#thekidswantcommunism

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Being Together Precedes Being — Philadelphia book launch at Slought

Tuesday, November 5, 2019, 6 - 8 pm

Image: Noa Yafe, Red Star, 2016-17. Photo by Gal Deren.

Slought is pleased to announce The Kids Want Communism, a public conversation exploring the legacies and meaning of communism today. The event will feature writers and scholars including Marissa Brostoff, Kristen Ghodsee, Malcolm Harris, and Joshua Simon, and marks the publication of the book  Being Together Precedes Being: A Textbook for The Kids Want Communism  (Archive Books), copies of which will be available courtesy of Ulises, and is presented in partnership with Philly Socialists. Specters are haunting the globe—the specters of anticommunism. From the European Union and its erosion to the disastrous "war on terror" and the destruction of the welfare state; from Wahhabism to neoliberalism; from debt economy to privatization; from game theory and disruptive innovation to cybernetics, and the surveillance of entertainment devices - all these anticommunisms are fighting one another, and collectively haunting us. What began with the implosion of real existing socialism almost thirty years ago comes full circle with the current collapse of the neoliberal arrangements that were then constituted. The discussion will consider communist legacies and knowledge inside and outside of real-existing socialism, to address some urgent questions facing us today: automation and reproductive labor, human capital and algorithmic management, environmental capitalist reform and planning for zero growth. From the Cold War to Global Warming, from the Soviet Block to Blockchain technology, from the Space Race to Space X, the word communism stands again as the radical opposition for exploitation and inequality. Being Together Precedes Being offers itself as a text book for The Kids Want Communism project, which was initiated towards the 99th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 as a series of exhibitions, symposiums and conferences, screening programs, publications and a summer camp around the world. In this textbook, communism does not merely describe an "us versus them" relation, but also offers that we are becoming the future. This trajectory of communism runs parallel to us at every single moment and its guiding principle is that being together precedes being. This event is free and open to the public. 

For more information, please visit here.

FB event available here. 

[gewohnheitstier]

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Ivonne Dippmann (’11) “for we bend and break time” wallwork / photo collage 300 x 700cm Hamburg 2018 with objects by Jan Thomsen (Thoja) & a limited edition of hats by FriedrichDippmann (#thekidswantcommunism) as part of the project LIEBESLIED Chemnitz - Tel Aviv 11.10.2018 - 11.11.2018 as part of the group show “prozess” at


xpon-art Repsoldst.45 20097 Hamburg

www.xpon-art.de www.ivonnedippmann.eu

[berxwedan161]

THE KIDS WANT COMMUNISM!

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Amazing propaganda images from the 1960s show how the Soviet Union thought the world would look in 2017

“Amazing images from the height of communism showing how a futuristic and all-conquering Soviet Union might have looked in 2017 have emerged in Moscow. The fantastical prediction of an idealized communist paradise - with the West defeated - was made almost half a century ago and envisaged Russia as it marked the centenary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. In this brave new world, there are under-ice cities in the USSR's polar regions where the season was 'eternal spring' with their own tropical sea and beach. Heat is obtained from 'the bowels of the earth' by 'underground boat 'moles' made from extremely heat-resistant steel' tapping into sources of perpetual energy. And Soviet apparatchiks tamper with nature to reverse two of Siberia's mighty rivers - the Yenisei and Ob (the fifth and seventh longest in the world) - to flow into the Caspian Sea, instead of the Arctic Ocean, to feed states of the union. The slide show was intended as a propaganda filled comic strip for Soviet children in 1960 allowing a glimpse the exciting future of their country, which - in fact- was to collapse in ruins in 1991 after nations such Ukraine voted for independence.” 

Read more here. 

Some images from the story below:

The front cover of the propaganda comic strip depicts a futuristic world of cities in the sky, high speed trains and space shuttles venturing into outer space. The western capitalists have been defeated but attempt a feeble fight back in the story.

The cartoon story predicted that the Soviet Union would be at the forefront of technology with heat obtained from 'the bowels of the earth.' The roots of the Union came in 1917 when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government.

The picture in the backdrop shows a towering skyscraper, aircraft dotted across the sky and a high speed train traveling on a glistening white bridge. The portrait painted in the cartoon was far removed from reality and just four years after the piece was released the country encountered a period of economic stagnation from which it would never recover.

