Runaway Noosphere
Oleksiy Radynski in conversation with Svitlana Matviyenko
Sonic Intervention by Sasha Dolgiy.

In the interwar period, the Soviet geologist and philosopher Vladimir Vernadsky diagnosed the transformation of the scientific thought into a geological force that affects material processes on a planetary scale and one able to transform the planetary biosphere ‘according to the interests of freely thinking humanity as an organic whole’, and sublate it into the Noosphere - a highly networked sphere of unified human knowledge. Vernadsky claimed that the transition to the Noosphere went utterly unnoticed and unreflected by humanity itself, which led to devastating consequences in the form of two world wars. He passed away just before the Hiroshima bombing, a challenge to his cautious optimism regarding the Noosphere’s future. With cyberwar, this future has arrived and its shifting battlefield is now in Ukraine where the nexus of cyber and nuclear emerged as the symptomatic trace of the runaway Noosphere.

Oleksiy Radynski is a filmmaker and writer based in Kyiv. His award-winning short films have been screened at film festivals including DOK Leipzig, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Docudays IFF, Artdocfest, Odesa IFF, Watch Docs, Molodist IFF, as well as at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), e-flux (New York), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), International Studio & Curatorial Program (New York) and others. He is a participant of VCRC, an initiative for art, knowledge, and politics founded in Kyiv, 2008. He was a 2019-2020 BAK Fellow at basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and a KONE Research Fellow in 2021. In 2020, he convened War and Cinema, a cycle of artist films for e-flux Video and Film.

Svitlana Matviyenko is an Assistant Professor of Critical Media Analysis in the School of Communication and Associate Director of the Digital Democracies Institute, Vancouver. Her research and teaching are focused on information and cyberwar, political economy of information, media and environment, and infrastructure studies.

Sasha Dolgiy is an artist, musician and innovator. In 2012-2018, he was an organiser of ЭFIR, a legendary artist run space in Kyiv. His work has been represented at a number of venues in Ukraine and internationally, including documenta 14.

Red Forest is mobilized by David Muñoz-Alcántara, Diana McCarty, Mijke van der Drift and Oleksiy Radynski, after their collective practices super collided during a 2019-2020 BAK Fellowship in Utrecht. It unfolds as a growing constellation of artists, activists, researchers, media producers, filmmakers, philosophers, educators and time travelers realizing interdisciplinary projects. In 2021, their ongoing research on Extractivism, Datafication, and Transformative Justice was supported by the Kone Foundation in Finland. They are producing an experimental social and durational performance series in Kyiv and Berlin titled Sambatas Stagings, supported by Goethe-Institut Co-Production Fund Kyiv and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. In 2022, they convened Red Forest Radiograms -Nomadic Cosmologies and Fugitive Power as the German Pavilion of the the 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition Unknown Unknowns. An Introduction to Mysteries.

The German Pavilion at the 23rd Triennale Milano International Exhibition is convened by Red Forest on a commission from the Goethe-Institut Mailand and supported by the German Federal Foreign Office. Media Partner Radio Raheem Milan and reboot.fm Berlin