notes
assemble, imagine, discuss
1 Viktor Koretsky,
Tovarishch plakat: Opyt, razmyshleniia [Comrade Poster: Experience, Thoughts] (Moscow: Plakat, 1981), 72.
2 Lynne Conner, “In and Out of the Dark: A Theory About Audience Behavior from Sophocles to Spoken Word,” in
Engaging the Audience: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life, ed. Steven J. Tepper and Bill Ivey (New York: Routledge, 2008), 107-8.
intrusive, intransigent, invisible
1 LA. Heikel,
Ignatii Diaconi Vita Tarasii Archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennicae, 1891), 414-15, as trans. in Leslie Brubaker,
Vision and Meaning in Ninth-Century Byzantium (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 260-61.
2 Jeffrey T. Schnapp, “Revolutionary Tides,” in
Revolutionary Tides: The Art of the Political Poster 1914-1989 (Milan: Skira, 2005), 8.
3 El Lissitzky, “Unser Buch,” in Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, ed.,
El Lissitzky (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1967), 356.
4 Cf. Lenin cited in Kendall Bates,
Technology and Society Under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917-1941 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 122.
5 Nikolai Tarabukin wrote in 1925 that early posters were perfect vehicles for illustrating struggle since they, originating in the woodcut medium, descended from a print process based on “fighting the resistance of the material.” See Nikolai Tarabukin, “The Art of The Day,” trans. Rosamund Bartlett and Maria Gough,
October 102 (Summer 2000): 62.
6 Pavel Florensky quoted in
Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art, ed. Nicoletta Misler; trans. Wendy Salmond (London: Reaktion, 2002), 254.
7 Pravda (6 October 1918); quoted in Stephen White,
The Bolshevik Poster (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), 112.
8 “The Poster has no self-contained elements. The Poster is condensed energy, a charge shot into the midst of the masses that aims to bring about through its explosion the effect for which the shot had aimed”; quoted in Waschik and Baburina, 171-72. For full citation see page 37.
9 Leon Trotsky, speech of 18 April 1920 to the Committee for the Fight Against Desertion on the Railroads, as published in Leon Trotsky,
Khoziaistvennoe Stroitelstvo Sovetskoi Respubliki (Moscow, 1927), 374-76; quoted in William Chamberlin,
The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 2:294.
10 Plakat i khudozhestvennaia reproduktsiia I (1934), 4; quoted in Bonnell, 325, n. 122. For full citation see page 37.
11 Boris Groys,
The Communist Postscript, trans. Thomas H. Ford (New York: Verso, 2010), 71.
12 Brigida khudozhnikov, 1-3; quoted in Bonnell, 290. For full citation see page 37.
13 On this subject, see Berit Sahlström,
Political Posters in Ethiopia and Mozambique (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1990).
14 Pavel Florensky,
Iconostasis, trans. Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev (Crestwood, NY, 1996), 33.
15 LA. Heikel,
Ignati Diaconi, 415.
international, intimate, intense
1 Anatoly Lunacharsky, “0 massovykh prazdnestvakh,”
Vestnik teatra no. 62 (27 April 2-May 1920): 4-5. Lunacharsky’s phrasing directly echoes that of Rousseau’s program for public celebrations in his
Letter to M. D‘Alembert: “Plant a stake crowned with flowers in the middle of a square; gather the people together there, and you will have a festival. Do better yet; let the spectators become a spectacle for themselves; make them actors themselves; do it so that each sees and loves himself in the others so that all will be better united”; Rousseau, 125-26 (translation adjusted). Part of this excerpt from Rousseau was cited in a list of quotations from “Prophets of Socialist Theatre” in the same issue of
Vestnik teatra as Lunacharsky’s essay (“Provozvestniki sotsialisticheskogo teatra,”
Vestnik teatra no. 62 [27 April-2 May 1920]: 3).
2 Viktor Shklovsky,
Gamburgskii schet: Stat’i, vospominaniia, esse, 1914-1933 (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990), 86.
3 N.N. Evreinov,
Demon teatral’nosti (Moscow, St. Petersburg: Letnii sad, 2002), 295.
5 N. Punin, “O pamiatnikakh,”
Iskusstvo kommuny (30 March 1919): 2-3.
6 N. Punin,
O Tatline, ed. I.N. Punina and V.I. Rakitin (Moscow: Literaturno-khudozhestvennoe agentstvo “RA,” 1994), 19; cf.
Tatlin, ed. Larisa Alekseevna Zhadova (New York: Rizzoli, 1984), 344-45.
7 N. Punin, “Proekt pamiatnika,”
Krasnaia gazeta (7 November 1919): 3.