Children of 2017 look out to a projection of an immaculate city with blanket white buildings and roads.  'The Era of Stagnation' is deemed to have started in 1964 under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev and lasted until 1985 when Konstantin Chernenko was in office. Experts say the state over budgeted on its military which lead to a prolonged period of economic decline.  

The image shows how 'bridges stretched over bottomless gorges' connect the vast Soviet Union together. It suggests that even mountains, which were blown away by 'precisely-aimed nuclear explosions,' cannot stop the rise of communism nor stunt the growth of the country.

'The sea that was just recently drying up now accepts new deep rivers,' reads the script. The Soviet Union, which was then presided over by President Nikita Khrushchev, shows it can play god in 2017 managing to beat nature by reversing two of Siberia's mighty rivers - the Yenisei and Ob (the fifth and seventh longest in the world) - to flow into the Caspian Sea instead of the Arctic Ocean.

This map shows the tumultuous route the waters would have taken to reach the Caspian Sea which would have served the Soviet states of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. This underlined in no uncertain context the strength the Union would have upon its centenary year.

Propagandists also claimed that the socialists state would build a dam across the Bering Strait linking Russia and an Alaska 'liberated' from capitalism. The dam can also accommdate 'nuclear powered trains' on double decker railway lines. 'See nuclear powered trains rushing across it. The dam blocked a cold current from the Arctic Ocean, so improving the climate of the Far East' the caption reads.

Elsewhere, defeated Western 'imperialists' have been banished to a remote island in the southern Pacific and are trying desperately to claw back land by building bombs with the manpower they have left.

Not content with conquering the world the communists were able to reach the depths of space to expand the Soviet Union's burgeoning territory.  The state consisted of now 15 separate countries including European nations such as Estonia, Moldova and Latvia. The union also encompassed Central Asian powerhouses Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

'Photonic rockets - interstellar ships - swept across space at near the speed of light, heading for the nearest, yet so distant planetary system of Alpha Centauri,' the script reads as a scientist gives a class to attentive students.

After an introduction to the impending achievements of the Union the story focuses on a boy called Igor who was awoken by another technological advancement of the regime. The boy's alarm clock sends out a hand to pinch its owner's nose to wake them.

See the rest of the story here. 

[tkwc]

Wir feiern 100 Jahre russische Revolution: Lesung und Musik

Hosted by Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien and Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

Veranstaltung: Dienstag, 07. November 2017, ab 19 Uhr

Im Rahmen der Ausstellung "The Kids Want Communism", die noch bis zum 12.11. zu sehen sein wird: Jacob Blumenfeld wird aus "Kommunismus für Kinder" von Bini Adamczak vorlesen und Diego Castro sorgt für Musik, denn am 07.11.2017 jährt sich die Russische Revolution zu ihrem 100sten Geburtstag. Gewiss ein Anlass! „Kommunismus für Kinder“ enthält zahlreiche Illustrationen, die Adamczaks Geschichte tragen und ihr helfen ihre Ideen zu vermitteln. Im Rahmen der Ausstellung „The Kids Want Communism“ zeigt Adamzcak einige der Illustrationen aus ihrem Buch. Diesen stellt sie jeweils Kommentare von Webseiten des konservativen und Alt-Right-Milieus gegenüber, wie etwa The National Review und Breitbart. Darin ereifern sich Autorinnen und Leserinnen gleichermaßen über die „Propaganda“, die Adamzcak und MIT Press fabriziert hätten. Stellenweise gipfeln die Kommentare gar in Aufforderung, das Buch solle „verbrannt“ werden.

Jacob Blumenfeld ist Übersetzer, Auto und Philosoph, der in Berlin lebt.

Diego Castro ist neben seiner Tätigkeit als bildender Künstler auch als Musiker bekannt, unter anderem als Frontmann der bekannten Kreuzberger Garagenrocker "Black Heino". Im Rahmen der Ausstellung komponierte er für sein "Monument für den Kunstarbeiter" Songs über das Berufsleben in der Kunstszene aus marxistischer Sicht, die er in einem ersten Set vortragen wird. In einem zweiten kurzen Set gibt er noch ein paar weitere Hits zum Thema zum besten, unter anderem umgedichtete Coverversionen von den Sex Pistols, die er speziell für den Abend eingeübt hat. Castro singt über Prekariat, Selbstausbeutung und die Transformationen der Arbeitswelt mit Witz und Humor und lässt dabei doch den gebührlichen Ernst walten.

