Alki1
"Illusions Killed by Life"
May 10-13, 2013 Princeton University. Organized by the program in Russian and Eurasian Studies.
PRINCETON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL STUDIES
PROGRAM IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN STUDIES
Princeton Conjunction – 2013: An Annual Interdisciplinary Conference
“ILLUSIONS KILLED BY LIFE”: AFTERLIVES OF (SOVIET) CONSTRUCTIVISM
May 10-12, 2013
Princeton
Keynote Address by Richard Pare, the author of Lost Vanguard: Soviet Modernist Architecture, 1922–32.
In 1923, the influential Russian writer Maxim Gorky complained in one of his letters: “In Russia, formalists, futurists, and certain people called constructivists perform all kinds of deformity. It must be stopped.” Stopped it was not. In the early 1920s, Russian Constructivism emerged as a key emblem of Soviet modernity that responded to the call to “materially shape the flux” of social life, as Alexei Gan put it. It did this through a series of crucial theoretical, aesthetic, and technological interventions which broke with the artistic languages of the past and, simultaneously, offered new tools for organizing a new life. Penetrating all spheres of the everyday – from housing, tableware and clothing to public space, mass performances and journalism – Constructivism fundamentally changed not only the vocabulary of expressive means but also the very understanding of the material environment and its social potentialities.
"Illusions Killed by Life"
May 10-13, 2013 Princeton University. Organized by the program in Russian and Eurasian Studies.
PRINCETON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL STUDIES
PROGRAM IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN STUDIES
Princeton Conjunction – 2013: An Annual Interdisciplinary Conference
“ILLUSIONS KILLED BY LIFE”: AFTERLIVES OF (SOVIET) CONSTRUCTIVISM
May 10-12, 2013
Princeton
Keynote Address by Richard Pare, the author of Lost Vanguard: Soviet Modernist Architecture, 1922–32.
In 1923, the influential Russian writer Maxim Gorky complained in one of his letters: “In Russia, formalists, futurists, and certain people called constructivists perform all kinds of deformity. It must be stopped.” Stopped it was not. In the early 1920s, Russian Constructivism emerged as a key emblem of Soviet modernity that responded to the call to “materially shape the flux” of social life, as Alexei Gan put it. It did this through a series of crucial theoretical, aesthetic, and technological interventions which broke with the artistic languages of the past and, simultaneously, offered new tools for organizing a new life. Penetrating all spheres of the everyday – from housing, tableware and clothing to public space, mass performances and journalism – Constructivism fundamentally changed not only the vocabulary of expressive means but also the very understanding of the material environment and its social potentialities.