8 V. Shklovsky, “The Monument to the Third International (The Most Recent Work by Tatlin),” in Zhadova, 343; see also Viktor Shklovsky,
Knight’s Move, trans. Richard Sheldon (Normal and London: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005), 70.
9 Punin,
O Tatline, 20. See also “The terrible states of detachment from space and time, given to man only for short instants of creativity, have grown for Russia into five years and have been called revolution”; Adr. Piotrovsky, “Vsia vlast’ teatru,”
Zhizn’ iskusstva no. 44 (5 November 1922): 7.
10 Punin,
O Tatline, 19, 20.
11 Punin, “Proekt pamiatnika.”
12 Ehrenburg,
A vse-taki ona vertitsia (Berlin: Gelikon, 1922), 19.
14 Peter Eisenman,
Idea as Model: 22 Architects 1976/1980 (New York: Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and Rizzoli International Publications, 1981), 10.
15 A vse-taki ona vertitsia, 25-26.
16 Punin quoted in Zhadova, 201.
17 Mikhail Prishvin, “Radio,”
Krasnaia nov’ 11 (1926): 207.
18 Andrei Platonov,
Happy Moscow, trans. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler with Angela Livingstone, Nadya Bourova, and Eric Naiman, introduction by Eric Naiman (London: Harvill, 2001), 92.
19 Andrei Platonov,
Zapisnye knizhki: Materialy k biografii (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 112.
20 Max Egly, “Lettre de Sibérie,”
Image et son, April/May 1963, 36.
21 A. Medvedkin, “294 dnia na kolesakh,”
Iz istorii kino, vol. 10 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977), 32.
22 Richard Roud, “SLON: Marker and Medvedkin,”
Sight and Sound, 42.2 (Spring 1973): 82-83.
23 Chris Marker quoted in
Cinéaste (22 September 2008).
24 Medvedkin, “294 dnia,” 32; 24. Cristina Vatulescu has identified Medvedkin as one of the figures who turned the OGPU’s (Soviet secret police) prosecutorial methods into an artistic method she calls “police aesthetics”; Cristina Laura Vatulescu,
Police Aesthetics: Literature, Film, and the Secret Police in
Soviet Times (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 92-99.
25 M. Karaseva, ed., “Mozhet byt’, my rano zagnali v tupik nash poezd? Perepiska Aleksandra Medvedkina s Krisom Markerom,”
Kinovedcheskie zapiski 49 (2000): 43.
26 See Sheila Fitzpatrick,
Tear off the Masks: Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
27 R. lurenev..
A Medvedkin-satirik (Moscow: Biuro propaganda sovetskogo kinoiskusstva, 1981), 48.
33 Raymond Bellour, “The Pensive Spectator,”
Wide Angle 9.1 (1987): 6-10; Laura Mulvey, “The Pensive Spectator,” Death
24X a Second (London: Reaktion, 2006), 181-96; Jacques Ranciere, “The Pensive Image,” in
The Emancipated Spectator, 107-130.
34 Elena Ustiugova, “Interv‘iu A.N. Sokurova,”
Aleksandr Sokurov na filosofskom fakul’tete (St. Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskoe filosofskoe obshchestvo, 2001), 29. Sokurov: “The film image must be created according to the canons of painting because there are no others”; “Plane Songs: Lauren Sedofsky Talks with Alexander Sokurov,”
Artforum 40.3 (November 2001): 124.
35 Aleksandr Sokurov, “Ob izobrazitel‘nom reshenii fil’ma,”
Sokurov: Chast‘rechi, ed. Liubov’ Arkus (St. Petersburg: Seans, 2006), 509.
36 Jacques Ranciere, “Le cinema comme la peinture?”
Cahiers du cinéma no. 531 (January 1999): 32.
unseen, unknown, unstoppable?
1 For a recent, popular, and provocative take on such phenomena, see Jaron Lanier’s discussion of the “ideology of violation” that dominates the online world in
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (New York: Knopf, 2010).
2 The terms “communist” and “communism” will be used without further definition, though in general, they refer to the lifestyles of the postwar Soviet Union. For a compelling articulation of this orientation toward propriety and self disciphne, see the Soviet Marxist critic Mikhail Lifshits’ essays collected in
Pochemu la ne Modernist? [Why Am I Not a Modernist?] (Moscow: Iskusstvo XXI veka, 2009).
3 Roger Caillois,
Man, Play and Games, trans. Meyer Barash (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 158-59.
4 See the discussion of
“regimes d‘imagéité” in Jacques Rancière,
The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London: Continuum, 2004).