See the FB event here.

And more information here. 

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The Kids Want Communism in Berlin - Vernissage

Photographs from 8th Sept 17 Vernissage at Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien

Images below taken by © Nihad Nino Pusija

See more here and here

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The Moon Museum, 1969

Now on view at the Museum of Modern Art, NY

Collaborating Artist: Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, David Novros, Forrest Myers, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Chamberlain

Medium: Lithograph of tantalum nitride film on ceramic wafer

Dimensions: sheet: 9/16 × 3/4" (1.4 × 1.9 cm)

Publisher: Forrest Myers

Fabricator: Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey

Edition: approx. 40

Credit: Gift of Ruth Waldhauer

Object number:124.1993

Department: Drawings and Prints at MoMA, NY (This work is on view on Floor 4, in a Collection Gallery, with 2 other works online.) -- online digital collection at MoMA.

“When Apollo 12 landed on the moon in 1969, it may have been carrying an edition of this artwork. Forrest Myers, a member of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), invited Rauschenberg and five other artists to make drawings, which were etched by scientists at Bell Laboratories onto tiny wafer-thin iridium-plated ceramic chips, developed for use in telephone circuits. When NASA didn’t respond to Myer’s request to send one of these chips to the moon, Bell Labs scientist Fred Waldhauer (along with Rauschenberg, one of the founding members of E.A.T.) asked an engineer at Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, the fabricator of the lunar lander, if he could help. According to Waldhauer, one copy of the chip was covertly attached to the leg of the lunar lander. In addition to Rauschenberg’s straight line, there is a Mickey Mouse-like figure by Claes Oldenburg, drawn initials by Andy Warhol, a black square by David Novros, a computer-generated drawing by Myers, and a circuit-like diagram by John Chamberlain.” 

Wall panel at MoMA, in the Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends exhibition

Up through September 17, 2017.

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Polina Barskova  by Michael Juliani

Source: BOMB — Artists in Conversation

Written in the Dark

Polina Barskova was born in 1976 in Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg), a city that hosted one of the most destructive arenas of the Second World War. The Nazi Siege of Leningrad claimed more than one million lives, trapping its citizens for over three years in a landscape of darkness, starvation, and disease. Barskova left Russia at the age of twenty to pursue a PhD in Russian Studies at UC Berkeley, having already earned a graduate degree and become an accomplished poet in her homeland. I first found her work in The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, co-edited by fellow émigré Ilya Kaminsky, who translated a short volume of her poems for Tupelo Press, This Lamentable City (2010). Barskova is also the author of several books in Russian, the earliest of which was published during her adolescence. Some of this work is represented in The Zoo in Winter: Selected Poems (Melville House, 2011). As a professor of Russian literature at Hampshire College, Barskova began an archival project that resulted in Written in the Dark: Five Poets in the Siege of Leningrad (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016), an anthology of work written during the siege that remained unknown for decades. Barskova's book gives form to the fluidities of poetic lineage, cultural context, and literary translation, a meld of aberrations optimized by what Barskova calls "the siege surreal." In service of these five poets, who found themselves caught in an often misrepresented moment in Russian history, Barskova and the several translators of this book have rendered these pieces from the catacombs of the twentieth century.

Michael Juliani In the introduction of Written in the Dark: Five Poets in the Siege of Leningrad, you mention how being in America for many years enabled you to study the blockade in a new way. What was that process like and how long did it take?

Polina Barskova Forever. At least five years in making. It's been one of the most important and humbling discoveries in life—that everything takes long, and good things take forever. The book came out of my larger project about the siege culture and literature. The siege is not a big mystery or a hidden secret, but for decades we knew only the official version—that it was absolutely heroic and courageous. Which, of course, has nothing to do with reality. One million people were not starving to death courageously, but for political and  ideological reasons Soviets couldn't say this. What's curious is that it's still the case—or rather again the case, because Putin is making a very useful thing out of the Second World War and the so-called Great Victory. So, it wasn't a good idea, and it still isn't a good idea to talk about the actual price of the Siege of Leningrad.

