The Benefits of Imagination: On "Eclipse 2.0" by Magda Szpecht and Dominika Janicka

What burns a thousand tons of diesel a day – even while docked in port¹ – and has escaped the confiscation of property and the sanctions imposed on Russia and its oligarchic elite? The Eclipse yacht, measuring 162.5 meters, and built a dozen years ago on the order of Roman Abramovich. Designed by a British architect, constructed in a German shipyard, and equipped with British safety systems,² the giant has spent recent years in exile in the port of Marmaris on Turkey’s Aegean coast.³

In 2011, Luna, another yacht then owned by Abramovich, this one measuring a modest 115 meters, was moored at the Giardini in Venice, blocking the sun and the view, as well as passage along the waterfront. In the exhibition English Magic, shown in the British pavilion at the Biennale in 2013, Jeremy Deller addressed the incident, which he clearly treated as an insult. He presented a mural (created by Stuart Sam Hughes) on which a giant with the face of William Morris – the British artist, designer, and socialist, as well as a prominent member of the Arts & Crafts movement, opposed to industrialization and its negative effects – hurls Abramovich’s yacht right into the Venetian lagoon. For all his complicated attitude toward mechanization, Morris, whom Deller himself considers an important reference point for his own work, is said to have stated that in a “real society,” neither luxury goods nor cheap crap would be produced, and that industrial machinery would serve to reduce the amount of work done by laborers.⁴

Meanwhile, 130 years after Morris’s death, we are experiencing another supposed Industrial Revolution, driven on the one hand, as Matteo Pasquinelli suggests in Eye of the Master,⁵ by our collective intellect accumulated in technology, and on the other by the gratuitous valuations of certain companies and startups. Most of us don’t celebrate the potential for reduced working hours brought about by progress, but rather fear the loss of work itself. New technologies, previously known from the visions of science fiction writers, sometimes offer the potential of improving working conditions. However, whether this will happen is no longer in the hands of a machine, even one that acquired “consciousness” (whatever that exactly means); it depends on political decisions that regulate the social and economic system, and which are influenced by what society considers necessary and what is in the realm of our imaginary. For the time being, however, the rich continue to buy yachts and build space rockets with the profits from the labor of majority.

Deller’s exhibition in the British pavilion offered more visions that opened up the imagination for those weary of late capitalism: a giant bird of prey clutching a Land Rover in its talons like a scrapyard grabber, in revenge for the hunting of endangered species; or the burning city center of St. Helier, the capital of the island of Jersey, once known as a popular European tax haven. Instead of focusing on the shiny technological superficiality of science fiction’s diegetic world, as magnates such as Musk, Bezos, and Altman eagerly do, dreaming of star travel or “God in the latest generation computer” (as the former Polish president, Lech Wałęsa, once said), we can activate the political aspect of fiction, so fundamental, after all, to many science fiction classics. For writers such as Kim Stanley Robinson, the alternative forms of social life that result from these innovations seem to be more important than a journey to Mars or the invention of a treatment to ensure longevity.⁶ But what if we don’t need technical advances to make them reality?

Let’s return to the Blue Planet and its modern waters. It is early February 2022, and the world is not yet alive to the Russian assault on Ukraine. Jeff Bezos’s newly launched yacht is causing a stir – measuring “only” 127 meters, but sailing under sail, making it the second longest in its category.⁷ It should be added, however, that during the techno-oligarch’s maritime expeditions, the Koru is always accompanied by a support vessel measuring 75 meters – it is there that a helicopter landing pad and, presumably, all the facilities needed to support a rich man, are located. This kind of outsourcing, not far removed from the way one might think about supply chains and suburban logistics warehouses, is clearly intended to keep alive the fantasy of ancient forms of maritime voyage.

Public opinion about the yacht, however, was far from delighted. To ensure it could leave the Dutch shipyard where it was built, the Rotterdam authorities decided, in a gesture of submission, to temporarily dismantle a nearly 150-year-old bridge spanning the canal that was the only way to the open sea.⁸ The uproar among the city’s residents, fueled by the viral nature of the news and its global reach, forced City Hall to reverse its decision, and the yacht’s owner to relent and remove the masts, which would otherwise have snagged the bridge during transport. The canal transit itself also took place under the cover of darkness, so as not to stir up further sensationalism and protest,⁹ and avoid further damage to Bezos’s image, already tarnished by Amazon’s treatment of employees during the pandemic.

