The Ernesto de Sousa case. Building a portuguese avant-garde.

u to pia University of Helsinki, Finland, 29 – 31 August 2014

Fourth bi-annual conference o f t h e E u r o p e a n N e t w o r k f o r Ava n t- Ga r d e a n d M o d e r n i s m S t u d i e s

Vierte zweijährliche Konferenz d e s E u r o pä i s c h e n N e t z w e r k f ü r S t u d i e n z u Ava n tg a r d e u n d M o d e r n e

Q uat r i è m e c o n f é r e n c e b i a n n u e l l e d u R é s e au e u r o p é e n d e r e c h e r c h e s u r l ‘ava n t- ga r d e e t l e m o d e r n i s m e

UTOPIA The fourth bi-annual conference of the European Network f o r Ava n t- Ga r d e a n d M o d e r n i s m S t u d i e s

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UTOPIA The fourth bi-annual conference of the European Network f o r Ava n t- Ga r d e a n d M o d e r n i s m S t u d i e s

contents About the EAM / Über EAM / À propos de l‘EAM

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EAM Book series / Die EAM-Bücherreihe / La Collection de l’EAM

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eam 2016

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EAM 2014: UTOPIA

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Programme / Program

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Keynote speakers / Hauptrednern / Conférenciers invites

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Organisers

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sponsors & partners

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Practical information about the conference

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Parallel sessions / friday 29 th august

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Parallel sessions / saturday 30 th august

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Parallel sessions / sunday 31 st august

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Open panel and peer seminar descriptions in alphabetic order according to the (first) chair

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Closed panel descriptions in alphabetic order according to the (first) chair

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Abstracts of individual papers and papers in the open panels in alphabetic order according to the main author

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appendix

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A b o u t t h e EA M

w w w . e a m - e u r o p e . u g e n t. b e

The experimental literatures and arts in Europe between ca. 1850 and 1950, and their aftermath, figure prominently on academic curricula, while modernism and avant-garde studies have come to form distinct yet interlocking disciplines within the humanities in recent years. These disciplines take on various guises on the continent. Within French and German academia, «modernism» remains a term rather alien -«die Moderne» and «modernité» coming perhaps the closest to what is meant by «modernism» within the English context. Here, indeed, modernism has acquired a firm place in research, signaling above all a period in modern poetics and aesthetics, roughly between 1850 and 1950, during which a revolt against prevalent traditions in art, literature and culture took shape. Similarly, the term «avant-garde» comes with an array of often conflicting connotations. For some the avant-garde marks the most radically experimental arts and literatures in modernism from the nineteenth centur y onward -the early twentieth centur y vanguard movements of Futurism, Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism, among others, coinciding with the avantgarde’s most «heroic» phase. For others the avant-garde belongs to a cultural or conceptual order differing altogether from that of modernism -the vanguard exploits from the 1950s onward marking that avant-garde arts and literatures can also perfectly abide outside modernism. T h e E u r o p e a n N e t w o r k f o r Ava n t- G a r d e a n d M o d e r n i s m S t u d i e s ( EA M ) , far from aiming to reduce the complexity of various European research traditions, aspires to embrace the wide linguistic, terminological and methodological variety within both fields. EAM will devote itself to the study of the avant-garde and modernism in Europe within a global setting, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will promote interdisciplinar y

and intermedial research on experimental aesthetics and poetics, and aims to encourage an interest in the cultural dimensions and contexts of the avantgarde and modernism. With initiatives in the crossdisciplinar y fields of avant-garde and modernism studies booming throughout European academia, EAM wishes to provide a more permanent platform in Europe for scholars to meet and discuss their research. To this aim it will organise biennial conferences and publish its own book series. Membership

EAM membership is to be renewed ever y two years. The membership fee is € 50. To facilitate the exchange of expertise, members’ current research interests and two of their representative publications are mentioned on the EAM website. Members also receive free access to a digital copy of the subsequent volume in the EAM book series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, to appear in 2011. To register, please visit: http://eam-europe.be/node/12

Ü b e r EA M

w w w . e a m - e u r o p e . u g e n t. b e

Forschungsinitiativen zum Thema Avantgarde und Moderne nehmen in der europäischen Forschungslandschaft weiterhin zu. Die experimentellen Literaturen und die Künste in Europa zwischen ca. 1850 und 1950 und ihre Nachwirkungen sind als Lehr-und Forschungsbereiche an den europäischen Forschungsinstitutionen sowie in den Lehrplänen heutzutage nicht mehr wegzudenken. Avantgarde

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und Moderne haben sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu unterschiedlichen, aber mehrfach miteinander verzahnten Forschungsgebieten entwickelt. Innerhalb der französischen und deutschen akademischen Welt bleibt der Sammelbegriff „modernism“ weniger geläufig – die „ (Klassische) Moderne“ und „modernité“ fungieren hier als nahe liegende Äquivalente zu demjenigen, was im internationalen Kontext (zwischen 1850 und 1950) als eine zeitliche und räumliche Ko-Okkurenz künstlerischer Ausdrucksformen und ästhetischer Theorien benannte warden kann, die gegen vorherrschende Traditionen in Kunst, Literatur und Kultur aufbegehrten. In ähnlicher Weise entfaltet der Begriff „Avantgarde“ eine Reihe häufig ambivalenter Konnotationen. Für manche kennzeichnet die Avantgarde den radikalsten experimentellen Bruch der Künste und Literaturen mit den Darstellungs-und Erzählkonventionen vom neunzehnten Jahrhundert an: Im frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhundert zeugen davon Avantgardebewegungen wie Futurismus, Expressionismus, Dadaismus und Surrealismus, Strömungen, die als die „heroische“ Phase der Avantgarde bezeichnet werden können. Ab den fünfziger Jahren kommt diese Avantgarde weitgehend ohne modernistische Begleiterscheinungen aus. Für andere gehört die Avantgarde zu einem kulturellen Umfeld, das sich, durchaus im Bunde mit der Klassischen Moderne, der Erneuerung ästhetischer Konventionen verschreibt. Da s

E u r o pä i s c h e

zu

Ava n tg a r d e

Netzwerk und

für

Moderne

Studien ( EA M )

möchte der Komplexheit der unterschiedlichen europäischen Forschungstraditionen gerecht werden und strebt danach, die breite linguistische, terminologische und methodologische Vielfalt abzudecken. EAM widmet sich ausdrücklich der Erforschung der gesamten europäischen Avantgarde und Moderne, ihrer Vorläufer und ihrem Nachklang im Laufe des neunzehnten und

zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts und möchte zudem die interdisziplinäre sowie intermediale Erforschung experimenteller Ästhetiken/ Poetiken fördern. Auch setzt sich das Europäische Netzwerk für Studien zu Avantgarde und Moderne zum Ziel, das Interesse an den kulturellen Zusammenhängen und Kontexten der Avantgarde und der Moderne in Europa anzuregen. Mittels Forschungsintiativen in disziplinübergreifenden Bereichen der Avantgarde-und Moderne-Forschung möchte es ein permanentes europäisches Forum bieten, auf dem Wissenschaftler einander begegnen und ihre Forschungsergebisse austauschen. Zu diesem Zweck organisiert EAM zweijährliche Konferenzen und veröffentlicht eine Bücherreihe. EA M - M i t g l i e d s c h a f t

Der EAM-Mitgliedschaft muss alle zwei Jahre durch Zahlung des Mitgliedsbeitrags erneuert werden Wer den Mitgliedsbeitrag entrichtet, zahlt 50 EURO und bekommt dafür den elektronischen Zugriff auf den jeweils im Folgejahr der 2010 Konferenz erscheinenden Band der EAM Buchpublikation Studien zur europäischen Avantgarde und Moderne zugeschickt. Die Mitgliedschaft umfasst auch die Erwähnung des eigenen Forschungsprofils (institutionelle Anbindung, Forschungsinteresse und Hinweis auf zwei repräsentative Publikationen) in der gemeinsamen Forschungsdatenbank auf der offiziellen EAM Heimseite. Die Forschungdatenbank möchte den Austausch und die Suche nach neuen Forschungsergebnissen fördern. Um Mitglied des Europäischen Netzwerks für Studien zu Avantgarde und Moderne zu werden, sehen Sie bitt http://eam-europe.be/node/12

À p r o p o s d e l ‘ EA M

w w w . e a m - e u r o p e . u g e n t. b e

Actuellement, les arts et les littératures expérimentaux en Europe de 1850 à 1950 et audelà font partie intégrante des programmes universitaires, tandis que les recherches sur l’avant-garde et le modernisme sont devenues des disciplines à part entière mais solidaires les unes des autres. Ces disciplines varient néanmoins à travers le continent. Dans les universités françaises et allemandes, la notion de « modernisme » reste plutôt étrangère : les notions de « modernité » et de « die Moderne » s’utilisent davantage pour ce que désigne la notion de « modernism » dans le contexte anglophone. La notion de « modernism » y a acquis une certaine stabilité: elle désigne avant tout une période de la modernité poétique et esthétique, approximativement entre 1850 et 1950, au cours de laquelle a pris forme une révolte contre les traditions artistiques, littéraires et culturelles prédominantes. De même, la notion d’« avantgarde » prend des connotations divergentes, souvent conflictuelles. Pour certains, l’« avantgarde » désigne les arts et les littératures les plus radicalement expérimentaux qui se développent à l’intérieur du modernisme à partir du 19ème siècle. Dans ce cas, les mouvements avantgardistes du début du 20ème siècle – le futurisme, l’expressionisme, le dadaïsme et le surréalisme – correspondent à la phase avantgardiste la plus « héroïque ». Pour d’autres, l’avant-garde appartient à un ordre culturel et conceptuel entièrement différent du modernisme: l’avant-garde sur vit au modernisme, comme en témoigne la permanence d’une sensibilité avantgardiste après 1950. Loin de vouloir réduire la complexité des différentes traditions de recherche européennes, le Réseau européen de recherche sur l’avantgarde et le

modernisme vise à embrasser la grande diversité linguistique, terminologique et méthodologique à l’intérieur de ces deux domaines. L’EAM veut stimuler l’intérêt pour les dimensions culturelles et contextuelles de l’avant-garde et du modernisme en Europe au cours des 19ème et 20ème siècles, et promouvoir la recherche interdisciplinaire et intermédiale sur les esthétiques et les poétiques expérimentales. Etant donné l’essor récent des initiatives interdisciplinaires dans ce domaine, l’EAM souhaite créer pour les chercheurs en Europe une plateforme de rencontre et de discussion plus permanente. A cet effet, l’EAM organise des conférences biennales et édite sa propre collection. Adhésion

L’adhésion à l’EAM doit être renouvelée tous les deux ans (2008-2009, 2010-2011, ...). Le montant d’adhésion est de !50. Membres ont accès a une copie digitale du volume suivant de la collection de l’EAM, Études sur l’avant-garde et le modernisme en Europe, à paraître au milieu de l’année 2011. Afin de faciliter l’échange d’expertise, le site de l’EAM fera mention des intérêts de recherche actuels des membres ainsi que de deux de leurs publications représentatives.Pour adhérer à l’EAM, visiter le site web: http://eam-europe.be/node/12

EA M B o o k S e r i e s

Modernism Studies

The avant-garde and modernism take centre-stage within European academia today. The experimental literatures and arts in Europe between ca. 1850

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and 1950, and their aftermath, figure prominently on curricula, while modernism and avant-garde studies have come to form distinct yet interlocking disciplines within the humanities in recent years. These disciplines take on various guises on the continent. Within French and German academia, “modernism” remains a term rather alien -“die Moderne” and “modernité” coming perhaps the closest to what is meant by “modernism” within the English context. Here, indeed, modernism has acquired a firm place in research, signaling above all a period in modern poetics and aesthetics, roughly between 1850 and 1950, during which a revolt against prevalent traditions in art, literature and culture took shape. Similarly, the term “avantgarde” comes with an array of often conflicting connotations. For some, the avantgarde marks the most radically experimental arts and literatures in modernism from the nineteenth centur y onward -the early twentieth-centur y vanguard movements of Futurism, Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism, among others, coinciding with the avant-garde’s most “heroic” phase. For others, the avant-garde belongs to a cultural or conceptual order differing altogether from that of modernism -the vanguard exploits from the 1950s onward marking that avant-garde arts and literatures can also perfectly abide outside modernism. European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, far from aiming to reduce the complexity of various European research traditions, aspires to embrace the wide linguistic, terminological and methodological variety within both fields. Publishing an anthology of essays in English, French and German ever y two years, the series wishes to compare and relate French, German and British, but also Northern and Southern as well as Central and Eastern European findings in avant-garde and modernism studies. The series will gather the best and most thought-provoking recent research and will devote itself to the study of the European avant-garde and modernism throughout the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries. European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies will promote interdisciplinar y and intermedial research on experimental aesthetics and poetics, and aims to encourage an interest in the cultural dimensions and contexts of the avant-garde and modernism in Europe. Essays accepted by the editorial board will be subjected to blind peer-review by international experts. Editors-in-chief: Sascha Bru / University of Leuven David Ayers / University of Kent Editorial Board: Jan Baetens / Leuven University Hubert van den Berg / University of Groningen Benedikt Hjartarson / University of Iceland Tania Ørum / University of Copenhagen

D i e EA M B ü c h e r r e i h e

S t u d i e n z u r E u r o pä i s c h e n Ava n t- G a r d e u n d M o d e r n e

Forschungsinitiativen zum Thema Avantgarde und Moderne nehmen in der europäischen Forschungslandschaft weiterhin zu. Die experimentellen Literaturen und die Künste in Europa zwischen ca. 1850 und 1950 und ihre Nachwirkungen sind als Lehr-und Forschungsbereiche an den europäischen Forschungsinstitutionen und in den Lehrplänen heutzutage nicht mehr wegzudenken. Avantgarde und Moderne haben sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu unterschiedlichen, aber mehrfach miteinander verzahnten Forschungsgebieten entwickelt. Innerhalb der französischen und deutschen akademischen Welt bleibt der Sammelbegriff

„modernism“ weniger geläufig -„die (klassische) Moderne“ und „modernité“ fungieren hier als nahe liegende Äquivalente zu demjenigen, was im internationalen Kontext als eine zeitliche und räumliche Ko-Okkurenz künstlerischer Ausdrucksformen und ästhetischer Theorien namhaft gemacht werden kann, die ungefähr zwischen 1850 und 1950 angesiedelt werden kann. Auf ähnliche Weise entfaltet die Bezeichnung „Avantgarde“ eine Reihe häufig widersprüchlicher Konnotationen. Für manche kennzeichnet die Avantgarde den radikalsten experimentellen Bruch der Künste und Literaturen mit den Darstellungsund Erzählkonventionen des 19. Jahrhundert: im frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhundert zeugen davon Avantgardebewegungen wie Futurismus, Expressionismus, Dada und Surrealismus, Strömungen, die als die „heroische“ Phase der Avantgarde bezeichnet werden können. Ab den fünfziger Jahren kommt diese Avantgarde weitgehend ohne modernistische Begleiterscheinung aus. Für andere gehört die Avantgarde zu einem kulturellen Umfeld, das sich, durchaus im Bunde mit der Klassischen Moderne, der Erneuerung ästhetischer Konventionen verschreibt. Die neue Bücherreihe Studien zur europäiSchen avantgarde und moderne möchte der Kompliziertheit der unterschiedlichen europäischen Forschungstraditionen gerecht werden und strebt danach, die breite linguistische, terminologische und methodologische Vielfalt abzudecken. Anhand einer zweijährlichen Sammlung von Beiträgen in englischer, französischer und deutscher Sprache möchte die Reihe nicht nur die französisch-, deutsch-und englischsprachigen, sondern auch die nord-, süd-, zentral-und osteuropäischen Ergebnisse der Avantgardeund Moderne-Forschung einbeziehen. Die Reihe sammelt die neuesten und ertragreichsten Beiträge zur Forschung und widmet sich ausdrücklich der Erforschung der gesamten europäischen Avantgarde und Moderne, ihrer Vorläufer und ihrem Nachklang im Laufe des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Die Studien

zur europäiSchen avantgarde und moderne fördern die interdisziplinäre und intermediale Erforschungexperimenteller Ästhetiken/Poetiken und setzen es sich zum Ziel, das Interesse an den kulturellen Zusammenhängen und Kontexten der Avantgarde und der Moderne in Europa anzuregen. Beiträge werden internationalen Experten zur anonymen Begutachtung vorgelegt. Die Chefredakteure sind: Sascha Bru / University of Leuven David Ayers / University of Kent Zum Redaktionsausschuss gehören: Jan Baetens / Leuven University Hubert van den Berg / University of Groningen Benedikt Hjartarson / University of Iceland Tania Ørum / University of Copenhagen

L a C o l l e c t i o n d e l ’ EA M

L’avant-garde et le modernisme occupent actuellement une place majeure dans les universités européennes. Les arts et les littératures expérimentaux en Europe de 1850 à 1950 et au-delà font partie intégrante des programmes universitaires, tandis que les recherches sur l’avant-garde et le modernisme sont devenues, à l’intérieur des sciences humaines, des disciplines à part entière mais solidaires les unes des autres. Ces disciplines varient néanmoins à travers le continent. Dans les universités françaises et allemandes, la notion de « modernisme » reste plutôt étrangère : les notions de « modernité » et de « die Moderne » s’utilisent sans doute davantage pour ce que désigne la notion de « modernism » dans le contexte anglophone. Dans la recherche anglophone, en effet, la notion de «

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modernism » a acquis une certaine stabilité : elle désigne avant tout une période de la modernité poétique et esthétique, approximativement entre 1850 et 1950, au cours de laquelle a pris forme une révolte contre les traditions artistiques, littéraires et culturelles prédominantes. De la même façon, la notion d’« avant-garde » prend des connotations divergentes, souvent conflictuelles. Pour certains, l’« avant-garde » désigne les arts et les littératures les plus radicalement expé rimentaux qui se développent à l’intérieur du modernisme à partir du 19ème siècle. Dans ce cas, les mouvements avant-gardistes du début du 20ème siècle – dont le futurisme, l’expressionisme, le dadaïsme et le surréalisme – correspondent à la phase avantgardiste la plus « héroïque ». Pour d’autres, l’avant-garde appartient à un ordre culturel et conceptuel entièrement différent du modernisme. Dans cette perspective, l’avant-garde sur vit au modernisme, comme en témoigne la permanence d’une sensibilité avant-gardiste après 1950. Loin de vouloir réduire la complexité et la variété des traditions de recherche européennes, etudeS Sur l’avant-garde et le moderniSme en europe vise à embrasser la grande diversité linguistique, terminologique et méthodologique à l’intérieur de ces deux domaines de recherche. Par la publication d’un volume d’essais en anglais, en français et en allemand tous les deux ans, la collection souhaite comparer et mettre en rapport les résultats issus des traditions de recherche française, anglaise et allemande, mais également d’Europe nordique et méridionale, centrale et orientale. La collection rassemblera les travaux les plus novateurs et les plus stimulants de la recherche actuelle et se consacrera à l’étude de l’avant-garde et du modernisme européens au cours des 19ème et 20ème siècles. etudeS Sur l’avant-garde et le moderniSme en europe se propose de promouvoir la recherche interdisciplinaire et intermédiale sur les esthétiques et les poétiques expérimentales et de stimuler l’intérêt pour les dimensions

culturelles et contextuelles de l’avant-garde et du modernisme en Europe. Les essais acceptés par le comité éditorial seront soumis à l’avis d’experts internationaux pour une évaluation à l’aveugle (blind peer review). Éditeurs principaux: Sascha Bru / University of Leuven David Ayers / University of Kent Zum Redaktionsausschuss gehören: Jan Baetens / Leuven University Hubert van den Berg / University of Groningen Benedikt Hjartarson / University of Iceland Tania Ørum / University of Copenhagen

EA M 2 0 1 6

L’ E n q u ê t e

We are delighted to announce that the 2016 EAM conference on the topic L’Enquête will be hosted by CELLAM , Centre d’Etudes des Littératures et

Langues

Anciennes

et

Modernes ,

Université Rennes 2, under the direction of Prof. Jean-Pierre Montier .

D e a r EA M c o n f e r e n c e d e l e g a t e s a n d m e m b e r s ,

W e a r e d e l i g h t e d to w e lc o m e y o u to U t o p i a , t h e f o u r t h b i a n n u a l c o n f e r e n c e o f t h e E u r o p e a n N e t w o r k f o r Ava n t- G a r d e a n d M o d e r n i s m S t u d i e s . T h e pa r t i c i pat i o n o f o v e r 3 5 0 d e l e g at e s f r o m n u m e r o u s d i s c i p l i n e s , f r o m a l m o s t e v e r y pa r t o f E u r o p e , a n d f r o m m a n y ot h e r pa r t s o f t h e w o r l d , t e s t i f i e s to t h e h e a lt h o f s c h o l a r s h i p i n o u r f i e l d a n d to t h e d e s i r e o f s o m a n y s c h o l a r s to s t e p o u t s i d e t h e c o m pa r at i v e s a f e t y o f n at i o n a l o r r e g i o n a l s c h o l a r ly f r a m e w o r k s a n d c r e at e n e w a n d f o r wa r d - lo o k i n g e x c h a n g e s t h at f o l lo w t h e c o n to u r s o f n e w a n d e m e r g e n t c u lt u r a l g e o g r a p h i e s . T h e EA M i s s t i l l y o u n g , b u t o u r f o u r t h c o n f e r e n c e i s e v i d e n c e t h at o u r p r o j e c t h a s r e a l r e s o n a n c e w i t h s c h o l a r s a n d p r a c t i t i o n e r s , a n d w e a r e a l r e a d y lo o k i n g f o r wa r d to w e lc o m i n g y o u a l l a g a i n to o u r fifth meeting in Rennes in 2016.

D av i d Ay e r s a n d M a r j a H ä r m ä n m a a J o i n t c h a i r s o f EA M

C O N F E R E N C E

T H E M E :

“ U TOPIA ”

M o d e r n i s m a n d Ava n t- g a r d e a r e a r t i s t i c l a n g u a g e s o f r u p t u r e . B ot h w e r e d i r e c t e d a g a i n s t t r a d i t i o n a l way s o f c o n c e i v i n g a r t, o f t e n a s s u m i n g a n a n ta g o n i s t i c p o s i t i o n i n r e l at i o n s h i p to e x i s t i n g c u lt u r a l a n d s o c i a l i n s t i t u t i o n s . B u t c o u l d m o d e r n i s t a n d ava n t- g a r d e a r t i s t s o ff e r a n a lt e r n at i v e ? Wa s t h e r e a ls o a u to p i a n d i m e n s i o n , o r wa s n i h i l i s m t h e o n ly o p t i o n ? T h e 2 0 1 4 EA M c o n f e r e n c e o f H e ls i n k i c o mm e m o r at e s t h e c e n t e n a r y o f t h e b r e a k - o u t o f t h e F i r s t W o r l d Wa r b y f o c u s i n g o n t h e m a n y u to p i a n d r e a m s w i t h i n E u r o p e a n l i t e r at u r e a n d a r t s a s w e l l a s t h e i r c o l l a p s e i n t h e fa c e o f t h e h o r r o r s o f wa r . W e t h u s i n v i t e p r o p o s a ls f o r c o n t r i b u t i o n s t h at d e a l w i t h t h e a lt e r n at i v e s t h at m o d e r n i s m a n d ava n t- g a r d e o ff e r e d to e x i s t i n g r e a l i t y : u to p i a s , c h i m e r a s , d r e a m s , a b s t r a c t i o n s , m y t h o p o e i a s , o r d y s to p i a s . W e w e lc o m e c o n t r i b u t i o n s a c r o s s a l l a r e a s o f ava n t- g a r d e a n d m o d e r n i s m a c t i v i t y : a r t, l i t e r at u r e , m u s i c , a r c h i t e c t u r e , f i l m , a r t i s t i c a n d s o c i a l m o v e m e n t s , l i f e s t y l e , t e l e v i s i o n , fa s h i o n , d r a m a , p e r f o r m a n c e , a c t i v i s m , d e s i g n a n d t e c h n o lo g y.

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UTOPIA P r o g r a mm e / P r o g r a m

F r i d ay 2 9 t h A u g u s t

D e pa r t m e n t o f M o d e r n L a n g u a g e s M e t s äta l o / u n i o n i n k at u 4 0 U n i v e r s i t y o f H e ls i n k i Finland

8.00 r e g i s t r at i o n at t h e l o b b y o f t h e u n i v e r s i t y b u i l d i n g m e t s äta l o / u n i o n i n k at u 4 0

9.00 – 10.30 1 s t pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s 10.45 – 12.15 2 n d pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s 13.00 – 14.30 H e ls i n k i c i t y r e c e p t i on a t t h e c i t y h a l l , i n c l u d i n g b u ff e t address: Pohjoisesplanadi 11 – 13

15.00 – 16.30 3 r d pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s 16.30 – 17.00 C o ff e e 17.00-18.15 O p e n i n g c e r e m on y & t h e f i r s t k e y n ot e m a i n au d i to r i u m , l e c t u r e h a l l 1

U TOPIA , C IT Y A N D T H E ITA L IA N A V A N T - G A R D E S professor Ester Coen

U n i v e r s i t à d e l l ’ Aq u i l a , I t a ly

18.30-20.00 R e c to r ’ s r e c e p t i on a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y m a i n b u i l d i n g , i n c l u d i n g b u ff e t A d d r e s s : U n i o n i n k at u 3 4 , M a i n B u i l d i n g , Teachers’ Launch

UTOPIA P r o g r a mm e / P r o g r a m

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h A u g u s t

s u n d ay 3 1 s t A u g u s t

9.00 / 9.30 – 11.00

9.00 / 9.30 – 11.00

4 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

8 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

11.15 – 12.45

11.15 – 12.45

5 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

9 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

12.30 – 14.00

12.30 – 14.00

lu n c h

lu n c h

13.30 – 15.00

13.30 – 15.00

6 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

1 0 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

15.15 – 16.45

15.15 – 16.45

7 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

1 1 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

16.30 – 17.15

16.30 – 17.15

c o ff e e

c o ff e e

17.15 – 19.00

17.15 – 19.00

EA M m e e t i n g & t h e s e c o n d k e y n o t e

c lo s i n g c e r e m o n y & t h e t h i r d k e y n ot e

m a i n au d i to r i u m , l e c t u r e h a l l 1

m a i n au d i to r i u m , l e c t u r e h a l l 1

S urre a l i sm ’ s o ff t he m a p ?

utopian

c a r t o gr a p h i es :

U t o p i a s a nd W a rs o f t he R uss i a n Av a n t - g a rde P r o f e s s o r N i n a G o u r i a n o va

Professor Elza Adamowicz

Q u e e n M a r y U n i v e r s i t y o f L o n d o n , UK

20.00 D i n n e r at t h e R e s ta u r a n t s e u r a s a a r i Address: seurasaari

N o r t h w e s t e r n U n i v e r s i t y , USA

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UTOPIA Keynote speakers / Hauptrednern / Conférenciers invites

E l z a A d a m o w i c z is Professor Emerita of French Literature and Visual Culture at Queen Mar y University of London. Her research interests are in Surrealism, Dada, the European avant-garde, and word and image relations. Her publications include: Surrealist Collage in Text and Image: Dissecting the Exquisite Corpse (Cambridge University Press 1998; 2004), Ceci n’est pas un tableau: les écrits surréalistes sur l’ar t (Lausanne: L’Harmattan 2004), Surrealism: Crossings/Frontiers (edition 2004), Bunuel and Dali: Un chien andalou (2010), Eggs laid by Tigers . Dada and Beyond (2 vols, co-edited with Eric Robertson, 2011-12), Back to the Futurists (co-edited with Simona Storchi, 2013), as well as numerous articles, chapters and catalogue essays. She is currently working on a book on Dada’s Exquisite Corpses: between battlefield and fairground.





S urre a l i sm ’ s u t o p i a n c a r t o gr a p h i es : o ff t he m a p ?

