Greek mythology with Malevich’s Suprematism and the distant future with the ancient past. Where does the artist, who heard the cartoon characters Křemílek and Vochomůrka in the voice of Václav Havel in 1991, draw inspiration? And what does his artistic method point to?
Third evening in a series of lectures by Russian Studies expert Tomáš Glanc (Universität Zürich) entitled Living Souls II: Contemporary Russian Culture in Words and Images.