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Home , Alexander Bogdanov

Prelude: Towards an Alternative Philosophical Genealogy of the Soviet Avant-Garde One of the most discussed concepts of the Soviet avant-garde – variously characterized as “construction,” “tectonics,” “production,” or “life-building” – may seem to refer

01/09 simultaneously to the formalist method in art and to a theory of social constructivism that departs from the idea of the “new Soviet man” and ends up with Stalin’s “engineers of the human soul.” The simultaneity of formalism and social constructivism normally explains the coexistence of the constructivist aesthetic program and the utilitarian politics of Maria Chehonadskih productivist art. As Benjamin Buchloh writes, constructivism passes from the expanded modernist aesthetics that “did not depart much The further from the modernist framework of bourgeois aesthetics than the point of Stofflichkeit of establishing models of epistemological and semiotic critique,” to the new industrialized the Universe: forms of art.1 Optimism about technology and media leads constructivists to totalitarian Stalinism.2 Yve-Alain Bois goes so far as to argue Alexander that the total instrumentalization of art is inevitable when the critical modernist tradition is Bogdanov and abandoned.3 In other words, the great achievements of the Soviet avant-garde conform to the standards of European modernist the Soviet , while utilitarian aesthetics and its function in the context of Stalinism signifies a Avant-Garde break or a black hole, which the narrative of art history can only explain by turning to ethical and moral arguments against propaganda and instrumentalization. An alternative proposition would be to examine the philosophical core of the constructivist and productivist programs and rethink their epistemological foundation. đđđđđđđđđđThe confusion regarding the constructivists’ construction and the productivists’ production comes from a false genealogical attribution of these concepts to formalism and social constructivism. What has to be accounted for, and what is normally ignored, is the background of what I term “Empirio-.” The interest in among the pre- and postrevolutionary Marxists of the and the Soviet state is mainly known though Lenin’s famous Materialism and Empirio- Criticism, the book in which he accuses

e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 — b y 2 0 1 đ M i C h d s k T h e S t o f l i c k U n v r s : A x a d B g - G Bolshevik activist and Alexander Bogdanov of deviating from Marxism and of providing reactionary support for idealist philosophy.4 Indeed, Bogdanov brings together the notorious empiriokritizismus and the early ’ understanding of Marx to first propose the philosophy of “empiriomonism” (1900s)5 and then the universal science of organization, or “” (1910s).6 Both

02.14.18 / 14:58:44 EST doctrines correspond to the political idea of Nevertheless, it is also a very well-known fact proletarian culture, implemented in the that writer and engineer Andrei Platonov was a (Proletarian Cultural-Enlightenment member of the Proletkult,8 and that the main Organizations) movement after the October theorist of productivist art, Boris Arvatov, worked Revolution in 1917. Bogdanov, a principal as secretary of the Proletkult, while theoretician of the movement, develops a Rodchenko, Tretyakov, and Eisenstein, among conception of experience as a homogeneous others, collaborated with Proletkult studios.9 field of collective praxis. 02/09 This fact has never led English-speaking đđđđđđđđđđThis is not an obvious reference point in theorists to examine closely Bogdanov’s relation to Russian avant-garde artists, since in philosophy or at least to consider Proletkult as their work there is no consistent presence of the an important intellectual and political reference. problem of experience. There are no overt What I aim to discuss here is to what extent references to empiricism, Mach, or Bogdanov in Bogdanov’s philosophy mediates methodologies the published archive of the Soviet avant-garde. of constructivism and productivism, and how It was more common to praise Lenin, and one can these movements in turn radicalize and shift the easily recall Dziga Vertov’s “Three Songs About philosophical and political claims of Bogdanov Lenin” or Alexander Rodchenko’s “Worker’s Club,” and the Proletkult. with a portrait of the leader of the proletariat on a wall. Nonetheless, Empirio-Marxism was a very Bogdanov’s Ontology of Organization and popular local tradition and Bogdanov had a the Art of World-Building greater intellectual authority in the art Bogdanov’s conception of organization rests on a community due to his establishment of basic empiricist assumption that experience of Proletkult. There are no official portraits of the outside world is given to us in the Bogdanov, but his philosophy in fact populates conjunctions of an object’s attributes. The every single art-related book. This has been decomposition of these attributes gives acknowledged only in Soviet publications, where elementary sensations of space, time, color, avant-gardism is associated exclusively with form, and size. However, the elements of Bogdanov’s ideas and political views.7 experience are sensations only in psychical

