Conversation with filmmaker Anton Vidokle.
“There is no substance which cannot take the form of a living being. The simplest being is the atom. Therefore the whole universe is alive and there is nothing in it but life,” writes Tsiolkovsky in a monograph entitled The Monism of the Universe (1931).13 Despite their profound difference in their relationship to death, both Tsiolkovsky and Fedorov imagine a living, sentient cosmos. While this is largely a scientifically inspired insight for Tsiolkovsky, for Fedorov it is an art project.