Anastasia Ryabova
Drawing Thesaurus
Seminar, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Tuesdays, 12-14 h, weekly, starts 21.10.2025, Hardenbergstr. 33, room 110

The problem of data organization extends far beyond the realms of statistics and finance. In an age of image overproduction, the central question shifts from criteria for evaluation to strategies for storage and utilization. What should be discarded, what should be preserved, and - most importantly - who gets to decide? Today, our focus is less on what we collect and more on the principles by which we reject. This filter dictates what we see, or choose not to see, in the world around us.

This course, dedicated to drawing—and thus to lines, colors, and points—will examine figures (of history), visual deviations and hypernorms, the biometrics that have replaced anatomy, and the convulsions and compulsions that mark the extremes of contemporary self-expression.
Here, drawing will be explored as an impulse whose traces we can detect beyond human presence: a drawing which is created by somebody/something, a drawing which creates itself, and a drawing which, in turn, creates something.
We will consider it as a dialectical phenomenon: the drive for free expression inevitably collides with unconscious patterns (ornaments, algorithms). The inherent presence of these patterns connects the human drawer to the machine and the machine to the human drawer.
Our work will involve disassembling and reassembling our own and others' drawings, seeking to recognize the uniform qualities of drawing common to many, and the multifaceted qualities belonging to one. The result may be that drawing, like a disassembled toy, never fully reassembles back into itself. Finally, we will catalog strategies of contemporary drawing while holding a central paradox in mind: the drawer’s deviation from any prescribed strategy is precisely what makes drawing still valuable today.

The course will consist of theoretical seminars, studio practice, and work in public spaces as well as in natural environments. It will also include several studio visits and trips to exhibitions and museums.
No specialized background is required; the course is open to students from all faculties.

Bibliography:
Artaud, Antonin. The Theatre and Its Double
Badiou, Alain. "Drawing"
Ballard, James Graham. The Atrocity Exhibition
Bates, Viktoria. "Cold White of Day: White, Colour, and Materiality in the Twentieth-Century British Hospital"
Brecht, Bertolt. Die Dreigroschenoper
Deleuze, Gilles. On Painting
Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control"
Dick, Philip K. Martian Time-Slip
Diderot, Denis. Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who Can See
Donner, Carol. The Magic Anatomy Book
Eisenstein, Sergei. Eisenstein at Work
Esipchuk, Maria. Politics of Drawing Part: United Seminars. Ch. "Contraband: What Is Topology?"
Foster, Hal. Compulsive Beauty
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things. Part I, Ch. 1: "Las Meninas"
Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias"
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. "Soldatentrost"
Harutyunyan, Angela. "On Mikhail Lifshit's Understanding of Mirroring in Social Realism"
Kleiman, Naum. Eisenstein on Paper: Graphic Works by the Master of Film
Kubin, Alfred. Die Andere Seite
Odoevsky, Vladimir. Russian Nights. Ch. "The Improvisatore"
Petrova, Evgenija Nikolaevna, editor. The Unexpected Malevich: From the Archive of Anna Leporskaya, Donated to the Russian Museum
Ryabova, Anastasia, and Nikolay Smirnov. Politics of Drawing
Sologub, Fyodor. Two Gothiks
Winkelmann, Andreas. Sezieren und Sammeln: 300 Jahre Berliner Anatomie 1713 bis heute
Zürn, Unica. Das Weisse mit dem Roten Punkt
Zürn, Unica. Im Pechsee Steht ein Schwarzen Fisch

Added to the reading list thanks to Sofia Duhovni:
Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Pleasure in Drawing. Ch. "The Line's Desire." 

Added to the reading list thanks to Nora Ashwood:
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan
Roth, Joseph. "Affirmation of the Triangular Railway Junction.” 

Added to the reading list thanks to Maria Esipchuk:
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Double

FILMS
Maddin, Guy. The Forbidden Room. 2015.
Fassbinder, Rainer Werner. Despair (Eine Reise ins Licht). 1978. (monologue of Mr. Hermann)
Fokin, Vladimir. Until First Blood. 1989.

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: Regular and active participation. Trust in the process and fellow participants.

Anastasia Ryabova is an artist, researcher, curator, and educator who combines a foundation in philosophy with an art practice. Her artistic track began in 2008 within the intellectual milieu formed around a marxist reading group in Moscow. Subsequently, she obtained a degree in Philosophical Anthropology and commenced her first artworks, curatorial, and publishing projects. Notable among her early works are the project Artists’ Private Collections, which was awarded the Kandinsky Prize in 2011, and the brochure Problem Book, which was translated into English and Italian and presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012. Since 2014, she has been teaching in different art schools in Russia and Europe. Since 2015, she is a founder member of the Night Movement. The period from 2016 to 2019 was marked by close collaboration with art historians and philosophers. Together, they published several books, including Introduction into Profession-XXI Century and Politics of Drawing, and wrote various articles for publications such as Raznoglasia Journal and Moscow Art Magazine. From that time until today, she has conducted various drawing experiments, which have been shown in exhibitions like the Tashkent Art Biennale (2019) and published in e-flux, the philosophical journal Another One, and on the syg.ma platform, among others. Currently she is working on a theory of clinical aesthetics through the philosophical frameworks of dialectics and phenomenology. With expanded drawing, social situations, and speculative modeling, she works on interconnections between postoperative female gaze, bioeconomics and biopolitics, and visual code that might present them today.