Gustav Klutsis, Construction, 1921.đ

02.14.18 / 14:58:44 EST Cover of the journal Veshch/Gegenstand/Objetđ(1922), edited by El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehreburg.đ

02.14.18 / 14:58:44 EST reality, whereas the same elements may belong an essentially vitalist quality.14 This process of to physical bodies as attributes – the extracting, shaping, and composing the elements squareness and redness of a brick are the of experience into life-complexes, Bogdanov sensual, perceptible, physical properties of this identifies with Marxian Verdinglichung object.10 The connection between the psychical (reification).15 and physical realms should be understood as a đđđđđđđđđđThis means that the object, or rather the complex unity that unfolds as an exchange of organization of objects, is a historically produced sensations and properties within an environment 04/09 of relations. The ready-made object is that is itself neutral to this subject-object the work in progress of laboring humanity: distinction. In other words, there is no sovereignty of a knowing subject who reflects on The practice of this great social organism is objects outside it, because there is no outside. nothing other than world-building … This This subject is already an object, a complex world, which has been constructed and product of exchanges between physical and continues to be under construction … is the psychical elements. Ontologically, this exchange most grandiose and perfected that we produces a series of “life-complexes” (forms of know … Such is our picture of the world: an life, including social forms); and unbroken series of forms of organization of epistemologically, it constitutes a monist point elements – of forms that develop in of view on the otherwise heterogeneous self- struggle and interaction without any organizing flow of psychical and physical beginning in the past, without any end in concatenations: “The universe presents itself to the future.16 us as an endless flow of organising activity. The ether of electrical and light waves was probably Any kind of social practice is the labor of that primeval universal environment from which organization, or the labor of world-building. That matter with its forces – and later on also life – is why Bogdanov’s theory of art corresponds to crystallised.”11 the same organizational ontology: đđđđđđđđđđBogdanov’s empiriomonism tends to reformulate the biological and the social in terms Artistic creativity, combined and often of the organizational logic of psychophysical alloyed with cognition, as may be seen in complexes. Taken as isolated entities, psychic many pieces of belles-lettres, poetry and and physical complexes exist in a pure state of painting, organizes understanding, feelings spontaneity, or the lowest level of organization. and emotions by its own methods. In art the This spontaneity preserves higher organizational organization of ideas and the organization forms only in analysis and in the practical of things are inseparable. For instance, an composition of the elements into new series. A architectural construction, a statue, or a rock is a spontaneously formed physical painting as they are, might be regarded as combination of minerals, and fear is a of “dead” elements – of stone, spontaneously formed psychical combination of metal, canvases and paint; but the lively stimuli and reaction. But the fear of wild animals meanings of pieces of art belong to the that leads to the construction of a house made complexes of images and emotions to out of rock is a product of a higher which they give life in a human psyche.17 psychophysical organization. đđđđđđđđđđAs we can see, the psychophysical Art is one of the many forces within the logic of complexes are constructed first in labor activity. organization. However, only collectivized In the wake of the rise of labor technics, the sum proletarian labor produces the art of total of the elements grows, but their usage depends organization. The proletariat brings elements of on “technical and cognitive goals.”12 The laboring the “lowest” life in nature and “unconscious” life subject appeals either to actions or to the in society to the noncontradictory and rational attributes of objects out of necessity. Splitting form of psychophysical unity. Bourgeois culture and crushing, for example, led to the invention of is based on competition and exploitation, and as the concept of the atom.13 Labor’s use of the a result, on the production of conflicting partial elements of experience – be it a rock in e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 — b y 2 0 1 đ M i C h d s k T h e S t o f l i c k U n v r s : A x a d B g - G systems. To make an exit from partial irrational construction, or ore in industry, or oil in painting, systems, such as , would mean to or the concept of the atom in philosophy – construct a new totality; some names for this corresponds to use value, on the grounds that it new totality are “universal organization,” emerges from a social need to distinguish and “classless society,” and “proletarian culture.” The differentiate experience in order to develop highest degree of organization is a homogeneous production – domestic, industrial, scientific, or wholeness based on unified industrial labor, artistic. In Bogdanov, use value appears as an solidarity, comradeship, and collectivization.18 ontological principle of usefulness, and value as

