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Exploding Tongues: Language, Art, and the Russian Avant-garde

Pomada - dyr bul schyl (Page 3)

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Book Page Project Proposals 21 Description of project options and examples of historical precedents from the Russian Avant-garde plain 2017-03-28T19:32:37-07:00
ASSIGNMENT PROMPT (DUE Tuesday, 3/28 midnight)
Students in ARTS 227 and CSLC 134 / RUSN 334 will collaborate in small groups of 2-3 students on the design, creation and use of print materials to produce one page contribution to a limited edition of a course book inspired by examples from the Russian/Soviet Avant-garde. Text can be composed in any of a variety of styles, from traditionally rhyming and metrically regular to zaum. Layout, design and distribution of text are similarly freed for expression or provocation.

Each student is required to submit a brief (paragraph-length) statement of intent in the form of a Comment submitted by clicking the Comment (speech bubble) button at the very bottom of this page (make sure to scroll past the last media window for "Tango with Cows"). Each statement should indicate which "type" of project it will be (see below), as well as any formal properties the content will have (e.g. text length, layout, graphics, imagery).

Parameters
- Groups must have at least one member from each course
- Each student must submit a proposal
- You may consult with other members of your "Flagration of Vowls" group to propose a joint project
- Projects submitted individually will be grouped by the professoriate on the basis of similarity or compatibility
- Project "types" describe a prototype or precedent, materials and method, but you do not have to emulate the suggested examples
To facilitate project work, we have to constrain the possible approaches to a reasonable number. For your proposals, please select an option from any of the three project types:
1. A simulated lithograph, using the more current "flexographic" technology using Photo Polymer Printing Plates. This method enables free-hand writing and illustration, of the sort exemplified in the famous early zaum poem, "Dyr bul shchyl," by Aleksei Kruchenykh, illustrated by Mikhail Larionov.
2. Suprematist-inspired graphics, using geometric and semi-regular shapes to compose letters, designs, and scattered decorative fragments, such as "Nash marsh" (Our March) from Dlia golosa (1923), a collection of poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, with typographic/illustrative design by el Lissitzky.
3. Moveable type. This approach allows free and expressive arrangements of consistent or mixed type blocks, such as lidandtIU FarAm (1923), a "Dra" (dramatic play) by Il'ia Zdanevich, or Tango with Cows (1914), a collection of "ferroconcrete" poetry by Vasily Kamensky, with illustrations by David Burliuk.
For each of these methods, limited hybrids and decorative hand-work (such as rubber stamped elements), etc. can be proposed and pursued, with time, equipment and materials considered.
Prostitutes and Peasants Mirskontsa is not the only book of zaum poetry to feature nude women. In Kruchenykh and Larionov's 1913 Pomada [Pomade], the nude woman is again a unique figured occasion in the text. However, the women of Pomada are not as deliberately visible as they are in Mirskontsa. In the famous poem-painting 'dyr bul shchyl,' there is a nude woman hidden in what simply appears to be scratch marks and scribblings on the page. This nude is the only figure in either Mirskontsa and Pomada to seemingly expose their genitals. It is notable that in alternative versions of 'dyr bul shchyl,' Kruchenykh's soon-to-be wife Olga Rozanova altered the image of the nude woman to produce an image seemingly more in line with female representations in Mirskontsa.

Later on in Pomada and in contrast to the "urban prostitutes" 'dyr bul shchyl,' a peasant woman with her breasts exposed carries a basket or some other burden. As Pomada lengthens the image of the woman-as-figure becomes more oblique and it begins to discern the sex of the figure at all. In the final image of what appears to be a woman figure, the defining motif of these female nude becomes itself obscured. Is this figure-in-horror exposing their breasts, or do they raise their arm to their chest in quiet exclamation?

Contrast between representations of the city and the village seem to have centered in representations on the people who live in them-- however, in keeping with Neo-Primitivist themes, this Individual-of-Representation often took the shape of the woman (it is no coincidence that one's place of origin is often referred to as the 'motherland.' In engaging with Marc Chagall's painting Above the Town there is (while not ubiquitous) an clear demarcation between the individual and place. Seemingly caught in a saving or pleasurably embrace, Chagall's female figure connotes a concerning specter haunting the transition from the town/village to the major city/metropolis. In the same period of time (1910-1920) this concern bubbled to the forefront of Russian Avant Garde iconography: In simple landscapes, the city (Moscow) begins to shake and climb upon itself as if reaching for the heavens by creating Jacob's ladder from its own body. Also, in the costuming of women, the peasant girl is constructed as having both agency and personhood--there is a 'capability'/potentiality present in her that is distinct from the faceless scratchings of the women in Pomada.

Like a two-headed infant conjoined at birth, the rise of technology both fascinated and demanded intervention by the Russian people. From the gruesome representations of the titular Anna Karenina preparing for death via railcar decapitation to the very presence of any portrayal of a traveling female peasant, the identity of Russia-going-forward was all but submerged by the crashing wave of questions and conflicts arising from technological advancement and integration in the social.

The presence and juxtaposition of prostitutes, peasants, cities, and villages belies a theoretical stance on reproduction and collaboration--- the deconstruction/vilification of the city, functions as a collaborative stance with the production of hand-made books. Even more than what can be done in a press workshop, in the continued supremacy of the village woman over the city prostitute, Larionov reasserts the Anti-Gutenbergian stance of early Russian Avant Garde sentiments. In doing this, Larionov accomplishes the turn from a rudimentary Neo-Primitivist discourse into a complete swerve towards mystical/fused signifier-signified systems.