ORTA, an art collective from Kazakhstan, is engaged in an implicit dialogue with these works of art. Their pavilion, LAI-PI-CHU-PLEE-LAPA: Centre for the New Genius, filled with robots, commemorative icons, and a monumental generator made of cardboard and light, presents itself as a platform for scientific and artistic experiments aimed at creating the language of “New Genius.” This language is generated not only by the efforts of the artists, but also by everyone who enters the space—through whatever forms their interaction with the Center may take.

If one relates ORTA’s practices to the theme of posthumanism, the collective takes human communication as their point of departure. This emphasis appears well grounded: before any attempt to construct a “multiverse,” it is necessary to challenge human hierarchies and violent modes of relating to the world. Artistic means alone prove insufficient for this task. This is precisely why ORTA is oriented toward developing its own philosophical framework.

Language is one of the key structural elements of the ontological framework that ORTA develops through its artistic practice. In order to lay its foundation, the collective refuses to describe its work as “contemporary art” or to fit it into familiar categories such as installation, performance, or graphics. Large-scale installations are transformed into laboratory-installations for collective use; performances become spiritual or occult rituals—yet free from doctrinal or mystical content; graphic works lose their autonomy, becoming part of ever-changing environments of action. All of this directs ORTA toward articulating a different artistic language, distinct from already established forms of art.

In the collective’s view, the restructuring of artistic language is necessary in order to overcome objecthood and the impulse to archive one’s work. When art becomes an object rather than a process, it creates a distance between participating artists and viewers. Non-human subjects (in ORTA’s multiverse these include robots, machinery, musical instruments, and various materials—from foil to wood) are thereby discriminated against as actors. Such stratification places artists in a dominant position, objects in a position of subjection, and viewers in a passive, observing role. ORTA, by contrast, seeks to abolish this division, granting equal rights and agency to all entities involved in the artistic process. The refusal of archiving, in turn, is necessary in order to prevent these symbiotic relations from closing in on themselves and hardening within some symbolic or physical space, where one group might gain control over another by establishing an official interpretation of the artistic statement.

All of this creates a particular form of communication that, at first glance, seems to require substantive content. However, ORTA sees this very expectation as the root of the problem that prevents non-human actors from participating in artistic action. In the collective’s understanding, robots and technical systems, lacking human rationality, produce a linguistic void—signifieds without signifiers. Expanding this void, ORTA argues, is the only way to avoid relations of domination. Yet such systems cannot be implemented within the linguistic frameworks common to human societies, whose primary function is the exchange of signifiers. The Kazakh artist Sergey Kalmykov, however, attempted to move beyond this impasse by proposing his own language of “New Genius.” Unlike all other languages, it consists entirely of empty signifiers.

ORTA continues to develop this language, demonstrating that there is no “negative” emptiness within it. Each word acquires a semantic foundation during artistic practices, yet it does not become fixed in meaning due to the artists’ deliberate refusal to archive. This gives the language the necessary permeability, making it possible to evade hierarchical divisions and relations of domination. Moreover, the empty signifiers of “New Genius” make it possible not to bind words to specific human, natural, or technological entities. In this way, any subjects can be included in ORTA’s artistic practices.

Although in each of the collective’s projects the actors develop a certain identity, the idea of “New Genius” practices presupposes a constant transformation of the self. The positive emptiness and non-archivability of the language of “New Genius” provide this possibility for all human and non-human beings involved in ORTA’s practices. The reconfiguration of identity intersects with another important aim of posthumanism—the return of mystery to technology and non-human subjects. By refusing to treat them in purely utilitarian terms, and by embracing the linguistic void they generate within their practices, ORTA succeeds in fulfilling this condition, which in turn grants all actors an irreducible freedom of self-determination.