02.14.18 / 14:58:44 EST World-Building Abolishes Art: capitalism, art becomes instead an Construction, Production, and Organization individualistic, self-organizing activity. Easel in the Avant-Garde painting is one significant example of the It is not hard to see how Bogdanov’s world- contemplative representational function of art in building is close to the productivist figures of the bourgeois society. Arvatov seeks the new forms “life-builder” and “engineer-constructor.” Art is a of a “proletarian ” in which the labor of shaping and composing an object productive capacity of art to shape the according to the usefulness of a color and a 05/09 environment can be restored.23 The figure of the form, writes Osip Brik.19 In the manifesto engineer-constructor expresses the unity of “Constructivism,” Alexei Gan provides a three- invention and construction in creating a new page-long quotation from Bogdanov to support “form of being,” or communism.24 The an argument about the importance of construction of the new elements of experience organization and production. Gan claims that – a.k.a., the labor of organization – gives art a material production replaces representational place in production. In other words, it makes art art. This new mode of production saves the “solid productive. material and formal foundations of art, such as đđđđđđđđđđIf constructivism and productivism are line, flatness, volume, and action,” along with the oriented towards the production of new forms of purposeful activity of “materialistically being and communist world-building, the task of grounded” artistic labor. Constructivism is art, according to Bogdanov, is less radical and Bogdanov’s organizational science, which seeks much more modest. Art is the education of the a form of “organization and cementation for the senses. It organizes feelings and emotions into mass labor processes, mass actions in the whole images and forms. The “unity of form and of social production.”20 This may lead to the content,” “harmony,” and “creativity” are conclusion that the three famous disciplines of epithets that Bogdanov uses to discuss constructivism – construction, facture (faktura), proletarian art.25 Despite the contradiction and tectonics – fully correspond to the principles between the enormous ambitions of the artistic of organization. It has even been argued that avant-garde and the modest role of art in tectonics is a cipher for tektology.21 Bogdanov’s Bogdanov’s system, the theorists of philosophy seems to be foundational, and one constructivism and productivism tried to can read the theory of constructivism back into reinterpret Bogdanov’s organization of the empiriomonism and tektology: faktura is the senses for their own benefit. Nikolai Tarabukin process of extracting and manufacturing the understands the organization of emotions in elements of nature, while construction is the empiricist terms, as the orientation of a subject aggregation of the complexes of elements into a in its natural and social environment. An artist purposeful organizational plan – tectonics. The does not copy but organizes nature on the organizational point of view appeals to Nikolai canvas, building a landscape according to Chuzhak as a grandiose cosmogony of all- compositional laws. Painting establishes a embracing life-building: particular “point of view” for the perceiving viewer. “The artist is the organizer of our visual People who look at art from the point of orientation,” concludes Tarabukin.26 Chuzhak view of communist monism inevitably come also accepts the emotional concept of art: “Art is to the conclusion that art is only a an original, mainly emotional (only mainly and it quantitatively individual, temporary, and only differs from science in this advantage) predominantly emotional method of life- dialectical approach to life-building.”27 The building, and, as such, cannot remain content of the constructivist “dialectical isolated, or what is more, self-sustaining modelling” consists of “the tangible thing” and compared with other approaches to life- “the idea, the thing in its model.”28 building.22 đđđđđđđđđđIn an early Proletkultist article entitled “Proletarian Poetry” (1922), Andrei Platonov A similar Bogdanovian detour into the various states that proletarian art has to begin with the currents of art practice, albeit more grandiose organization of “immaterial things” – images and still, was that of the Proletkultist Boris Arvatov. e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 — b y 2 0 1 đ M i C h d s k T h e S t o f l i c k U n v r s : A x a d B g - G symbols of things; or simply put, words. He In Art and Production, at once a presentation of distinguishes three elements of a word: idea, research and an energetic manifesto, the history image, and sound. The organization of poetry of art is shown to unfold within the terms of according to the triangular properties of a word Bogdanov’s history of labor. According to this is the process of gathering all wandering feelings narrative, art has always been a part of and senses into one thought. The word- production: for instance, crafts, frescos, and becoming of thought penetrates reality better architecture served the everyday needs of than empty abstractions, because it makes premodern societies. However, under the rule of conscious both sensibility and proletarian

