The Book To Come
"‘The Book to Come’ Session III (Vilnius). ‘Molla Nasreddin: Embrace Your Antithesis.’ Lecture performance by Slavs and Tatars. Photo: CAC Vilnius.
Friday 1 April 2016
‘Session III’ (Vilnius)
7pm / Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius / CAC Cinema / Duration: 50 minutes.
Arguably the most important periodical of the Muslim world in the 20th century, Molla Nasreddin, was a legendary Azerbaijani periodical, featuring illustrations reminiscent of a Daumier of the Caucasus. Molla Nasreddin was read by an audience that stretched from Morocco to India, and addressed issues such as gender equality, education, colonialism, and Islam’s integration of modernity—all of which remain as relevant and pressing today as when the magazine was first published a century ago.
Molla Nasreddin: Embrace Your Antithesis includes a discussion of the book’s historical context, a case study of the complexity otherwise known as the Caucasus, the figure of the antimodern, and the issue of self-censorship a century ago and today.
Slavs and Tatars is a faction of polemics and intimacies devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. The collective's work spans several media, disciplines, and a broad spectrum of cultural registers (high and low). The collective's practice consists primarily of three activities: exhibitions, publications, and lecture performances. Molla Nasreddin: Embrace Your Antithesis has been presented at the Serpentine Gallery, London; UCLA’s Near Eastern Studies Department; Kunstverein Münich; Swiss Institute, NY; EHESS, Paris; Meadows Museum, SMU, amongst other venues.
The presentation of the project The Book to Come at CAC Vilnius is supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.