I was always interested in the incredibly rich twentieth-century culture of my city, all its hidden layers, the avant-garde. While working on this topic [in America], I found names and texts I had never heard of before, which was kind of offensive to me. I thought I knew the culture of my city. How was it possible that I, such a nerd, a totally bookish person—this is all I do, basically, unfortunately—didn't know that such unbelievable texts remained hidden and invisible? And then this whole process of thought began: What happened to that culture? Why are there hidden nooks of culture? The hidden culture of the siege became my obsession. So I thought, okay, we don't have a book where strange siege poets are together. [They were] a phenomenon, a world of which people are not so aware.

Hampshire College generously gave me a prize for this work, and I took it to Matvei Yankelevich [at Ugly Duckling Presse] and then there was this huge adventure of translating these poets. There were discussions, quarrels, exaltations, but it happened. I think these are good translations, as far as I can understand. English, for me, is very much a second language. These were difficult translations. This poetry is ugly. This is not beautiful poetry, and one of the problems was to overcome the desire to make it beautiful in English.

MJ Because it's an anthology of five poets, I could experience each of them individually, but they also seemed to weave a collective fabric. I'm curious about the thought process behind choosing these particular poets and poems?

PB The world of siege poetry is rather big. I like to think about this in crazy architectural terms. There are many stories, many floors. The obvious one is "official" poetry. There are some poets, for example, like the most famous, Olga Bergholz, who wrote for Leningrad radio. In the official siege cemetery, Piskariovskoye, her words are engraved in gold, and it says, "Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten," which is absolutely the opposite of the situation as I see it. So, there is this well-known official poetry, some of which is actually very strong.

For this particular project, I decided to concentrate on the strangest, least publishable, and least published—only surrealist poetry about the siege. We do know of surrealist art and poetry coming from the Holocaust. I think such poetry, on some level, makes lots of sense. Human minds cannot process these events. It stops and says, "I do not want to process you, Siege of Leningrad. I do not know what to do with you." Another reason why I became interested, [is that] they were connected to my favorite Leningrad poets—this generation who Matvei Yankelevich and Eugene Ostashevsky, for example, translated beautifully. This group was called OBERIU, which included Kharms and Vvedensky and Oleynikov, who were all murdered in the purges of the 1930s. These absurd, funny, beautiful men in their thirties, writing strange poetry about god and music and numbers, they were killed. Which is one of the most surreal things, because one understands why one kills Mandelstam, on some level. Mandelstam writes a poem where he calls Stalin a cockroach.

MJ Going right to the source.

PB Right. But Kharms and Vvedensky didn't call Stalin a cockroach. They wrote a lot about insects, but in very metaphysical ways. While they were playing their games in the 1930s, younger artists and poets were observing these strange masters. And when the masters died, these young gentlemen remained. This was the next generation. Which is also kind of touching and poignant, because when you study literature and its history—maybe this is a human thing to believe there is some connection—after you, your students will follow. This is why we teach. To create this texture. So on some level of reading, observation, whatnot, these poets are the disciples of the murdered OBERIU, and these are disciples who happened to live in the siege with this amazing language to describe one of the least believable events of the twentieth century.

MJ With a number of writers I love from the Siege of Sarajevo in the Bosnian War, the situation set up time for them to write, because the social fabric was so destroyed they couldn't work. They just had to find food and survive, and write. These Leningrad poets also experienced total collapse. I guess for some writers it could destroy their ability to write, but with these poets it enabled them to write in a way they wouldn't have been able to before, as well as process their relationships with their heroes.

PB I really like what you say about a hole in the social fabric. A lot has been written about this. We don't have women [in this book], but one of the most important people who wrote about the Siege of Leningrad is Lidiya Ginzburg. More of her work is being translated into English, to my delirious happiness, because she is great. She was working with the word relief. The siege was a time of hell, but it was relief. For one thing, it was relief from silence, because they were so tired from the 1930s, when things were unspeakable. Nobody could even remotely write about the arrest of their best friends, husbands, wives, or children. You couldn't talk about it, basically. So your best friend, husband, child disappear at night and you go on, if you're lucky. You continue being in the society, in silence, which is like the worst thing ever. The siege allowed people to scream about it. One could say that the pressure of unspeakability was relieved. And this is what happened, great poetry, just like water, it went under this pressure.