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Arseny Zhilyaev, Return, 2017.đInstallation view.

02.14.18 / 14:58:44 EST experience. From the organization of triangular organizing matter – is, according to Platonov’s words into thoughts, humankind will proceed to vocabulary, a “substance [veshchestvo] of the organization of matter and world-building.29 existence.” đđđđđđđđđđThe triangular words of Platonov recognize đđđđđđđđđđThe Russian word veshchestvo can mean only proletarian experience; they materialize in “matter,” “substance,” “thing,” “materiality,” or words the “troubled” sound of the “gurgling of “stuff.” Robert Chandler, who has translated a acid and alkaline grasses being digested in [the] number of Platonov’s works into English, often stomachs” of the proletariat.30 Triangular words 07/09 renders veshchestvo as “substance,” but also may also prove that a thought is the process of sometimes as “essence,” “thing,” or “object.” The material production through “a certain pressure root of the noun veshchestvo is veshch’, which in the dark warmth.”31 This is the point of view of means “thing.” Remember that Lissitzky titled labor experience, the articulation of what is seen his journal Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet. Maria and what happens from the perspective of a Dmitrovskaia, a Russian researcher of Platonov, laboring body: it speaks as it labors. Triangular notes that the parallel usage of veshchestvo, words are material as much as immaterial, since veshch’, “matter,” and “body” corresponds to the they are embodied in the experience of the archaic meaning in Old Medieval Russian, where laboring proletariat. Platonov writes “not with veshch’ and veshchestvo sometimes were words, imagining and copying real living synonymous and where the understanding of a languages, but rather with pieces of living human body as veshchestvo was common. In language.”32 Similarly, Dziga Vertov writes “kino- archaic Russian, veshchestvo meant to be a thing[s] via filmed frames” and creates “visual material substratum of the world. It indicated thinking.”33 This art of seeing organizes the things in existence and was a synonym of the chaos of impressions into a new “class vision.”34 word “material.” Such Platonov expressions as This does not mean that Vertov and Platonov “metallic veshchestvo” and “fluid veshchestvo” prefer a naturalistic photographic copy of reality. were very common in eighteenth-century Instead, they produce reality, or better yet, the .37 universal point of view of the laboring population đđđđđđđđđđVeshchestvo is a reminder of veshch’; it is an of the earth. elemental unit or an element of a decomposed psychophysical complex. In this sense The Stofflichkeit of the Universe: Platonov veshchestvo is close to the English colloquial and the Thinghood of a Thing word “stuff,” or the German Stoff and The organization of the sensible is already the Stofflichkeit. There is a scene in Platonov’s novel organization of matter, since the sensible is The Foundation Pit where the main character embodied proletarian experience. That is why the Voshchev collects “the objects [veshchi] of nature of psychophysical elements – those unhappiness and obscurity.”38 Thus, veshchestvo unities of experience – occupies Platonov as here appears as a memory of veshch’, as the much as the materiality of words and sounds. In remainder of its exhaustion in the past. It seems his story The Impossible (1921), that this strange praxis of collecting the leaves, he writes: garbage, and destroyed objects of material culture exemplifies the act of recomposing and The Swedish physicist Arrhenius has a recollecting matter. In Bogdanov’s terminology, beautiful, amazing hypothesis concerning Voshchev is organizing life – the “veshchestvo of the origin of life on the earth. It is his guess existence” – into complexes – veshchi. In Nikolai that life is neither a local nor a terrestrial Fedorov’s terminology, he is collecting dead phenomenon. It has been transported to us molecular pieces to resurrect the thinghood of a from other planets through enormous thing, the veshchnost’ veshchi, in the future. In ethereal spaces in the form of the smallest 1931 Platonov writes: and most elementary colonies of organisms … Perhaps atoms, and atoms of atoms – The vulgar worldview [of materialism] electrons – are the same microorganism, anticipates that life is a combination of but only in its limited, initial form.35 biological processes: “a human” properly is