On the 1929 Surrealist Map of the World, the Pacific Ocean occupies the centre of the world, New Guinea, Easter Island, China and Mexico are magnified, while Western Europe is reduced to a tiny promontor y at the outer limits of the vast Russian landmass. A modern mappa mundi with its mix of histor y, myth and imagination, it can be read as a model of surrealist dépaysement, foregrounding Surrealism’s utopian sites: countries of the revolution and supposed liberation from European norms. Foremost among these sites was Mexico, “le lieu surréaliste par excellence” (Breton), valued by the surrealists as the land of revolutions and precolumbian cultures. The paper will explore the European surrealists’ encounters with “Mexico”

as a discursive practice, an intertextual reality, a utopia forged by the ideological, political, and aesthetic context of the period, a map – or more precisely a mapping process – with constantly shifting parameters. The argument will consider various aspects of Mexico as a utopian construct: as an imaginar y or fantasized space, perceived essentially through its revolutions and preHispanic culture; as a real place which many of the surrealists, including Artaud, Breton, Paalen, Péret and Carrington passed through or settled in; and above all as a screen onto which the surrealists projected their utopian aspirations. This encounter raises the question: to what extent is utopia coextensive with the surreal?

ESTER COEN is Professor of Contemporar y Art at the Università dell’Aquila. An expert on Futurism, Metaphysical Art, and Italian art of the first half of the twentieth centur y, she has also done research on the 1960s and ‘70s, and on contemporar y art. She is the author of numerous publications. With Giuliano Briganti, she co-authored the exhibition and catalogue Pittura metafisica (Venice 1979), and with Maurizio Calvesi the catalogue raisonne of the works of Umberto Boccioni (1983). She curated the retrospective exhibition on Boccioni for the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1988, and contributed to numerous international exhibitions, including Italian Ar t in the 20th Centur y, Royal Academy (London 1989); Memoria del Futuro, the Reina Sofia Centre (Madrid 1990); Ar t and Power, Hayward Galler y (London 1995). She curated the exhibitions Futurismo at the Picasso Museum (Barcellona) in 1996, and



Metafisica at the Scuderie del Quirinale (Rome) in 2003. In collaboration with Mario Codognato, she organized an exhibition on Richard Serra at the Mercati di Traiano (Rome). She planned the exhibition on Gar y Hill at the Colosseum (Rome 2005) and curated the retrospective on Enzo Cicchi at the Museo Corrier (Venice 2007). In 2009 she was one of the three members of the committee for the exhibition for the centennial of Futurism (Centre Pompidou, Paris; Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome; Tate Modern, London). In 2009, she also organized the exhibition on the relationship among the early avant-gardes Futurismo 100: Illuminazioni. Avanguardie a confronto. Italia-Germania-Russia for the MART in Rovereto. She is currently organizing an exhibition entitled Matisse Arabesque for the Scuderie del Quirinale, scheduled to open in the Spring of 2015.

UTOPIA, CITY AND THE ITALIAN AVANT-GARDES

In a period of ominous signs – albeit rife with the optimism of progress – the artistic avant-gardes of the early twentieth-centur y, with their extraordinarily intense utopian impulse, renewed languages and models. Italy, then recently unified, produced two among the most interesting tendencies of the times. Two apparently opposing ways of thinking modernity: the dynamic fur y of the Futurists expressed by the propagandistic vigour of theirs declarations and manifestoes, and the apparent and yet hostile calm of De Chirico’s visions. The centre and symbol of both visions – one dynamic, and the other still and frozen – is the city, celebrated not only by the poets, but also by many avant-garde artists, from Kirchner to Delauney and Grosz. The city is the starting point for a project of renewal in the case of the Futurists, and for a paradoxically modern discourse in the case of the spatial re-arrangement of architectonical, or archaeological, elements in De Chirico’s comings and goings. Of less interest to

the Cubists, the city becomes the cornerstone of the two Italian tendencies, in a double movement of forward thrust or of estranged inversion of forms. Incredibly, future and past take on similar meanings in two approaches that would leave a lasting mark on the art of the twentieth centur y. N i n a G o u r i a n o va (aka G U R I A N O V A ) (Ph.D. 2001, Columbia, Associate Professor) reexamines in her research the wide spectrum of questions concerning the cultural, poetical, social, and political environment as expressed in Russian culture. Her scholarship in the fields of literature and art histor y encompasses both Russian and European modernist and avant-garde movements, with a specific emphasis on the interrelation and mutual influence of aesthetics and politics. Another, no less important problem she addresses deals with the profound symbiosis of the literar y and the visual. Nina Gourianova authored several books, published in Russia, Europe, and the United States. The well-recognized expert on Russian Avant-garde throughout the world, Gourianova ser ved as the primar y curatorial consultant to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) on the exhibition of Russian Futurist and Constructivist books in 2002, and participated in the organization of many exhibitions, including Amazons of the Avant-garde and Kazimir Malevich at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was nominated and elected a Fellow at Har vard Society of Fellows in 1998-2002. Her most recent book, The Aesthetics of Anarchy (2012, University of California Press) explores the question of creative freedom. What does it take to make art political, or was it culture that shaped politics? How does an artist’s social and political agenda change the environment around her or him? These questions still remain as important at the beginning of the twenty first centur y, as they were at the beginning of the twentieth.



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UTOPIA Conference organizers

C o n f e r e n c e c o n v e n o r s a n d t h e EA M network chairs

Prof.

David Ayers

University of Kent, UK Dr.

Marja Härmänmaa

University of Helsinki, Finland

T h e s c i e n t i f i c c o mm i t t e e o f t h e EA M 2 0 1 4 c o n f e r e n c e

Henry Bacon

Prof.

Natalia Baschmakoff

Prof.

Tomi Huttunen

Prof.

Irmeli Hautamäki

Prof.

Prof.

University of Helsinki Prof.

University of Eastern Finland Prof.

University of Helsinki Dr.

University of Helsinki Dr.

Pekka Pesonen

University of Helsinki

Kirsi Saarikangas

University of Helsinki

Riikka Stewen

Academy of Fine Arts

Harri Veivo

University of New Sorbonne / University of Helsinki

Teemu Ikonen

University of tampere Dr.

Timo Kaitaro

C o n f e r e n c e S e c r e ta r y

University of Helsinki Dr.

Janna Kantola

University of Helsinki Prof.

Pirjo Lyytikäinen

University of Helsinki Dr.

Alfonso Padilla

University of Helsinki Dr.

Riikka Rossi

University of Helsinki Dr.

Johanna Laakkonen

University of Helsinki

Heli Huhtala Meetings Mill www.meetingsmill.fi [email protected]

UTOPIA S p o n s o r s a n d Pa rt n e r s

University of Helsinki, Finland Research Project “Autogenetic Russian Avantgarde” Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies “Choices of Russian Modernisation” Academy of Fine Arts , Finland Federation of Finnish Learned Societies Italian Culture Institute in Helsinki, Finland Embassy of Italy in Helsinki, Finland Dante Alighieri Society in Helsinki, Finland The European Social Fund, European Union Centre for Russian and Border Studies , University of Eastern Finland Leverage from the EU Regional Council of North Carelia Ylikraka Attorneys-at-Law Austrian Embassy in Helsinki, Finland Bundeskanzleramt Österreich WKO Wien, Österreich Restaurant Kolme Kruunua

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UTOPIA p r a c t i c a l i n f o r m at i o n a b o u t t h e c o n f e r e n c e

CON F ERENCE VENUE

RE G ISTRATION F EES

U n i v e r s i t y B u i l d i n g M e t s äta lo

Speakers, Participants and Accompanying Persons.

Address: U n i o n i n k at u 4 0 , 0 0 0 1 4 U n i v e r s i t y o f H e ls i n k i

The fee includes:

E n t r a n c e a ls o o n t h e ot h e r s i d e o f t h e b u i l d i n g : Fa b i a n i n k at u 3 9

access to all sessions conference material

RE G ISTRATION

The registration desk at the conference site (Metsätalo Building) will be open at the following times:

T h u r s day, Au g u s t 2 8 / 1 8 . 0 0 – 1 9 . 3 0 F r i day, Au g u s t 2 9 / 0 8 . 0 0 - 1 7 . 0 0 S at u r day, Au g u s t 3 0 / 0 8 . 0 0 – 1 7 . 0 0 S u n day, Au g u s t 3 1 / 9 . 0 0 – 1 4 . 0 0

The following ser vices are available at the registration desk: registration

lunches and refreshments during the scheduled breaks servings at the receptions on Friday 29th: H e ls i n k i C i t y R e c e p t i o n at t h e c i t y h a l l o n F r i day at 1 3 . 0 0 - 1 4 . 3 0 , i n c lu d i n g b u ff e t W e lc o m e R e c e p t i o n h o s t e d b y t h e r e c to r o f t h e H e ls i n k i U n i v e r s i t y o n F r i day at 1 8 . 3 0 2 0 . 0 0 , i n c lu d i n g b u ff e t

PG doctoral students and staff of the University of Helsinki and the Academy of Fine Arts – both speakers and non presenting participants: S a m e a s s p e a k e r s b u t lu n c h a n d c o ff e e a r e n ot i n c lu d e d i n t h e c o n f e r e n c e f e e .

( p r e - r eg i s t e r e d pa rt i c i pa n t s a n d on - s i t e r eg i s t r ation – paym e n t by c a s h on ly )

Additional fees:

c o n f e r e n c e m at e r i a l & t i c k e t s f o r s o c i a l events

EA M M e m b e r s h i p F e e / 5 0 €

g e n e r a l i n f o r m at i o n book exhibition

Please note that only registered participants may attend the scientific sessions and social events offered by the conference.

Conference Dinner on Saturday, August 30 / 45 €

I M PORTANT PHONE NU M BERS

BAD G ES

R e g i s t r at i o n d e s k – C o n f e r e n c e o ff i c e H e l i H u h ta l a + 3 5 8 4 0 0 7 3 7 4 2 0

All delegates, speakers, accompanying guests and exhibitors are asked to wear their name badges to the scientific sessions and social events. Entrance to the sessions is restricted to registered delegates. If you lose your badge, please contact the registration desk.

e-mail: [email protected] U n i v e r s i t y, M e t s äta lo B u i l d i n g ( p o rt e r ) 0294121601 Em e r g e n c y 1 1 2 Ta x i i n H e ls i n k i 01000700 / foreign phones +358 100 0700

IN F O F OR SPEAKERS

Technical information of the meeting rooms: Lecture hall 1 accommodates over 200 people, and there is a high standard technique. Other meeting rooms are smaller and have approx. 25-30 seats each. The computer and the data projector will be found from each room. Delegates are asked to switch their mobile phones off during the sessions. Photography, audio taping, video recording, digital taping or any other form of duplication is strictly prohibited in the sessions.

messages

Messages for EAM participants will be displayed on the message board in the registration area, together with any program changes and general information on the congress. Please check the message board each day.

LUNCH AND CO F F EE

Lunch is included in the registration fee for Speakers, Participants and Accompanying persons. On Friday the city of Helsinki offers a buffet. On Saturday and Sunday lunch will be ser ved at the Unicafe Restaurant (0 Floor) at the University Metsätalo, Main Building.

BANKS

Banks are open from 10.00 to 16.00, excluding weekends. Cash dispensers are available in city centre.

CURRENCY AND M ONEY EXCHAN G E

The EURO is the valid currency in Finland. Forex Money Exchange in Helsinki is located in: t h e m a i n R a i lway S tat i o n S to c k m a n n ’ s D e pa rt m e n t S to r e

Cash dispensers in the town accept most international credit cards. No personal cheques will be cashed by any bank or hotel. Major credit cards are accepted in most shops and restaurants.

INTERNET

ELECTRICITY

Internet codes will be found from the registration envelopes.

The electrical supply in Finland is 220 Volts, AC 50 Hz.

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LAN G UA G E

TRANSPORTATION IN HELSINKI

T h e offi ci al l anguage of t he congres s i s Eng lish, F re n ch and Deutsch. Interpretation is not provided by t h e or gani zer s .

Most hotels are located within walking distance fro m the University B uilding . From the city center to Kaisaniemi you can catch a metro o r a tra m no. 3.

SHOPPIN G

T h e l arger stores in Helsinki are open from 09.00 t o 2 1 .00 from Monday to Friday On Saturdays they a re o pen from 09.00 to 18.00. Many stores are open on S und ays i n t he s um m er from 12. 00 to 18.00, s o me t o 21. 00.

TRAVEL AND INSUARANCE

The Local Organizing Committee , University of Helsinki or Meetings Mill are not responsible for any loss, theft, accident or damage during the c o nferenc e . Pa r tic ipa nts a re kindly requested to ma ke their own indiv idua l a rra ng ements.

S M OKIN G POLICY

S mo k i ng i s not al l owed i nd oor s i n publ ic pla c es, e . g . c ongres s bui l d i ngs , banks , d epar t m ent sto res, p u b l i c transpor t, etc . Par ticipants who wish to s moke w i l l need t o d o s o out s i d e t he building s. I n t h e restaurants, please ask the staff about the s mok i ng areas .

TOURIST IN F OR M ATION

H e l s i nki ci t y t our i s t i nfor m at i on offi ce: Poh j o i s es pl anad i 19 Te l e p hone + 358 ( 0) 9 3101 3300 E - ma i l : t our i s t . i nfo( at ) hel . fi O p e n ing hour s : M on - F r i 9- 20 S at - S un 9- 18 T h e tourist information is found also in the Helsinki C e n t ral Rai lw ay S t at i on. T h e official tourism website of the City of Helsinki i s h t t p: //w w w. vi s i t hel s i nki . fi /en

WATER

In Finla nd the wa ter is sa fe to drink.

UTOPIA pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

friday 29th august

9.00 – 10.30 / 1st parallel sessions 1 0.45 – 12.15 / 2nd parallel sessions 1 5.00 – 16.30 / 3rd parallel sessions

saturday 30th augus t

9 .00/9.30 – 11.00 / 4th parallel sessions 11.15 – 12.45 / 5th parallel sessions 13.30 – 15.00 / 6th parallel sessions 15.15 – 16.45 / 7th parallel sessions

sunday 31st august

9.00/9.30 – 11.00 / 8th parallel sessions 11.15 – 12.45 / 9th parallel sessions 13.30 – 15.00 / 10th parallel sessions 15.15 – 16.45 / 11th parallel sessions

23

SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) Chair: Kirsi Saari kangas

Utopian archit ectu res .

SESSION 3.

Closed panel of Lau ra Salisbury.

Utopian Tim es .

SESSION 2.

Open panel of Irmeli Hautamäk i.

Kan din sky’s th eory of art.

SESSION 1.

SEM 9 (24)

Kurt S chwitters’ alphabet of utopia

Robi n Fuller. Trinity College Dublin, IRELAND:

Management

C on temporary Spatia l Utopia s as an Effec t of the C reative Ri sk

Ewa Odyjas. Silesian University of Te chnology, POLAND:

“Antic Hay”

An e xp lor ation of t he morality of arch itecture i n Aldo us H uxley ’s

Ronald Trogdon. Durham University, UK:

Wa iting Time and Slow Endurance: Psychoanalysis , Feminism, Utopianism

Lisa Baraitser. Birkbeck, UK :

Futur ity in the NEP-era Soviet Union

No n- Reproductive F utur ism: C ommun ist Babi es , Soviet Mot hers and

Hannah Proctor. Birkbeck, UK :

Slow Modernism /Slow Modernity: Utopianism and the Weight of Matter

Lau ra Salisbury. Exeter, UK / Chair:

Kand insky and Bauh aus Wall Painting

Ridler Morgan. CUNY, USA:

relation to the art theories of Wassily Kandinsky & Arnold Schönberg

A synt hesis of the a rts in the exp er imental films o f Pet er Kylberg , in

Diu rlin Lars. University of Oxford, UK:

‘Innere Notwendigkeit’ and the Utopian Artwork in Kandinsky and Rilke

Conqu er Rey. University of Oxford, UK:

friday 29th august / 9.00 – 10.30 / 1st parallel sessions

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 – 1 0 . 3 0 / 1 s t pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

24

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 14 (30)

Modernist Myths in Marino Moretti’s “lapis”

Gallo Cinzia. University of Catania, ITALY:

Understanding Modernism thr ough Dante: Rebora, Eliot, and Mandelstam

Aresi Anna. Brown University, USA:

A Case Study of Montalian Modernism: “Fine dell’infanzia

Colella Massimo. University of Flore nce , ITALY:

1920 and 1970

The F innish long journey towards avant-garde: Finnish poetry between

Arianna Consuelo Marco n. University of He ls inki, FINLAND:

Montale

The first G eneration o f Italian Mo dernist Po et s: Gozzan o, Sbarba ro, and

Alberto Comparini. Stanford Univers ity, USA:

Es tonia (1905-1915

J. R andvere´s “Ru th” (1909) a s t he u topia n i dentity c onst ruc tion of Young

Mirjam Hinrikus. Tallinn University / Unde r and Tuglas Lite r atur e Ce ntr e , ESTONIA:

friday 29th august / 9.00 – 10.30 / 1st parallel sessions

pa rt 3/3, session 35, see page 38.

pa rt 2/3, session 16, see page 31.

part 1/3.

Open panel of Rossella Ricco bono.

Ci tysc apes .

Voices: Myth s , Dys topias an d

Italian Mo dernism an d its Poetic

SESSION 6.

SESSION 5.

Chair: Riik ka Rossi

Areal modernit ies .

SESSION 4.

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 – 1 0 . 3 0 / 1 s t pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

25

SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) Peer Seminar of Ken Hi rschkop .

Cities an d Modern ity

Se ssion 9. ending at 11 am.

part 2/2, session 18.

part 1/2.

Chair: Tomi H utt unen

Ru ssian utopias .

Se ssion 8.

Chair: Finn Fo rdham

Theatre utopias .

Se ssion 7.

SEM 24 (21)

Toronto’s three modernities

Ken H irsch kop. University of Waterloo, CANADA:

The dream interiors of Djuna Barnes’s short fiction

Laura Oulanne. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

Mo dernity in Young Music and Literary Production.

Cairo and Alexandr ia (Egypt): Utopia n and Dystopia n Visions o f U rba n

Carla Dodi. University of Cairo, EGYPT:

Instances of modernism in Paola Masino’s narrative

Chiara Coppin. Università degli studi di Nap oli “ L’Or ie ntale ” , ITALY:

Alexa nder Vertinsky’s Doleful Ditties: on the Gestures of the Text

Rik u Toivola. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

The C onstructivist Utopia of Vsev olod Meyerhold

Vadim Scherbakov. Institut for Art Re s e arch, Mos cow, RUSSIAN FEDERATION:

Mich ael Chekhov in the 1920s: the quest for the modern actor

Liisa Byckling. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

The Wasted Dreams and Visions of the Czech (Theatre) Avant-Garde

H elena Spurná. Palacky University in Olomouc, CZECH REPUBLIC:

with a Foot in Both Camp

Mo dernist a nd /or Mo derniz ed: Turn -of-the -Century Mo dern G ree k The atre

Antonis Glytzouris. Aristotle Univers ity of The s saloniki, GREECE:

The Pioneer Players (1911-25) and the Theatres of Art

Kat harine Cockin. University of Hull, UK:

friday 29th augu st / 9.00 – 10. 30 / 1st parallel sessions

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 – 1 0 . 3 0 / 1 s t pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

26

SEM 26 (21) SEM 27 (18)

Victo r Brauner ’s Utopian Pict-Poetic World

Cosana Eram. University of the Pacific, USA:

The non-oedipian android: towards a surrealist utopia in postwar Romania

Imre Joz sef Balazs. Babes Bolyai Unive rs ity, ROMANIA:

Europe

The New Adam: The Robotic challenge for a C ommunist Utopia in Eastern

Mari na Dmitri eva. University of Leipzig, GERMANY:

the 1960s to the 1990s

Killed u topia s: H ungar ian Dec onstruc tivist Neo-C onstruc tiv ism fr om

Eva Fo rgacs. Art Center College of De s ign, USA: AUSTRIA:

Asia a s a rememdy for the decline of the West in German-J ewish writing .

Sebastian Musch. Hochschule für Jüdis che Studie n, GERMANY:

The Rise and Fall of Russian-Jewish Avant-Garde Art.

Ruth Apter-Gabriel. The Israel Museum, ISRAEL:

F uture.

Redemption, Utopia, a nd the Avant-Ga rde: C o nti nental Jewish Visions of t he

Sami Sjöberg. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

Introduction - Jewish Messianism and the Avant-Garde

Tom Sandqvist. University of Arts, Cr aft and De s ign, SWEDEN:

friday 29th augu st / 9.00 – 10. 30 / 1st parallel sessions

Eva Forgacs and Marina Dimit rieva.

Closed pa nel of

utopia of ot hern ess .

l’impossible Searc hing for a n ew

“S oyons réalistes ! Demandons

Se ssion 11a. en din g at 11 am.

Open panel of Tom Sandqv ist.

an d Avan t- Garde.

Jewish Messian ism

Se ssion 10. ending at 11 am.

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 – 1 0 . 3 0 / 1 s t pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

27

SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) Chair: Cosana Eram

Guerrillas & Mes siahs .

SESSION 13.

Closed panel of David Watson.

te mporalities and literatu re.

In an d ou t of t ime: ex ten ded

SESSION 12.

Closed panel of Cathy J rade.

lit erat ure.

con temporary Lat in Americ an

European utopianism an d

SESSION 11b .

SEM 9 (24)

Guerrilla art in the streets of Athens: utopia in action

Konsta ntina Drakopoulou. University of Athe ns , GREECE:

a guerilla mode

Let’s g o placeshaking! Part 2 Inhabiting/Researching public space on

Emeline Eudes. FRANCE:

at La jos Kassák’s Activist circle in Vienna and Budapest

The horizons of the Bilda rchitektur - pol itical messia nism a nd arti stic utopia

Merse Pál Szeredi. Eötvös Loránd Unive rs ity, HUNGARY:

Woolf and T.S . Eliot

Imagining the E nd of Civi lisation: Deep T ime as Po liti cal Critique in Virginia

Elsa H ögberg. University of Glasgow, UK:

Narratives of Pre-Emption, Speculation, and the Anthropocene

David Watson. Uppsala University, SWEDEN:

Cathy Jrade. Vanderbilt University, USA

Leila Lehnen. University of New Mexico, USA

Charlotta Roger. George Mason Unive rs ity, USA

friday 29th august / 10. 45 – 12.15 / 2n d parallel sessions

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 1 0 . 4 5 – 1 2 . 1 5 / 2 n d pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

28

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 14 (30)

against human ruins

Giorg io Cap r oni’s i nt ert extual ity in “Il muro dell a t err a”: fragment s sho red

Piet ro Girgenti. Collegio della Guastalla, ITALY:

Cesa re Pavese’s Modernism : Influences from European and American Models

Marie Ko kubo. University of Tokyo, JAPAN:

Pavese Modernist Narrator in “Lav orare stanca”

Rossella Riccobono. University of St. Andr e ws , UK:

Mondrian’s utopia in the fourth dimension and third space

Runet te Kruger. Tshwane University of Te chnology, SOUTH AFRICA:

Pa ris s tudio

Uto pia a s projective t hinki ng in the work of Mo ndrian’s t heory, pai nti ng a nd

Luis Diaz. University of Brighton, UK:

Pure Dots , Pure Music in Kand insky?

Alt t i K uusamo. University of Turku, FINLAND:

et techniques dans la vie moderne in Paris

Delaunay’s pa nor am ic mur als fo r the 1 9 3 7 Exposition i nternationale des a rt s

The utopia n p romise o f w or k, techno lo gy and leisure in Robert a nd Son ia

Kate K angaslahti. Independent Scholar , BELGIUM:

figures and radically innovative perspective.

uto pia n a spir ations m ature into an art o f re al ity, unha rnessed

How E douard Pign on’s 1934-6 de pictions of work ers’ solidarit y and

Helen E. Beale. Independent Scholar , UK:

Stag ing Modern Ruins: Eugene Berman’s Dystopian Cityscapes of the 1 9 3 0s

Lau ra Fravel. University of North Carolina, USA:

Charlotte Perriand and the Misery of Paris

Genevieve Hendricks. Muhlenberg College / Parsons The New School for Design, USA:

friday 29th august / 10. 45 – 12.15 / 2n d parallel sessions

pa rt 3/3, session 35.

pa rt 1/3, session 6.

part 2/3.

Open panel of Rossella Ricco bono.

Ci tysc apes .

Voices: Myth s , Dys topias an d

Italian Mo dernism an d its Poetic

SESSION 16.

Chair: Bela Tsipuria

Kan din sky an d Mon drian .

SESSION 15.

Open panel of Emilie Lu se.

Ci tysc apes of t he 1930 s.

Frenc h Landscapes an d

Utopia an d Dys topia in the

SESSION 14.

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 1 0 . 4 5 – 1 2 . 1 5 / 2 n d pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

29

SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) SESSION 19.

PART 1/2, session 8.

PART 2/2.

Chair: Tomi H utt unen

Ru ssian utopias .

SESSION 18.

Closed pa nel of Li dia Gluchowsk a.

Part nersh ip.

Creativ e Collaborat ion and Ideal

Artis tic couples : a Utopia of

SESSION 17.

The Crisis of the Avant-Garde in the Late 1 9 2 0s and the Early 1 9 3 0s

Stanislav Savitski, Smolny College, St. Pe te rs burg, RUSSIAN FEDERATION:

Mo dernist?

Andrei Pl ato nov in the C on text of Russia n Avant-garde: Wa s Plato nov a

Vadim KHOKHRYAKOV, Saint Petersburg State Unive rs ity, RUSSIAN FEDERATION:

Toyen in the network of the interwar avant-garde

Ma n- Cuttle-Fi sh and Ma gnetic Wo man: Artistic Partnership o f Štyrský and

Lenka Bydžovská, Academy of Science s of the Cze ch Re public, CZECH REP UBLIC:

projec t of the avant-garde

The Germ an-Polish c ouple Ma rgare t e and Stan isl aw Ku bicki. An unf inished

Lidia Głuchowska, University of Zielona Gor a, P OLAND:

Two modernist c ouples from the Riga Artists’ Group

Aija Braslina, Latvian Natio nal Muse um of Art, LATVIA:

friday 29th augu st / 10.45 – 12.15 / 2nd parallel sessions

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 1 0 . 4 5 – 1 2 . 1 5 / 2 n d pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

30

SEM 24 (21)

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 1 0 . 4 5 – 1 2 . 1 5 / 2 n d pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

SEM 26 (21)

SEM 27 (18)

friday 29th augu st / 10.45 – 12.15 / 2nd parallel sessions

SESSION 21.

SESSION 20.

31

SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) SEM 9 (24) Closed panel of Felicit y Gee.

Utopian Sexualit ies .

Utopian Spac es:

SESSION 24.

Forest U niv ersi ty, USA

Chair: Profess or Scot t W. Klei n,Wak e

Closed panel of Joshua Koti n.

Syn ecdoc hes of Utopia.

Cot eries , Comm itt ees , Companies:

SESSION 23.

SESSION 22.