MJ I was also very interested in how the OBERIU poets released themselves from historical references, and how the siege made these poets attach to their historical moment in the process of playing with language.

PB Yeah, this is one of my main observations. If you study history of literature, this is your weird disease. When we say that these people, like Gor and Zaltsman, learn from OBERIU, they learn to break language. They learn that smooth, ornate, orderly language doesn't work for the twentieth century as they saw it. But what was absolutely crucial for OBERIU, I think, was to create a capsule of some sort where Soviet reality was like a gas you breathe. OBERIU played many games, social games, but they were these brilliant young people who, on some level, pretended that the Soviet thing didn't exist. It was their experiment, it was an artistic endeavor. They were womanizers, gamblers. They had very peculiar obsessions for the 1930s. They loved mathematics. They were interested in theology, a strange interest to have in the Soviet Union. They were obsessed with Bach, for example, with very high music, which is almost as strange as theology and mathematics. When we read their diaries it's like reality, history, is almost nowhere to be found. It's not like, "Today is the First of May parade, everything is colored red—disgusting," or something. It's just not there. And it's more or less not there in their poetry, at least not directly. What makes the siege generation different is that, using the toolbox of OBERIU, they do write history. Now their camera is very much on. This is history written through a surrealist lens.

MJ As an American, I never learned anything in school about Russia except that they were our enemy in the '60s or something. So, I learn a lot from studying literary figures. One of the things I've heard, especially with Mandelstam, is that before Russian modernism there was an emptiness of tradition, as if there was Pushkin and then modernism. I'm wondering if that's at all fair. It's extremely complicated, I'm sure.

PB It is extremely complicated. There were people between Pushkin and modernists, indeed. Since I teach literature in this country, I think about it all the time, as do friends and colleagues. When American students study Russian things, it's Pushkin then Tolstoy and Dostoevsky—where did Lermontov and others go? What happened to Leskov and Goncharov?

Russia has its own problems with the history of Russian literature. This is a little bit more of an immediate, urgent concern for me. Sometimes we look at the medieval maps of the world, like for example, an old Spanish map—there is Spain, there is France, and a little bit further [out] you see dragons and mermaids and monsters. Certain topics are covered too well on the map of twentieth-century Soviet literature. And then we see monsters and white spots. How can it be that [we don't know about] a poet of the scale of Gennady Gor? It's like waking up and realizing you've spent your whole life next to a whale. Like, "Ah, mama!"

MJ Moby Dick.

PB Right, Moby Dick! Precisely. How can it be that we didn't know that such was Soviet history, such were social pressures. We are still very much in the process of active discovery. Gor never published one poem in his lifetime—by which I mean he didn't read one poem to anybody. When I say this to my American friends, there is a difficult pause. I claim that Gennady Gor is one of the ten greatest poets of the Russian century, if this would be the right way to view this discipline, which it is not. There are no strongest poets; it's not sports. Somehow it works in a different way. But how can you spend your whole life without reading one of your poems to your lover, to your child, to your best friend?

We are still trying to understand what it means for Russian literature that suddenly we have this island, it's like Atlantis coming up from being hidden. It's a big event. When our friends learn about this anthology, their first reaction is, "Great!" and the second is, "What do we do now? Where do we find a place in the sequence of things?" Twentieth-century Russian literature is like an earthquake since we're not sure what will end up where, what the mountain will be.

MJ Most of these poets were prominently involved as artists or philologists. Was that a symptom of their need to hide their poetry, or were they truly more involved in other pursuits? Would that make their siege poetry an aberration?

