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The paper results from long-term research in the field of contemporary Russian literature and digital technology (postdigital poetry), and the area of Russian feminist and queer literature. We approach these areas within the broad context of posthumanism that redefines methodological concept of a human and the relationship between the human and non-human entities, biological as well as technological. We focus on technological posthumanism and the way it enables us to interpret ever-changing communicative situation that reflects symbiosis of humans and contemporary technology, to thematize transforming physicality, shifting identities that lack strictly defined forms and boundaries. We are going to focus on Roman Osminkin, a contemporary Russian poet, performance artist, curator, and an art theorist. He conducts research in contemporary actionism and performance, was a founding member of The Laboratory of Poetic Actionism (2008-2012). Researchers usually situate his poetics between the tradition of Moscow conceptualism, especially its leading poet Dmitrii Prigov, and the 1920s Left Front of the Arts (see Mark Lipovetsky. A dilemma for the contemporary artist. The “revolutionary pessimism” of Roman Osminkin). This paper however will focus on the projects Osminkin carried out with the interdisciplinary Techno-Poetry Cooperative, a group that mixes poetic texts with techno, tries out different modes of speaking and singing, explores the formats of performance, performative talks and workshops, video, and whose vocalist and ideologist Osminkin claimed to be. The group explored queer aesthetics, their texts frequently have a feminist accent, denounce violence and toxic communication (group interrupted all their activities on the territory of Russian Federation at the beginning of March 2022). Their creative activities across various genres and styles, the ways they combine verbal, musical as well as visual tools, will be used to present new forms of collective performative art. The paper will also discuss the strategies Osminkin uses in his print texts and web-based performances (FB, telegram, youtube) to create the persona of a poet, a feminist, activist. We aim to investigate individual as well as collaborative artistic practices and the way they (re)construct and perform (post)human multifaceted author persona while moving on the spectrum between physical and virtual reality, the persona that is at the same time a public figure, thus connecting artistic/literary, scientific/technological and activistic discourses.
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