e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 — b y 2 0 1 đ M i C h d s k T h e S t o f l i c k U n v r s : A x a d B g - G some sort of result of the relations and Similar reflections about atoms and electrons interactions of these forces – a human is are repeated by the scientist Popov in Platonov’s relation. This is only half true. The other science fiction story “Ethereal Tract.” Popov’s half is that the human is by itself theory includes an understanding of living and veshchestvo, “materialism” included in bio- dead matter: the center of atoms is filled with combinations. From here, and only from both living and dead electrons, and the dead here – the human as by itself veshchestvo, electrons serve as food for the living ones.36 This and not only as relation – can one draw the living entity – this elemental unit of self- great general conclusion that the door to

02.14.18 / 14:58:44 EST the secret of nature is still open for Maria Chehonadskihđis a philosopher and critic. She humans. If, by contrast, a human is only received PhD in philosophy from the Centre for “relation,” “combination,” etc., those doors Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University (London) in 2017. Chehonadskih works on 39 are closed forever. the problem of Soviet epistemologies across Marxist philosophy, literature and art. She wrote a number of For constructivism and productivism, forms of texts on Soviet philosophy, art theory and post-Soviet being emerge in the process of building and politics, and contributed to Radical Philosophy, South Atlantic Quarterly, Moscow Art Magazine and constructing the new. But for Platonov, the new 08/09 Alfabeta2. Chehonadskih occasionally curates and already exists in the old, in the crumpled and works in collaboration with artists. Her last exhibition poor form of veshchestvo. World-building is the ‘Shadow of a Doubt’ (curated together with Ilya resurrection of existing particles and elements, Budraitskis) was dedicated to the problem of the restoration of a thing, the assembling of conspiracy (Moscow, 2014). Lives and works in wandering senses, thoughts, and relations. The London. lowest entity – veshchestvo – corresponds to the molecular biology of self-organizing matter, but it produces the highest degree of organization: socially organized experience. Communism emerges out of the poverty of the elemental, out of the poor bodies of the proletariat. The laboring proletariat consists of those “who silently made useful veshchestvo” and those who signify not just a of class relations, but also a restoration of the world in the process of communist world-building.40 đđđđđđđđđđVeshchestvo is a building material for the object and subject, the physical and the psychical composition of bodies, relations, and serial complexes of activities. It expresses degrees and logics of organization and structuring on the molecular, biological, and social levels. The constitutive unit of life is an element of experience in Bogdanov’s philosophy, and a veshchestvo of negative organizational spontaneity in Platonov. Taken together, the element of experience and veshchestvo introduce the principal role of the organizing force of being that shapes life-building. The Empirio-Marxist ontology of organization assumes the constructive and constitutive means of an art that not only changes, but also shapes forms of social being. Material culture as the organization of things, relations, and people replaces the concept of art. đđđđđđđđđđ× The author thanks Danny Hayward for his help in editing this article. e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 — b y 2 0 1 đ M i C h d s k T h e S t o f l i c k U n v r s : A x a d B g - G