PB Gor's poetry is an aberration. Everybody who knew him after the war speaks of him as nice, agreeable, and curious. According to his poetry, he is a total monster—a genius. Nothing is nice or agreeable. He produced huge numbers of well-disciplined, pro-Soviet sci-fi about good Soviet citizens traveling to other planets. He hid himself rather well. Zaltsman was much more difficult, but he was a brilliant artist. He went to Kazakhstan and decided never to go back to Leningrad. Many people did that on some level. For example, the greatest philosopher of the Russian century, Bakhtin. Everyone around him was eliminated, but [sarcastically] Bakhtin was a teacher of literature in Saransk, with his cat, and somehow nobody found him until it was not a murderous adventure to be found, not a death sentence. Rudakov died at the front, but everybody else was rather good at assimilation, which makes each of these cases more interesting than just a book of siege heroes. I'm a huge enemy of the notion of hero. I'm interested in humans. Survival and writing are acts of outlandish strength.

MJ It would seem, at least from a civilian perspective, a non-poetic perspective, that maybe sitting and writing poetry during the Siege of Leningrad would be an absurd thing to do.

PB I think some of them didn't even imagine going to the front. They were not of that material. Again, it was a different form of strength, a different form of courage and humanity. There was nothing military about them. They were, I would say, like children. This understanding that children can be crazy, weak, and strong. I am a mother, I know weak and strong. But they could not play war, and this poetry is what they did.

MJ Because you've been involved in this archival and editorial work for a number of years now, can you trace any effect it has had on your own writing, your own practice, or the way you think about being a poet?

PB It completely changed me. I've become an archival poet. It changed my language. I stopped writing beautiful poetry. I stopped being interested in beautiful poetry. I became interested in the hidden. I'm like a mole hunter. I'm interested in subterranean culture that says 'I will trick you' to official culture, 'I will play you.' Bergholz, who we just mentioned, now has huge diaries being published. She understood everything about the Soviet era, and she wanted to play different games. She wanted to be a Soviet-accepted, huge canonical poet, but also to write real stuff, and she desperately tried to figure out how one can do both. It's a question of whether it's possible at all—that's why we're talking now about Bergholz now. All this is possible because we have documents. This is the whole thing about archive fever. None of this would exist otherwise. It's like a ghost. Who are they? What are the notepads that were never found? I think this book, and all books of this kind, are memorials to things that disappeared.”

“Michael Juliani is a poet, editor, and journalist from Pasadena, California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in outlets such as The Adirondack Review, the Los Angeles Times, The Conversant, Truthdig, and The Huffington Post. The editor of three books by the filmmaker and photographer Harun Mehmedinovic, he earned a BA in Print & Digital Journalism from the University of Southern California and an MFA in poetry from Columbia University. He lives in New York City.”

[tkwc]

Against the Mainstream! The Communist Party of Israel (CPI) 1919-2009.

Articles and Posters. (Hebrew, German and English) Angelika Timm and Tamar Gozansky (eds.), Tel Aviv 2009.

On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI), the RLS Israel-Office, the Tel Aviv University and the Open University held a conference. Presented in the foyer of the conference hall was an exhibition of historical posters of the CPI. This book contains a selection of these posters as well a chronology of the CPI, four articles in Hebrew and their abstracts in German and English.

See here for the full book (PDF)

[tkwc]

The third and final installment of The Kids Want Communism opens on 22 June, 2017!

☭ ☭ ☭

Opening reception is 8:00 - 11:00 pm.

☭ ☭ ☭ 

See here for more information.

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El Lissitzky's “Abstract Cabinet”

“El Lissitzky’s “Cabinet of Abstraction” (Kabinett der Abstrakten) was commissioned in 1927 by Alexander Dorner for the Hannover Provincial Museum. In 1926, Soviet artist El Lissitzky was Head of the Department of Furniture and Interior Design at the wood and metal workshop at VKhUTEMAS and received an assignment by the Narkompros, the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment, to travel to Germany and the Netherlands in order to study modern architecture and act as an ambassador for Russian art. The artist began experimenting with exhibition design in the early 1920s through a practice which aimed at integrating his researches in abstract art with three-dimensional environments.

The cabinet comes as a close collaboration between the artist and art historian and curator Alexandre Dorner.  Dorner believed in the need for new exhibition formats for abstract art which would include the possibility for the spectator to interact with the art works and the exhibition spaces.

