Watch

Mother Tongue
  • Yevgeniy Fiks, Juliet Jacques, Dan Healey and Sarah Wilson:
    Panel discussion in association with Mother Tongue project
Apparition of the Last Soviet Artist in London
  • Victoria Lomasko:
    Apparition of the last Soviet Artist in London
ShadowMemory x Art Night Open
  • Various artists:
    ShadowMemory Project Video 2018
Postponed Futures
  • Kasia Redzisz, Nikita Kadan, Mykola Ridnyi, Konstantin Akinsha:
    Roundtable discussion
Superwoman: ‘Work, Build and Don’t Whine'
  • Iwona Blazwick and Zelfira Tregulova:
    Roundtable Discussion
  • Dolya Gavanski, Phoebe Taplin, April de Angelis, Maria Shevstova:
    'Superwoman: The Changing Image And Role Of Women'
Unexpected Eisenstein
  • Rachel Morley:
    Russian Cinema before 1917
  • Ian Christie:
    Besides Eisenstein: Protazanov, Barnet and the new Soviet cinema of the 1920s
  • Ian Christie:
    Maxim and co: creating the new heroes and heroines of the 1930s
  • Phil Cavendish:
    Soviet Colour Film, 1929-1945: An Experiment Understood by Very Few
  • Jeremy Hicks:
    Meaningful Martyrdom — Death, Revolution and Victory from Lenin to the Reichstag, 1924–45
  • Emma Widdis:
    Film and the Making of the New Soviet Person: Bodies, Minds and Feelings
  • Ian Christie:
    Hopes and fears: the Soviet New Wave of the 1960s
  • Carmen Gray:
    Andrei Tarkovsky: The Citizen Poet and the State
  • Jeremy Hicks:
    Reusing War Footage in Russian and Soviet Films, 1945–2015
Peripheral Visions
  • Francis Morris:
    In conversation with Anthony D'Offay about Artist Rooms
  • Ekaterina Degot:
    In conversation with Olga Chernysheva
A Game in Hell. The Great War in Russia
  • John E. Bowlt:
    Introductory remarks
  • Elena Sudakova:
    'Forgotten Heroes of the Great War'
  • Christina Lodder:
    'A Painting Fit for Heroes: Kazimir Malevich's Reservist of the First Division'
  • Natalia Budanova:
    'Who Needs the Art Now?': Russian Women Artists Representing the Great War'
  • Valentina Parisi:
    'Russian Avant-Garde Circles and the Literary Response to the Great War'
Work and Play Behind the Iron Curtain
  • Alexandra Chiriac:
    Curator tour
  • Amber Jane Butchart:
    Soviet Fashion
The Shabolovka Tower Model
  • Tilly Blyth:
    Seminar Event: Science Museum
  • John Milner:
    Seminar event: Courtauld Institute of Art
  • Lutz Becker:
    Seminar Event: Independent Art Historian
  • Vladimir Shukhov:
    Seminar Event: Fosters and Partners
  • Xenia Vytuleva:
    Seminar Event: Columbia University
  • Henry Milner, Maker:
    Seminar Event
Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen
  • Curators and Special Guests:
    Panel Discussion with Exhibition
  • Lutz Becker:
    Curator talks: Chess Fever and The Three Million Case
  • Lutz Becker:
    Curator talks: Man with a Movie Camera
  • Lutz Becker:
    Curator talks: October
  • Lutz Becker:
    Curator talks: Storm Over Asia and Turksib
  • Lutz Becker:
    Curator talks: The End of St Petersburg
  • Elena Sudakova:
    Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen
Utopia LTD
  • 'Inside the Rainbow' Performance:
    Directed by Irina Brown
  • Professor John Milner:
    Seminar: 'Re-Constructivism'
  • Willem Jan Renders:
    Seminar: 'After Lissitzky: Reconstructions at the Van Abbemuseum'
  • Christina Lodder:
    Seminar: 'Gustav Klucis: Transmitting Utopia'
  • Aleksandr Shklyaruk:
    Seminar: 'Klucis and the Materialisation of a Futurist Idea'
  • Dr. Maria Tsantsanoglou:
    Seminar: 'Tatlin's Legend'

Listen

Superwoman: ‘Work, Build and Don’t Whine'
Unexpected Eisenstein
Bolt
Seminar
Judith Mackrell : Seminar
A Game in Hell. The Great War in Russia

Read

Aleksei Kruchenykh

(1886-1968)

Aleksei Kruchenykh was born on 21 February 1886 into a Ukrainian peasant family. In 1906 he graduated from Odessa Art School and in 1907 moved to Moscow. From 1912 onwards he became an integral part of the group of young creatives known as the Futurists. Known mostly for his poetry and writings, Kruchenykh, along with Velimir Khlebnikov, published books written with deliberate misprints, strange hand-written typefaces on wallpaper and blotting paper. Famously Kruchenykh developed the transrational ‘zaum’ style of writing, in which new words were formed from the roots of Slavic words, with the purpose of freeing them from their meaning. Zaum , meaning ‘beyond sense’, reinstated the connection between word and object, creating a language, both old and new. The illustrations that accompanied these writings were primitive in style and echoed the coarse and discordant tone of the accompanying poems. Among these books were A Game in Hell (1912), The World Backwards (1912) and A Duck’s Nest…of Bad Words (1913). In addition Kruchenykh worked with Kazimir Malevich and Mikhail Matyushin on the Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun (1913), which proclaimed the victory of artificial light over the sun and technology’s dominance over nature.

In 1912 Kruchenykh married Futurist artist and illustrator Olga Rozanova with whom he collaborated on several publications, one of which was the notable Universal War in which her abstract collages compliment the nature of the poet’s writing style. The First World War saw Kruchenykh relocate to Georgia where he founded the Futurist group 41 Degrees. Later in the 1920s the writer returned to Moscow and immersed himself in the activities of LEF, a leftist group of avant-garde artists determined to re-examine the ideology and purpose of Art.

The 1930s saw a changed political and artistic situation in Russia. This led to decreased popularity and the eventual cease in the publishing of Kruchenykh’s works. It was from this point onwards that Kruchenykh devoted himself to the study and classification of Futurist art.

By the mid 1950s Kruchenykh had become associated with underground artists of the Lianozovo school, yet again pushing political and artistic boundaries. Kruchenykh died in Moscow in 1968.