INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH

Photo: S. Chabutkin

Valery Savchuk — a contemporary philosopher, an artist, a supervisor and an author of articles and books about the nature of the modern art. He took part in different art actions and exhibitions of modern art, also abroad - in Hamburg, Kotka (Finland), Kassel, Warsaw, the St. Paulo (Brazil), Tartu (Estonia), Löderup/Lund (Sweden), Siauliai (Lithuania). He works in the performance, city sculpture and installation manner.
V. Savchuk together with E. Kozlov and V. Drapkin has organized the philosophy and art society “New archaic” as well as the festival of the same name in the art cabaret “Brodyachay sobaka” (“Stray dog”) (1990). He supervised the workshop “Academic/marginal thought and modern art: strategies of recognition” (Gallery – 103, Pushkinskaya, 10) (1999–2001), headed the organizing committee of the “Petersburg text” award, is the author of the project of a virtual cemetery “Novie Literatorskie Mostki “ (“New literary gangways”) (2000), as well as of the project of a city sculpture "Geroy Dnya" (“Hero of the day”) and "Angel Dostoevsky", supervised the monument “Zayats I” (“Hare the 1”) on the Hare island of St.-Petersburg. V. Savchuk is also the author and the deputy chairperson of the philosophy award “Vtoraja Navigatsija” (“The second navigation”) jury. Currently he heads "Media philosophy" center at the philosophical faculty of the St.-Petersburg state university, organizes thematic workshops. Valery Savchuk is the author of more than 300 publications, many of which are translated into English, German, Finnish, Portuguese, Polish, Bulgarian and Lithuanian languages.

The interview with Valery Savchuk is a kind of a conceptual essay of the author arguing about the matter of actual art, new ways of art life and the special strategies of contemplation which have become characteristic for our time. Answering the questions of the interview, Valery Savchuk describes in detail both his theoretical and practical points of view on the actual art environment, especially marking out the complexity of the ways of self-identification. The situation of the present as well as of the actual art, because of their heterogeneity and hyperactivity, often force artists, supervisors and spectators to transform their identity. Only in this way there is an opportunity to enter an art-process. The role of an artist-philosopher, in which Valery Savchuk worked for some time, turns to be a hard one. Clearly understanding the responsibility of the chosen way, today Valery Savchuk remains the theorist of the actual processes in art and society. It is important, that this guideline for analytics does not exclude in any case the creation and participation in the art-projects reached the level of meta-art and polymedia concept where the interaction of different ways of perception is necessary. So the polylog of identities of the art process subject appears and it opens different levels of its subjectivity representing the "substance" of an artist.

The first part of this interview was published: International Journal of Cultural Research. Vol 1. 2010. — P. 113–118.