The pavilion is a room of about 20 square metres built inside the galleries of the Museum, a modular and adaptable area conceived to host works by constructivist and abstract painters, among whom Piet Mondrian, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger as well as Mies van der Rohe and El Lissitzky himself. The Cabinet,  an art piece by itself, does not work only as background for the paintings and sculpures on show, but provides the spectator with changing viewing conditions by means of the reflective properties of some of its materials as well as by the way colors are placed on the areas around the paintings. The walls are covered with vertical background stripes of steel painted grey on the front side, white on the left edge and black on the right side in a way that following the position of the viewer, the walls appear white, grey or black. To further involve the observer during his visit to the cabinet, El Lissitzky integrated movable partitions and rotatable glass-cases which could be continuously displaced in order to create new spatial combination inside the structure.

The pavilion was destroyed in 1936 during the Third Reich and reconstructed in 1969 following the original plans in the Sprengel Museum in Hannover.” (source)

Also see:

“El Lissitzky and Alexander Dorner Kabinett der Abstrakten Original and Facsimile,” Museum of American Art Berlin

See here for “a catalog published as a constitutive printed matter both for the exhibition Kabinett der Abstrakten—Original and Facsimile at Halle fuer Kunst Lueneburg from 24 January to 8 March, 2009 and of Displayer 03.” 

and see:

demonstrationsraum - An augmented-reality app on El Lissitzky’s Abstract Cabinet

A virtual exhibition on EL Lissitzky's 'Abstract Cabinet'

Lower Saxony State Chancellery, Berlin, Nov 30—Dec 13 2015

Sprengel Museum Hannover, Jun 5—Oct 16 2016

Braunschweig University of Art, Oct 26—Nov 11 2016

«Арт Ель» art space, Novosibirsk, May 19—Jun 11 2017

“El Lissitzky intended his Abstract Cabinet (1926/27) to function as a “Demonstrationsraum” (demonstration room): an exhibition space for abstract art that makes visitors aware of their own visual experience, and thus of the conditions of exhibiting itself, through an array of devices fostering both interaction and disorientation. The work of the Russian avantgarde artist has had a fragmented and changeful history. Initially installed in the Provinzialmuseum Hannover in 1927 as a commission by Alexander Dorner, and destroyed only ten years later by the National Socialists, it was reconstructed in 1968 for the Landesmuseum Hannover. This second version was transferred to the Sprengel Museum in 1979, where it has since been permanently exhibited. Each of the Cabinet’s different states has been documented in photographs, so that photography has had a significant impact on the evolution of the space—both in retrospect to historical versions as well as for the current and future reconstructions. The history of this ground-breaking art space is reflected upon in an exceptional exhibition format. With the help of historical and recent photographs, an augmented reality app allows for a virtual visit to the Cabinet, proposing a time travel across the different versions of the installation. The app “demonstrationsraum“ draws on El Lissitzky’s terminology and concept: It transfers his artistic and social vision of uniting art and technology and activating spectators as citizens into a virtual exhibition. In the app, the diverging layers of time represented by digitized photographs taken since 1928 until today overlap precisely with the actual view of the visitors while moving through the space. Upon a closer look, both the differences between the three versions and their similarities become apparent, with the latter lying in the task of shattering the bourgeois monopoly on art, of facilitating participation—a goal that is actualized again by the “demonstrationsraum“ app.”

Download the app here or from  Google Play 

“... In order to use the app beyond this particular context, just print this document on an A4 sheet, cut out the depicted form and fold it into a cuboid. Then, place it on a flat surface with the blank side looking down, open the app and start scanning the markers. “

Also see here for: 

“Politics of aura. El Lissitzky's Abstract Cabinet between musealization and participation”

“In Benjaminian termns, the Abstract Cabinet can be described as a space that, paradoxically, achieves the detachment of aura from the works of art exhibited in it by investing visitor interaction with aura. This tension that made Lissitzky’s installation such an interesting case for contemporary artistic and curatorial practices is further accentuated by the art historical canonization of the space. The primal space was deconstructed in the 1930s under the pressure of the cultural political campaigns of the nazi regime and re-erected as late as in 1968. The ‘Abstract Cabinet’ is on view in a secondary reconstruction of 1979 as part of the permanent collection of the Sprengel Museum. The museum’s logic transformed it into a gesamtkunstwerk, in opposition to a space dedicated to the spectator’s experience. An object, that  today is the subject of conservational considerations on the basis of interpreting the historical documents on the space. To what extent is the Abstract Cabinet’s claim of participation compatible with its musealization? Do non-morphological aspects of the space have to be taken into account when it comes to its preservation? And how can an original state be postulated, when even the complex form of the installation is only fragmentarily conveyed in photographs, construction sketches and drawings? How can its initial mission be experienced again by contemporary visitors? Which methods and media could be employed to re-activate the Abstract Cabinet?