Earlier, at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, a quotation by Milton Friedman – unearthed from the depths of neoliberal history – had gained widespread popularity. Interestingly, it was widely used by groups at far ideological distance from the author of Capitalism and Freedom. In 1982, Friedman had written:

There is enormous inertia – a tyranny of the status quo – in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.¹⁰

This thesis was one of the foundations for the political and social strategy of disaster capitalism, dubbed the “shock doctrine” by Naomi Klein in 2007. However, for the first time in many years – and especially since the 2008 crisis and the decline of the alter-globalization movement – it began to seem like a double-edged sword. As the “tyranny of the status quo” increasingly comes to resemble unbridled capitalism, the ideas “lying around” may serve to rein it in more than to unleash it.

The same applies to wars: regardless of how catastrophic they may be on so many levels, they reshape the existing order – either by entrenching further the previous balance of power, or by weakening it and thus creating space for new forces to emerge. And when the far right, in the context of genocide or aggressive war, attempts to implant machine-generated and virally spread fascist visions in the collective consciousness – such as the notion of a “Trump Gaza resort,”¹¹ we ought to muster enough of our collective imagination, however scarce it may be, to create alternatives that propose reparations and redress for the victims.

The luxury marinas that war criminals would like to build on stolen lands would harbor vessels such as the Eclipse. The gigantic yacht stands as a striking symbol of the detachment of the unimaginably wealthy – individuals whose fortunes, in one way or another, have invariably been built upon the suffering and exploitation of others. This is why, in Eclipse 2.0, Magda Szpecht and Dominika Janicka undertake the détournement of Abramovich’s superyacht. Known for her work at the intersection of art and cyber-activism, Szpecht, together with Janicka – co-author of the Fair Building exhibition, which represented Poland at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale – weave a tale of political fiction, driven by the concept of restorative justice.

In brief, restorative justice differs from the prevailing doctrine in Western legal systems in that it emphasizes not deterrence and rehabilitation through punishment and isolation, but rather the expression of remorse, the repair of harm done, and the restoration of social relationships that have been damaged as a result of the offense.¹² It would, of course, be futile to expect any expression of remorse from sanctioned Russian oligarchs. We are unlikely to see their active participation in the process of repairing the damage caused by the political-military machine whose beneficiaries they have been for decades. One can, however, envisage the use of their confiscated assets in a manner aimed at improving the welfare of those suffering because of the war.

This is precisely what Szpecht and Janicka do by proposing a speculative voyage aboard Abramovich’s yacht, transformed into a floating therapeutic center for veterans and civilians harmed by Russian aggression. Instead of luxurious indulgence, participants in the retreat would be offered the opportunity to receive professional psychological support, access to modern therapies for the treatment of post-traumatic stress, and, above all, respite from brutal reality. The possibility of temporary escape would cease to be a privilege and a fantasy reserved for the owners of vast fortunes, and would instead become a tool of restoration – one that enables the avoidance of long-term, and even intergenerational, consequences of wartime trauma.

The artists’ strategy is reminiscent of the provocations staged by the German collective Zentrum für Politische Schönheit [Center for Political Beauty], such as The Bridge, which proposed constructing a bridge – financed with European Union funds – linking Tunisia and Sicily. This crossing, as one can hear in the promotional video for the project, would not only be the best way to prevent further tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea, but also “the most effective means of combating human traffickers”¹³ – in contrast to incessantly building new border walls.

However, The Bridge differs from Eclipse 2.0 in terms of style. While the former operates with gravitas and a pristine corporate aesthetic – even “borrowing” the logo of a well-known international construction company – the project by Szpecht and Janicka, prepared for the Lower Silesian Festival of Architecture in 2023, is a deliberate inversion of such an aesthetic. The kitschy yet opulent interiors of the yacht are desecrated by sloppy collages presenting the new functions of the former VIP bedrooms and exclusive conference rooms. There is no seriousness here – not even any sense – and the creators instead offer the pure joy of imagination. In contrast to the ubiquitous AI slop of today, in which media researcher Roland Meyer sees the aesthetics of digital-age fascism,¹⁴ we get a Dadaist photomontage mocking rigid conventions.

Although in the harsh reality of our world, we continue to build more walls dividing people than bridges uniting them, and Roman Abramovich has hidden his largest yachts off the coast of Turkey – a country that has not complied with EU and US sanctions – it is nonetheless worthwhile envisioning speculative alternatives and imagining different paths forward. If only because a 143-meter sailing yacht confiscated from oligarch Andrey Melnichenko is awaiting better days in the port of Trieste, Italy.¹⁵ Instead of merely pouring millions into its upkeep, we could put it to some productive use.