5 Bryan Ferry, as quoted in German: “Die Art und Weise, wie sich die Nazis inszeniert und präsentiert haben, meine Herren! Ich spreche von den Filmen von Leni Riefenstahl und den Gebauden von Albert Speer und den Massenaufmarschen und den Flaggen—einfach fantastisch. Wirklich schön.”
Welt am Sonntag (3 March 2007).
6 Roberto Bolaño,
Nazi Literature in the Americas, trans. Chris Andrews (New York: New Directions, 2008), 114.
7 “We are deeply sorry that this happened, and we are in the process of pulling all of these T-shirts from our stores,” said Wal-Mart spokesperson David Tovar. He continued, “Respect for the individual is a core value of our company and we would never have placed this T-shirt on our shelves had we known the origin and significance of this emblem,”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15702868/ns/business-us_business/.
8 The post-Soviet transition to Sex/Death is treated in depth in Eliot Borenstein’s
Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2008).
9 Alain Badiou,
The Century, trans. Alberto Toscano (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007), 159.
10 Jacques Ranciere discusses “the project for an art released from images” and its enactment through an “art which abolishes the distance of the image so as to identify its procedures with the forms of a whole life in action, no longer separating art from work or politics”;
The Future of the Image, trans. Gregory Elliott (London and New York: Verso, 2007), 19.
11 Viktor Koretsky,
Tovarishch plakat: Opyt, razmyshleniia (Moscow: Plakat, 1981), 64.
13 Koretsky expected the display and viewing of photoposters to be transformed in the future. Regarding technological enhancements to the poster-viewing process, poster art will, as in cinematography, “turn to such means to intensify its artistic impact.” Koretsky,
Tovarishch plakat, 66.
15 See the artist’s discussion of these predecessors’ poster designs in Koretsky,
Tovarishch plakat, 8-25.
rewind, fast forward, play
1 Steve Biko,
I Write What I Like: Selected Writings, ed. Aelred Stubbs (Oxford: Heinemann, 1987), 42.
2 The Natives’ Land Act of 1913, the foundation of racial segregation in South Africa, decreed that only certain areas (less than 10 percent of the country) could be owned by Africans.
3 Ladysmith Black Mambazo popularized this musical style through collaboration with Paul Simon on his 1986 album
Graceland. 4 Anne-Marie Gray, “Liberation Songs Sung by Black South Africans During the Twentieth Century,”
International Journal of Music Education, 1999, 30–35.
5 Established in 1923, the African National Congress (ANC) became South Africa’s dominant liberation movement.
6 Hendrik Verwoerd, prime minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966, led the move to establish the Republic of South Africa in 1960. During his tenure as prime minister, anti-apartheid movements such as the ANC and Pan Africanist Congress were banned.
7 The Pass Law Act of 1952 required black people to carry “passbooks” when outside designated areas. Failure to produce this document resulted in arrest.
8 Albert Luthuli, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was president of the ANC from 1952 until his death in 1967.
9 Under the Group Areas Act of 1950, residents were forcibly removed from their homes in the Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown to make way for whites.
10 Jabulani C. Buthelezi,
Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Nelson Mandela: An Ecological Study (Trafford, Canada, 2002), 231. Excerpted from Nelson Mandela’s statement at the opening of his defense at the Rivonia Trial, 20 April 1964.
11 E.S. Reddy, “Vuyisile Mini: Worker, Poet and Martyr for Freedom,” in
Notes and Documents (November 1974), 31–74. Ben Turok, a fellow prisoner, had this to say: “Heard the door of their cell being opened. Murmuring voices reached my straining ears, and then the three martyrs broke into a final poignant melody which seemed to fill the whole prison with sound and then gradually faded away into the distant depths of the condemned section.”
12 Alton B. Pollard III, “Rhythms of Resistance,” in Nelson, 99.
13 See Liz Gunner, “Jacob Zuma, the Social Body and the Unruly Power of Song,”
African Affairs 108.430 (January 2009): 27-48. Gunner writes, “It is not often that a politician or public figure is so closely associated with a song that it becomes almost a part of his/her skin. Yet that has been the case with the South African politician, Jacob Zuma, now president of the African National Congress, and the song, ‘Umshini Wami’ (‘My Machine Gun’).”
14 On the AK-47 and its inventor, Mikhail Kalashnikov, see C.J. Chivers,
The Gun (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010). As Marek Kohn writes, “If the Kalashnikov had not been unique, the Soviet Union would rule the world. If its cars, its televisions, its fridges and its furniture had been as fit for purpose as its assault rifles, and as abundant, the USSR could have fulfilled its boasts about burying the West.”
Independent, 5 November 2010.