Ca rring ton’s Fem inist Revision of Surrealism

“I am a herm aphr od ite in love wit h one o f my o wn dre ams ”: Le on ora

Anna Watz. University of Linköping, SWEDEN:

‘“W hat are the islands to me”: Bryher, H.D. and the Heterotopic Island

Jana Funke. University of Exeter, UK :

‘V isual Poems’: Claude Cahun’s Archive of the Self

Felicit y Gee. University of Exeter, UK :

and Le Guin

Workp laces of Tomorr ow: Admin ist ration as Hop e i n Bo gdanov, W ells ,

Doug las Mao. John Hopkins, USA:

“Wa iting for Godot”

“That’s the ide a, le t’s c ontradict each ot her ”: t he labor of negation i n

Ju lia J archo. NYU, USA:

J.H. Prynne’s Utopia

Josuah Kotin. Princeton, USA:

friday 29th august / 15. 00 – 16.30 / 3rd parallel sessions

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 1 5 . 0 0 – 1 6 . 3 0 / 3 r d pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

32

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 14 (30)

The U topian Dimension of the Abstract Cinema (1 9 2 0 -1 9 4 0 )

Marie Rebecchi, Sorbonne Nouvelle - Par is III, FRANCE:

“Eaten Horizon”

Surrealism in 1947 and c inema - myth and ma gic i n “L’ Invention du mo nde” and

Kristoffer Noheden. Stockholm Unive rs ity, SWEDEN:

Guide books for the New

Jed Rasula. U. of Georgia, USA:

Discussant: Nina Gurianova. Northwe ste r n Unive rs ity, Evanston & Chicago, USA.

Perceptual Utopias in the Russian Avant-Garde (1 9 1 0 s -1 9 6 0 s ).

From the ‘Transparent Stone Age’ to the ‘Space of the Chalice-Cupola’:

Natalia Baschmakoff. University of Eastern Finland / University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

«Город Эн»

Детская утопия и культурная мифология модернизма в романе Л. Добычина

Alexander Belousov. Saint-Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts, RUSSIA:

Ан тропонимический взрыв эпохи мод ернизма: от трад иц ии к утопии

Elena Dushechkina. Saint Petersburg State Unive rs ity, RUSSIA:

Language Writing’s Critical Utopia: From Leningrad to Occupy

Barret t Watten. Wayne State Univers ity, USA:

Prefigurative Politics

Tani a Ørum. University of Copenhage n, DENMARK:

C onflic ts between Subversive Action and Politics

Harri Veivo. Université So rbonne Nouve lle – Par is 3, FRANCE:

friday 29th august / 15. 00 – 16.30 / 3rd parallel sessions

Chair: Henry Baco n

Ci n ema.

SESSION 27.

PART 2/2, session 59.

part 1 /2.

He lsinki, FINLAND.

Chair: Sa nna Turoma. Uni v ersi ty of

Closed pa nel of Natal ia Bas chmakof f.

Ru ss ian Avant-Garde (1900-2000) .

Utopia an d the Tran sc endent in

SESSION 26.

Closed panel of Tania Ørum.

th e 1960 s and 1970 s.

Art istic an d Polit ic al U topias in

Art into Politics – Polit ics into Art.

SESSION 25.

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 1 5 . 0 0 – 1 6 . 3 0 / 3 r d pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

33

SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) SESSION 30.

Chair: T eemu Ikonen

M odernis m durin g the World Wars .

SESSION 29.

Chair: Riikka Rossi

Distu rbin g modernit y.

SESSION 28.

the Polish interwar art criticism

“A c on troversy b et ween Chw istek and Strz eminski – t w o m odels of utopia i n

Diana Wasilewska. The University of Szcze cin, POLAND:

Modernism at the Front? Temporality in Literary Contributions to WWI Journals

Sarah Po sman. presented by Cedric van DIJCK , Ghe nt Unive rs ity, BELGIUM:

Batt le of Dorking

The literary spar k fo r the Fi rst Wo rld War: The imm inent dystopia o f The

Bo Pet tersson. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

Mo dernity as pathology: Llorenç Villalonga’s “Andrea Víctrix” (1 9 7 4 )

Jo rdi Lario s. University of St. Andrews , UK:

Kafka ’s “Odrade k” – Thoughts of Distortion and Transformation

Michiko Oki. University College London, UK:

Innocence & Erotic Utopia in Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities”

Carl Findley III. Mercer University, USA:

friday 29th augu st / 15.00 – 16.30 / 3rd parallel sessions

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 1 5 . 0 0 – 1 6 . 3 0 / 3 r d pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

34

SEM 24 (21)

SEM 26 (21) SEM 27 (18)

Thin king in the Soviet Estonia

The Tota l Aest hetic o- Philosophical Syst em of T õnis Vint: a n Exa mple o f Utopia n

Elnar Taidre. Art Museum of Estonia / Estonian Acade my of Arts , ESTONIA:

Cosmopolitism as the Driving Force in the Artistic Development of Valentin Serov

Tanja Malycheva. Paula Modersohn-Be cke r Mus e um, GERMANY:

friday 29th augu st / 15.00 – 16.30 / 3rd parallel sessions

SESSION 32.

Chair: Agata J agubowsk a

in t he arts .

Nat ionalism and un iversal

SESSION 31.

f r i d ay 2 9 t h a u g u s t / 1 5 . 0 0 – 1 6 . 3 0 / 3 r d pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

35

SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) SEM 9 (24) pa rt 2/3, session 16.

pa rt 1/3, session 6.

part 3/3.

Open panel of Rossella Riccobono.

Dystopias and Citys capes .

an d it s Poet ic Voices : Myt hs ,

Italian Mo dernism

SESSION 35.

PART 2/2, session 45.

part 1/2.

Konsta ntin Dudakov-K ashuro.

Open panel of Natalia Smolynsk aya and

Avant-Garde.

Conc ept in t he Russian

Th e Relevan ce of t he Utopia

SESSION 34.

pa rt 2/2, session 48.

Part 1/2.

Ha rri Veivo. U niv ersit é So rbonne No uv elle – Paris 3, FRANCE.

Jyrk i Nummi. Univ ersi ty of Helsinki , FINLAND

Nathali e Aubert. Oxford Brookes Uni versity, UK

Peer s eminar of

SESSION 33.

of Futur ism

Ambivalent Mo dern ity: Ma ssi mo Bontem pelli’ s Pro sai c R evision of t he Po eti cs

Welg e Jobst. Universität Konstanz, GERMANY:

Modernism in 1930s Italy. Solaria’s model

Ludovico Roberto. University of Amhe rst, USA:

Marinetti between Modernism and Avant-garde

Luca Somigli. University of Toronto, CANADA:

avant- garde in exile

Escape from Utopia : t he me tamo rphoses of t he utopia n dre ams i n the Russian

Dmi tri Tokarev. Institute of Russian Lite r atur e , RUSSIA:

Brave New World and Russian avant-garde

Irina Golovach eva. St. Petersburg State Unive rs ity, RUSSIA:

Re- thinking Utopism / Re-disc overy of the Russian Avant-gardes

Natalia Smolyanskaya. Russian State Unive rs ity for the Humanitie s , RUSSIA:

Literature is news that STAYS news: Ezra Pound, Politics , and Modernism

Sv etlana Nedeljkov. University of Ne w Brunswick, CANADA:

So nnet s of Eino Leino, Kaarlo Sarkia and Teemu Manninen

Echo es o f Ov id a nd Petrarch i n The Finnish Po et ry. Abo ut Me tamo rph os is i n

Tuula Rautio . University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

the Turkish Literary Tradition

The M ystical M eth od : Ahme t Ha md i Tanpinar, E urope an Lit era ry Modernism and

Kaitli n Staudt. University of Oxford, UK:

sat urday 30th august / 9. 00/9.30 – 11. 00 / 4t h parallel sessions

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 / 9 . 3 0 – 1 1 . 0 0 / 4 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

36

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 12 (44)

Rhythm, Space and Dynamics of the Imagination: Painting and Poiesis in Postwar Paris

Natalie Adamson. University of St Andr e ws , uk:

Defining Brazilian Modernism: Antropofagia or the culture of ingestion

Lara Demori. University of Edinburgh, UK:

disciplinary c omparison

Marianne Moore and Joseph C ornell: gift exchange as a model for cross-

Siofra McSherry. Freie Universität, Be r lin, GERMANY:

bet ween local avant-garde practices

The Ja pa nese reception of Max W eber’s C ubist P oems as a s ite of intera ction

Pierantonio Zanotti. Ca’ Foscari, Unive rs ity of Ve nice , ITALY:

relief of laughter

“ wo ble ibb da hummooa?” E rnst Jandl , G erhard Rühm and the tremendous

Helm ut Neundlinger. AUSTRIA:

bet ween performance, dadaism and historical reflection.

Dec o nstruc ting Twelve-Tone Utopia. Vi ennese c om posing as an in terface

Irene Suchy. Network ViennAvant, AUSTRIA:

Friedensreich Hundertwasser and the ironical turn in Austrian Arts after WWI

Harald Krejci. Museum Belvedere, AUSTRIA:

“Houses without any roof. You must be joking!”

Rudolf Kohoutek. independent scho lar , AUSTRIA:

Horror

Sm other ing Mot her ing M etre: Raym ond Queneau’s Non- c onfo rmism a gainst

Anne- Sophie Bories. University of Lee ds , Uk:

Histo ire de l’œi

From Terror to Horr or: t he Ant elogo s of Dystopia i n G e orges Batai lle ’s

Claire Lozier. University of Leeds, UK:

Rewriting the Horror of the War: Terror in Blaise Cendrars’ “Moravagine”

Rebecca Ferreboeuf. Durham Univers ity. UK:

sat urday 30th august / 9. 00/9.30 – 11. 00 / 4t h parallel sessions

pa rt 2/2, session 38B , see page 43.

PART 1/2.

Open panel of Davi d Cot tington.

cr oss-disciplinary com paris on s .

Modernism and avant-gardes:

SESSION 38. startin g at 9. 00.

Chair: Irene Suchy

Irene Su chy.

Closed pa nel of Hannes Schweiger and

avant-garde.

element of Vienn ese post-war

Sc hmäh. Humour as a cons titu tiv e

SESSION 37. startin g at 9. 00.

Closed panel of Claire Lozier.

Horror in Frenc h Modern ism .

Utopian Terror an d Dystopic

Th e Pow er of Literature:

SESSION 36.

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 / 9 . 3 0 – 1 1 . 0 0 / 4 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

37

SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) SEM 24 (21) part 3/3, session 63.

part 2/3, session 52.

part 1/3.

Open panel of Christopher Townsend.

Con servative U topias .

Hi storio graphies and

an d shattered: Modernism’s

The Futu re, thrown beh ind us

SESSION 41. start ing at 9.00.

part 3/3, session 62.

part 2/3, session 51.

Part 1/3.

Laura Sc uriat t i.

Open panel of Caroline Patey and

the utopian lure of comm un ity.

guilds . Modernis t aest hetic s and

Phalans teries , groups , c irc les and

SESSION 40.

part 3/3, session 61.

part 2/3, session 50.

part 1/3.

debora h L ewer.

Open panel of David H opki ns and

Dada Again st Totality.

Ins ult, Debat e, Disput e:

SESSION 39.

the Critique of Progress

The Radicalisation of R ecapitulation: S urre al ism, E v olu tionary Theory, a nd

Donna Roberts. Independent scholar , USA:

Mo dernism

Past Fu tures: Bi-directionality and H eterochr onicity in the Fi rst Portuguese

Stu dies, University of Coimbra, PORTUGAL:

Patrici a Silva McNeill. Queen Mary Uni ve rsity o f Lo ndon, UK / Ce ntr e for Social

New World for New People? Socialist Rev olution, Social Shift, and Modernism

Bela Tsipuria. Ilia State University, GEORGIA:

F unctional Warsaw. A Polish example of utopian planning

Mich al Wenderski. University of Poznan, POLAND:

Surrealist and Situationist urbanism: from bric olage to utopia

Tim o Kaitaro. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

AENIG MA, München 191 8

Die Kü nstlerkolonie Dornach 1913 und die ant hroposoph ische K ünstlergru ppe

Reinhold Fäth. HKS, GERMANY:

A S houting Match: The Role of Scandal in Futurism and Dada

Jo sef Horacek. Louisiana State Unive rs ity, USA:

Yodelling or Cubism? Zurich Dada and perceptions of Switzerland

deborah Lewer. University of Glasgow, UK:

hollak a hollala anlogo bung: dada’s subversive glossolalia

Eric Robertson. Royal Holloway, Unive rs ity of London, UK:

saturday 30t h au gus t / 9. 00/ 9. 30 – 11. 00 / 4t h parallel sessions

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 / 9 . 3 0 – 1 1 . 0 0 / 4 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

38

SEM 26 (21) SEM 27 (18)

The rec onstructive soul-making utopia of J ohn Middleton Murry’s Adelphi

Patrick Jeffery. University of Kent, UK:

The Cercle des Hydropathes: A liber al utopia?

Alex Trott. Royal Holloway Univers ity of London, UK:

L ive, local, loc o-specific: Merseybeat performance and the creation of a scene

H elen Taylor. Royal Holloway Unive rs ity of London, UK:

saturday 30t h au gus t / 9. 00/ 9. 30 – 11. 00 / 4t h parallel sessions

SESSION 43.

part 2/2, session 53.

Part 1/2.

Alex Trott.

O pen panel of Essi Viitanen and

M odernism an d Rit ual.

SESSION 42.

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 / 9 . 3 0 – 1 1 . 0 0 / 4 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

39

SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) Open panel of Irmeli Hautamäk i.

Arc hit ectu ral U topias .

SESSION 46.

pa rt 1/2, session 34.

part 2/2.

Konsta ntin Dudakov-K ashuro.

Open panel of Natalia Smolynsk aya and

Garde.

Conc ept in t he Russian Avant-

Th e Relevan ce of t he Utopia

SESSION 45.

Closed panel of Tyrus Miller.

Modernist A est het ic s .

György Lukács , Utopia, and

SESSION 44.

SEM 9 (24)

Adriano Olivetti’s c ommunities aftermath

So cial utopia i nfluence i n Ital ian modernis t arch itecture a nd urba n ref orm:

Tri ncas Matteo. University of Cagliar i, ITALY:

Modern Age

Lo oking Back to Move Fo rward : Le C o rbus ier on the Dec orative Arts i n the

Lynn Palermo. Susquehanna University, USA:

on Teófilo Reg o Archive and the “Esc ola do Porto”

Crit ical readings o n Photogr aphy and Mo dern Arch itect ure : In terp retatio ns

Migu el Silva Graca. Escola Superior Artistica do Porto, PORTUGAL:

C onst ructivist c oncept of sound: utopian music?

Konstantin Dudakov-Kashuro. Lomonosov Moscow State University, RUSSIA:

The R eification of Utopian Theatre

Roann Barris. Radford University, Usa:

Dystopia vs factuality: E. Zamyatin’s “We” and E.E. Cummings’ “EIMi”

Vladimir Feshchenko. Institute of Li nguistics , RUSSIA:

Art, Utopia, and Habit in Late Lukács

Eri k Bach man. University of California at Santa Cruz, USA:

Uto pian Anti-Avant-Gardism. Lukács’s Middle Period

Johan Fredrik Hartle. University of Amste r dam, HOLLAND:

Ea rly Lukács and the Utopia of Art

Tyrus Miller. University of California at Santa Cruz, USA:

sat urday 30th august / 11.15 – 12. 45 / 5t h parallel sessions

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 1 . 1 5 – 1 2 . 4 5 / 5 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

40

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 14 (30)

F. Ga rcía Lorca des années 1920 et 19 3 0 : théâtre, utopie et société

La ques tion de l’émancipation de la femme espagnole dans le théâtre de

Isabelle Cabrol. Université Paris -So r bonne ( Par is IV) , FRANCE:

Primitivism and the Serbian avant-garde

Bojan Jović. Institute for Literature and Art, SERBIA:

Movements in Slovenia and Croatia

From Autark y to “ Barba rian” C o sm opolitanism : The Ea rly Ava nt-Ga rde

Marijan Dović. University of Nova Gor ica, SLOVENIA:

in F innish Modernism

It is noth ing but a n ear-r ing anym ore. The Pa storal Fall and the Wo rk of Art

Eri ka Laamanen. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

Remap ping Modernism: the case of modern Greek sculpture

Klairi Angelou. University of Bristol, UK:

Mordenizing polish literature and the c oncept of local modernisms

Agni eszka Kluba. Institute of Li terary Re s e arch, POLAND:

Writing Of(f) Dada History

Cosana Eram. University of Pacific, USA:

Rewriting Life every Day: Emmy Hennings’s “Dada”

Lorella Bosco . Università di Bari, ITALY:

My fatal plurality: Arthur Cravan and the wasted life of the témoignage

Sean Reynolds. SUNY-Buffalo, USA:

The Dada Archive as Meta-Memoir

Timothy Shipe. University of Iowa, USA:

sat urday 30th august / 11.15 – 12. 45 / 5t h parallel sessions

pa rt 3/3, session 71.

pa rt 2/3 session 60.

PART 1/3.

Open panel of Bojan Jov i ć .

Cu ltu re and Societ y.

Avant-garde Ques t for new A rt,

Int erwar U topia of Re-c reat ion :

SESSION 49.

PART 1/2, session 33.

Part 2/2.

Ha rri Veivo. U niv ersit é So rbonne No uv elle – Paris 3, FRANCE.

Jyrk i Nummi. Univ ersi ty of Helsinki , FINLAND

Nathali e Aubert. Oxford Brookes Uni versity, UK

Peer s eminar of

SESSION 48.

Open panel of Marius H entea.

Dada History.

Dada Lives: Writ ing t he Self and

SESSION 47. en ding at 1 pm.

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 1 . 1 5 – 1 2 . 4 5 / 5 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

41

SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) SEM 24 (21) part 3/3, session 63.

part 1/3, session 41.

part 2/3.

Tow nsend.

Open panel of Christopher

Con servative U topias .

Hi storio graphies and

an d shattered: Modernism’s

The Futu re, thrown beh ind us

SESSION 52.

part 3/3, session 62.

part 1/3, session 40.

part 2/3.

Laura Sc uriat t i.

Open panel of Caroline Patey and

the utopian lure of comm un ity.

guilds . Modernis t aest hetic s and

Phalans teries , groups , c irc les and

SESSION 51.

part 3/3, session 61.

part 1/3, session 39.

part 2/3.

debora h L ewer.

Open panel of David H opki ns and

Dada Again st Totality.

Ins ult, Debat e, Disput e:

SESSION 50.

Anachr onism and Futurity in Peter Weiss and W. G . Sebald

Kai sa K aakinen. University of Turku, FINLAND:

The M essianic Modernity of Antonio Tabucchi. From Utopia to Heterotopia

Veronica Frigeni. University of Kent, UK:

L at e Modernism

Into the C entre wit h No R et urn T icket. Inqu iry i n t he Space C onstruc tions o f

Mark eta Russell Holtebrink. Univers ity of Toronto, Canada:

L ittle R eview

“Exiles”: c ommun it y, c osm opolita nism and aut horial self-fashioning in The

Christina Britzolakis. University of Warwick, UK:

“A thought outgrows a brain”: transmutation in Nancy Cunard’s early poetry

Bi rgit Van Puymbroeck. Universiteit Ge nt, BELGIUM:

The utopian lure of c ommunity: Olive Garnett and the Republic of letters

Mart ina Ciceri. Università La Sapienza, Roma, ITALY:

Paris Dada and the Bourgeois Carcass

Eliz abeth Legge. University of Toronto, CANADA:

Dada ’s Globe: Terr itory, Globality, Geographic

Andreas Kramer. Goldsmiths, Univers ity of London, UK:

Balls to You : Duchamp’s Refusal

David Hopkins. University of Glasgow, UK:

saturday 30t h au gus t / 11. 15 – 12. 45 / 5t h parallel sessions

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 1 . 1 5 – 1 2 . 4 5 / 5 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

42

SEM 26 (21) SEM 27 (18) SEM 12 (44)

Kaba kov

The dialo gue between image a nd te xt in the w ork s of Anselm K iefer and Ilya

Vlada Müller. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

(abstract in appendix)

The Af terlives of the Avant-Garde: Beyond Modernism?

Kiene B rillenburg Wurth. Utrecht Univ ers ity, NETHERLANDS:

Rothko’s late series and Kafka’s “Tr ial”

morgan Thomas. Art History, Univers ity of Cincinnati, USA:

Not a heaventree but a Utopia ( Joyce, “Ulysses”): Modernist Utopian Universe

Kat herine Ebury. University of Sheffie ld, UK:

der Zeitschrift “Der Brenner” 1910-1 9 5 4

“Immer eines Kommenden t räch tig” - Utopi sche und apokalyptische Visionen in

Mark us Ender & ingrid fuerhapter. Unive rs ity of Inns bruck , AUSTRIA:

Postmodern Fiction

F rom Party Politi cs to Body Politics: Re ading Mo dern ist Dystopia n Fiction as

Eduardo Marks de Marques. Federal Unive rs ity of Pe lotas , BRAZIL:

Ritual as artistic practice in Lars Skinnebach’s “Exercises and Ritual Texts”

Mari anne Ølholm. University of Cope nhage n, DENMARK:

Ritual Poetry and the Spiritualization of Experience in the 1 9 6 0 ’s

Erik Erlanson. Lund University, SWEDEN:

saturday 30t h au gus t / 11. 15 – 12. 45 / 5t h parallel sessions

part 1/2, session 38.

PART 2/2.

Open panel of David Cot tington.

cross-disciplinary comparison s .

M odernism an d avan t-gardes :

SESSION 38B .

Chair: T eemu Ikonen

SESSION 54.

part 1/2, session 42.

part 2/2.

Alex Trott.

Open panel of Essi Viitanen and

M odernis m an d Ritual.

SESSION 53.

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 1 . 1 5 – 1 2 . 4 5 / 5 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

43

SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) SEM 9 (24) part 2/2, session 68.

PART 1/2.

Op en panel of Agata Jaku bowsk a.

H et erotopias .

A ll W omen A rt Spaces as

SESSION 57.

part 2/2, session 67.

part 1/2.

Closed panel of P et ra Jam es.

1900-1968.

Cent ral Eu ropean Avant-garde

“ The Day Aft er The Happy Fu ture”:

SESSION 56.

part 2/2, session 66.

part 1/2.

Op en panel of Kimmo Sarj e.

Ornamen t as a Gest ure of U topia.

SESSION 55.

W om an’s Place and other 1970s feminist art initiatives in Britain

K at y Deepwell. Middlesex University, UK:

feminist art space

“Kvindeudst ellingen pa C harlottenborg ” in C openh agen 1 9 7 5 and t he idea of

Monik a Kaiser. SA, GERMANY:

Introductory remarks

Ag ata Jakubowska. Adam Mickiewicz Unive rs ity, POLAND:

Ildef ons Gałczyński (1905 – 1953)

C om ing s and goings to « HAPPY ISLE S » of Adam Waż yk (1 9 0 5 - 1 9 8 2 ) et Konstanty

Dorota Walczak. Université Li bre de Bruxe lle s , BELGIUM:

post-1945 afterlife

New Homes f or N ew M en. C ollective h ous ing project s aro und 1 9 3 0 and the ir

Ostmitt eleuropas, GERMANY:

Arnold B artetzky. G eisteswi ssensch aftlich e s Z e ntrum G e schich te und K ultur

Rosa P omeranz

W riting for a b ett er World : Utopia n Ideas and Po litical Aims – The Examp le of

Ostmitt eleuropas, GERMANY:

Dietli nd Hüch tker. G eisteswi ssensch aftl iche s Z e ntrum Ge schich te und Kultur

end of the nineteenth century

The ornamental design and it s natio nalistic f orce i n Russia and Galicia at t he

Jo sephi ne Karg. Justus -Li ebig-Univers ity, GERMANY:

Ornament - a pattern way out

Niran Baibulat. Finnish Academy of Fine Arts , FINLAND:

“Vernacular Resistance”?

The Build ing as Ornament. S ymbol f or Globa l Capita l ism – o r a Mo del fo r

J an-Erik Andersson. Åbo Akademi Unive rs ity, FINLAND:

s at urday 30th augu st / 13.30 – 15.00 / 6th parallel sessions

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 3 . 3 0 – 1 5 . 0 0 / 6 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

44

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 14 (30)

M arg a van Mechelen. University of Amste r dam, NETHERLAND:

Mo dernism in Georgia: quest for a new idea of art

Art History and Heritage, GE ORGIA:

Nat ia Eban oi dze. George Chubi nashv ili National Re s e arch Ce ntr e for Ge orgian

The Af terlife of Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square”

Ekat erina Kudryavtseva. Stetson Unive rs ity, USA:

the avant-gardes – the traffic of images in the Avant-garde magazines

In search o f u topia n v isual l anguage o r visual la ngua ge to unify

I rina Genova. New Bulgarian Univers ity / Bulgar ian Acade my of Scie nce s , BULGARIA:

Comm entator: Nina Gourianova, Northwe ste r n Unive rs ity, USA.

Eurasian Empire

Post-Imperial Sublime : Alex ey Beliayev-G uin tovt’s neo-avant-garde dre ams of

M aria Engström. Dalarna University, SWEDEN:

Russia n Neo-Avant-Garde. Ry Nikonova and Sergey Sigey

Willem Weststeijn. University of Amste r dam, NETHERLAND:

That-a-Way! – Towards a Positional Epistemology of the Avant-Garde

Alan P rohm. Sans Academy, GERMANY:

and 1970

The Finnish Lo ng Journey Towards an Ava nt-Ga rde: Finn ish Poe try bet ween 1 9 2 0

Arianna Consuelo Marcon. University of He ls inki, FINLAND:

Sigma and the Event Structure Rese arch Group (ERG)

s at urday 30th augu st / 13.30 – 15.00 / 6th parallel sessions

part 3/3, session 71.

part 1/3, session 49.

part 2/3.

Op en panel of Boj an Jovic.

Cu lt ure and Soc iety.

Avan t-garde Qu est for n ew Art,

In t erwar Utopia of Re-creation:

SESSION 60.

part 1/2, session 26.

part 2/2.

Chai r: Natalia Baschm akoff

Closed panel of Natalia Baschmakoff.

Russian Avan t- Garde (1900-2000).

Utopia an d th e Transcen den t in

SESSION 59.

Op en panel of Alan Prohm.

is avant-garde today, an d how?

The Radic al Now – W here/What /Who

SESSION 58.

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 3 . 3 0 – 1 5 . 0 0 / 6 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

45

SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) SEM 24 (21) part 2/3, session 52.

part 1/3, session 41.

part 3/3.

Open panel of Christopher Townsend.

Con servative U topias .

Hi storio graphies and

an d shattered: Modernism’s

The Futu re, thrown beh ind us

SESSION 63.

part 2/3, session 51.

part 1/3, session 40.

part 3/3.

Laura Sc uriat t i.

Open panel of Caroline Patey and

the utopian lure of comm un ity.

guilds . Modernis t aest hetic s and

Phalans teries , groups , c irc les and

SESSION 62.

part 2/3, session 50.

part 1/3, session 39.

part 3/3.

Debora h L ewer.

Open panel of David H opki ns and

SESSION 61.

outbreak of World War II

Mo dernism and t he avant-garde t ransformed: Utopia s in transition and the

Finn Fo rdham. Royal Holloway, Unive rs ity of London, UK:

Kift Kindred

Utopia n futures and im agined pa st s i n t he ambivalent m odern ism of the K ib b o

Annebella Pollen. University of Brighton, UK:

Fabulat ion and utopias of authorship: on the uses and abuses of author-names

Kai sa K urikka. University of Turku, FINLAND:

spirit of dissent

Progressive intell igent sia: t he Young Amer ica n critics , u topia n ism and the

Est her Sanch ez-Pardo. Universidad Comp lute ns e , SPAIN:

c onsequences of the Watergate Theatre Club

Promotion, pat rona ge and mentoring in post-war Lo ndon: o rig ins , ideals and

Charlotte Purkis. University of Winche ste r , UK:

Insult, Regression and Harmonic Totality: Post-Dada as Anti-Dada?

Sabine Kriebel. University College Cor k, IRELAND:

Suédo is (1924)

Be tween Prov ocation and Performa nce: Pic abia, Sati e and R elâche at t he Balle t

Joyce Cheng. University of Oregon, USA:

Ma rcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Tristan Tzara and the joke that was New York Dada

Sarah Archino. Institut national d’histoir e de l’art, FRANCE:

saturday 30t h au gus t / 13. 30 – 15. 00 / 6t h parallel sessions

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 3 . 3 0 – 1 5 . 0 0 / 6 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

46

SEM 26 (21) SEM 27 (18)

Radio Drama. A Means of Realizing Avant-Garde Intentions?

