Alena Ledeneva
The God of the Informal: Avos', 2018
Collage, wood, antique metal
29.0 × 43.0 × 3.0 cm
Avos’ is among various ideas of luck and fortune, hope, speculation and anticipation found in societies across the world. …The great Russian dictionary of Vladimir Dal’ explains the etymology of Avos’ as a shortening of ‘А вот сейчас’ (Oh, there it is, right now!) (Dal’ 1836-6)... Avos’ can be compared with the idea of kairos, named after the Greek god Kairos, the deity of seizing the moment… Yet Avos’ differs from kairos. The latter in its ancient Greek version implies selecting the right place and time, duly measured, appropriate and opportune, and is an aristocratic practice; the unbalanced, untimely, out-of-place and vulgar are outside the zone of Kairos (Boer 2013). With Avos’, by contrast, conceptions of harmony and due measure are absent. Avos’ is a chance that seems rather to happen to the actor, on the wing, and all he or she has to do is to notice it” (Caroline Humphrey for the Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, 2018)
Avos’ is among various ideas of luck and fortune, hope, speculation and anticipation found in societies across the world. …The great Russian dictionary of Vladimir Dal’ explains the etymology of Avos’ as a shortening of ‘А вот сейчас’ (Oh, there it is, right now!) (Dal’ 1836-6)... Avos’ can be compared with the idea of kairos, named after the Greek god Kairos, the deity of seizing the moment… Yet Avos’ differs from kairos. The latter in its ancient Greek version implies selecting the right place and time, duly measured, appropriate and opportune, and is an aristocratic practice; the unbalanced, untimely, out-of-place and vulgar are outside the zone of Kairos (Boer 2013). With Avos’, by contrast, conceptions of harmony and due measure are absent. Avos’ is a chance that seems rather to happen to the actor, on the wing, and all he or she has to do is to notice it” (Caroline Humphrey for the Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, 2018)