02.14.18 / 14:58:44 EST đđđđđđ1 đđđđđđ12 and John Roberts and translated đđđđđđ36 Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “From Alexander Bogdanov, by Shushan Avagyan (Pluto Andrei Platonov, “Efirnyi trakt” Faktura to Factography,” October “Empiriomonizm” (1913), in Press, 2017). (Ethereal Tract) (1927), in Works, 30 (Autumn 1984): 94. Russkii pozitivizm: Lesevich, vol. 2 (Moscow: Vremia, 2011), Iushkevich, Bogdanov, eds. S. S. đđđđđđ24 11. đđđđđđ2 Gysev, A. F. Zamaleeva, and A. I. Arvatov, Iskusstvo i Proizvodstvo, Ibid., 109–10. Novikova (: 117–18, 129–30. đđđđđđ37 Nauka, 1995), 213. Maria Dmitrovskaia, “Iazyk i đđđđđđ3 đđđđđđ25 sozertsanie A. Platonova” Yve-Alain Bois, “El Lissitzky: đđđđđđ13 Alexander Bogdanov, Nauka i (Language and intuition in Andrei Radical Reversibility,” Art in Bogdanov, Philosophy of Living rabochii class: Doklad, chitannyi Platonov) (habilitation thesis,

America 76, no. 4 (April 1988): Experience, 209. 09/09 na konferentsii Proletarskikh Peoples’ Friendship University of 161–81. Kul’turno-Prosvetitel’nykh Russia, 1999), 157–59. đđđđđđ14 Obshchestv goroda Moskvy 23 đđđđđđ4 Together with economist fevralia 1918 g. (Science and the đđđđđđ38 , Materialism and Skvortsov-Stepanov, Bogdanov working class: Theses presented Andrei Platonov, The Foundation Empirio-Criticism: Critical wrote two volumes presenting at the Conference of the Pit (1930), trans. R. Chandler, E. Comments on a Reactionary an introduction to political Proletarian Cultural- Chandler, and O. Meerson (New Philosophy (1908), in Collected economy. My interpretation of Enlightenment Societies of York: New York Review Books, Works, trans. J. Fineberg and G. Bogdanov’s understanding of Moscow, February 1918), 72–73. 2009), 5. Hanna, vol. 31, April–December use value derives from this work: 1920 (Moscow: Foreign Alexander Bogdanov and Ivan đđđđđđ26 đđđđđđ39 Languages Publishing House, Stepanov, Kurs Politicheskoi Nikolai Tarabukin, Khudozhnik v Andrei Platonov, Zapisnye 1966), 17–388. Economii (A course on political klube (The artist in a club) Knizhki (The notebooks), ed. economy), 2 vols. (Sankt- (Moscow: VZSPS, 1926), 5–6. Kornienko, 2nd ed. (Moscow: đđđđđđ5 Peterburg: Znanie, 1920). Nasledie, 2006), 79. Alexander Bogdanov, đđđđđđ27 Empiriomonizm: Stat’i po filosofii đđđđđđ15 Chuzhak, “Under the Banner of đđđđđđ40 (Empiriomonism: Articles on Bogdanov, “Empiriomonizm” Life-Building,” 142. Translation Platonov, The Foundation Pit, philosophy) (1905–06) (Moscow: (1913), 211. modified. See the Russian 122. Translation modified. Knizhnyi Klub Knigovek, 2014). original: “Pod znakom đđđđđđ16 zhiznestroeniia (Opyt osoznaniia đđđđđđ6 Bogdanov, Tektology, Book 1, 3. iskusstva dnia),” LEF 1 (1923): Alexander Bogdanov, Tektologiia: Translation modified. Compare 38. Vseobshchaia organizatsionnaia with Bogdanov, Tektologiia, 70. nauka (Tektology: The universal đđđđđđ28 organizational science) đđđđđđ17 Chuzhak, “Under the Banner of (1913–21) (Moscow: Ekonomika, Ibid. Life-Building,” 145. 1989). Only the first part of Tektologiia has been translated đđđđđđ18 đđđđđđ29 into English: Alexander Alexander Bogdanov, O Andrei Platonov, “Proletarskaia Bogdanov, Tektology, Book 1, proletarskoi kul’ture (1904–24) poeziia” (Proletarian poetry) trans. A. Kartashov, V. Kelle, and (On proletarian culture (1922), in Works, vol. 1 (Moscow, P. Bystrov (Hull: Centre for (1904–24)) (Moscow: Kniga, IMLI RAN, 2004), 164–65. Systems Studies Press, 1996). 