This anthology presents a selection of essays addressing these questions from the perspective of art history and curatorial studies. 

(Please note that as of now, the texts (apart from Steven ten Thije's) are only available in German and Russian; an English translation is forthcoming.)”

[tkwc]

The Kids Want Communism | Part 3 -- And the re-opening of the Ben Ari Museum

Opening of the third and final installment and the re-opening of the Ben Ari Museum after its renovation is Thursday 22 June, 8pm!

"The Kids Want Communism” is a yearlong exhibitions project at MoBY-Museums of Bat Yam that is held in conjunction with a number of different artists and institutions around the world, including exhibitions, lectures, exhibits, screenings, and publications throughout the year of 2016-2017. Partner institutions include the Tranzit Prague, VCRC Kiev, Free / Slow University of Warsaw, State of Concept in Athens, Škuc Gallery in Ljubljana, Westspace in Melbourne, and MoBY. As part of the third round of “The Kids Want Communism”, the entrance exhibits the paintings by the artist Toy Boy, who was born in Luanda, and grew up as a street kid in Angola after the Cuban war against South Africa and the United States. The unique story of this unknown war, which led to the fall of the Apartheid, is being told through the artist’s experiences. 

Beside him, is the installation of Hila Laviv and Dana Yoeli, ‘In the Corner This Morning’, an installation poster inspired by the utopian rooms designed by the Soviet artist El Lissitzky (1890-1941). The visitors are invited to take with them a poster with a paper self-preparation model and are encouraged to touch, cut, fold, paint, and decorate in handicrafts tradition of DIY (Do it Yourself). In this way the painting becomes an object.

On the second floor, the large-scale installation of Max Epstein “Dacha", which was created especially for the exhibition, restores not only the traditional Russian wooden summer house, but also provides the uncanny features it involved. Tamar Nissim presents "I am Simha Sabari", which tells the fascinating story of Sabari (1913-2004).

Mati Lahat exhibits “Titans", an installation created especially for the exhibition and composed of original frescoes created by Shraga Weil and Shmuel Katz in the communal dining hall of Kibbutz Ein Hamefratz in 1954. Lahat rescued the frescoes before the dining hall wall was destroyed. At MoBY he presents them against graphite drawings of the Liquidators monument in the Ukraine. These volunteers sacrificed their lives to seal the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl with concrete in 1986 in order to prevent further leakage of radioactive radiation.

Tal Gafny's installation "Atidim" was also created especially for the exhibition. In its center is the image of Alyssa Carson, an American girl who has been practicing for the last nine years in order to participate in the first manned expedition to Mars planned by NASA for 2033. The work represents a summary of the first chapter of the project which will accompany Alyssa on her departure to Mars in 17 years. "Structure for Rest," a formation of beds for daydreaming by Ohad Meromi, is moving in the second floor to construct new constellations between the exhibits. In addition, the mural by Jonathan Gold showing people standing in line has been completed during the year and is now presented in its final form. The exhibition "Notes on Division,” curated by iLiana Fokianaki of State of Concept in Athens, one of the international partners of "The Kids Want Communism" activities, focuses on a return to the Greek civil war of 1946-1949 and the political discourse surrounding the current economic crisis in the country. The exhibition will host six major artists from the art scene in Athens, including: Konstantinos Kotsis, Yota Ioannidou, Antonis Pittas, Yorgos Sapountzis, and Vangelis Vlahos.

“The Kids Want Communism” is an annual exhibitions project at MoBY-Museums of Bat Yam, and is held in conjunction with a number of different artists and institutions around the world throughout 2016. The Kids Want Communism is organized by iLiana Fokianaki, Vladimir Vidmar, Oleksiy Radynski, Vit Havranek, Kuba Szreder, and Joshua Simon.

moby.org.il

Please find more information on the Facebook event page here.