| Summary: | The New Blockheads was a collective of young artists from Saint Petersburg, the bohemian center of Russia. Between 1996 and 2002, they conducted more than 100 collaborative actions and performances in galleries, in the streets and in private homes. Their performances were little noticed at first. Why? Because as the Kunsthalle Zürich, the original organizer of the exhibition put it, the Brotherhood's actions appear pointless, irrelevant, dilettantish, and hopeless. These actions were also characterized as despairing, naive, radical. The New Blockheads was inspired by the absurdist poetry of OBERIU, a short-lived collective of Russian creative types - writers, musicians, and artists in the 1920s and 1930s - which has been referred to as the last Soviet avant-garde. This archival exhibition of The Brotherhood of New Blockheads (1996-2002) is special, being the first time the group has been presented officially on the international stage. In what way is the legacy of the New Blockheads of interest today? It is in part quite logical, for it was born in a time when a deficit in the present and a crisis of utopian ideals made looking to the past the only source of hope. Utterly in keeping with their own time, standing apart from any fixed styles or trends, The Brotherhood of New Blockheads was everything we could want of art: daring, despairing, naive, radical. Their legacy is relevant today for it provides a model for frank and uncompromising artistic behaviour, for maximum sincerity, something which is so keenly lacking in the world today. Exhibition: Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland (16.02. - 26.05.2019).
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