Chto Delat sounds like a Russian icebreaker and it can do what they can: namely, sail frozen oceans. However, the collective is not made up of sailors, but artists, critics, writers and philosophers.

Their goal is to show how fragile life is today, how deadlocked the political, economic and ecological situation, how dangerous the rebirth of nationalism, imperialism and fundamentalism, and what role art plays in this scenario. In this respect, Chto Delat (Russian for “What to do?”) is a nom de guerre, a secret cipher that finds its starting point in the person of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin when he called for a revolutionary Marxist workers' party in 1902. Founded in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Chto Delat wants to continue the great tradition of the Russian avant-garde and preserve their militant optimism. To this end, they have further developed and sharpened various formats, some of them classic: Bertold Brecht's Singspiel, for example, participatory theater, propaganda tools such as the Learning Flags (in the evn collection, for example, Lenin. Fly Like a Butterfly, Sting like a Bee, 2011, Inv. No. 0384), murals, public actions, film, video, and spectacular exhibitions described as 'tragic,' such as the Vienna Secession in 2014 and the Berlin gallery KOW (Time Capsule. Artistic Report on Catastrophies and Utopia).

Their numerous activities are coordinated by a core group that includes the following members: Tsaplya Olga Egorova (artist, Saint Petersburg), Artiom Magun (philosopher, Saint Petersburg), Nikolay Oleynikov (artist, Moscow), Natalia Pershina/Glucklya (artist, Saint Petersburg), Alexey Penzin (philosopher, Moscow), David Riff (art critic, Moscow), Alexander Skidan (poet, critic, Saint Petersburg), Oxana Timofeeva (philosopher, Moscow), and Dmitry Vilensky (artist, Saint Petersburg).

The DNA of the evn collection includes invisible connections, and so it should be mentioned that David Riff, together with Dmitry Gutov, is the creator of another work in the collection, The Need for Money, 2012/13, Inv. No. 264 a–f, which connects painting and sound with the Karl Marx School of the English Language, or knowledge in general, founded in Moscow in 2005.

The 2020 work for the fourth iteration of the evn collection wallpaper project also works with knowledge as a cultural asset. From the very beginning, the members of Chto Delat understood knowledge as a central element of (political) action. An extensive archive of newspapers, magazines, ephemera, film fragments, dossiers, written materials etc. document their work for over a decade. Chto Delat feeds the present wallpaper from this pool of resources, developing it as an endless collage.

Brigitte Huck, 2020 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)