Alexei Penzin is Reader in Art at the University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton and Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. His major fields of interest are philosophical anthropology, Marxism, Soviet and post-Soviet studies, and the philosophy of art. He lectures widely on these topics and has participated in many international research projects, seminars, and symposia, including: What Is Thinking? Or a Taste That Hates Itself, Documenta 13, Ständehaus, Kassel, 2012; The Cairo Seminar, Documenta 13, MASS Alexandria, Cairo, 2012; and Modernidad y la llamada acumulación originaria [Modernity and So-called Primitive Accumulation], seminar in the context of the project The Potosí Principle, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2010. In 2008, he initiated and organized a series of conferences and talks on the topic “Capitalism as Religion? Walter Benjamin, Critical Theory and Art Today” at the National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow. Penzin has written numerous articles and is author of Rex Exsomnis: Sleep and Subjectivity in Capitalist Modernity (2012). He is a member of the interdisciplinary artistic and intellectual group Chto Delat [What is to Be Done?], which works in the space between theory, art, and political activism. Penzin currently lives and works in London and Moscow. [Last updated 2014]