Su sanne Becker. University of Osnabrück, GERMANY:

in E arly Polish Modernism

The Polish Cyborg . A R eflection on t he R elationship b etween Ma n and Ma chine

Emi liano Ranocchi. Università di Udine , ITALY:

V ort icism ’s Dual-Vision of Technology

Sarah Lee. Goldsmiths College, Unive rs ity of London, UK:

The Affiliative Scheme in Georgia O’Keeffe’s Artistic Path

Cristiana Pagliarusco . Università de gli Studi di Tr e nto, ITALY:

Mo dernism and the Danish magazine “Buen”, 1 9 2 4 -2 5

Inge Lise Mogensen Bech . sAarhus Unive rs ite t, DENMARK:

saturday 30t h au gus t / 13. 30 – 15. 00 / 6t h parallel sessions

part 2/2, session 74.

part 1/2.

Open panel of Bi rgit Van Puymbroeck.

Tec hnotopia.

SESSION 65.

Chair: Matt hew Taunton.

Ab out modernis m.

SESSION 64.

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 3 . 3 0 – 1 5 . 0 0 / 6 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

47

SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) SEM 9 (24) part 1/2, session 57.

part 2/2.

Open panel of Agata Jakubowska.

Het erotopias .

Al l Women Art Spaces as

SESSION 68.

part 1/2, session 56.

part 2/2.

Closed panel of Petra James .

1900-1968.

Cen tral Euroepan Avant-garde

“The Day Aft er The Happy Fut ure”:

SESSION 67.

part 1/2, session 55.

part 2/2 .

Open panel of Kimm o Sarje.

Ornamen t as a Ges ture of Utopia.

The VBKÖ’s Tea Parties as Heterotopias or How to Shut Oneself Off?

Autonomous University of Mexico, MEXICO:

Juli a Wieger. Academy of Fine Arts in Vie nna, AUSTR IA, and Nina Hö chtl. National

W omen ’s Art spaces: Two Mediterranean Case Studies

Kat ia Almerini. Independent scholar :

Kunst and the Schule fur kreativen Feminismus

1970s Fem inist Practice as He terotopia n: The Stichti ng Vrouwen in de Beeldende

Kat hleen Wentrack. The City Univers ity of Ne w Yor k, USA:

abstract in appendix.

The U topian Space in the Works of Carlfriedrich Claus

Martin Kolár. University of Jan Evangelista Purkyne, Ústí nad Labem, CZECH REPUBLIC:

The Af termath of Utopia and The Czech Art

Pet ra James. Université Libre de Bruxe lle s , BELGIUM:

Ornament and Epoch in Eliel Saarinen’s Philosophy of Art and Architecture

Kimm o Sarje. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

Ornament as political statement: the Arts and Crafts movement

Su sanne König. University of Paderbor n, GERMANY:

Overdramatizing of Utopia with Ornaments?

Altt i Kuusamo. University of Turku, FINLAND:

^

SESSION 66.

saturday 30t h au gus t / 15. 15 – 16. 45 / 7t h parallel sessions

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 5 . 1 5 – 1 6 . 4 5 / 7 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

48

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 14 (30)

This topia. M.H. Maxy and late avant-garde’s apology of the given

Kessler Erwin. Bucharest Institute of Philos op hy, Romania:

(presented by Isabel Wünsche)

c ommunist Czechoslovakia

Karel Teige’s defense of social v isionary Bohum il Kubista a s i dea l a rti st f or

Moseman Eleanor. Colorado State Unive rs ity, USA:

L andscape Space

Avant- Ga rde Now : Individual’s Expressio n of Hope in a Pai nt ed Utopia n

H ilj a Roivainen. University of Turku, FINLAND:

Nostalgic Utopia

Nik las Salmose. Li nneaus University, SWEDEN:

Gunna r Björling’s gay utopia

Fredrick Hertzberg. University of He ls inki, FINLAND:

Ma rcel Proust’s Erotic Utopi

Rubén G allo. Princeton University, USA:

Mo nt jouvain: Obscenity and Transgression in Marcel Proust

Robert Buch . University of New South Wale s , AUSTRALIA:

saturday 30t h au gus t / 15. 15 – 16. 45 / 7t h parallel sessions

part 2/3, session 60.

part 1/3, session 49.

part 3/3.

Open panel of Bojan Jovic.

Cult ure and S ociety.

Avan t-garde Quest for new A rt,

Int erwar Utopia of Re-c reat ion :

SESSION 71.

Chair: Tania Ø rum

Utopian t ime and s pac es .

SESSION 70.

Open panel of Rubén Gallo.

Imaginat ion of Genres .

Queer U topias: Modern ism an d th e

SESSION 69.

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 5 . 1 5 – 1 6 . 4 5 / 7 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

49

SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) SEM 24 (21) part 1/2, session 65.

part 2/2.

Open panel of Bi rgit Van P uymbroeck,

Tec hnotopia.

SESSION 74.

Chair: Pirjo Lyyti käinen

Li terary utopias .

SESSION 73.

Chair: Dav id Ayers.

Fascis t and comm un ist s u topias .

SESSION 72.

Driessens and Verstappen. Chance Operations in the Age of C omputation

Neill O’Dwyer. Trinity College, Dublin, IRELAND:

Intentional Architecture. TERRA X, TERRA Y, TERRA Z

Ewa Odyjas. Silesian University of Te chnology, POLAND:

The nouveau roman and the dream of the new man

H anna Meretoja. University of Tampe r e , FINLAND:

Gu illaume Apollinaire

The Imperfect i s Our Paradise: Apocalypse and Anti-Utopia i n The P oe try o f

James Leveque. University of Edinburgh, UK :

Dar k days of spring: the visionary violence of Dr Williams and Dr Benn

JT Welsch. Yo rk St John University, UK:

The Bolshevik Utopia and the Modernist C ounterreformation

Mat t hew Taunton. University of East Anglia, UK:

Subjection Under Italian Fascism

Children’s Utopia, Fa scist Utopia. An Analysis o f Ch ildren’s Textbooks and

Sylv ia Hakopian. Cornell University, USA:

Breastfeeding , and the C onstruction of Industrial Motherhood in Fascist Italy

H ow to Bu ild the Perfect Mot her : Rational ist Obst etric C linics , Taylorist

Diana Garvin. Cornell University, USA:

saturday 30t h au gus t / 15. 15 – 16. 45 / 7t h parallel sessions

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 5 . 1 5 – 1 6 . 4 5 / 7 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

50

SEM 26 (21) SEM 27 (18)

in London’s c ontemporary classical music scene

Classic al o r Avant-garde? Playful p erform ances of ‘cla ssic’ avant-ga rde work s

Sarah Barnes. Queen Mary, University of London, UK :

by öyvind Fahlstrom

“All people are different, but everyone i s of equal wo rth ”. Three m anifestoes

Per Bäckström. Karlstad university, SWEDEN:

Avantgardism as an utopian ideology implemented in the Danish Factory Industry

Jens Tang Kristensen. University of Cop e nhage n, DENMARK:

Red isc overing Utopia in Francis Alys’ “When Faith Moves Mountains” (2 0 0 2 )

Riikka H aapalainen. University of He ls inki, FINLAND:

A Pap er Paradise – W. R. Lethaby and The Crystal Chain

Kat e Armond. University of East Anglia, UK:

Supermatism and Gorgona

Iva Stefanovski. University of Tubinge n, GERMANY:

saturday 30t h au gus t / 15. 15 – 16. 45 / 7t h parallel sessions

Chair: T yru s Miller

Recon sidering avant-garde.

SESSION 76.

Chair: Jed Rasula

utopias .

Artis tic an d arc hit ec tural

SESSION 75.

s at u r d ay 3 0 t h a u g u s t / 1 5 . 1 5 – 1 6 . 4 5 / 7 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

51

SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) Chai r: ha rri v eivo

Utopie en fran cais .

SESSION 79.

Closed panel of G abriella Im posti .

the Rus sian -S ov iet Cas e.

Preservin g an Idealiz ed Past:

Env isionin g the Futu re,

SESSION 78.

Closed panel of Elena Hamalidi.

from Transit ion to Crisis .

Avan t-Garde Strategies in Greece

A lt ernat ive Topoi and

SESSION 77.

SEM 9 (24)

surréalistes

Rêver et toucher le c o rps? Pour une appr oche ta cti le des myt hologies

M arti ne Antle. University of North Carolina, USA:

Abstraction et métamimesis

Diego Scalco . Université Paris 1, FRANCE:

Kosice de l’entre-deux-guerres et sa vie artistique polyphone

Z uz ana Bartosova. Slovak Academy of Scie nce s , SLOVAKIA:

L’ava nt-garde roumaine et l’utopie du pouv oir

F lorin Oprescu. Vienna University & We st Unive rs ity of Timis oar a, AUSTRIA:

W orld War and the Russian Civil War, through the eyes of Konstantin Vaginov

A retreat fr om everyday Sovie t li fe. Petro grad/Leningr ad be tween the First

I rina Marchesini, University of Bologna, ITALY:

century

the work s o f Russian mus icians in t he f irst three decades o f the nineteenth

à la recherche d’ une sonnerie u topique : sound representatio ns o f Utopia i n

Elena Petrushanskaya-Averbakh, Mos cow State Institute for Arts Studie s , RUSSIA:

Khlebnikov’s visions of Utopia

The “Superstat e of t he Star”: from the First Wo rld War to a world o f Peace,

G abriella Elina Imposti, University of Bologna, ITALY:

H et erogeneity – Experimentation as a Teaching Technique

Antoi netta Angelidi. Aristotle Unive rs ity of The s saloniki, GREECE:

Greek ‘ Weird Wave’

the p olitics of alternative spatio-t em poral ities fr om N ew G reek Cinema to the

Rea Walldén. Athens School of Fine Arts , GREECE:

democracy from the 1970s to today

Under C onstruc tion’ – G reek a rt gr ou ps and c ollec tivities reclaiming

Elena Hamalidi. Ionian University, GREECE:

s un day 31st augu st / 9.00/9.30 – 11.00 / 8th parallel sessions

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 / 9 . 3 0 – 1 1 . 0 0 / 8 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

52

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 14 (30)

J ane Dowson. De Montfort University, UK:

L abyr int

Join ing the Spanish 1927 Writers on a Lit erary J ourney t hrough an E nchanted

M elania Stancu, University of Buch ar e st, ROMANIa:

Dysto pian Visions of Gilbert Clavel’s “An Institute for Suicide”

J un Tanaka, University of Tokyo, JAPAN:

Rudyard Kipling ’s Dystopian Turn: “As Easy as ABC” (1 9 1 2 )

P et er Lawson. The Open University, UK:

The VILKE C ollection of Finnish electronic art

K ari Y li-Annala. AALTO University, FINLAND:

The Ernesto de Sousa case. Bu ilding a portuguese avant-garde

M arina Pinto dos Santos. Universidade nova de Lis boa, PORTUGAL:

Somewhere in the City: Joseph C ornell’s New York Stories

Des O’Rawe. Queen’s University, UK:

Bar oness Els a, Mina Loy and Joyce Mansour

“In extrem is”: violence and erotic dre am ing i n t he avant-garde poet ries of

Alex Goody. Oxford Brookes Univers ity, Uk:

“The dreams have reached my waist”: Trance and Ritual in Hope Mirrlees’s Paris

Sandeep Parmar. University of Li verp ool, UK:

“I wa s like one dead, like a small ghost”: Edith Sitwell’s “shy dreams”

s un day 31st augu st / 9.00/9.30 – 11.00 / 8th parallel sessions

part 2/2, session 93.

part 1/2.

Op en panel of G erri Kim ber.

garde and Modern ist Short Story.

Dystopian Vis ion s in t he Avan t-

SESSION 82.

Chai r: Henry Bacon.

Cin ema an d furt her.

SESSION 81.

Op en panel of J ane Dowson.

by avan t- garde w omen poet s .

S tates and disruptions of dreams

SESSION 80. start ing at 9 am .

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 / 9 . 3 0 – 1 1 . 0 0 / 8 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

53

SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) SEM 24 (21) part 2/2, session 96.

part 1/2.

Open panel of Isabel Wü nche.

Utopias of Abstrac t Art.

Se ssion 85. start ing at 9 am.

Chair: Tania Ø rum

Art U topias in t he Nort h.

SESSION 84. start ing at 9 am.

part 2/2, session 94.

PART 1/2.

Ann Steph en.

Open panel of Andrew McNamara and

Polke.

Primit ivis t U topias from Tzara to

SESSION 83.

Wassily Kandinsky’s Theory of Color and Form: From Theosophy to a Science of Art

Vik toria Schindler. Freie Universität Be r lin, GERMANY:

ev olution of C onsciousness

Ma gnetic Modern ism: F rantišek Ku pka’s Mesmeric A bst raction and t he

Fay Brauer. University of East London, UK / University of New South Wales, Australia:

Anarch ism and Lebensreform in František Kupka’s Abstract Painting

Naomi Hume. Seattle University, USA:

Utopias of Abstract Art

Isabel Wünsche. Jaco bs University, Ge r many :

in P ortugal and Spain (1914-1918)

Building a North -South axi s . Lo cal and i nt ernational avant-garde strat egies

Joana Cunha Leal. Universidade Nova de Lis boa, PORTUGAL:

actions

Delaunay’ s show i n Stock holm 1916 , Prismes d’elect riques and alternative

Annik a Öhrner. Södertörn University, SWEDEN:

H ow woodcut changed Ellen Thesleff’s paintings

Ku kka Paavilainen. Academy of Fine Arts and Unive rs ity of He ls inki, FINLAND:

CROSS OF FREEDOM AND THE WHITE ROSE OF FINLAND IN 1 9 1 8 AND 1 9 1 9

CREATING HER ALDRY OR AK SELI GALLEN- KALLEL A AS T HE DESIGNER OF T HE ORDERS OF

Kirsi Kaisla Sundholm. University of Tur ku, FINLAND:

H et erogeneity – Experimentation as a Teaching Technique

Antoi netta Angelidi. Aristotle Unive rs ity of The s saloniki, GREECE:

A S ubterranean reading of “Totem and Taboo”

Ann Stephe. University of Sydney, AUSTRALIA:

Primitivism and utopia & its c onfounding

Andrew McNamara. QUT, AUSTRALIA:

su n day 31s t august / 9.00/ 9. 30 – 11.00 / 8th parallel sessions

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 / 9 . 3 0 – 1 1 . 0 0 / 8 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

54

SEM 26 (21) SEM 27 (18)

Politics of participatory art: A reading of Pilvi Takala’s

Saara H acklin. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

W hen Art Hurts: Art and the Avant-garde Politics of the Senses

Mart ta Heikkilä. University of Helsinki / The Finnis h Acade my of Fine Arts :

Noise Music

Avant- garde Aggress ion? The F utur ist L egacy o f Violence in C ontem porary

Janne Vanhanen. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

Avant-garde avant la lettre: The Absolutely Modern as a 19th Century Imperative

Pajari Räsänen. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

Exhibition 1930

Try ing to C hange t he (Art) Wo rld. Otto G . Ca rlsund a nd t he Stockh olm

Andrea Kollnitz. Stockholm Univers ity, SWEDEN:

Testing utopia: Henry Heerup’s dark sculptures

Karen Westphal Eriksen. University of Cop e nhage n, DENMARK:

Jens- August Schade and the short-lived French Schadisme movement

F rom c ollec tive love to nud ism . E rotic u topia s in the Danish surre alis t author

Per Stounbjerg. Aarhus University, DENMARK:

Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen as catalyst and outcast

Dan ish surre alism between abs tr action and eroti c utopia. Danish surrea list

Camilla Skovbjerg Paldam. Aarhus Unive rs ity, DENMARK:

su n day 31s t august / 9.00/ 9. 30 – 11.00 / 8th parallel sessions

Closed pa nel of Pajari Räsänen.

M odernis t Modes of Ex perien ce.

Avan t-garde as a Challenge to

Art an d th e Politic s of Ot hern ess:

SESSION 87. start ing at 9 am .

Camilla Skovbj erg Paldam.

Closed pa nel of

of the 1930 s

in N ordic Avant-garde

Erotic utopias and pu rism

SESSION 86. start ing at 9 am .

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 9 . 0 0 / 9 . 3 0 – 1 1 . 0 0 / 8 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

55

SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) SESSION 90.

Closed pa nel of Gabri ele J ut z.

Obsolete.

The Utopian Pot ent ial of t he

SESSION 89.

Closed pa nel of Li se Jaillant.

Wyn dham Lewis , War an d Utopia.

SESSION 88.

Gabri ele Jutz

Krist ina Pia Hofer

Nina Jukic

Scot t Klein. Wake Forest University, USA: Re s p onde nt.

Journey to Anglosaxony: Wyndham Lewis’s Democratic Utopia(s).

Ann-M arie Einhaus. Northumbria Unive rs ity, UK:

Mo dernism .

Rewriting “Tarr” Ten Years Lat er: W yndham Lew is and t he Domestication o f

Li se Jaillant. Newcastle University, UK:

to the metropolis… and beyond! Am bivalent Topographies in Wyndham Lewis .

Adam Stock. Newcastle University, UK:

su n day 31s t august / 11. 15 – 12.45 / 9th parallel sessions

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 1 . 1 5 – 1 2 . 4 5 / 9 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

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SEM 9 (24)

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 14 (30)

Potential of Love

Eileen Chang ’s “Sealed Off”, Ur ba n Dystopia, a nd the Redemptive

Eric Sandberg. Miyazaki International Colle ge , JAPAN:

Eliz abeth Bowen’s “Mysterious Kôr”

Warti me Architectures o f Ruin and Rele ase: Bet ween Dystopia a nd Utopia i n

Emm a Zimmerman. University of Nottingham, UK:

H emingway’s Subtractive Method and the Modernist Even

Christina Britzolakis. University of Warwick, UK:

Ban ker”

Ratio nality, C ynicism a nd Utopia. Mo dernist Am bivalence i n Pessoa’s “Anarch ist

Mich ael G. Kelly. University of Limerick, IRELAND:

Gender and c osmopolitanism in Jean Rhys’s “good morning , midnight”

Ingrid Galtung. University of Agder , NORWAY:

L awrence, The Plumed Serpent and nationalist utopia

David Barnes. University of Oxford, Uk:

Rixt Woudstra

David Rifkind

Przem yslaw Strozek

su n day 31s t august / 11. 15 – 12.45 / 9th parallel sessions

part 1/2, session 82.

part 2/2.

Open panel of Gerri Kimber.

ga rde an d Modernis t Short Story.

Dystopian Visions in the Avant-

SESSION 93.

Chair: Erik Bachm an

Li terary utopias .

SESSION 92.

Closed pa nel of Przem yslaw Strozek .

Italian-occu pied Ethiopia.

Imagin ing an Avant-Garde Utopia in

SESSION 91.

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 1 . 1 5 – 1 2 . 4 5 / 9 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

57

SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) SEM 24 (21) part 1/2, session 85.

part 2/2.

Op en panel of I sabel Wünche.

Utopias of A bst ract Art.

SESSION 96.

SESSION 95 .

part 1/2, session 83.

part 2/2.

A nn St ephen.

Op en panel of Andrew McNamara and

Po lke.

Primit ivist Utopias from Tzara to

SESSION 94.

Sout hwestern United States

The Transcendental Pain ting G roup, 1 9 3 8 -1 9 4 1 : Abs tra ction and Idea lism in the

H erbert R. Hartel, Jr. Hofstra Univers ity, USa:

W illia m C ongdon Monochromes and Metaphysic Immediacy

Niev es Acedo del Barrio . Universidad Ne br ija, SPAIN:

the 1920s

Surveying the Great Utopia: Soviet Cartography and C ontructivist Space in

Nick Baron. University of Nottingham, UK:

“The Savage hits back” – The Utopian Vision of J ulius Lips

Anna Brus. Universität Siegen, GERMANY:

Ethno graphic Museum (1924-34)

Primiti vism , Ph otom ontage and Ethn ogr aphy in Hannah Hö ch’s F rom an

Jo shua Dittrich. University of Toronto, CANADA:

Their Pasts , Their Futures and Our Present

Paul Wood. Open university, UK :

su n day 31s t august / 11. 15 – 12.45 / 9th parallel sessions

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 1 . 1 5 – 1 2 . 4 5 / 9 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

58

SEM 27 (18)

Art, n on-art, a nti-art : p enser la d imensio n p lastique selon G her as im Luca,

Françoi se Nicol. Université de Nante s , FRANCE e t Monique Yaar i:

‘Infra-noir’ : le mot et la chose

Jo nat han Eburne. Penn State Univers ity, USA:

Introduction : un groupe surréaliste tardif entre Bucarest et Paris

Monique Yaari. Penn State University, USA:

Naum et Virgil Teodorescu

F ilm e t ready-m ade dans Malom br a de G her asim Luca, Tro st, Paul Paun, G ellu

Régine- Mihal Friedman. Université de Te l-Aviv, ISRAË L:

Trost et Paul Paun (focalisation sur les deux derniers)

su n day 31s t august / 11. 15 – 12.45 / 9th parallel sessions

Closed pa nel of Monique Yaari .

utopie ou ch imère?

“i n fra-n oir” u n et multiple:

SESSION 98. ending at 1 pm.

^

SEM 26 (21) ^

SESSION 97.

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 1 . 1 5 – 1 2 . 4 5 / 9 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

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SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) SEM 9 (24) pa rt 2/2, session 112.

part 1/2.

Open panel of Malcolm Miles.

arc hit ectu re.

int ernat ional modernis t

an d conc rete realit ies of

Th e utopian aspirat ion

Salvaging Modern ism?

SESSION 101.

Closed panel of Scot t W. Klein.

Dystopian Politic s .

Modernist Deformat ion s an d

SESSION 100.

Open panel of Irmeli Hautamäk i.

Avant-garde and U topia.

Polish an d Hun garian

SESSION 99.

acculturation

Peripher al ambient a nd cult ural democratizatio n: c onsumption as

I nes Alves. University of Porto, PORTUGAL:

mo dernism

Procedur al Arch itecture – reversing t he destny of func tional ist

Alan P rohm. SA, GERMANY:

Sinturbanism : socialist legacy of utopian spatial thinking

Lj ilj ana Kolesnik & Ivana Hanicar Buljana. Institute of Art History, CROATIA:

Dar kness” and Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonate”

F rom Kurtz to M erz: V oi ce and Utopia n Politics i n C onr ad ’s “H ea rt of

Scott W. Klein. Wake Fo rest University, USA:

Dissonant Utopian Impulses in Thelonious Monk and Ernst Bloch

Bru ce Barnhart. University of Oslo, NORWAY:

Za myatin, Huxley and Orwell. c ancel l ed .

F orms of Di sc ontent: Lit erary Innovation and t he Mo dernist Dystopia s o f

Mich ael Valdez Moses. Duke University, USA:

The U topian Blueprints of Hungarian Neo-Avant-Garde Literature

K aroly Kokai. University of Vienna, AUSTRIA:

arch itecture parlante

The Petrified Utopia. Mo numental ity of P ol ish socialist l iter ature and

K atarzyna Trzeciak. Jagiellonian Unive rs ity, POLAND:

Utopia and Praxeology in Polish Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde

To masz Zaluski. University of Lodz, POLAND:

s un day 31st augu st / 13.30 – 15.00 / 10th parallel sessions

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 3 . 3 0 – 1 5 . 0 0 / 1 0 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

60

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 14 (30)

I oana Eliza Deac. Babes -Bolyai Unive rs ity, ROMANIA:

(abstract in appendix)

EM Fo rster’s “Howards End”

Our house i s the future as well as the pa st: utopia n space and u topia n form i n

H arrington Weihl. West Virginia Unive rs ity, USA:

Artopia: utopia and dystopia in c ontemporary art. From 1 9 8 9 till today

Simone Ciglia. Sapienza University of Rome , ITALY:

Rev olutionising of the Book

Be tween D estruc tion and R ec onstruc tion. Tr ista n Tza ra a nd t he

s un day 31st augu st / 13.30 – 15.00 / 10th parallel sessions

SESSION 104.

Chai r: Teemu Ikonen

Dest ruct ion and dys topia .

SESSION 103.

SESSION 102.

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 3 . 3 0 – 1 5 . 0 0 / 1 0 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

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SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) SESSION 107.

SESSION 106.

Chair: Marja H ärmänmaa

Avan t-garde.

SESSION 105.

The G rotesque and Magical Realism as C ontemporary Avant-Garde

Anneli Mihkelev. Tallinn University, ESTONIa:

Destructivity in Avant-garde Art

Essi Syren. University of Turku, FINLAND:

in 20 s Avant-garde

H isto ry mus t be burned. A historiogr aphic proposal to study time ic onoclasm

M. So liña Barreiro. EUPTM-UPC, SPAIN:

su n day 31s t august / 13. 30 – 15.00 / 10t h parallel sessions

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 3 . 3 0 – 1 5 . 0 0 / 1 0 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

62

SEM 24 (21)

SEM 26 (21) SEM 27 (18)

. - . Giedre Jankev iciute. Li th uanian Inst itute for Cultur e Re s e arch / Vi lnius Acad e m y

F uturism and Art Dec o in Denmark

Vibeke Petersen Gether. Det Kongelige Bibliote k, DENMARK:

L ifeless Glaciers: Futurism in Denmark

Torben Jelsbak. Roskilde University, DENMARK:

Ma nifes tations of the Futurism in Lithuanian visual art of the early 1 9 2 0 s

of Arts, LITHUANIA:

su n day 31s t august / 13. 30 – 15.00 / 10t h parallel sessions

SESSION 109.

part 2/2, session 119.

part 1/2.

Open panel of Günt er Berghau s.

North-European Coun tries .

The Futu rist Utopia in

^

SESSION 108.

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 3 . 3 0 – 1 5 . 0 0 / 1 0 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

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SEM 5 (22) SEM 7 (27) SEM 9 (24)

early rece ption of Debussy, and their c ontexts .

and Peter Sloterdijk’s “In the World Interior of Capital”

The End of Modernity’s End ing – reflections of T J Clark’s “Farwell to an Idea”

Malcol m Miles. University of Plymouth, UK:

part 2/2. part 1/2, session 101.

of Kraftwerk

Nostalg ia f or t he m odern. R e-imag ining t he avant-garde in the mus ic Open panel of Malcolm Miles.

arc hitec ture.

Pertti Grönholm. University of Turku, FINLAND:

The ambigu ities of ind ividual ist versus c o llectiv ist i nterpretatio ns in the

an d con cret e realit ies of int ernational m odern ist

Jacob Derkert. Stockholm University, SWEDEN:

The utopian aspiration

Carla Lonzi

“I wo uld give you a kiss”: Not es o n utopia a nd c onviv iality in Autoritratto b y

Giulia Lamoni. IHA UNL-FCSH, Li sbon, PORTUGAL:

Utopian dimensions in the work of Pedro Cabrita Reis

Bruno Marques. IHA UNL-FCSH, Li sbon, PORTUGAL:

Strateg ies of dislocation. Space and utopia in c ontemporary art

Margarida Brito Alves. IHA UNL-FCSH, Lis bon, PORTUGAL:

The Nostalgic Utopia of Early-Twentieth-Century Dance

H anna Järvinen. The University of the Arts , FINLAND:

Rationalization in Modernism

Irm eli Hautamäki. University of Helsinki, FINLAND:

Mo dernism and Esoteric Ritual

Mark Morrisson. Penn State University, USA:

Sa lvagin g Modern ism ?

SESSION 112.

Closed panel of Giul ia Lamoni.

Utopia as Dis location .

SESSION 111.

Chair: Luca Som ig li

M odernis m an d Rational.

