“the fact that Kalmykov received and continues to receive publicity—including via our New Genius project—is a mistake which can only be explained by the Theory of the Fourth Dimension”
“It’s as if one were to say, “Antonin Artaud was an outstanding theater director!” and everywhere were to show a film recording of one of the one and a half performances he staged”
“Yes, Kalmykov and Artaud have a lot in common. In terms of “art,” they are a “weak artist” and a “weak director,” respectfully”
“As “helpless” as Artaud’s performances were, so are Kalmykov’s paintings”
“everyone understands that the point is not the performances that Artaud staged or not. So, the point is not the paintings that Kalmykov painted”
“A governmental commission made an audit of his apartment and found more than a thousand paintings, almost ten thousand pages of his manuscripts, many albums with drawings and texts, and pieces of wallpaper, cardboard, and linoleum on which he also drew and wrote a lot”
“no one from the professional artistic community has recognized Kalmykov as a somewhat “good” artist. We know only two art historians who have studied his work: Valentina Buchinskaya from Almaty and Igor Smekalov from Orenburg, where Kalmykov lived for some time”
“Kalmykov is still not accepted in the artistic environment of Kazakhstan—even now he really remains marginal. Usually they speak of him with condescension, as a holy fool or a “city madman,” sometimes adding “original” or “eccentric.””
“he sewed himself crazy-wide pants, attached all kinds of tin cans to them, dyed his hair with black paint, made himself an ultra-stylish triangular bag, and wore a big red beret, about which he said, “My red beret against Mayakovsky’s yellow jacket!””
“The idea behind such an outfit was for him to be a “bright spot” against the background of the “generally gray creeping mass” in order to be seen from space by millions of eyes looking at Earth”
“your work is still connected with archival work, with building your own mythology on the basis of Kalmykov’s theories. And as far as we understand, this implies maximum openness to all those who want to realize themselves as a genius and, at the same time, openness to everything that interferes with your plans”
“The New Genius, or the art of the New Genius, lies at this depth—it is a school of thought, philosophy, art, science and, in fact, a totally new kind of human activity”
“Kalmykov said, “Raise your intimate secrets to the heights of World Advertising.” Is the Venice Biennale not the height of World Advertising? In general, everything we do is Advertising—this is one of the main principles of our work”
“We declared in our information campaign: “We are the New Geniuses! Come see how we designed and set the Centre for the New Genius—a symbol of the great Art of the New Genius!” When it became clear that the two trucks with our installation would not arrive on time for the Centre to be set up for the opening week, we had no choice but to organize an Advertisement for the future Centre, i.e. to make an Advertisement of the Advertisement of the New Genius”
“we decided to follow Kalmykov and “bet on advertising!,” because “advertising is the key to success!””
“It is an ongoing process; it is a Practice. Everything in the world is Advertisement, and the product is an Empty Place that you can’t catch by the tail, because it is also just an indication of something even deeper”
“Kalmykov called himself a genius—and he was one. “Was” as an active action, and not as a third-party assessment of his condition”
“Any person can do the same: call yourself a genius and be one. Claim. Decide. Practice. And do not compare yourself with anyone: genius is not an assessment of abilities”
“Genius is an absolute category from the Fourth Dimension: in this dimension there is no relativity, no dimensionality”
“It is high time for humans to become an absolute, each one, and not at the expense of anyone else”
“overcoming the limitations of personhood—expanding without infringing on a space already existing and not belonging to you—without colonization is impossible in our world. But in the Fourth Dimension it is very possible!”
“Is it possible to use the phrase “Kazakh futurism” or cosmism in relation to the ORTA Collective?”
“We came out of the Soviet Union; our entire objective and mental environment bears traces of that culture, whether we like it or not. We want to use beautiful materials, whether living or once alive, and many of these materials are from the history of our land—some from the ancient times, some from Soviet times”
“But do we want to “tell something about the Soviet Union?” No. Nor do want we to tell something about the time and space we live in today. Or to tell anything at all. We are not “tellers.””
“We probably have more in common with cosmism than with ethno-futurism. We are looking for the possibility of overcoming the natural limitations of the human in the sense of being conditioned by the surrounding world”
“the Fourth Dimension—of course, it is possible to call it something else; we just have not yet come up with it—is a dimension where it is possible to overcome the limitations of humanity”
“But if in traditional cosmism this is supposed to be done in the cosmos, then in our theory this is done in the Fourth Dimension itself”
“The state of Kazakhstan, in some sense, is also trying to implement the concept of Advertisement through claiming all kinds of “images of the bright future.” However, at the government level, the concept is not realized as a conscious strategy and becomes false, exclusive, destructive”
“But how do you transfer an entire country to the Fourth Dimension? This is a task”