M33 Lev Nussberg
A Kinetic Manifesto (1966)
Towards the end of the 1950s, the Soviet Union was struggling to compete globally in some areas of science and industrial design. The destructive political forces that had led to the condemning of intellectuals as bourgeois dilettantes in the 1920s had resulted in a lamentable lack of understanding of good design, leading to shoddy, poorly conceived products. The authorities agreed to the establishing of a series of technical research institutes, which began, tentatively, to re-evaluate the work of earlier designers, artists and scientists working in the hitherto unsupported fields of nuclear physics, cybernetics and industrial design. Nonconformist artists discovered they could work behind the cloak of these disciplines and their activities would be tolerated.
The Kineticist Group (Dvizheniye) was an association of just this type of artist. Led by the charismatic Lev Nussberg (b. 1937), they promoted their purely aesthetic experiments with light, colour, movement and rhythm as investigations into product and environmental design. Staging exhibitions in which their playful mobiles and kinetic constructions were presented as futuristic plans for products, towns and cities, they attempted to pick up the thread of the Russian Constructivists, whose work had been sabotaged by Stalin’s ideological guardians in the 1920s. They later expanded the group’s remit to include happenings, performances and improvisations.
Nussberg wrote the group’s manifesto (originally titled ‘Manifest russkikh kinetov’) in 1966 and distributed it privately. In it he called on artists to embrace science and technology, for only through combining art and science could either practice truly flourish.
KINETICISTS OF THE PLANET EARTH!
TODAY’S WORLD: ‘I demand my own forms and symbols!’ in the 20th century TECHNOLOGY has united ART with SCIENCE. Man TODAY: ‘To everyone, absolute freedom of imagination!’ IMAGINATION says: ‘Give me a new instrument – and I will remake the world.’ From the TREE OF SCIENCE springs many new branches, from the TREE OF ART-FORM 20th-century man. KINETICISM – FRUIT of many branches.
NOT TO BE GRASPED ALONE. Even the strong, if alone are weak. PRIEST OF KINETICISM – THE KINETICIST. THE KINETICIST – this is one and many. He is – both personal and collective. THE WORLD SAYS: ‘MANKIND, if you are not for yourself then who is for you? But if you are only for yourself – what are you worth?’ TODAY’S WORLD: ‘Why is it people are not yet united? Surely you have ART …’ TODAY – musicians, physicists, actors … architects, psychologists, engineers, sociologists … and poets – TOMORROW KINETICISTS. A new quality in art is being born through the COLLECTIVE. Together we make this art, which alone is impossible to do.
‘ENGINEER, what have you done for BEAUTY?’ ‘ARTIST, how are you perfecting the INSTRUMENT of art?’ ‘WORLD, to you we offer an art of SOUL, MIND and BODY.’
KINETICISM – art that reveals the secrets of life and transformation. Nearer and nearer is the era of REAL ART, the time when all mankind will understand through art. The era of KINETICISM is coming. KINETICISTS of the planet EARTH, in our hands is the greatest spiritual task. KINETICISM – not only is this a new form of art, not only even a new aspect of art, but it is a new relation to the world, to mankind, that has been evolving over thousands of years. Outside the man and without man there is no art. We – are pioneers. We unite the WORLD to KINETICISM! TODAY’S man is torn apart, sick. ‘Man, are you not tired of destruction?’ TODAY’S child – is already the cosmic generation. The stars have come nearer. Then let ART draw people together through the breath of the stars!
‘PEOPLE, LET US CREATE A WORLD
INSTITUTE OF KINETICISM!’
Let kineticism bring life close to the world of dreams and imagination. We will push apart the horizons – let TOMORROW see it. We will master a new language of the soul.
TODAY WE HAVE THE SEED – TOMORROW WE WILL MAKE THE TREE BLOSSOM!! TODAY WE PROPOSE THE PROJECT: TO CREATE A WORLD INSTITUTE OF KINETICISM!
Moscow 1966. Lev Nussberg.
Members of Dvizheniye: Nussberg, Infante, Kusnetsov, Buturlin, Koleichuk, Zanevskaya, Glinchikov, Orlova, Muravieva, Bitt, Dubovskaya, Stepanov.