SESSION 110.

su n day 31s t august / 15. 15 – 16.45 / 11t h parallel sessions

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 5 . 1 5 – 1 6 . 4 5 / 1 1 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

64

SEM 11 (21) SEM 13 (30) SEM 14 (30)

The Lost Utopia in Shklovsky’s Two Editions of Zoo, or Letters Not about Love

Asi ya Bu latova. The University of Manche ste r , UK:

H . Parland: “Quosego” and “Keturi vejai”

Gintare Vaitonyte. Vytautas Magnus unive rs ity, LITHUANIA:

An Absurd Rendezv ous: Ionesc o vs Caragiale

Adela N. Beiu-Papanastasiou, Univers ity of East Anglia, UK:

Queer atopia via subversion: surpassing the utopia/dystopia inversion

Piot r Sobolczyk. Institute of Literary Re s e arch, POLAND :

Reexamining Surrealism in a tropical dystopia

Lynn Palermo. Susquehanna University, USA:

Pablo Picasso’s “Three-C ornered Hat” revisited in light of moral creativity

Juipi Chi en. Natio nal Taiwan Univers ity, TAIWAN:

su n day 31s t august / 15. 15 – 16.45 / 11t h parallel sessions

Chair: Ti mo Kaitaro

utopias .

Theater and literatu re

SESSION 115.

Chair: douglas m ao.

Dystopia – U topia.

SESSION 114.

SESSION 113.

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 5 . 1 5 – 1 6 . 4 5 / 1 1 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

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SEM 15 (30) SEM 18 (24) SESSION 118.

SESSION 117.

Chair: Rea Walldén

Commun ity utopias .

SESSION 116.

The Intellectual Worker and the 1 9 3 0 s Crisis of Cultural Production

Justi n Parks. University at Buffalo/Unive rs ity of Tur ku, FINLAND:

Gener ation and c ommunity art

H ans Vandevoorde. Vrije Universiteit Brus s e l, BELGIUM:

The M ood of Defeat: Jules Vallès and the Fall of the Paris C ommune

Scot t McCracken. Keele University, UK:

su n day 31s t august / 15. 15 – 16.45 / 11t h parallel sessions

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 5 . 1 5 – 1 6 . 4 5 / 1 1 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

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SEM 24 (21)

SEM 26 (21) SEM 27 (18)

The Reception of Futurism in Iceland

“A New Movement in Poetry and Art in the Artistic C ountries Abroad”:

Benedikt Hjartarson, University of Ice land, ICELAND:

F uturism

“Break, ar ise, and bloom!”: Experiments with La nguage and Books in Estonia n

Tiit Hennoste, University of Tartu, ESTONIA:

‘Wandering motifs’ of Futurism in Lithuania

su n day 31s t august / 15. 15 – 16.45 / 11t h parallel sessions

SESSION 12 0.

part 1/2, session 108.

part 2/2.

Open panel of Günt er Berghau s.

North-European Coun tries .

The Futu rist Utopia in

. - . Ramu te Rach leviciute, Vilnius Academy of Arts , LITHUANIA: ^

SESSION 119.

s u n d ay 3 1 s t a u g u s t / 1 5 . 1 5 – 1 6 . 4 5 / 1 1 t h pa r a l l e l s e s s i o n s

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o p e n pa n e ls a n d p e e r s e m i n a r s OPEN PANEL DESCRIPTIONS

g ü n t h e r BERG HAUS :

DAVID COTTINGTON:

T h e F ut ur is t Uto pia in No rt h -Eur o pe an Co untries

M odernisms a nd ava nt-ga rdes: cross-disciplina ry

se ssi on s 108, 119

compa risons session 38

In the 1910s, the Futurist movement developed along two main strands in Italy and Russia. The former, led by F.T. Marinetti, was conceived from the onset as a radical, international movement that would change the future of art and literature and the fabric of human society. Russian Futurism had a less proselytizing spirit, but still made considerable impact in surrounding countries, as well as further afield. Both forms of Futurism had a lasting effect on the processes of renewal in European culture. Apart from the concrete changes they initiated in the ways poems or paintings were created, they also had a fundamental and long-lasting influence on the Utopian spirit of all subsequent avant-garde movements. In the past decades, a large number of studies have examined the influence of Futurism in the Slavic and Hispanic world, in German-speaking countries and also outside Europe. However, little progress has been made with regard to Futurist traces in the arts and literatures of Northern countries, ranging from Iceland in the West via Scandinavia to Estonia in the East. At previous EAM conferences, a variety of papers have investigated the work of modernist and avant-garde artists from Northern countries, but ver y few of them have given Futurism more than a cursor y glance. This panel with a focus on seven Northern countries is intended to change that situation. Chair: Günter Berghaus (Dr. phil. habil.) Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol, UK [email protected] General editor Bibliographic Handbook of Futurism, International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, Handbook of International Futurism

In the rapidly-expanding field of avant-garde and modernism studies, two intersecting avenues of research in particular are emerging which are, arguably, of fundamental importance for our understanding of this field, but which do not appear to have received the attention that is their due. These are the study of the relation between the concepts, and the histories, of modernism across the range of cultural practices, and the study of the relationship between the avantgarde groupings of artists in different media within the cultural avant-gardes. While there are major studies that have been published on the relation between literature and visual art, for the most part these either do not primarily address the modern period; if they do, they focus on the relations of cultural power, rather than on any broader relation between them. There is therefore a pressing need for studies, on the one hand, of the relations between the problematics, of modernisms across the range of cultural practices (both in Europe, and elsewhere); and on the other, of the relations between the avant-gardes of different cultural media within any given ‘node’ of the avantgarde network. The panel proposed here would limit itself, for reasons of practicality and clarity of focus, to consideration of such relations between literar y and visual art modernisms and avant-garde groupings, across and within the nodes of the networks of the avant-gardes. As regards the relations between modernisms, it proposes to consider such questions as the following:

What can we learn from a comparison of modernist visual and literar y poetics as different modes of representation, expression and communication? What are the expressive potential and limits of both media, and what are the parallels and differences between the solutions which they offer, vis-a-vis novel and changing aesthetics, ideologies, historical conjunctures and worldviews? How might we compare the responses of poetr y and the visual arts to the shifts in representational and epistemological paradigms triggered by that profound cultural change which modernist culture articulated in the centur y from c 1850?

As regards the relations between avant-garde groupings, it would offer avenues of enquir y such as the following: How, if at all, might the modernism of writers and painters in a given conjuncture be compared, in terms of their aesthetic, philosophical and cultural concerns, their professional interests and their relation to emerging avant-gardes? What was the respective cultural weight and authority of literar y and fine art experimentalism within the avant-garde formation of a given city within the period? What are the theoretical and methodological issues that such comparisons raise? How might the relation between modernisms, and/or the configuration of such cultural hierarchies within avant-gardes, be related—if at all—to the broader historial conjuncture of these formations? Proposals are invited for papers on these and/or related questions.

Chair: Dr. David Cottington Professor of Art History at Kingston University London, UK [email protected]

JANE DOWSON: States and disruptions of drea m by avant- garde women poets session 80

The Sitwells exploited simultaneously a nostalgia for the social thrill of pre-war modernist radicalism, and the refusal of the meanings of that stance which was current in the twenties. The bulk of their achievement after the immediate post-war years lies in the evocation of a pre-modern dream world, an imaginar y alternative to modernity. (David Peters Corbett, The Modernity of English Ar t 1914–30 Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1997, p. 160) Led by Edith Sitwell, the ‘Eiffel Tower Group’ (Sitwell, Nancy Cunard, Iris Tree), established the radical anthologies Wheels (1915-21) intended to rekindle the waning pre-war zeal for cultural innovation. Sensationally labeled ‘The Asylum School of Poetr y’, they opposed the postwar dullness propagated by the parallel anthologies of Georgian verse. Daughters of aristocrats, they fuelled their reaction against and dislocation from their privileged backgrounds into avant-garde experiments with verbal texture, influenced by European art, music and ballet. In the 1920s, Sitwell spent time in Paris, forming an important alliance with Gertrude Stein in 1924, and moved there in 1932. Her lifetime liaison with Russian-born surrealist painter Pavel Tchelitchew also developed her groundbreaking, often disturbing, evocations of individual and collective anxieties and desires. More dystopian than utopian, her lengthy poems, such as Façade (1922), Sleeping Beauty (1924) and Gold Cost Customs (1929), interweave dream state with myth to mediate anti-traditionalist fer vour :

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One of the principal aims of the new poets is to increase consciousness, and, to do this, we must use all the powers that nature and intelligence and insight and dream and fact have given us. ... The modernist artist wishes us to see things for ourselves—not merely to believe the trees are green because we have been told so. (Edith Sitwell, ‘Modern Poetr y’, Time and Tide, 30 March 1928: 308–9). The panel would include other British poets, whose defamiliarising symbols and syntax were contiguous with their anti-feminine anticonventionalism, such as Hope Mirrlees and Mina Loy, along with poets from other European countries.

You can propose a paper from the field of histor y avant-garde art considering the Blaue Reiter artists, Kandinsky’s activities during and after the Russian Revolution, and/or his activities in Bauhaus. Papers from the field of theor y of art/aesthetics considering the problems of synthesis of art in Kandinsky’s books and articles are also welcome. Chair: Dr. Irmeli Hautamäki Adjunct professor of Aesthetics, University of Helsinki, Finland Irmeli.Hautamaki@kolumbus .fi

M ARIUS HENTEA: Chair: Dr. Jane Dowson Reader in Twentieth-Century Literature, De Montfort

Da da Liv es: Writing the Self a nd Da da History session 47

University, UK [email protected]

IR MELI HAUTA MÄKI : K a ndin s ky’s G re at Uto pia: t h e Syn t h e s is o f Arts se ssi on 1

The founders of the Blaue Reiter publication Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc held the idea that the synthesis, where the means of different arts were brought together, could renew and transform the culture. Kandinsky called this his Great Utopia. The synthesis of art can be considered in many ways. Historically it can be related to the old German idea of total work of art. In the Blaue Reiter community it entered a new stage towards its realization. The synthesis of arts also suggests the political utopia of internationalism. According to Kandinsky there was no reason to develop or study the methods of art of one nation only, but with their synthesis avantgarde could transcend the limits of national art. The synthesis of arts has also a great theoretical interest. Kandinsky developed it in his 1926 book from Point and Line to Plane, where he intended to raise the methods of arts to scientific level.

This open panel examines how autobiography and memoirs have contributed to – and stifled – the historiography of Dada. Louis Aragon, Hugo Ball, Raoul Hausmann, Richard Huelsenbeck, Marcel Janco, Man Ray, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Hans Richter, and Tristan Tzara all penned memoirs (in different forms and with var ying purposes) to buttress their views of Dada; they also contributed to the shaping of Dada histor y either by controlling access to personal collections of Dada material or by advising museums on Dada exhibitions. This panel is interested in charting the legacy of these autobiographical inter ventions onto Dada histor y: can a histor y of Dada be written without the subjective inter vention of its lead participants? Is there a genre called the Dada memoir, and, if so, of what does it consist? What happens to key figures in Dada who did not stake out a subjective histor y of the movement? Chair: Marius Hentea Assistant Professor of Literary Studies, Ghent University, Belgium

DAVID HOPKINS & de b o rah le w e r: INSULT, DEBATE , DISPUTE: DADA AGAINST TOTALITY se ssi on s 39, 50, 61

It is commonplace to think of Dada as a movement which was at conflict with existing cultural and social structures. This session invites speakers to explore Dada as a movement which was at conflict with itself. We invite proposals which examine Dada as a site of argument, disagreement and discord, and therefore work against notions of the utopian modernist or avant-garde movement as something characterised by totalising vision or agreed set of goals. As well as papers exploring disputes, conflicts, spats and arguments among the Dadaists themselves (for instance Huelsenbeck’s antipathy towards Schwitters, or Picabia’s tirades against Breton), we welcome papers which deal with the representation or mobilisation of the insult within Dadaist production. The textual or artistic representation of disagreement, physical conflict, disunity and so on would therefore be other appropriate and welcome themes. Chairs: Dr. David Hopkins Professor of History of Art, University of Glasgow, UK [email protected] Dr. Deborah Lewer Senior Lecturer in History of Art, University of Glasgow, UK [email protected]

AGATA JAG UBOWSKA : A l l wo me n art s pace s as h e t e r oto pias se ssi on s 57, 68

One of the important elements of the women’s art movement emerging in the 1970s was the creation of all women art spaces. They existed for a longer period of time or just during one exhibition or even one performance. They were to offer an alternative to the unfriendly reality of male-dominated art world and aimed at creating an environment where

women artists could address the experiences of women. The most famous of them – Womanhouse (Los Angeles 1972) – has already been thoroughly analysed. This panel seeks to explore much lesser known women art spaces functioning in different European countries. Its focus will be on the 1970s but proposals that deal with initiatives that were undertaken later are also invited. Papers are expected to analyse ideas, forms of their implementation and effects of these diverse heterotopias. The panel chair’s proposal to characterise all women art spaces as heterotopias is to be discussed. Chair: Agata Jakubowska (Hab . Ph. D.) Associate Professor at Department of Art History, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland [email protected]

BOJAN JOVIC : Interwar U topia o f Re-creation: Avant- garde Quest for new Art, Culture a nd Society sessions 49, 60, 71

Panel is dedicated to various aspects of avant-garde theoretical and practical efforts to regenerate foundations of European culture and society. Individual and collective undertakings, being aimed at establishing new art, changing the social structure and forming new Man through (anti-) aesthetic, ideological and political action, comprised destructing traditional forms and institutions of bourgeois art and culture (Expressionistic spirituality, Dadaistic nonsensicality) and imposing new ones (Futuristic cult of machines and mechanics, Constructivistic applicability), aspiring after total work of art through individual synesthetic creation (Kandinsky, Schoenberg) or collective actions (movements, happenings) and spectacles (“Parade”, “La creation du monde”, “1002. Night”), activating additionally motives and techniques of archaic mythopoetic, folklore (Slavic and Scandinavian nations), primitivistic and exotic origins. This re-forming effort of avant-garde ended paradoxically in a dystopian

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form – in art of the Stalin era, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, as well as in neoclassicistic, traditional and politically committed tendencies in other countries. Chair: Dr. Bojan Jovic Institute for Literature and Art, Belgrade, Serbia

G ERRI KI MBER: Dystopian Vis ion s in t h e Avan t-gar de an d Mo d ern is t Sh o rt Sto ry se ssi on s 82, 93

If we view Modernism and Avant-gardism as artistic languages of rupture, then the renaissance of the short stor y form in the early twentieth-centur y often reflected this rupture and was utilized to considerable effect by certain authors. Incorporating literar y experimentation, the genre’s potential for fragmentation, disturbance and complexity mirrors the dystopian worldview of the period in question. Sometimes reflecting a Bakhtinian notion of conflicting narrative voices, together with a Freudian concept of the uncanny, the short stor y would emerge as a radical avant-garde and modernist vehicle, questioning traditional forms, the importance of the narrator, and the overall relationship of the author to the reader. Wyndham Lewis, for example, in his own short stories, exemplified the Vorticist stances of detachment and dynamic form. Other writers whose stories reveal this experimental mode include James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, Katherine Mansfield, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Richardson and May Sinclair.

EM ILIE LUSE : Utopia a nd Dystopia in the F rench La ndsca pes a nd Citysca pes of the 1930s Session 14

A troubled period of French histor y, the 1930s were marked by a pessimism regarding the feasibility of the Third Republic as well as a sense of aesthetic crisis. In painting, this period saw a turn to the imagined or fictionalized landscape or cityscape. In contrast to the obser vational experiments and simplifications which had marked the work of Cezanne, the landscapes of the 1930s operate in an allegorical language, functioning as the site of a psychological projection in which two parallel tendencies can be detected, each with their relationship to the past clearly stated. The first is Utopic, oriented somewhat desperately towards the idyllic, class-free canvases of Puvis de Chavannes and Poussin, while the second is dystopic, presenting a ruined, empty or apocalyptic terrain onto which the pessimistic narratives about the present or future are projected. Welcoming papers on all artistic tendencies, this panel seeks to relate these features to political sympathies and the cultural politics of this period, with special attention to the way in which these paintings articulate anxieties or fantasies regarding class-relations, industrialization, or national and imperialistic identity. Chair: Emilie Anne-Yvonne Luse Duke University, USA

ANDREW MCNA M ARA & ann stephen: Chair: Dr. Gerri Kimber Senior Lecturer in English, University of Northampton,

Primitiv ist Utopia s from Tza ra to Polk e Sessions 83, 94

UK [email protected]

For over a centur y the primitive has been at the heart of modernist culture uncannily illuminating and reinventing its critical resources as well as being the source of its unease, if not repulsion. Primitivism was a magnet of attraction as well as of critical refusal. It resided on the knife-edge of envy and denunciation,

as well as for the projection of alternate imaginative utopias and the worst forms of racial chauvinism. Many artists have been drawn to primitivism as a provocation precisely because of its potential to disturb. But what is the spectre of the primitive a provocation for? Why would anyone freely identify with a label that carried such negative connotations since its inception? What is the fate of primitivism after Eurocentrism? Our speculations, shaped by the long histories of cultural exchange and projection in Australasia, seek to outline various provocations prompted by the appeal to primitivism through modernism.

housing to iconic buildings and city planning, how did international modernism succeed or fail to realise its dreams? Were the means used appropriate to the aims? Can the utopianism of modernist architecture and planning be salvaged from the rubble of demolished tower-blocks and the collapse of state-socialism? Chair: Dr. Malcolm Miles Professor of Cultural Theory, School of Architecture, Design & Environment, University of Plymouth, UK

CAROLINE PATEY & laura scuriatti: Phalansteries, groups, circles and guilds . Modernist

Chairs: Dr. Andrew McNamara

aesthetics and the utopian lure of community Sessions 40, 51, 62

Head of Visual Arts, QUT, Brisbane, Australia [email protected] Dr. Ann Stephen Senior Curator, University Art Gallery, University of Sydney, Australia [email protected]

MALCOL M MILES: Sa lvag in g Modernism? T he utopian aspiration and con crete realities of international moder nist ar ch it e ct ure S e ssi on s 101, 112

Avant-garde artists disrupted bourgeois culture’s forms and institutions as a means to interrupt bourgeois society. International modernist architects sought, perhaps from related motives, to build a new society. If art’s disruptive activities alluded to a radical rejection of bourgeois values, modernist architects sought radical social change by designing the buildings and planning the cities to concretely house it. Artists and architects were equally haunted by the slaughter of the 1914-18 war, as architects and planners responded to fear of future conflict after the bombing of cities in 1939-45 by espousing a revived humanism; but if reaction to fear was one polarity informing modernism, hope for a genuinely better world was another. In the East and West blocs, from

It is perhaps possible to argue that one of the differences between Avant-garde and Modernism concerns the ways in which Avant-garde aesthetics and practices developed within or into groups and movements, while Modernism, especially literar y modernism, has long been investigated in the wake of the primar y role played by individual voices and authorship. Group artistr y, however, is central in the elaboration not only of the Avant-garde but also of modernist aesthetics and ethics throughout Europe and the United States. Together with the more renown instances such as the Wiener Werkstätte, Bauhaus, the Omega workshops and the groupings which followed the outbreak and success of the Russian Revolution, a number of less known collective experiences (circles, little magazines, theatre companies, guilds) are crucial in the understanding of the aesthetics production and practices of both Avant-garde experiences and modernist ones, also from the point of view of their (ver y different) utopian goals.Whether institutionalised or informal, most of these groupings, which were housed both in urban and rural surroundings, involved artists, authors and thinkers working together in a collective attempt to reassess/reformulate the issues of art, creativity and craft in the light of communal

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practices and choices. The panel aims at investigating the role played by the diverse communities disseminated throughout Europe and intends to focus on the following aspects although other suggestions are welcome: 1.

It seems important to draw an accurate map of these experiences: some are well know and however still deser ve full attention (Carpenter at Millthorpe, Omega, Charleston), others have hardly ever been approached critically (Eric Gill and the crafts at Ditchling; Ben Nicholson and Adrian Stokes at Carbis Bay, the Tolstoian communities in Essex, and, later, Roland Penrose at Farley Farm) In the US, the charting of these collective ventures would lead to the groupings around the little magazines Others, The Masses, The Broom, The Rogue, The Freewoman, The Dial, The Blind Man or to marginal places such as Provincetown and Taos. Other European countries offer a wealth of communal experiences which have played an important role in the articulation of Modernism: Monte Verità in Switzerland; Rudolph Steiner at Dornach in Switzerland; Mas Angirany and the Maurons in France; the meetings at the Abbaye de Pontigny; De fem in Sweden; Worpswede in Germany.

2.

On the methodological and theoretical side of things, a closer knowledge of places and persons should trigger an exploration of the nexus group/ artistic expression: what happens to the single artists’ authorial voice when it is merged in a choir? How are the issues of signature, format, visibility, impact and acceptance dealt with in the various communal experiences?

to imagine that such coexistence triggers forms of interaction between different media and techniques and therefore invites processes of accelerated cross-fertilization. 4.

Little is known about the political status of some of these communities and of the ways in which they interact, if at all, with the social and cultural groups around them. Investigating the strategies of inclusion and exclusion would undoubtedly be worthwhile: who and what validates belonging to the group?

We invite contributors: A.

To fill in the white places of our initial map. What happened in Europe? The Northern countries, Italy? Eastern Europe? What about the organization of communities and how did it affect artistic production and visibility?

B.

To elaborate on the theoretical aspects of authorial identity, agency, originality, subversion.

C.

To interrogate the role played by the multiple discourses entailed by an artistic community: does collective living encourage forms of discursive hybridisation and artistic crossfertilization?

D.

To explore and assess the cultural and political status of such communities: where are their boundaries, how do they behave in terms of inclusion/exclusion, what is their relationship with the dominant groups in which they are immersed?

Chairs: Dr. Caroline Patey Professor of English literature, Università degli Studi, Milan, Italy Dr. Laura Scuriatti Liberal Arts University in Berlin, Germany

3.

In many cases, various forms of artistic expression coexist in the community: how does that affect the aesthetic discourses of the group. It is easy

ALAN PROHM: T h e Radical N ow – W here/ What/ Who is avant- garde to day, an d h ow ? S e ssi on 58

The call for this conference is written in the past tense. The EAM Network, like culture and academia more generally, continues the tendency to view the avant-garde as primarily a historical phenomenon – something that happened in the past, in a period “roughly between 1850 and 1950”, to quote the website. Attention given to a/the “neo”-avantgarde often simply reaffirms this passéist perspective by updating it, perhaps as far as the 1970’s, maybe all the way to ‘89. But a principle at work near the heart of the avant-garde adventure in many of its most famous cases is that only the now is historically relevant. Consequently, it can and should be argued, an avant-garde (a movement, an initiative, a project) can only ever be avant-garde now. This panel invites contributions engaging the question: Where/What/Who is avant-garde now? and, always also, where do you stand in relation? Chair: Dr. Alan Prohm http://alanprohm.wordpress .com/

ROSSELLA RICCOBONO : I ta l i an Modernism and its Poetic Voices: Myths , Dystopias an d Cit ys cape s S e ssi on s 6, 16, 35

Research in the field of Italian Modernism has been recently opened by a series of publications both in the ambit of Anglo-American academia by Luca Somigli and Mario Moroni, as well as within the more recent discussions in the Italian Academia lead mainly by well eminent scholars such as Romano Luperini, Raffaele Donnarumma and Massimiliano Tortora. There still exists a gap in the agreement of what exactly is Italian Modernism and which voices can be

included in this area of transformations both for the human subjectivity and for their artistic expression. Often Italian Modernism is still connected to the development of the novel and prose writing. More recently Prof. Luperini has included poetic voices, such as that of Eugenio Montale and his poetic production influenced by many European preceding contemporar y voices, in primis the influence of T.S.Eliot. It is this the moment when the discussion of Italian Modernism is starting to heat up. This panel proposes to discuss further the ambit of Italian Modernism vis a vis the other poetic voices of the time both Italian and European in the hope that research in the Italian Modernist field may grow and gain more affinity to contemporar y studies in European Modernism. Chair: Dr. Rossella M. Riccobono Lecturer in Italian, University of St Andrews, UK

TOM SANDQVIST: Jewish M essia nism a nd Ava nt-Ga rde Session 10

Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, Natan Altman, László Moholy-Nagy, Henr yk Berlewi, Sonia Delaunay, Chaïm Soutine, Jacques Lipchitz - already only the most well-known names provide us with an impressive list of artists who profoundly characterized the Central and Eastern European Jewish contribution to the development of modern art at the beginning of the 20th centur y. This panel focuses on a seemingly simple question: is there an affinity between the emergence of “Messianic” modern art and various Avant-Garde movements such as Russian Suprematism and Polish or Hungarian Constructivism around about the turn of the last centur y and the process of Jewish assimilation in the Habsburg empire and Russian tsardom respectively? An additional question is, of course, whether Modernism in general may be connected to this process and in what way both “Messianic” dreams

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and eclecticism, so conspiciously obvious in the region, was be determined by the presence of Eastern Jewish culture and philosophy. Shortly: what is the role of Eastern Judaism when it comes to the politically radical and at the same time transgressive nature of Central and Eastern European Modernism? What about the possible connection between “Hebraism”, Jewish Messianism, Talmudic philosophy, and Kabbalistic speculations and the most radical, Utopian Avant-Garde movements of the region? Was Russian Cubo-Futurism, Suprematism, Productivism, Polish and Hungarian Constructivism actually fostered by ideas and practices articulated in Eastern Jewr y? And what was the impact of AntiSemitism on how the artists related to stylistic purity and their own cultural identity in the region already prior to the emergence of Avant-Gardism? How did the supposed biblical ban on “graven images” influence the approach of the Jewish artists? chair: Professor Tom Sandqvist (Dr.phil.) University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden and University of Lapland, Finland [email protected]

production. Van de Velde supported a socialist and industrial ideal and wanted to free ornament from the restrictions of naturalism. Adolf Loos of Austria, on the other hand, questioned the whole meaning of ornament as an anachronism. After Loos, modernism was restrained with regard to ornament – albeit with many exceptions. In the 1920s and 1930s, classicism and Art Deco restored ornament to the core of design, while the International Style condemned it as decline. The International Style, however, created its own structural ideal of ornament. Le Corbusier’s design programme with its support of dynamic capitalism had no role for traditional ornament. Totalitarian states such as Germany and the Soviet Union made ornament a means of their ideology. The classical language of ornament ser ved the message of both Soviet Man and the Third Reich. Postmodernism discovered in ornament and its deconstruction the means to question the dogmas of modernism and totalitarianism. I propose that, as chairman, I will assemble an open panel to discuss the political agendas of utopias with the concept of ornament as a starting point.

KI M M O SARJE : O r na me n t as a G e s t ure o f Uto pia S e ssi on s 55, 66

chair: Dr. Kimmo Sarje Adjunct Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Helsinki, Finland

The concept of ornament is laden with a great deal of aesthetic meanings and political aims from democracy to totalitarianism. Ornament is a gesture of utopia. In the late 19th centur y, John Ruskin and William Morris called for a rejection of the mechanical and unauthentic ornamentality of revived styles, which was regarded as decay. They proposed instead an honest ideal of ornament based on nature that would also express a new social ethic. The aim was to make handcrafted beauty available to ever yone. Henr y van de Velde propagated and developed the ideas of his British examples in Continental Europe, but unlike Ruskin and Morris he believed in mechanized

[email protected]

NATALIA SMOLYANSKAYA & konstantin dudakov-kashuro: The R elevance o f the Utopia Concept in the Russian Ava nt-Ga rde Sessions 34, 45

The emphasis on the “utopian” feature as the basis of the Russian avant-garde, which inherits to social utopias of the past, is ver y common. It is no coincidence that during perestroika, when histor y in general and particularly histor y of art of the 1910 – 1920’s has been reconsidered, the idea of the

“utopianism” was largely determined by the failure of building fair society. Accordingly, this social failure was interrelated with the avant-garde tendencies in arts, treated now as utopian. The Great Utopia exhibition (1992) – one of the major events in this context – marked this attitude. Once coined by Vasily Kandinsky, the designation “Great Utopia” does not seem now however to represent the basic intentions of the Russian avant-garde in depth. Does the concept of “utopia” reduce Russian avant-garde experience to a social dreaminess or some abstract and unsuccessful formation of a new human and society? At the same time one should differentiate between ideology of transforming a human by labor (i.e. building Belomor channel), on the one hand, and the idea of creating new forms of life of a “radiant mankind” (Tsiolkovsky) or “suprematist nature” (Malevich), on the other. It is no coincidence that the “utopian” feature is ascribed to avant-garde exactly when histor y is reconsidered under postmodern spell. Pastiche attitude of this concept limits the analysis of constructive and creative potentials of the artistic avant-garde. Thus vigor and radicalness for which avant-garde was so remarkable, is dematerialized to the point, when it is possible to identify avant-garde with conceptual art and its offshoots, making both terms equally confusing. Does the “utopian” approach still lead to better understanding of the constructive and vital energies of the Russian avant-garde or shall we reconsider it?

