Kuryokhin explains his definition of fascism and his distinction between mainstream postmodernism and a postmodernism of protest.
Post-Soviet
1996/97
Discourses surrounding identity and chernukha in the nascent post-Soviet mediascape generally reflect an underlying dialectic tension between virtual reality and manipulation on the one hand, and the authenticity of physical experience and true belief on the other. A perfect example of this is the experimental musician and performer Sergey Kuryokhin, who is famous for having argued that Lenin was a mushroom on Soviet television in the spring of 1991, and who can be seen as the quintessential postmodern artist and practitioner of styob (see Artifact 205). Kuryokhin was generally fascinated with totalitarian artforms—in the sense of artforms or actions that would involve a radical transformation of reality. Hence, both Kuryokhin’s fascination with mass manipulation and his romantic impulse toward sincerity, belief, and absolute commitment. After experimenting with music performances, film, radio, and television, Kuryokhin decided, in his own words, “to experiment with radical politics” by joining the National Bolshevik Party, the radical organization led by Limonov and the far-right thinker Aleksandr Dugin, and by organizing Dugin’s own political campaign for a seat in the Duma in 1995 (see Artifact 194). In the artifact presented here, an interview he gave to Dugin’s far right publication Elementy (the interviewer was, in all likelihood, Dugin himself), Kuryokhin elaborated on the tension between belief and the postmodern commodification and “virtualization” of reality that he thought was becoming predominant after the fall of the Soviet Union. And he more or less explicitly saw the former as a form of resistance against the latter. In the interview, he distinguished between a “vulgar” and an authentic, “elitist” postmodernism: “[These epigones] are the representatives of a cheap kind of postmodernism, embodied by the ultimate mass artform, television. All shows try to be sarcastic (obstebat’sia), nobody wants to talk about anything serious . . It is not a coincidence that the word “as if” (kak by) is so common today—this is a sign that people are not able to take their own words seriously. In contrast, “authentic postmodernism” for Kuryokhin was an attempt at “joking about the revolution, while maintaining the desire to be revolutionary”—whereas fascism is a radical form of romanticism or the quintessential form of militancy, seemingly in the sense of a total commitment to an artistic or political vision. For Kuryokhin, if one is a romantic—truly committed to an aesthetic vision—one will inevitably “become a fascist.”
Saint Petersburg
Dugin, Aleksander (Aleksandr) and Kuryokhin (Kurekhin), Sergei
Russia and former Soviet Union
“Esli vy romantik, vy—fashist! Rassuzhdeniia o postmodernizme. Interv’iu s Sergeem Kurekhinym.” Elementy, no. 8 (1996/97). 83-6.