Anton Vidokle- THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION WAS CAUSED BY THE SUN (Institute of the Cosmos)

The second part of the trilogy looks at the poetic dimension of solar cosmology of Soviet biophysicist, Alexander Chizhevsky. Shot in Kazakhstan, where Chizhevsky was imprisoned and later exiled, the film introduces Сhizhevsky’s research into the impact of solar emissions on human sociology, psychology, politics and economics in the form of wars, revolutions, epidemics and other upheavals. The film aligns the life of post-soviet rural residents and the futurological projects of Russian cosmism to emphasize that the goal of the early Soviet breakthroughs aimed at the conquest of outer space was not so much technical acceleration, but the common cause of humankind in their struggle against limitations of earthly life. The Institute of the Cosmos is an ongoing collective research project founded in 2019 and commissioned by the 2nd Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, RIBOCA 2. Informed by the historical ideas of Russian Cosmism, the Institute is a space for a creative investigation of the materiality of the cosmos and its strange universalism, from the perspectives of philosophy, anthropology, history of science, and art.