CHRISTOPHER TOWNSEND & sa ra h fill: The F uture, thrown behind us a nd shattered: Modernism ’s Historio g raphies and Conservative Utopia s Sessions 41, 52, 63

This panel examines how modernism’s historiography conflicts with modernity’s notions of temporality. Modernity orders historical events into a linear, progressive sequence, forming a narrative that pinpoints the present, and therefore the future, as the ever-rising summit of human achievement. This prioritising of present over past helps produce the concept of utopia. Modernism’s historiography is often antithetical to this notion. Texts like Pound’s Cantos, the Wasteland, and David Jones’s In Parenthesis shatter rational sequence through anachronism. The idea of histor y as a fragmented field, unintelligible in totality, is carried over into modernist thought in Benjamin’s ‘Theses on the Philosophy of Histor y’, where the past becomes understandable only in a redemptive eschaton that has more in common with St. Augustine’s historiography in City of God than the historical positivism of technical-industrial modernity. This panel asks whether modernism’s radical historiography thus facilitates the imagination of antediluvian social models rather than the progressive utopias imagined by modernity? Chairs: Dr. Christopher Townsend

Chairs: Dr. Konstantin Dudakov-Kashuro Associate Professor, Lomonosovsky Moscow State University, Russia [email protected]

Professor of the history of avant-garde film, Director of Post Graduate Research, Dept. of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK Sarah Fill Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

Dr. Natalia Smolyanskaya Associate Professor at Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia [email protected] [email protected]

BIR GIT VAN PUYM BROECK : Technotopia Sessions 65, 74

Ever since Marx’s Capital, cultural critics, philosophers, authors and artists have thought about

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the relation between man and machine. Heidegger and Benjamin questioned the relation between art, technology and society, as did the Italian Futurists, British Vorticists, and Russian constructivists. This panel invites papers that deal with technology in modernist and avant-gardist literature and art: how does technology change us as individuals and/ or as society? How does it affect the way we look at the past and view the future, and/or the way in which we experience literature, art and culture? The panel welcomes both methodologically inspired papers that deal with current critical thinking on the ‘posthuman(ist)’, and specific case studies that explore the relation between man and technology in early-twentieth-centur y literature and art. For more information, please contact the chair. chair: Dr. Birgit Van Puymbroeck Yale University, USA [email protected]

ESSI VIITANEN & ale x t rott: Mo d ern is m an d Rit ual S e ssi on 42, 53

In 1913, the pagan sacrifice in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring portrayed the power of the ritual to dominate the behaviour of a community. Against a backdrop of archaic customs, the revolutionar y and complex composition highlights the enduring potency of the ritual, whose manifestation endures as a formative agent in society. The ‘ritual’ assists in the affirmation of a collective identity. It both symbolises and actualises collective ideals by providing a means of engagement; traditions are renegotiated, reflecting ideological shifts. As European modernism heralded a new era of cultural practice that rejected tradition and restructured the world according to utopian ideals, what role did rituals play in creating new, imagined histories, and uniting disparate communities through a shared experience? This open panel proposes an examination of how modernist ideals shaped, and were shaped by

the ritual. Taking an interdisciplinar y approach, we would like to solicit papers from a range of historical and theoretical perspectives that consider the breadth of roles the ritual played in transforming modernist cultural practice. chairs: Essi Viitanen UCL, UK [email protected] Alex Trott Royal Holloway, University of London, UK [email protected]

ISABEL WÜNSCHE: Utopia s of Abstract Art Sessions 85, 96

The early pioneers of abstract art, Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka, Kazimir Malevich, and Piet Mondrian, shared the belief that art should not ser ve the reproduction of visible reality but be an expression of the absolute. Fascinated by esoteric ideas, occultism, and theosophy, they viewed art, and, in particular, the abstract approach, as a medium to advance human creative evolution and lead the way into a new age of spiritual renewal. The interwar period saw a secularization of the spiritual concerns of early abstraction; artists turned to science and technology and the ideals of modern industrial production. This panel will examine the utopian ideals that were closely intertwined with the production of abstract art, whose proponents derived their inspiration from metaphysics, the natural sciences, and modern technology and equated spiritual and technological advancement with social progress. The focus will not be so much on Constructivism but rather the ideas and theories, including anarchism, evolution, and Lebensreform, which shaped the artists’ worldviews and their artistic production. chair: Dr. Isabel Wünsche Professor of Art and Art History, Director of Humanities Research Center, Jacobs University, Germany

o p e n pa n e ls a n d p e e r s e m i n a r s Peer Seminar Descriptions

NATHALIE AUBERT, jyr ki n ummi & h arr i ve ivo :

KEN HIRSCHKOP :

Q u e st ion in g/Ch alle n gin g Mo de r n is m/Mo de rnity

Cities a nd M odernity

S e ssi on s 33, 48

Session 9

The narratives of “modernism” and “modernity” are challenged today by researchers who seek to put forward the heterogeneity and incommensurability of discourses, styles, practices and careers of writers, artists and intellectuals who are usually subsumed under these general notions. We are not, however, dealing with the disappearance of modernism or with post-modernism, but rather with liquid or plural modernity and with networks of relocated modernisms that move in time and in space and transcend national boundaries – in other words, with a creative network that challenges modernism and modernity and develops them further, converting contradictions and oppositions into unifying dynamics. Drawing on recent works that have pluralised the research on 20th centur y modernism and avant-garde movements, this seminar is addressed to graduate students and researchers interested in charting and analysing challenges to modernism and modernity as well as alternative modernisms in different kinds of national and transnational contexts.

In any account of modernity as a sociological phenomenon, or modernism as an artistic one, urban experience looms large. The metropolis or large city provides not only the venue in which new technologies, economic forms and political movements are nurtured, but also the existential setting for ‘modern’ experience and modern individuality. But although the cities of the twentieth centur y share an affinity with the modern, they imagine this modernity in many different ways. Not ever y city could embody modernity as a radical joining together of the ancient and the fashionable, as Benjamin thought Paris did, or as a display of what rational planning and engineering might achieve, a typical route for cities in the United States and Canada. In this seminar we will explore the relationship cities across the world have with modernity: what they think it means to be modern and how they embody this vision in planning policy, architecture, politics and cultural forms. Papers that examine a single city in depth are encouraged, although any paper relevant to the topic will be considered.

chairs:

chair:

Dr. Nathalie Aubert

Dr. Ken Hirschkop

Professor of French Literature, Oxford Brookes

Department of English Language and Literature

University, UK

University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada [email protected]

Dr. Jyrki Nummi Professor of Finnish Literature, University of Helsinki, Finland Dr. Harri Veivo visiting professor, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, France

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c lo s e d pa n e ls c lo s e d pa n e l D e s c r i p t i o n s

NAtalia Bas ch mako ff: U to pia an d t h e Tr an s ce n de n tal in Rus s ian Ava ntGa r de ( 1900-2000) S e ssi on s 26, 59

This panel offers a panoramic view of the multiple transcendental ideas that characterized the pre-revolutionar y quest for new forms of artistic expression during the first wave of the Russian avantgarde (1890s-1920s). It will deepen our understanding of the avant-garde’s wild utopian ideas and shed light on the innovative explorations behind the artists’ theoretical and creative experiments. These experiments strived at redefining the role of humankind in a holistic and anthropocentric universe to “take the measure of an ultimate reality” (Charlotte Douglas). Among the achievements of these experiments in the late 1920s were those studies on spatial perception of nature that reported phenomena of the transcendent order of reality (Matiushin school). These ideas were further developed in the artistic underground till the late socialist period (Sterligov school). Voluminous research published worldwide since Camilla Gray’s, Renato Poggioli’s and Nikolai Khardzhiev’s groundbreaking works show a continuing interest in the study of the Russian avant-garde. Approaching the topic from the perspective of cosmogonist utopianism, this panel strives to create a bridge from the first wave of the multifaceted Russian avant-garde to its more current expressions.

Aleksanteri Institute Associate, University of Helsinki [email protected] From the ‘Transparent Stone Age’ to the ‘Space of the Chalice-Cupola’: Perceptual Utopias in the Russian AvantGarde (1910s-1960s) ELENA DUSHECHKINA Professor, History of Russian Literature, Saint Petersburg State University [email protected] Антропонимический взрыв эпохи модернизма: от традиции к утопии ALEKSANDR BELOUSOV PhD, Docent, Saint-Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts [email protected] Детская утопия и культурная мифология модернизма в романе Л. Добычина «Город Эн» WILLEM G. WESTSTEIJN Professor Emeritus, Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Amsterdam; Russian Literature, Editor in Chief [email protected] Russian Neo-Avant-Garde. Ry Nikonova and Sergey Sigey MARIA ENGSTRÖM PhD, Assistant Professor, Russian Department, Dalarna University, Sweden [email protected] Post-Imperial Sublime: Alexey Beliayev-Guintovt’s neoavant-garde dreams of Eurasian Empire NINA GOURIANOVA (discussant) Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures Northwestern University, Evanston & Chicago, Illinois [email protected] Abstracts are in individual papers. eva F orgacs & M a rina Dimitrieva :

chair: SANNA TUROMA PhD, Academy of Finland Fellow, Adjunct Professor Aleksanteri Institute, Academy of Finland Center of Excellence Program ”Choices of Russian Modernization”

“Soyons réa listes! Dema ndons l’ impossible! ” Searchin g f or a new utopia o f otherness – technolo gical, scientif ic, transrational, robotic, a rchitectura l Session 11a

[email protected] NATALIA BASCHMAKOFF Professor Emerita, Russian Language and Culture, University of Eastern Finland

This panel will address the search for new, utopian solutions that are directed at reinventing

reality on a social, technological, or psychological level. It could be a different language and thinking modus, a new technical utopia/dystopia, another android, another constructivism that is different from the Russian avant-garde pattern, a new strangeness, a new concept of time, or the merciless dissection of a past utopia. The aspiration to an active alternative solution is more important than a passive “post”. Key words: Utopia of otherness, android, robotic, scientific, post-psychological, post-communist. Eva Forgacs Adjunct Professor, Humanities and Sciences, Art Center College of Design, USA Killed utopias: Hungarian Deconstructivist NeoConstructivism from the 1960s to the 1990s

what has been perceived as a celebration of innate female powers. In contrast to such overly essentialist readings, this paper argues that an examination of the utopian dimensions of Carrington’s highly experimental treatment of both gender and literar y form in The Stone Door shows a much more complex notion of how gender is constituted, articulated and performed. In its combining of parody, critique, contradiction and utopian vision, The Stone Door, I argue, anticipates some of the 1970s feminist avantgarde – most notably Hélène Cixous, who in ‘Sorties’ (1975) proposes a similar model of gender based on the notion of ‘bisexuality’, which enables ‘the multiplication of the effects of desire’s inscription on ever y part of the body and the other body’.

Imre Jozsef Balazs

Anna Watz

Professor, Babes Bolyai University, ROMANIA

Linköping University, Sweden

The non-oedipian android: towards a surrealist utopia in postwar Romania Cosana Eram



‘What are the islands to me’: Bryher, H.D. and

Assistant Professor, University of the Pacific, USA

the Heterotopic Island

Victor Brauner’s Utopian Pict-Poetic World

Female modernist authors, including Radclyffe Hall, Vita Sackville-West, Br yher and H.D., drew repeatedly on the island as a geographical and metaphorical space to articulate and negotiate sexual possibilities. This paper draws on a selection of these works to show that the island offered not only a heterotopic space, but also a heterotopic temporality to facilitate a critical and creative engagement with gender and sexuality. It focuses, in particular, on Br yher’s and H.D.’s autobiographical novels, historical fiction and poetr y to demonstrate that both authors envisioned insular space as temporally complex and layered, offering access to various historical, national, colonial and imagined pasts. It was through an engagement with these pasts that Br yher sought to express her cross-gender identification with the figure of the boy whereas H.D. aimed to negotiate her bisexuality. Overall, the paper shows that Br yher and H.D. offer an important case study to understand better how the temporal complexity of insular space allowed female modernist authors to resist limiting binar y understandings of sexuality and gender,

Marina Dmitrieva Senior Researcher, GWZO (Geisteswissenchaftliche Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas) at University of Leipzig, GERMANY The New Adam: The Robotic challenge for a Communist Utopia in Eastern Europe

Fe l i c it y ge e : U to pian Space s , Uto pian Se x ualit ie s S e ssi on 24



‘I am a hermaphrodite in love with one of my

own dreams’: Leonora Carrington’s Feminist Revision of Surrealism

This paper addresses the surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington’s utopian vision of gender in her novel The Stone Door (written in the mid-1940s, but not published until 1976). Carrington’s art and writing frequently reference myth, alchemy and magical practices, and as a result of this, her aesthetic production and portrayals of femininity have often been read in terms of goddess-worship and

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opening up instead a broader range of utopian sexual possibilities. Jana Funke University of Exeter, UK

‘Visual Poems’: Claude Cahun’s Archive of the Self Ambition: to live without a suppor t, as if of the plant species . Place one’s ideal in oneself. Sheltered from the elements . Claude Cahun, Aveux non avenus [aka Cancelled Confessions; Disavowals] 1930. This paper explores the notion of the self-portrait or memoir as an affective repositor y. In particular it addresses the question of whether ‘the self ’ can ser ve as a site for a utopian re-imagining of a given reality. The given reality explored here, is the ever yday life of French artist, performer and writer Claude Cahun (1894 – 1954, née Lucy Schwob); a life mapped through an extraordinar y output of geo-political and radical creation. Cahun is now well known, her work explored by art historians, feminists and queer theorists. Recent research draws upon her associations with French Surrealism, her life under German occupation on the island of Jersey during WWII, and her fearless denial of logo centrism and transgression of heteronormative discourse. Central to each of these discussions are questions of gender, masquerade and role play. Mindful of these debates, this paper asks whether the splitting or shedding of a definitive self, i.e. through continual reinvention and metamorphosis, can provide a utopian reimagining of a non-fixed self that is not ‘outside’ or ‘other’.

movements and political revolution. In this context artistic couples became one of the characteristic social and artistic outcomes of this period. As the smallest artistic groups (often within the bigger ones) they represented the utopia of ideal creative partnership. Sometimes they were homosexual or members of the same family, artistic couples shared common aesthetic and intellectual views or social-political preferences. Together, in an international context they successfully brought off common artistic projects, exhibitions or publications. Often one of the partners preser ved the oeuvre of the other and contributed to the establishment of his/her legacy. Not exceptionally, however, the utopia of ideal cooperation was damaged by rivalr y or family obligations. This panel addresses the complexity of mutual collaborations within artistic couples, including the problems of both female and national emancipation. chair: Lidia Głuchowska Ph.D, Ass . Professor, Institute of Visual Arts, University of Zielona Gora, Poland [email protected] The German-Polish couple Margarete and Stanislaw Kubicki. An unfinished project of the avant-garde. Aija Braslina Head of Collections and Research Department, Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia Two modernist couples from the Riga Artists’ Group Lenka Bydžovská, PhD, Head of the Department of the 19th to 21st Centuries Art, Institute of Art History Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic Man-Cuttle-Fish and Magnetic Woman: Artistic Partnership

Felicity Gee, chair University of Exeter, UK

of Štyrský and Toyen in the network of the interwar avant-garde.

L i d i a G łuch ow s ka:

elena Ha ma lidi:

Art i stic couples: utopia o f creative collaboration

A lternative Topoi and Avant-Garde Strate gies in

an d i de al part n e r s h ip

Greece from Tra nsition to Crisis

S e ssi on 17

Session 77

Around the time of WWI several progressive social and aesthetic projects appeared. They were the consequence of a reordering of life, emancipation

We comparatively study the use of avantgarde art strategies as methods of social inter vention in Greece, in the contexts of the 1970s Transition

to democracy and the present Crisis. We obser ved that, in both these historical moments of rupture, collectivities and individuals have used art strategies in order to create alternative topoi. We investigate the avant-garde and/or utopian character of these efforts, as well as the similarities and differences between the two periods. Which is the relation between art and social inter vention? Do these efforts refer, explicitly or implicitly, to an ideal, a small or big narrative? In which temporal mode do they conceive themselves? And which generalizing conclusions may be drawn from the Greek example?

chair: Gabriella Elina Imposti Modern Foreign Languages Literatures and Cultures, University of Bologna, ITALY The “Superstate of the Star”: from the First World War to a world of Peace, Khlebnikov’s visions of Utopia Elena Petrushanskaya-Averbakh Moscow State Institute for Arts Studies, russia A la rechérche d’une sonnerie utopique: sound representations of Utopia in the works of Russian musicians in the first three decades of the nineteenth century Irina Marchesini University of Bologna, italy A retreat from everyday Soviet life. Petrograd/Leningrad between the First World War and the Russian Civil War, through the eyes of Konstantin Vaginov

chair: Elena Hamalidi Audio-Visual Arts Department, Ionian University, greece

Lise Ja illa nt:

‘Under Construction’ – Greek art groups and collectivities

Wyndha m Lewis , Wa r a nd Utopia

reclaiming democracy from the 1970s to today.

Session 88

Rea Walldén Department of Theoretical Art Studies, Athens School of Fine Arts, greece The politics of alternative spatio-temporalities from New Greek Cinema to the Greek ‘Weird Wave’. Antoinetta Angelidi Film School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, greece Heterogeneity – Experimentation as a Teaching Technique.

Ga br ie lla Elina Im po s t i: E n v i sioning the Future, P reserving an Idealized Pa st: t h e Rus s ian -Sovie t Cas e S e ssi on 78



The proposed panel

This panel on Wyndham Lewis, War and Utopia will promote cutting-edge scholarly research, in the context of the centenar y of the First World War. The three papers will examine the impact of the war on Lewis, through various aspects. Einhaus looks at the effect of Lewis’s war experience on his political writings rather than his fiction. Stock questions Lewis’s vision of the modern city through a comparison with Rex Warner. Jaillant examines the publishing histor y of Tarr, a novel that Lewis rewrote ten years after the Armistice. To

Envisioning the Future,

focuses on Russian and Soviet modernist literature and music. The panel’s members from Bologna University team up with a well-known Russian scholar of the Moscow State Institute for Arts Studies in exploring how Utopia was constructed in Russian avantgarde and Soviet art. More specifically, we will look at how Utopia is depicted in various discursive contexts, focusing in particular on the relationship between the creation of a Utopian language and the theme of war. Preserving an Idealized Past: the Russian-Soviet Case

the

metropolis…

and

beyond!

Ambivalent

Topographies in Wyndham Lewis.

The metropolitan city has long been a focus of research for modernists but if, as Raymond Williams (1985) argues, immigration to the metropolitan city is “the key social basis of modernism”, then we should pay attention not only to the new experience of that metropolitan destination, but also to the regional and international migrator y origins of such migration in modernist texts. In this paper, I explore Wyndham Lewis’s ambivalent attitude towards the modernist metropolis. While in BLAST 1 metropolitan centres are by turns ‘blasted’ and ‘blessed’, in his novel Tarr (1918/1928)

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the Parisian setting is curiously lacking in detail. Yet the abstract and imaginative city at the heart of the narrative of The Childermass (1928) remains an important physical focal point – albeit one only ever seen from the outside. I situate Lewis’s work as contrasting with that of other modernist texts, including Rex Warner’s largely neglected novel The Wild Goose Chase (written 1928-1932, but only published in 1937), in which, as N.H. Reeve (1990) notes, one can see the inspiration of Lewis at work. In comparing the landscapes and topographies of Lewis and Warner I re-assess how the imagined physical worlds of modernism gesture towards utopian spaces of the not-yet. Adam Stock Newcastle University, uk



Rewriting “Tarr” Ten Years Later: Wyndham Lewis

and the Domestication of Modernism.

In 1928, the publisher Charles Prentice asked Wyndham Lewis for the right to include Tarr in Chatto & Windus’s cheap series of reprints, the Phoenix Librar y. Lewis was reluctant at first, complaining about the low royalty rate he would receive. But he then threw himself into the project and decided to re-write the entire novel. Although the 1928 edition of Tarr is generally considered the standard text, its context of production and reception has remained under-studied. My paper will examine the revised version of Tarr as a material artefact as well as a stylistic testimony on the “taming” of modernism. Writing for the large audience that would read his novel in a cheap format, Lewis made his style much more accessible and less confusing for the common reader. Tarr is therefore a prime example of the late 1920s domestication of an earlier, utopian modernist form. Drawing on extensive research in the Chatto & Windus archive at the University of Reading, this paper is part of a larger project on European publisher’s series that widened the market for modernism in the 1920s and 1930s.



Journey

to

Anglosaxony:

Wyndham

Lewis’s

Democratic Utopia(s).

Wyndham Lewis was profoundly affected by his experience of the First World War as a gunner and war artist, a war trauma that was intensified by the ensuing inter-war economic depression and by what Lewis saw as a disillusioning decline in European artistic expression. This paper will scrutinise the effect of Lewis’s war experience on his political writing rather than his fiction, scrutinising his critical (and often controversial) engagement with different forms of government, the concept of the sovereign state and the League of Nations. Beginning with the controversial Hitler (1931) and culminating with Anglosaxony, Or, A League That Works (1941), I will trace Lewis’s attempts to salvage from the waste of war some hope for a society still capable of sustaining artistic development from early proto-fascist ideas to an embracing of democracy as a workable concept, albeit a limited one.



Lise Jaillant, chair Newcastle University, uk

Ann-Marie Einhaus Northumbria University, uk

Scott Klein Wake Forest University, usa respondent

Petra Ja mes: « The Day After The Ha ppy F uture » : Centra l European Avant- garde 1900-1968 and its Ideolo gical a nd Aesthetic strugg les with Utopia Sessions 56, 67

The panel proposes to focus on the development of Central European avant-garde movements and their representatives in their relation to utopian thought. We suggest covering the long period spanning from the eve of the avant-garde aesthetics in the beginning of the 20th centur y to the aftermath and critical re-evaluation of its utopian aspects after World War II. Indeed, in the period before World War II, the artists and architects of the avant-garde were engaged not only in heated

debates concerning new techniques and forms in art and in architecture but also in various political left-wing movements. Their artistic and architectural projects were often conceived as a utopian vision of a “New Man” in the new order of the world to come. Nevertheless, the end of World War II and the forceful introduction of popular democracies in Central and Eastern Europe brought a direct confrontation of utopian ideals with reality. We will focus especially on this evolution of the relation to utopian ideals (be they applied to politics, social life or art). The specificity of this panel is to offer a close study of the development of specific artistic trajectories on the background of architectural utopian projects and histor y of several Central European countries. The panel will offer presentations on avant-garde artists coming from Czechoslovakia, Poland (with special attention to the topic of Jewish artists of Galicia) and Eastern Germany. In all presentations we will tr y to show the artistic struggle with utopia.

Writing for a better World: Utopian Ideas and

Political Aims – The Example of Rosa Pomeranz

Rosa Pomeranz (1872-1934) was a writer and a politician in the Zionist movement of Galicia. She addressed herself to women and the female place in the Zionist movement and at the same time she wrote a lot of short stories and some novels about Jewish life in Galicia. After World War I, she was a member of the new Polish Parliament and dedicated herself to feminist topics and wrote about birth control, marital partnership, the future of love, but also eugenic politics. The new Polish state was connected with deep hope for a better future and for new possibilities in the new state. But the more the nationalist parts of Poland gained influence, the more the hope failed for the Jewish part (as well as for other minorities). In Pomeranz’s writings between the wars one can find this hope for a better future. What I want to discuss are the aesthetics, which is connected with this hope of a better world and the tension between the utopian

aspects of a better society and the imagination or the expectation of feasibility after World War I. Dietlind Hüchtker GWZO - Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas, [Leipzig Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe] [email protected] www.uni-leipzig.de/gwzo



New Homes for New Men. Collective housing

projects around 1930 and their post-1945 afterlife

Modernist architecture and urban planning were closely linked with utopian avant-garde ideas of a new society. Numerous building projects not only reflected the current political models – they were also seen as a key means of introducing a new way of life, and thereby of realising the vision of a “New Man”. This applied particularly to revolutionar y housing concepts such as communal houses, which aimed at a collectivisation of living space and at the same time attempted to gain almost complete social control. Around 1930, projects for communal houses were a topical issue in the Soviet Union. From there, the concept spread to the neighbouring countries in East Central Europe such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungar y, where the idea of collective living was promoted by left-wing avant-garde architects. Shortly afterwards, all upcoming projects were stopped for several reasons. They were not resumed even after 1945, when East Central Europe became part of the Communist Bloc, as the Soviet Union had abandoned the concept of collective housing. However, there is no doubt that the idea of collectivisation did have an impact on the major housing developments under the auspices of the new communist power. This paper traces the emergence of the communal house projects around 1930, the reasons for their failure and their post-1945 afterlife in socialist countries.

Arnold Bartetzky GWZO - Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas, [Leipzig Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe] [email protected] www.uni-leipzig.de/gwzo

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Comings

and

goings

to

«

HAPPY

ISLES

»

of

Adam Ważyk (1905 – 1982) et Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński (1905 – 1953)

These two Polish writers seem to incarnate perfectly the specific and complex struggle of Central European artists with Utopia in the 20th centur y. Both artists, born in 1905 in Warsaw, started their artistic career in the interwar period as representatives of the first Polish avant-garde. After World War II they will both work for the Communist Party. Gałczyński will write a pamphlet against Miłosz, the traitor, before being himself accused (by Ważyk) as the « enemy of the people » and exiled to an isle in Mazuria, Pranie. In 1956, Ważyk will be on of the artists who will denounce the Stalinism and its bad influence in Poland. How come these artists were so attracted to the communist utopian thought? What are the mechanisms of their ideological and aesthetic struggles? How does utopia change into dystopia in their works?

demonstrated on artistic trajectories of these major figures of Czech avant-garde art.



Dorota Walczak Chair of Polish Language and Literature, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

The Aftermath of Utopia and The Czech Art

he paper proposes to have a close look on the development of major Czech avant-garde artists in terms of ideology and aesthetics. Indeed, before the Second World War, these artists were openly supporting left-wing revolutionar y movements as well as being connected to the artistic avant-garde. Nevertheless, the end of the war and the communist coming to power in Czechoslovakia in 1948 brought a lot of disillusion and sobering up (the Czech poet and artist Jirí Kolár (1914-2002), even the passage to a clandestine existence and the complete falling out with the communist regime in place (the Czech avant-garde art critic Karel Teige, 1900-1951 and his surrealist circle) or an embracement of the new politics and of the position of an official artist of the state (the Czech avant-garde poet Vítezslav Nezval 1900-1958). The complex relation to utopia will be

Petra James, Chair Chair of Czech Language and Literature Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

Martin Kolár š Department of History and Theory of Art, Faculty of

š Art and Design, University of Jan Evangelista Purkyne, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic The Utopian Space in the Works of Carlfriedrich Claus abstract in appendix

Cathy j ra de: European utopianis m and contem porary Latin Am erica n literature Session 11b

I am proposing a closed panel on late twentieth- and early twenty-first-centur y Spanish American literature and the various ways it responds to the political and cultural realities of the corresponding periods. The poets and novelists to be discussed confront different utopian promises (tied to resources, ideologies, and political regimes) and offer different responses to the failures of those utopian dreams. The panelists will present on a diversity of genres, regions, and decades, thereby highlighting the degree to which European utopianism marks contemporar y Latin American texts and societies. The three speakers are distinguished scholars, who have garnered considerable recognition in their fields of endeavor. Charlotte Rogers is a professor at George Mason University in Virginia. She is currently working on a book, tentatively called Mourning El Dorado, which examines novels about Amazonia as dystopia. She will present a paper comparing Alvaro Mutis’s La nieve del almirante (1986) to Conrad’s Hear t of Darkness (1899), which would demonstrate the echoes of the European avant-garde in contemporar y Amazonia.

