Da: Mark Konecny
THE INSTITUTE OF MODERN RUSSIAN CULTURE
4 March, 2002
This e-bulletin provides news on events and achievements for the month of February,. 2002.
Please take a moment to to look at our updated website redesigned by Lorin Johnson: www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/IMRC/
The IMRC is pleased to announce the award of an Interdisciplinary Research Grant from the James H. Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund at the University of Southern California. This support will be used towards creating a fully searchable database for the collections of Soviet dissident and underground materials in the IMRC. Work will begin on this project after July, 2002.
Ongoing Project
Anna Bunina and Lorin Johnson continue to elaborate their Research Project (supported by the Undergraduate Research Program) -- "The Other Art: Documenting Soviet Counter Culture". The enterprise entails the creation of a catalogue raisonnŽ and exposition of part of the IMRC collection of documents and artifacts pertaining to the Soviet dissident movement, particularly the archive of Francisco Infante. Bunina and Johnson are reorganizing the containers of archival materials, museum catalogues, and photographs to correspond to a system based on 5-year increments (e.g.,1960-1965) Materials are being placed in appropriate folder categories (manuscripts, correspondence, slides, press releases, personal and group photographs, scholarly articles, etc), and assigned to a file within a particular 5-year interval . The archival research and website (www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/IMRC/infante/
Experiment
Experiment No. 8, devoted to the theories of Vasilii Kandinsky (including a previously upublished version of "On the Spiritual in Art") will be published later this spring or summer. This issue concentrates on Kandinskyâs collaborations with early Soviet cultural institutions such as Svomas, Inkhuk, and RAKhN. Within the perimeter of these agencies Kandinsky was able to develop and put into pedagogical and pictorial practice many of his ideas concerning the broad issues that he developed later on at the Bauhaus. Subjects include the primary elements of painting, the systems of visual perception, and the interrelation of the fine arts with other disciplines as well as more conceptual conditions such as artistic synthesis, time and space in the work of art, and the influence of environment on creativity. For the list of contents and further information go to the IMRC website and click Experiment 8. Lectures and Celebrations
On 8 February veteran Soviet artist, Leonid Stil', spoke on Soviet Realism of the 1950s-80s. Using his own work as an illustration of that aesthetic, Stil' discussed the form and content of the various genres that defined official taste of that era.
On 15 February Fred White gave a multi-media presentation on "A Shared Sense of Chaos (Aleksandr Blok's Literary Portrait of Leonid Andreev)"
On 22 February Sharon Carnicke ([email protected]) directed a re-creation of "Les Noces" at the Bing Theater, USC
The next lecture sponsored by the Department of Slavic Languages will be Karl Swearingen speaking on: "Developments in Arts Education in Post-Soviet Ukraine - A Musical Model at Experimental Arts Magnet School #57, Sevastopol, Autonomous Republic of Crimea". Date and place: 22 March at two p.m. in GFS 330:
John E. Bowlt will be accompanying his graduate seminar in modern Russian art to the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece, over Spring Break, in order to research the Costakis collection of Russian paintings, drawings, and constructions. He will also be visiting the Nukus Museum of Art, Karakalpak, Uzbekistan, in preparation for an exhibition of the Russian avant- garde that he is co-curating for the Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna (opens summer 2003). Mark Konecny is organizer and curator of the exhibition "The Bestiary of the Russian Cabaret: Flying Mice and Blue Birds, Black Cats and Stray Dogs: Designs and Documents from the Institute of Modern Russian Culture and Other Collection" to be held in the Doheny Library in April-July. Opening on 1 April, ãThe Bestiary of the Russian Cabaret" will be accompanied by song and dance recitals tentatively scheduled for 5 April and 7 April. For further information go to www.isd-db.usc.edu/now/story.lasso?ID=32821
Other News
Simone Kozuharov continues to process the rare book collection and to update the IMRC master mailing database. If you havbe corrections or additions to your address, please e-mail Simone at [email protected]
Oleg Minin is helping to organize and inventorize the cabaret materials for "The Bestiary of the Russian Cabaret".