1925). đđđđđđ30 đđđđđđ7 đđđđđđ19 Andrei Platonov, “Soul” (1936), in See, for example, a militant Osip Brik, “V poriadke dnia” (The Soul and Other Stories, trans. R. Leninist critique of Bogdanovist order of priority), in Iskusstvo v Chandler et al. (London: Vintage, productivism in Anatolii Il’ich proizvodstve (Moscow: 2013), 50. Mazaev, Kontseptsiia Khudozhestvenno-Proizvodstve proizvodstvennogo iskusstva 20- nnyi Sovet Otdela IZO đđđđđđ31 kh godov (The conception of Narkomprossa, 1921), 8. Andrei Platonov, Chevengur 1920s production art) (Moscow: (1926–28), trans. A. Olcott Nauka, 1975). đđđđđđ20 (Michigan: Ann Arbor, 1978), 236. I quote from the Russian đđđđđđ8 publication of the work: Alexei đđđđđđ32 See the biography of Platonov by Gan, “Konstruktivizm” Andrei Platonov, “Fabrika Oleg Lasunskii, Zhitel’ rodnogo (Constructivism) (1922), in literatury” (Factory of literature) goroda (The citizen of a Formal’nyi metod: Antologiia (1926), in Works, vol. 8 (Moscow: hometown)(Voronezh: Tsentr russkogo modernizma, ed. S. Vremia, 2011), 51. There is also dukhovnogo vozrozhdeniia Oushakine, vol. 1, Systems an English translation, but it was Chernozhemnogo kraia, 2007). (Moscow: Kabinetnyi uchenyi, based on the heavily corrected 2016), 894. See also the English Soviet edition, and some terms đđđđđđ9 translation: Alexei Gan, are translated incorrectly: See, for example, the Constructivism, trans. C. Lodder Andrei Platonov, “Factory of biographical sketch of Arvatov in (Chicago: Tenov Books, 2014). Literature” (1926), trans. A. Christina Kiaer, Imagine No Kalashyan, in Molecular Red Possessions: The Socialist đđđđđđ21 Reader, ed. McKenzie Wark Objects of Russian Kristin Romberg, “Alexei Gan: (London: Verso, 2015), 37–45. Constructivism (Cambridge, MA: vvedenie v tektoniky” (Alexei MIT Press, 2005), 27. On the Gan: Introduction to tectonics), đđđđđđ33 relationship between Proletkult in Formal’nyi metod, ed. S. Dziga Vertov, “Kino-glaz 11-yi” and the artistic avant-garde, see Oushakine, vol. 1, 851–52. (Kino-Eye: The 11th) (1928), in Maria Zalambani, L’Arte Nella Formal’nyi metod, ed. S. Produzione: Avanguardia e đđđđđđ22 Oushakine, vol. 2, Materials, rivoluzione nella Russia sovietica Nikolai Chuzhak, “Under the 116. degli anni ’20 (Ravenna: Pleiadi, Banner of Life-Building (An

Longo Editore, 1998). Attempt to Understand the Art of e - f l u x j o r n a # 8 — b y 2 0 1 đ M i C h d s k T h e S t o f l i c k U n v r s : A x a d B g - G đđđđđđ34 Today)” (1923), trans. C. Lodder, Dziga Vertov, “Kino-Eye” (1922), đđđđđđ10 Art in Translation 1, no. 1 (2009): in The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Bogdanov, Empiriomonizm 121. trans. K. O’Brien (Berkeley: (1905–06), 10–13. University of California Press, đđđđđđ23 1984), 66. đđđđđđ11 I refer to the Russian publication Alexander Bogdanov, The of Art and Production: Boris đđđđđđ35 Philosophy of Living Experience: Arvatov, Iskusstvo i Proizvodstvo Andrei Platonov, Popular Outlines (1912), trans. D. (Art and Production) (Moscow: “Nevozmozhnoe” (The G. Rowley (Boston: Brill, 2016), Proletkult, 1926), 97. An English Impossible) (1921), in Works, vol. 232. version of the book has been 1 (Moscow: Vremia, 2011), 291. recently edited by Alexei Penzin

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