Leila Lehnen is a professor at the University of New Mexico and she will discuss how contemporar y Argentine and Chilean literature represents the fallout of the leftist utopian projects (especially those of the 1960s-1970s) and the parallel legacy of authoritarianism in present day Latin American society. She will focus on Patricio Pron’s El espiritu de mis padres sigue subiendo en la lluvia (2011) and Alejandro Zambra’s Formas de volver a casa (2011), examining how the two novels relay the bankruptcy of utopian political projects through the perspective of the generation that grew up during the militar y dictatorship. She will show how the novels propose an implicit link between authoritarianism and the demise of utopian ideals in the aftermath of Argentina’s and Chile’s democratic transitions. I would be the third speaker. I am Chancellor’s Professor of Spanish at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. I will speak on the Argentinean poet Juan Gelman (1930- ), who, early in his life, embraced the hopes for a better world provided by Marxism. He became a Communist but, following a disagreement over strategies, he left the party in 1964. Yet Gelman never lost sight of his utopian goals. By 1975 violence in Argentina was on the rise and Gelman, under the threat of death, was forced into exile. In 1976 the militar y dictatorship came to power and, from a distance, Gelman witnessed the death of fellow activitists and writers as well as the execution of his son and daughter-in-law. In my paper, I will discuss the way Gelman, through his poetr y, seeks to recover from his disappointments with Marxist strategies and Marxism’s failure in Argentina, the loss of his homeland to brutally repressive forces, and the death of his son and daughter-in-law. I will show that the poetr y written in exile is grounded, in part, in the utopian perspective that informed his earliest work. Yet Gelman’s later perspective is more personal and mystical; its efforts are more inwardly directed. I will therefore show that Gelman’s later poetr y offers an alternative post-utopian vision to the dystopias

that have come to dominate the landscape of later twentieth-centur y and early twenty-first centur y Spanish American prose. Cathy jrade Chancellor’s Professor of Spanish at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, usa charlotte rogers professor, George Mason University, Virginia, usa leila lehnen professor, university of new mexico, usa

ga briele j utz: The Utopia n Potentia l of the Obsolete Session 89

Today, obsolescence is a relevant topic not only in artistic practices, but also in popular culture. This panel addresses the question why there is this interest today and how the obsolete can ser ve critical, even utopian purposes. Nina Jukic analyzes how the current resurrection of analogue photography in popular culture reflects utopian desires to resist the digital abundance of the modern world, yet relies on capitalism itself. Kristina Pia Hofer will focus on the example of Herschel Gordon Lewis’ exploitationfeminist utopia She-Devils on Wheels (1968), whose appeal to later queer/feminist engagement has roots in the insistent presence of obsolete technology. Gabriele Jutz will deal with the historical avant-gardes, showing that their attitude to the new technologies of (audio)visual reproduction was retrograde, but necessarily so, given their radical utopian aspirations. gabriele jutz Media theory, University of applied arts Vienna, AUSTRIA

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scott kle in : M o d ernist Defor mations and Dystopian Politics S e ssi on 100



Modernist

Deformations

and

understand as attempts to represent and react to the revolutionar y and oppressive features of the modern administrative state. Michael Valdez Moses

Dystopian

puts into juxtaposition ideas of utopian social formation, the move towards Modernist and avant-garde formal experimentation, and how ideas of aesthetic form can be work to mediate – and undermine – ideas of political cohesion. The three panelists examine dystopian fiction, treatments of musical form, and the political implication of voice in both fiction and avant-garde sound poetr y to question how form, in its joint potential guises as “formation” and “deformation,” can illuminate the vexed relation between social and aesthetic idealism in a variety of artistic modes.

Duke University, usa

Politics



Dissonant Utopian Impulses in Thelonious Monk

and Ernst Bloch

In opposition to the kinds of utopian thought that project a harmonious future free from the dissonant antagonisms of the present, Ernst Bloch argues that it is precisely these antagonisms that most forcefully open up utopian possibilities. For Bloch, utopia is only realizable by way of the dissonant trajectories and opaque blindspots of the present. My paper uses Bloch’s ideas about dissonance and utopia as a way of thinking the role of dissonance in the music of Thelonious Monk.

Forms of Discontent: Literary Innovation and

the Modernist Dystopias of Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell

Huxley and Orwell and Zamyatin have not been generally recognized for their formal literar y innovations. In this paper, I will revisit the most famous fiction of Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell in an attempt to highlight how their radical experiments in form and technique embody a vision of modern political life that is at once modernist and dystopian. Zamyatin’s elimination of personal names for his characters in favor of “mere” letters and number (D-503, O-90) participate in general flattening of character typical of much modernist fiction; Huxley’s use of cinematic cross-cutting/montage in Brave New World partakes in a more general modernist concern with and reaction against the modern mensuration and regulation of clock-time. Finally, Orwell’s experiments with “Newspeak” provocatively link the propagandistic manipulation of ordinar y language with a modernist play with linguistic conventions. This paper will demonstrate that the “popular” (“middle-brow”) novels of these authors not only should rightfully take their place alongside the high-modernist fictions of Joyce, Woolf, Proust, and Kafka, but also that their specifically modernist formal innovations must be



Monk’s music is renowned for its creative use of clangorous and dissonant sonorities; when seen through the lens of Bloch’s thought, these sonorities can be heard as attempts to utilize the contradictions of the present as pathways to a fortuitous future. My analysis will focus on the ways in which Bloch’s thought and Monk’s music can contribute to a theorization of the hinge between a contradictor y present and a utopian future. Bruce Barnhart University of Oslo, norway

in

From Kurtz to Merz: Voice and Utopian Politics Conrad’s

“Heart

of

Darkness”

and

Kurt

Schwitters’

“Ursonate”

This paper puts into unlikely juxtaposition two aesthetic manifestations of solo voice, social formation, and linguistic fragmentation in works of English Modernist and of the European Avant-Garde: the character of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Hear t of Darkness (1899) and the Sonata in Urlauten (Sonata in Primal Language) or Ursonate (1922-32) by German artists Kurt Schwitters, creator of the post-Dada art movement Merz. Conrad repeatedly presents Kurtz,

the sociopathic focus of attention in his novella, as “a voice”: yet his moral and political failures are reflected as a breakdown of language and aesthetic form, where the proto-fascist power of the influential voice gives way to moral aphasia. In Kurt Schwitters, conversely, the solo voice comes to celebrate linguistic nonsense as a counter-dystopian attempt to reclaim aesthetic form as a new kind of individual politics. His Ursonate acts in many ways as a reformulation and inversion of Conrad’s key concerns, reformulates for the politics and technologies of the period after World War 1: one that reformulates the collapse of language not as the necessar y disappearance of voice or as ethical deterioration, but as the reclaiming of individual political identity through art and performative vocalization. Scott W. Klein

as a whole. Our aim will be to illuminate what these these microcosms tell us about the social aspirations of modernist and avant-garde writing. joshua kotin Department of English, Princeton University, USA J.H. Prynne’s Utopia Julia Jarcho new york university, usa “That’s the idea, let’s contradict each other”: the labor of negation in Waiting for Godot Douglas Mao Johns Hopkins university, usa Workplaces of Tomorrow: Administration as Hope in Bogdanov, Wells , and Le Guin

giulia la moni: Utopia as Dislocation Session 111

Wake Forest University, usa

j o sh ua kot in : Cot e ries , Committees , Co mpanies: S ynecdoches of U to pia S e ssi on 23

Labor is the subject of much utopian literature. This literature depicts social structures that eradicate unemployment, that create fulfilling jobs. Labor is also the object of much utopian literature. This literature attempts to motivate audiences to work for a better world, to overcome the divisions that define modern life. This proposed panel examines the relationship between labor and utopia in a series of modernist texts--the fiction of Bogdanov, Le Guin, and Wells; the early drama of Beckett; and the poems of J.H. Pr ynne. Our focus will be how these texts represent groups of workers as privileged synecdoches of social order. Specifically, we will examine how these texts use the labor of literar y coteries, administrative committees, and performers and their audiences to imply and support utopian arrangements in the world

The notion of utopia is based on the conception of an alternative to reality, produced through forms of deviation, or dislocation. This panel proposes to envision utopia as the result of – or inter vening term in – processes of dislocation enacted by contemporar y artworks and critical texts produced since the late 1960s. In particular, while discussing the relation between utopia and Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, the participants will explore spatial and discursive articulations strategically performing dislocation in order to construct multiple, heterogeneous and even contradictor y material configurations. How is utopia produced or transformed by such strategies? The papers will explore utopia as dislocation from different perspectives. M. Brito Alves will focus on the role of dislocation in the context of the relations between space and utopia. She will explore installation works by contemporar y artists such as Ilya Kabakov, Miroslaw Balka and Gregor Schneider. G. Lamoni will analyze art criticism by Italian writer Carla Lonzi as a discursive space where the words of the artists are dislocated in radical ways, thus unveiling a utopian perspective on art writing. B.

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90

Marques, finally, will examine the work of Portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis, and more particularly its contradictor y relations with the triangulation art/ construction/utopia.

Dr Rebecca Ferreboeuf Teaching Fellow in French, Durham University, uk Rewriting the Horror of the War: Terror in Blaise Cendrars’ “Moravagine” Dr Claire Lozier, chair Lecturer in French, University of Leeds, uk

Margarida Brito Alves Assistant Professor in Contemporary Art History, IHA UNL-FCSH, Lisbon, Portugal Strategies of dislocation. Space and utopia in

From Terror to Horror: the Antelogos of Dystopia in Georges Bataille’s “Histoire de l’œil” Dr Anne-Sophie Bories

contemporary art

Visiting Fellow in French, University of Leeds, uk

Bruno Marques

conformism against Horror

Smothering Mothering Metre: Raymond Queneau’s Non-

PhD, Associate researcher, IHA UNL-FCSH, Lisbon, Portugal Utopian dimensions in the work of Pedro Cabrita Reis tyrus miller: Giulia Lamoni, chair

György Luk á cs , Utopia , a nd M odernist Aesthetics

FCT Post-doctoral Fellow, IHA UNL-FCSH, Lisbon,

Session 44

Portugal “I would give you a kiss”: Notes on utopia and conviviality in Autoritratto by Carla Lonzi

clai r e lo z ie r: T h e Powers o f Literature: Utopian T error and Dystopic Ho r ro r in Fr e n ch Mo de r n is ms S e ssi on 36

This panel focuses on the ways in which a selection of French and Spanish avant-garde authors (namely Blaise Cendrars, Georges Bataille, Agustín Espinosa and Raymond Queneau) use terror and radicalism to renew the nature and function of art at the time of inter-war modernism. Crossing geographic and generic borders, Cendrars in his novel Moravagine (1926), Bataille in his erotic novella Histoire de l’œil (1928), Espinosa in his mock travel guide Lancelot 28°–7° (1929) and Queneau in his collection of poems Chêne et chien (1937) weave radical politics and surrealist aesthetics. They also reassess the role of the body in such a context as well as its ability to inhabit a dystopic world ravaged by the horror of the Great War and nascent colonial conflicts. Literature appears in each case as a utopian space of personal and collective (re)construction where terror can acquire a positive and creative value.

This panel considers the relation of utopia and modernist aesthetics in three phases of the work of the Hungarian Marxist literar y critic and philosopher György Lukács: his early, pre-Marxist work (Tyrus Miller); his early Marxist period, from Histor y and Class Consciousness to his anti-modernist aesthetics of realism in his middle period (Johan Hartle); and in his late Aesthetics, written in the 1960s (Erik Bachman). In each of these periods, Lukács took up and differently framed the question of utopia, which in turn inflects his views, mostly critical, of aesthetic modernism and avant-garde. Tyrus Miller, chair Professor of Literature and Vice Provost & Dean, Graduate Studies, University of California at Santa Cruz, usa Early Lukács and the Utopia of Art Johan Fredrik Hartle Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, the netherlands Utopian Anti-Avant-Gardism. Lukács’s Middle Period Erik Bachman Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California at Santa Cruz, usa Art, Utopia, and Habit in Late Lukács

Pa jari Räs än e n : Art and the Politics o f Otherness: Avant- garde as a C h a lle n ge to Mo de r n is t Mo de s o f Ex pe r ie nce S e ssi on 87

Pajari Räsänen, chair PhD, Comparative Literature, University of Helsinki, finland [email protected] Avant-garde avant la lettre: The Absolutely Modern as a 19th Century Imperative

The session addresses the interconnectedness of the political and the aesthetic in the concept and practice of avant-garde art. Individual presentations explore various perspectives on how avant-garde art seeks to relocate or even break the boundaries between established positions in the relations between artist, artwork and its audience, also in the historical perspective. An important focus of this interdisciplinar y session are the political implications of these artistic practices. Pajari Räsänen’s Avant-garde avant la lettre: The Absolutely Modern as a 19th Century Imperative links Olinde Rodrigues’ call-out for the artists’ avant-garde as a progressive force with the process of Romanticism becoming conscious of itself, ahead of itself, an art that must become modern (from the Absolute of German Romanticism to Rimbaud’s “Il faut être absolument moderne”). Janne Vanhanen’s Avant-garde Aggression? The Futurist Legacy of Violence in Contemporary Noise Music

questions whether the influence of Luigi Russolo’s manifesto The Art of Noises in contemporar y noise music constitutes an aesthetics of violence and what would be its repercussion vis-à-vis the modernist “aesthetics of silence”. Martta Heikkilä’s When Art Hurts: Art and the Avant-garde Politics of the Sense s deals with encountering visual artworks which overpower and disrupt our conventions of reception by presenting a threat to our sensor y abilities. Saara Hacklin’s Politics of participatory art: A reading of Pilvi Takala’s intervention at the Frieze art

discusses the tradition of participator y in visual arts: from an avant garde convention participation has become increasingly popular strategy within the contemporar y art scene. How Takala’s work challenges number of modernistic assumptions is my question. fair

Janne Vanhanen PhD, Aesthetics, University of Helsinki, finland Avant-garde Aggression? The Futurist Legacy of Violence in Contemporary Noise Music Martta Heikkilä PhD, docent, Aesthetics, University of Helsinki, finland; senior lecturer, The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, finland When Art Hurts: Art and the Avant-garde Politics of the Sense s

Saara Hacklin PhD, Aesthetics, University of Helsinki, finland Politics of participatory art: A reading of Pilvi Takala’s intervention at the Frieze art

Irene Suchy: Schmä h. Hu mour as a constitutive element o f Viennese post-wa r ava nt-ga rde Session 37

The fact that Viennese post-war avant-garde movements led the way in exploring socio-political and contemporar y events in historical terms can be seen in various studies and in the work of ViennAvant, an independent network devoted to research on the avant-garde. Humour in its various aspects is identified as an aesthetic strategy in the arts and as a means of breaking with the National-Socialist past and of creating an anti-Fascist, pacifistic and humanistic outlook on life. This panel analyzes humour as a central means for fictionalizing reality. Thus humour is also the component of utopian concepts, of new forms of living and politics. In addition, the ambiguous nature of humour helps to explain many people’s hostile reactions to avant-garde art in post-war Vienna.

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Rudolf Kohoutek independent researcher and author in urban studies and architecture, Austria [email protected] “Houses without any roof. You must be joking!” Harald Krejci curator at research institution museum Belvedere, Austria [email protected] Friedensreich Hundertwasser and the ironical turn in Austrian Arts after WWII Irene Suchy, chair university senior lecturer, musicologist, radio editor,

Hundred) and strong media presence. Yet they were also seeking to subvert the strict moral codes of the time through sex, alcohol, drugs and deviant behavior. This libertarian and utopian agenda prefigured some of the political issues that were to gain in importance later, but it was also highly individual and conflicted with the collective efforts. I am interested in looking in detail at authors, texts and events that exemplify this conflict, using the cases also to examine general historical and theoretical issues.

Austria

Harri Veivo

[email protected]

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, france

Deconstructing Twelve-Tone Utopia. Viennese composing as an interface between performance, dadaism and historical reflection.



Helmut Neundlinger



author and philologist of German Literature, Austria [email protected] “wo bleibb da hummooa?” Ernst Jandl, Gerhard Rühm and the tremendous relief of laughter

tan i a Ø rum: A rt i n to Po lit ics - Po lit ics in to Art A rt i s t ic an d Po lit ical Uto pias in t h e 1960s and 1970 s S e ssi on 25



Conflicts between Subversive Action and Politics

The 1960s have attracted wide attention, but it is still not clear how we should understand the decade. Were the 1960s the cradle of civil rights movements, European terrorism or the new conser vative politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher? Should we tell a stor y of utopia, dystopia or return to order? I propose to look at these issues through the particular prism of Finnish neo-avant-garde poetr y and its relations to politics and media. In the 1960s, Finnish poets of the young generation sought to reconnect their work in a critical way with the social and political questions of the time, introducing into their texts foreign voices that would represent the multiple tensions of the rapidly changing society. This eventually gave them political importance (exemplified for instance by candidatures at parliamentar y elections and active participation in the Committee of One

Prefigurative Politics

The American student movement of the 1960s was characterised by its prefigurative politics (Winni Breines 1989). This was true of the European student and youth movements as well. Much of the collective ethos, the experimental process and theor y, the “sociopoetics” (Craig J. Saper) of the 1960s avantgarde groups can be seen to prefigure the prefigurative politics of the youth and student rebellion of the later 60s. And for a moment around 1968-1969 it looked as if the artists and the youth movements might join forces, overturn social order and effect the “radical and plural democracy” envisioned by for instance Laclau and Mouffe. Many factors contributed to the failure of these hopes of a democratic revolution, among them the increasing dogmatism af the new Left groups, the competitive notion of being “ahead of the game” among avant-garde artists, and the global recession. I will look at some examples of avant-garde art in the context of the youth and student revolt in the 1960s in Denmark in order to explore the tension between art, politics, theor y and practice. Tania Ørum, chair Dept of Cultural Studies and the Arts, University of Copenhagen, DENMARK



Language

Writing’s

Critical

Utopia:

From

Leningrad to Occupy

Language writing (an American avant-garde poetic movement originating in the 70s, with cultural and political origins in the 60s) has a differential, both affirmative and critical, relationship to utopia. The frame of “language” itself offers an expansive and holistic medium for poetr y as a ground for potential action and combinatorial fantasy, while the properties of “language” as a medium invoke radical particularity and material opacity. In this paper, I will chart the relationship of Language writing to the horizon of utopia at four specific historical moments: in its development of poetic practice both in radical formal terms and as a social formation at its origins; on the occasion of four Language writers’ participation in a conference on avant-garde poetics in the former Leningrad (1989) and the subsequent multiauthored account (Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union; 1991); with the writing of the multiauthored Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography by ten Language writers who met in San Francisco in the 70s; and the performance and reception of The Grand Piano in a series of readings in San Francisco during the Occupy movement of 2011. The paper will be theoretically guided by critiques of utopia in the Frankfurt school,by discussions of the “collectivism” of Language writing; and by writings by Occupy poets.

Barrett Watten Wayne State University, usa

were both domesticated, as seen at the Stockholm Exhibition 1930, and radicalized as seen in the erotic utopias of some of the Danish surrealists. Focusing on four different cases the panel will investigate these positions, their responses, and the connections between national, Nordic and international avantgarde utopias. The speakers are all contributors to Cultural Histor y of the Avant-Gardes in the Nordic Countries, volume 2 (1925-50). First of four volumes was published 2013. Camilla Skovbjerg Paldam, chair associate professor, PhD, Aarhus University, Denmark Danish surrealism between abstraction and erotic utopia. Danish surrealist Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen as catalyst and outcast Per Stounbjerg associate professor, dr.phil, Aarhus University, Denmark From collective love to nudism. Erotic utopias in the Danish surrealist author Jens-August Schade and the short-lived French Schadisme movement Karen Westphal Eriksen PhD student, MA, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Testing utopia: Henry Heerup’s dark sculptures Andrea Kollnitz associate professor, PhD, Stockholm University, Sweden Trying to Change the (Art) World. Otto G. Carlsund and the Stockholm Exhibition 1930

laura sa lisbury: Utopia n Times Session 2

C am i lla Skovb je rg Paldam: E r ot ic utopias and puris m in N ordic Avant-garde o f t h e 1930 s S e ssi on 86

New avant-garde movements such as surrealism and purism were introduced in the Nordic countries in the 1930s. The polarized political culture of the time generated different responses to avantgarde aesthetics, and the new ideas and art forms

Modernist and avant-garde figurations of utopia frequently appeal to a time that is yet to come, or a nostalgia for a lost past. In this other ‘non-place’, time seems to veer oddly away from the temporality we commonly associate with modernism and the avant garde – the ticking tempo of distraction, speed, suddenness, rupture – towards a post-crisis mode of experience that is sometimes figured as a non-time. This panel explores the ways in which

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specific avant-garde and modernist discourses seem able to take account of this time that modernity has difficulty in registering, using Beckett and Benjamin, psychoanalysis, and Soviet revolutionar y literature and models of the child, to analyse the persistence, duration, endurance, fortitude, delay, staying, waiting, nurturing, and slow progression that are folded into utopian time. Laura Salisbur y (Exeter ; Chair) will speak about Slow Modernism/Slow Modernity: Utopianism and the Weight of Matter ; Hannah Proctor’s (Birkbeck) paper is entitled Non-Reproductive Futurism: Communist Babies, Soviet Mothers and Futurity in the NEP-era Soviet Union ; and Lisa Baraitser (Birkbeck) will present Waiting Time and Slow Endurance: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Utopianism .

land whose fertile farmland remained unexploited. Artists and designers responded enthusiastically to the opportunity to use East Africa as a place to test avant-garde ideas, techniques and principles. This closed session presents three papers that explore different aspects of modernism’s engagement with Italian-occupied Ethiopia; Przemyslaw Strozek discusses Futurist art and F.T. Marinetti’s involvement in the invasion of Ethiopia, David Rifkind examines the convergence of modernist urban planning and fascist political policy in the construction of Ethiopian cities by the Italian authorities, and Rixt Woudstra studies Le Corbusier’s influential masterplan of Addis Ababa as a model of avant-garde planning sensibilities, set in the ser vice of the fascist regime.

laura salisbury, chair English and Film, University of Exeter, Uk slow Modernism/Slow Modernity: Utopianism and the Weight of Matter hannah proctor birkbeck, university of london, uk Non-Reproductive Futurism: Communist Babies, Soviet Mothers and Futurity in the NEP-era Soviet Union

przemyslaw strozek, chair Special Collections, Instytut Sztuki PAN / Institute of Art Polish Acad, POLAND David Rifkind Rixt Woudstra

lisa baraitser birkbeck, university of london, uk Waiting Time and Slow Endurance: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Utopianism

Dav id Watson: In and out of time: extended temporalities and literature Session 12

P r z e mys law St ro z e k: Imag in in g an Avan t-Garde Uto pia in Italiano ccupie d Et h io pia S e ssi on 91

Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia was greeted by artists, architects and urban planners as a chance to realize the modernist dream of building a utopian state on the virgin soil of East Africa. It did not matter that the established cities of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia and the trade routes that connected them were the result of several thousand years of cultural development, nor that the modern Abyssinian nation had built its own railway, telegraph, telephone, road and postal networks. The Italian press depicted Ethiopia and its neighbors as a primitive and undeveloped

Dramatically expanded time scales have become a regular feature of critical discourse. Timescapes such as the anthropocene, deep time, the longue durée, long modernity, geological time, or those associated with object-oriented ontology and Timothy Morton’s hyperobjects have repositioned the subject within a vast temporality. These timescapes disrupt the subject’s relation to the world and time, and are loaded with apocalyptic and utopian potential, particularly within ecological thinking. This panel investigates manifestations of deep time thinking in different literatures and periods. It tracks the appearance of these timescapes in literar y modernism and the contemporar y texts of the neo-avant-garde, and interrogates their explanator y value from a

postcolonial perspective. Throughout experiments with time scales that subject’s relation to the time of the temporalities that reframe historical discourses.

it attends to disorient the ever yday, and and political

David Watson, chair English, Uppsala University, sweden

période fait l’objet de notre session, à travers laquelle nous visons aussi à attirer l’attention sur la spécificité des avant-gardes « de l’Est ». Monique Yaari, chair French and Francophone Studies, Penn State University, USA Introduction : un groupe surréaliste tardif entre Bucarest et Paris

Narratives of Pre-Emption, Speculation, and the Anthropocene Elsa Högberg University of Glasgow, uk Imagining the End of Civilisation: Deep Time as Political Critique in Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot Ashleigh Harris Uppsala University, sweden

Jonathan Eburne Penn State University, USA ‘Infra-noir’ : le mot et la chose Françoise Nicol Université de Nantes, France & Monique Yaari Art, non-art, anti-art : penser la dimension plastique selon

The African Avant-garde and the Aesthetics of the

Gherasim Luca, Trost et Paul Paun

Temporary

(focalisation sur les deux derniers) Régine-Mihal Friedman Université de Tel-Aviv, Israël

Mon ique Yaar i: “ i nf ra-n o ir ” un e t mult iple : uto pie o u ch imère? S e ssi on 98

Dans les années 40 à Bucarest, un groupe surréaliste tardif, majoritairement francophone, tente une expérience inédite: ouvrages collectifs signés à cinq mains, nouveaux rapports entre les arts, dépassement du surréalisme existant, en dialogue avec Breton. Une utopie? Plutôt une réponse de résistance, une « Chimère » composite et ineffable opposée à la « pestilence », à la dystopie environnante : la réinvention perpétuelle du désir ; l’efficacité de l’action automatique ; le déni de l’« Art » ; le défi du langage. La dénomination d’une série de publications collectives leur a valu parfois le nom de ‘groupe Infra-noir’. Car ils créent, dans un isolement extrême, textes, dessins, objets, jeux, théories—sombres, mais nimbés d’humour et d’exigences radicales, tantôt d’un avant-gardisme militant, tantôt insaisissables. Clandestin pendant la guerre, le groupe n’aura que deux années pour se manifester publiquement, de 1945 à 1947, entre deux régimes totalitaires (fasciste et communiste). Cette

Film et ready-made dans “Malombra” de Gherasim Luca, Trost, Paul Paun, Gellu Naum et Virgil Teodorescu

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i n d i v i d ua l pa p e r s a b s t r a c t s o f i n d i v i d ua l pa p e r s

n i e v e s ace do :

nata lie a da mson:

W i l l iam Con g don m onochro m es and m etaphysic

Rhythm , Space and Dynam ics o f the Im agination:

i mme diacy

Pa inting a nd Poiesis in Postwa r Pa ris

S e ssi on 96

Session 38

William Congdon (Providence 1912 – Milan 1998) was a first generation New York school action painter. A revision of his work, and of many others such as his close friend Richard Pousette-Dart, is part of the current rewriting of the histor y of the New York School. Congdon’s approach to abstraction is tortuous. He tried to stay away from it for a long time, afraid of losing his inner balance, already weakened by his war experience. In his late years, however, he developed in Italy what some have called a true alterstil, a lyrical abstraction that culminates in monochrome paintings. Disconnected from what was happening in those years in the art world, his work remains wholly modernist, and it has been considered an epilogue of his own generation (Licht, 1998). This paper will analyse the philosophical underpinnings of this stage of his work. It is not the result of a mere process towards formal “purity”, but rather conveys, according to his letters, a late approach to Zen and a metaphysical view of the world in which painting is a manifestation of immediacy, which Congdon learned, among others, from his compatriot Thomas Merton.

