Chto Delat
Chto Delat (What is to be done?) was founded in 2003 in Petersburg by a working group of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers from Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism. The group’s name recalls the first socialist workers’ self-organizations in Russia, which Lenin portrayed in his “What is to be done?” (1902). Chto Delat as a collective operates in different media such as video films, graphics, and murals, learning theater, newspaper publications, radio plays, and militant theory. The artistic activities of Chto Delat are orchestrated by four member artists—Tsaplya (Olga Egorova), Nikolay Oleinikov, Glyuklya (Natalia Pershina), and Dmitry Vilensky—who often cooperate with Russian and international artists and researchers in joint projects realized under the collective name of Chto Delat.