In an inter view of 1951, the French abstract painter Pierre Soulages insisted on the exegetic potential of poetr y in relation to painting: ‘La peinture est avant tout une expérience poétique. C’est une métaphore; elle ne se laisse pas expliquer, elle ne se laisse même pas entamer par l’explication: sur elle viennent se faire et se défaire les sens qu’on lui prête.’ In calling upon poetr y to frame painting – specifically, the high modernist tradition of French poetr y identified with Stéphane Mallarmé and given its ethical and historical longitude in the work of Henri Meschonnic – Soulages calls upon a discursive theor y of the artwork as a technically specific object (where the material craft is resuscitated as poiesis); whose abstract form is governed by spatial rhythm; producing a contingent and subjective form of experiential knowledge. This paper takes Soulages as the chief case-study in an investigation of how and why a paradigm of poetics infiltrated the culture of lyrical abstract painting in Paris after 1945. It addresses the significance of what Jacques Derrida describes as ‘the grafting of one art onto another, the contamination of codes’ at a moment in the histor y of modernist and avant-garde culture when its social and aesthetic ideals came under acute pressure.

nieves acedo Fine Arts, Nebrija University, SPAIN

natalie adamson School of Art History, University of St Andrews, uk

k at i a alme rin i: W o m en’s Art spaces: T wo Mediterranean Case S t u die s S e ssi on 68

This paper aims at expanding the geography of women’s art spaces in the 1970s, by comparing two case studies from Mediterranean Europe, in Rome and Barcelona. The first is the Beato Angelico Cooperative, founded in 1976 and managed by eleven women, mostly artists, until 1978. The second, is LaSal, Bar-Biblioteca Feminista en Barcelona, founded by five women, one of which an artist, it was active from 1977 to 1979. Both spaces were pivotal in their own contexts to develop a debate around the role of artistic spaces for women’s liberation. Both spaces also fostered a discussion on the development of an art practice which could be independent from the male tradition. These two examples will be discussed against the political and cultural background of Mediterranean regions, particularly in relation to their affinity with the theories of sexual difference. Disconnection from institutions and mostly underground reception informed different levels of radicalism, which allowed Beato Angelico and LaSal groups to explore linguistic subversions, and experiment with artistically different forms and concepts. By analysing their difference, this paper will reflect on the possibility of reading these spaces as heterotopias.

It is explored the idea of flaneur (Baudellaire) as contemplation, addressing access to ‘pleasure’ only by the bourgeoisie. The Modern Movement introduces the dimension of leisure equally, with the plan of cities from scratch. It is here proposed a transition to the idea of ‘architectural promenade’ (Le Corbusier), still ver y attached to the ‘flaneur’ and the contemplation of the architectural object. Then, in a period that is questioning towards life and the world – in a postwar climate - the psychoanalysis theor y arises with the individual defragmentation, coming here the idea of ‘juissance’ (Lacan), taking part of things and ‘the other’ to fill an internal void. In parallel with the market economy implementation, is claimed the importance of the proletariat and necessar y equality between individuals, with the Communist Manifesto (Marx & Engels, 1848). Following the same line of reasoning, Situationism proclaimed anarchism as establish itself and individual condition and situation. In the ‘Entertainment Society’ (Debord) is dictated the death image in favor of ambience. Passing the ‘consumer society’ (Baudrillard) and establish a ‘culture - world’ (Lipovetzky), it is reestablish the initial idea of pleasure with Zizek that turns to fetishistic and metaphysical. inês alves Art Education, Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porti, PORTUGAL

katia almerini Art History and Theory, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Uk

ja n-erik a nderson: The building a s orna ment. Symbol for globa l ca pita lism, or a model for “v ernacula r

I n ê s Alve s : P e r i ph e ral amb ie n t an d cult ural de mo cr atization:

resista nce”? Session 55

cons umpt ion as accult urat ion S e ssi on 101

It is proposed a journey about the implementation of the democratic society, situating the idea of consumption, industrialization and proletarization.

Ever since Vitruvius in De architectura libri decem, stated the three requirements for constructing a good a building; Firmitas (Firmness), Utilitas (Commodity) and Venustas (Delight), the discussion, which always raises controversy, has continually

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concerned the relationship of Venustas – Delight – to the others. Over 100 years of modernist aesthetics has, rather successfully, reduced Venustas to be about abstract masses and abstract space, free from ornamentation. During the last decades, though, we have seen an interesting development: the emergence of ”iconic buildings”, which reference phenomena outside of ”pure” architecture. Furthermore, these buildings tend to become ‘ornaments’ themselves – and their designers referred to as ‘trophy’ architects. Many of these buildings are symbols of global capitalism (even though, ironically, many are built in Communist China or its countries of influence) and they have met severe criticism from architects and pundits who call for a more modest approach based on minimalism. In my contribution to this conference, as in my research, I would like to stress – both theoretically and in my architecture co-design practice – that “iconic buildings”, buildings as ornaments, can also represent an important alternative. They can be created on low budgets and in accordance with sustainable goals. Hatleaf- and flower-shaped buildings, by ornating our world, could help to create a better world, and a more humane and sustainable one, using wit and humour as weapons against rational modernist box-buildings and so-called ‘rational’ thinking. As a mode of making and expression – as an energy – with ancient roots, ornamentation contains deep messages about caring, dreaming, beauty, pausing, reflecting, thinking.

(‘Greekness’) as a procedure towards the formation of a national and international identity. Modern Greek culture – with special reference to sculpture – will be examined under the lens of centre and peripher y – with Greek art seen as peripher y. I will particularly elucidate the specific historical and socio-cultural context in which Modernism not only was developed, but also challenged in Greece. Especially in the years following World War II, this debate on Ellinikotita, was shaped around a polarized response to foreign influences, as a dilemma of choosing between East and the West; the former going hand-in-hand with tradition and the latter choosing to be influenced by contemporar y European movements. I aim to challenge Modernism’s supposed cosmopolitanism and bring to light the different notions it acquired in the peripher y, where local cultural idiosyncrasies gave it a new dynamic. Therefore, the artists’ practices will be examined not only as responses to the central/ European movements, but will also be placed within the context of the peripher y’s own experience of histor y. klairi angelou History of Art, University of Bristol, uk

Klairi Angelou would like to thank the Alumni Foundation of the University of Bristol who has been extremely kind and generous and agreed to award her a Postgraduate Travel Grant towards attending the conference.

jan-erik anderson Amos Anderson Laboratory for Artful making, Åbo Akademi University, FINLAND

ma rtine a ntle: Rêver et toucher le corps? Pour une approche tactile des mythologies surréa listes Session 79

k la i ri an ge lo u: Remapping Modernism: the case of modern Greek sculpture S e ssi on 48

This paper will examine how Modernism was developed in Greece, and more specifically by discussing its connection to the notion of ‘Ellinikotita’

En prenant comme point de départ la notion de tactilité chez Apollinaire et Marinetti, je propose de montrer que si l’érotisme surréaliste traverse l’espace du corps, et « dépayse la sensation » comme au marché aux puces avec Breton, il est

voué au nomadisme, à l’irreprésentable ou encore à l’indicible. Cependant, cet érotisme s’affiche d’une manière inédite et nous interpelle par la sensation tactile comme le confirme le titre l’exposition de 1947 « Prière de Toucher. » Cette pratique de l’érotisme tactile engage de nouvelles perceptions du réel et du sensible. De la « mémoire palpable » chez Cornell, aux illustrations de Justine par Toyen, ou encore aux objets palpables de Meret Oppenheim, l’érotisme tactile traverse le surréalisme. Je mettrai ici en dialogue plusieurs contextes culturels et visuels dans lesquels l’élément tactile transmet et se fait le porte-parole des mythologies surréalistes : la prégnance des mains dans la photographie avec Man Ray et chez Lee Miller (« Revanche contre la culture »). Dans le domaine pictural il s’agira d’analyser les mains qui chez Delvaux deviennent l’instrument même de la peinture (Les Mains) et cachent ou révèlent le sexe (Le Miroir). martine antle romance languages, university of north carolina, USA

ru t h Apt e r-Gab rie l: T h e Rise and Fall of Russian- Jewish Avant-Garde A rt S e ssi on 10

This paper will start with a brief comparison between the prevailing Jewish art in Tsarist Russia in the early 20th centur y and the emerging Jewish modernist art movement. Its major sources will be discussed: Jewish folk art sources, the importance of playwright An-Sky’s ethnographic expedition (191114), Lissitzky’a and Ryback’s visit to the Mohilev Synagogue, and of course, influences from their Russian avant-garde peers. This will be followed by examples of the new Jewish national art. Lissitzky in particular, but also Nathan Altman, Robert Falk, Boris Aronson, Issachar Ber Ryback, Mark Epstein and others will be presented,

as well as book illustrations and theatre designs for the Jewish theatres. The paper will end with the decline of the Jewish modernist art movement, due to the influence of universal artistic ideas expressed by post-revolutionar y Russian artists, Anti-Semitism. and finally, Socialist Realism. A brief discussion of the biblical ban on “graven images” relating to abstract art will conclude the paper. ruth Apter-Ga briel Prints and Drawings, Formerly The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, ISRAEL

sa ra h Archino: Marcel Ducha mp, Man Ray, Tristan Tzara and the j ok e that wa s New York Da da Session 61

The contours of New York Dada are difficult to discern, made more obscure by the lack of a self-identified group of participants, consistent aesthetic or clear manifesto. The evidence most often cited as concrete proof of an American Dadaism is the single issue of New York Dada published by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray in April 1921. Indeed, it marked the first and only time that contemporar y American artists referred to themselves by this label yet, when examined in the context of the relationship between Tristan Tzara and the New York Dada editors, there are reasons to suspect the sincerity of this endeavor. This paper would demonstrate that the publication was not a late and naïve attempt to establish Dada in America, as it has often been characterized. Instead, I propose that Man Ray and Duchamp designed the issue to expose and undermine Tzara’s desire for an international Dada roster, an organizational impulse that ran counter to the alleged non-programmatic stance of the movement. After years of Tzara’s overtures and invitations to artists in New York, the naming of New York Dada was not intended to

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signal an alliance with the European Dadaists: it was a satirical, overly emphatic, adoption of the label. sa r a h Ar ch in o le département des Études et de la Recherche, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, FRANCE

an na ar e s i: U n d erstanding Modernism throu g h Dante: Rebora, E l i ot, an d Man de ls tam S e ssi on 6

The notion of Modernism, Romano Luperini states, brings together under one categor y several poets which have been otherwise problematic for scholars to group. Poets such as Ungaretti, Montale, Saba, and Rebora, he holds, share “a common innovative character” which “does not have a name yet.” According to him, this common innovative character, variously declined, is precisely what constitutes Modernism. Luperini’s definition singles out a multifaceted, yet common denominator, which unifies those (and potentially other) poets without disregarding the uniqueness of each. However, further work needs to be done in order to achieve a deeper understanding of Italian modernism in poetr y. To this aim, it is fruitful to study Italian modernist poetr y against the background of European modernist poetr y: expanding the horizons, so to speak, enables one to identify dynamics pertaining to the broader European context, casting these dynamics into a new light and thus making for a new and deeper understanding of them. Furthermore, the international scholarship on European Modernism provides conceptual frameworks that can be applied comparatively to Italian modernism as well. In this paper, I explore the ‘modernistness’ of Clemente Rebora, in particular through the analysis of his first two poetic collections, Frammenti lirici (1913) and Canti anonimi (1922). I do so both by focusing on his reception of Dante and in comparison with two other modernist poets, T. S. Eliot and Osip

Mandelstam, and their own reception of Dante. I take Dante as a point of entr y into the modernist conceptions of tradition and Europe, investigating the role he played in the construction of these notions in the thought and poetic practice of these three poets. Each in his own way, Rebora, Eliot, and Mandelstam strove to define what the European literar y tradition is and what it means to be a European poet, and in this effort each assigned a chief role to Dante, who came to represent a sort of mythical elsewhere – chronologically, geographically, and culturally – onto which they projected their own ideas and aspirations, but whom they also took as a stylistic ideal against which they compared their own poetic practices. Anna a resi Ita lia n Studies , Brown Univ ersity, USA

k ate a rmond: A Pa per Pa ra dise – W. R. Letha by a nd The Crysta l Cha in Session 75

This paper will explore similarities between the work of German post-war archtectural writers and their English counterpart, William Richard Lethaby, before asking why some of these fantastical visionar y designs re-emerge as defining features of Wyndham Lewis’s novels in ‘The Human Age’ trilogy. Both Lethaby and the members of Bruno Taut’s ‘Glaserne Kette’ (Cr ystal Chain) produced abstract philosophical publications and correspondence, arguing that architecture should always evolve from a play of natural and cosmic forces and man-made innovations. Works such as Bruno Taut’s ‘Alpine Architecture’ can be considered alongside the ideas of a literar y figure such as Lewis as post-war economic stringencies dictated that the artist was trapped within a paper medium, and architect and writer alike reached their audience through grand quixotic parables of a dreamlike world. The paper closes with a tour of Lewis’

fictional after-life where heaven does indeed seem to have been created according to the blueprint for a Cr ystal Chain utopia. k at e Ar mon d D e pa rtment o f Literature, University of East An glia, Uk

n i r an Baibulat: O r na me n t - a patt e r n way o ut S e ssi on 55

A pattern is not received only in visually, but also through bodily approach. I see a pattern as a performance or at least as bodily lived experience. Then a pattern, ornament becomes a consequence of action not a purpose itself. This is how an ornament could be seen as a flexible construction, not a fixed composition. What interests me in the concept of ornament is that it allows complexity of construction as a means to create multiplicity. In my art works I have used simple textile technique like crocheting. A complex surface of crocheted piece and its construction is accomplished by repetitive actions. In this construction the sense of interior is created by linear proceeding, stich after stich development. Here crocheting is seen by bodily gestures and trajectories. I see crocheting as a method and skill of ever yday utilization. The surface of a textile piece as a compressed form and consisting abundant of details could be seen as a miniature landscape. Then the body holding the piece in hand extends and the piece of work is seen by distance. Changing the scale enables to investigate the structure or composition as a spatial whole or as a temporal part.

dav id Ba rnes: Lawrence, The Plu m ed Serpent and nationalist utopia Session 92

D.H. Lawrence’s late novel The Plumed Serpent (1926) is often dismissed by readers as an awkward and clumsy book, of confused politics and repetitious writing. Yet the novel provides a fascinating test-case of interwar utopian modernism; Lawrence’s Mexican stor y both deifies and deconstructs the ritualprimitivist impulses of twentieth-centur y nationalism. The novel also emerges from the real context of postrevolutionar y Mexican nation-building. In this paper, I explore the ways in which The Plumed Serpent leans on the theories and practices of Mexican cultural revival (as embodied, for example, in the ‘Noche Mexicana’ festival of 1921) to explore the distinctions between the European and the American, between colonial and ‘organic’ cultures. For Lawrence, writing from Mexico in 1923, colonial architecture represented ‘dead Spain’, whilst Aztec monuments seem ‘to have risen out of the earth’. With a clearer understanding of Lawrence’s response to post-revolutionar y Mexican culture and ideas of mexicanidad (‘Mexicanness’), such comments may be understood in the light of live debates around the culture and philosophy of New World nationalisms, and their opposition to European models. In this paper, I read Lawrence’s Mexico in its historical context, as a crucible for exploring competing political concepts of the ‘nation’ in the interwar period. dav id Ba rnes Faculty of English, Univ ersity of Oxford, uk

sa ra h ba rnes: Classical or Avant- garde? Playf ul per form ances

n i r an baibulat P o s tg raduate S tudies , The Finnish Acade m y o f Fine Art s , FINLAND

of ‘classic’ avant-garde works in London’s contempora ry cla ssica l music scene Session 76

At London Contemporar y Music Festival 2013, in a disused multi-storey car park in South

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London, a live performance of Alvin Lucier’s ‘I am sitting in a room’ became ‘I am standing in a car park’. Swinging microphones over speakers in Steve Reich’s ‘Pendulum Music’ became actual swings on which audience members took turns to create the sound of feedback. This paper looks at a contemporar y classical music scene in London in which new, ‘avant-garde’, experimental music is presented alongside twentieth-centur y experimental works by composers such as Steve Reich, John Cage, Alvin Lucier and Fredric Rzewski, suggesting an avantgarde tradition, even a canon. And yet because the avant-garde works being revived emphasise music as process, and as performance, the two temporalities of ‘avant-garde’ could be said to co-exist in present-day performances of ‘classic’ avant-garde works. Because they were originally devised, improvised or recorded, and not notated in the traditional way, contemporar y performers exhibit a freedom and playfulness in interpreting such works. Their performance style also facilitates playfulness and interactivity for the audience. Are they creating an avant-garde canon? Or are they (to employ Nicolas Bourriard’s terms for 1990s relational art practices) attempting to create ‘micro-utopias’ through a ‘relational aesthetics’ of music? sa r a h bar n e s D r am a, Q ue e n Mary, Un ive rs it y o f Lon don , uk

in common conceptions of space, time, visuality and representation. These were derived from shared ‘modernist’ assumptions regarding metaphysics, the natural sciences, the social possibilities of technology, and the relationship between society and nature. Specifically, the paper asks whether we can identify a transition from a Bolshevik ‘geodetic utopianism’ in the first decade of Soviet rule, characterised by a preoccupation with mathematics, measurement and abstract space, to a Stalinist ‘cartographic realism’ from the mid-1930s, focussed on description and representation, mobilised to reinforce the state narrative and project territorial power. It thus reflects both on the political and technological contexts of aesthetic theor y and artistic endeavour and the cultural basis of policy-making and practice in a field of applied science and technology. More broadly, it is concerned to assess the ‘utopian’ dimensions of evolving Soviet ideologies of space, and their discursive relations with artistic ideals and strategies, cartographic plans and projects, and the shifting modalities of authoritarian rule. nick ba ron Depa rtment of History, Univ ersity of Nottingha m, uk

M . Soliña ba rreiro: History must be burned. A historiographic proposal to study time iconoclasm in 20s Avant-garde Session 105

n i ck baron : Su rv eyin g the Great Utopia: S oviet Carto g raphy an d Con t ruct ivis t Space in t h e 1920 s S e ssi on 96

This paper considers the inter-relations of early Soviet cartography and contemporar y avantgarde visions and constructions of space. It proposes that post-revolutionar y artists and cartographers, although operating in dissimilar professional fields, with often divergent ideological motivations and practical aims, grounded their designs and practices

Aggression against clocks constitutes an usual symbolic element in 20’s Avant-garde cinema. This temporal iconoclasm is related to a radical criticism to the concept of time inherited of Enlightenment: an unstoppable and perfective time composed by equal and homogeneous unities, that lefts behind an unrecoverable and closed past, useless to an active and transformative memory. Avant-garde cinema proposes a series of strategies to defy the enlightened concept of time. These strategies go far beyond of the clock destruction imagery, they build a complex myriad of temporalities

based on an extended concept of trace. These strategies are the denial of linear time, the fight for the record, the work on optical unconscious, the search for the meaningful actualization of time. This paper proposes to study Avant-garde cinema using a specific method elaborated taking in count the nature of our object of study (mechanical, reproducible and massive) and contemporary theories about time subversion. The proposal is an aesthetical paradigm of history based on constellations of ideas that avoid linear construction of history and the constriction of diversity to an unique narrative direction. Benjamin and Kracauer have an essential role in this method that stresses key concepts as actualization, the original, materiality and trace, optical unconscious. This method has its basis a Benjamin suggestion: “dialectical conception of historical time must be developed”. M. S o l i ñ a barr e ir o : Au d i ovis ual Me dia, EUPTM-UPC, SPAIN

r oa nn barr is : t h e re ificat ion o f uto pian t h e at e r S e ssi on 45

Long ago (in graduate school) I wrote a dissertation proposal entitled The Reification of Utopia . It didn’t keep that name although my primary thesis, that the perception of constructivism as having broken with the past was a considerable (and perhaps strategic) misunderstanding of that movement, did not change. Although I no longer agree with all of my dissertation, I do not reject my thesis. However, I would update it. Rather than pointing to the influence of folk spectacles, I would now point to the influence of both the photomontage and the so-called “new realism.” Because the new realism referred less to anything new than it did to the belief that art should model itself on strategies for reaching and engaging the public, it did not dictate style so much as method. And this, in turn, does not guarantee either utopian art or avant-garde art. Thus, we have the duplicitous situation of identifying the avant-garde with

conservative tendencies even as those avant-garde forms of art are rejected for being too avant-garde. We might query that belief, however. Perhaps they were rejected for making too many demands on the public. That, at least, is what I will assert. roa nn ba rris Art, Ra dford Univ., USA

Zuza na Ba rtosova :

Ko š ice de l’ entre-deux-guerres et sa v ie a rtistique polyphonique Session 79

Košice jouit entre-deux-guerres d’une situation particulière, en la première République tchécoslovaque. Orientée auparavant vers Budapest, la ville s’est retrouvée, après 1918, dans une situation politique nouvelle. Dans les années vingt la ville culturellement la plus dynamique sur le territoire de l’actuelle Slovaquie, a profité de son « genius loci » aussi bien que des possibilités d’une démocratie tolérante envers la diversité des langues et envers confessionnelle des habitants. La vie picturale de Košice était polyphone. Dehors des artists de la ville, plusieurs repatriés et immigrés venant de la République des conseils de Hongrie y ont trouvé asile. Dans le Musée de la Slovaquie orientale ont pu trouver la possibilité de mettre en valeur leur œuvre, grâce aux expositions organisées par Josef Polák, un érudit originaire de la communauté juive pragoise. Mácza, Bortnyik, Krón, Schiller, Foltýn ont passé un certain temps à Košice ; Kassák donnait des conférences ; le groupe pragois Les Obstinés y a fait des expositions... À côté du musée, Polák a fondé une école des beaux-arts. L’objectif de notre communication est de dépeindre la singularité de la vie picturale de Košice de l’entre-deux-guerres, et de présenter cette ville dans un contexte historico-artistique européen. zuza na ba rtosova Institut o f Art History, Slovak Acade m y o f Sciences , SLOVAKIA

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z u z ana barto s ova I n s t i tut o f A rt H istory, S lovak Acade my o f Sciences , SLOVAKIA

helen bea le: How Edouard Pignon’s 1934-6 depictions o f work ers’ solida rity a nd utopia n a spirations m ature into an art o f reality, unharnessed figures a nd ra dica lly innovativ e perspectiv e.

natalia Bas ch mako ff:

Session 14

F r om the ‘T ransparent S tone Ag e’ to the ‘S pace o f t he Chalice- C upola’: Perceptual U topias in the Ru ssi an Avan t-Gar de ( 1910s-1960 s) S e ssi on 26

This paper examines Russian and Soviet spatial utopias through six decades of the avant-garde quest. My focus is on the interaction between the literar y and visual arts. How did the artists rework their media of expression in order to grasp the transcendental behind the physical world? In their revolutionar y program the early avant-garde utopists strived to “split the object open by piercing through the universe with their gaze”. New spatial histor y, an emerging field in Russian studies, is as much about the visible and tangible surface as it is about understanding the abstract forces and relations that construct our social and material reality. The utopists of the 1910s followed inner artistic freedom in their effort to understand laws of the nature in an era of urbanization, technological and scientific progress. Their artistic means were “extended viewing”, “spherical perspective” and “spatial realism”. The Soviet nonconformists, such as artists of the Sterligov-school of the 1960s, had to work and to sur vive in a social straitjacket of a totalitarian regime and obedience to the official ideology, which promoted “mastering and controlling of the nature”. For the early utopists the transcendental was an open field of exploration, for the nonconformists – an inner refuge in spirituality.

Early paintings (c.1934-6) by Edouard Pignon [1905-1993] do contain dystopian tendencies: bleak industrial landscapes, mining catastrophes. Nevertheless, utopian tendencies dominate: monumentalised figures of workers meeting to plan a better future; uniformly-depicted figures suggesting their symbiosis of thought and physique; the solidarity of mourners uniting in grief, possibly also in shared reclamation. Pignon, dismissed from Renault and black-listed after joining the Communist party in 1933, looks for work, aspires to refine his art and to belong in avant-garde intellectual circles. In later work, as he explained in La Quête de la réalité, his first allegiance is to art: he seeks to channel his social commitment and contemporar y anxieties not through Socialist Realism but by expressing reality through innovative form and colour, and unifying compositional rhythm. While figuration is retained, figures are freed, enjoying greater individuality, their state of ‘becoming’ expressed by protean line. Most radically, Pignon breaks with tradition in the handling of picture space, sometimes by greater closeness to the subject, more crucially by ‘bending‘ and stretching space to encompass richer reality. helen bea le F rench (retired) , Univ ersity of Stirling, uk

susa nne beck er: Radio drama – a means of realizing avant-garde

natalia Bas ch mako ff

intentions Session 65

As Heinz Schwitzke, one of the most important radio drama theorists in Germany, has once noted, technological inventions never occur accidentally,

but are always intimately linked to greater intellectual currents that precede them. Radio drama, according to Martin Esslin, came at a particular moment in time when theatre was tending away from a mimetic and naturalist towards a more subjective and intimate portrayal of reality as can especially be seen in symbolist and surrealist theatre, but also in the nouveau théâtre after 1945 which follows the surrealist tradition. In this paper I intend to explore how the radio play – due to its intimate, immaterial and ephemeral nature and its inherent capacity to annul the boundaries between actors and public, stage and auditorium, individual and crowd, dream and reality and between literature, theatre and music – reveals itself more so than the traditional theatre stage as an appropriate means to realize surrealist and poetic drama. Radio drama thus presents a step towards the realization of the intentions of the historical avant-garde: a reintegration of art into the practice of life as defined by Bürger and others and the breakdown of dichotomies as envisaged by Breton. su san n e b e cke r R o m a nce St udie s , Un ive rs itae t Os nab rue ck, GERM ANY

of the show. In Ionesco’s reading, the disarticulated language of Caragiale’s plays was inspired by the delirious cant of the newspapers proliferating at a mad pace in fin-de-siècle Romania. Indeed, Caragiale’s extensive journalistic career informed his theatre, giving rise to an innovative aesthetic. The playwright toyed with forms of mass media – news, telegrams, reports, advertisements, caricature and vaudeville – and transformed them into the most effective critique of Romanian modernity, a visionar y theatre, which inspired Ionesco and still enthrals critics and audiences. Much like the avant-garde movement, Caragiale deviated the resources of popular culture towards a wholesale critique of modernity. The Romanian avant-garde, I will suggest, sprang up in this fertile niche unlatched by Caragiale. a dela n . Beiu-Pa pa na sta siou Literature, Dra m a, C reative Writing, University of Ea st Anglia , uk

A lexandr Belousov: ДЕТСКАЯ УТОПИЯ И КУЛЬТУРНАЯ МИФОЛОГИЯ МОДЕРНИЗМА В РОМАНЕ Л. ДОБЫЧИНА «ГОРОД ЭН» Session 26

ad e la n . Be iu-Papanas tas io u: A n A bs ur d Re n de z vo us : Ion e s co vs Caragial e S e ssi on 115

This paper will explore the surprising affinities between Eugène Ionesco and his compatriot Ion Luca Caragiale, the far less iconoclastic father of modern Romanian theatre. Revealing the points of contact between Ionesco’s cr yptic forms and Caragiale’s seemingly more traditional dramaturgy, will illuminate the important aesthetic mutation at work in the theatre of the absurd. In August 1953, Théâtre de la Huchette put on a Spectacle Ionesco, which included Caragiale’s Les Grandes Chaleurs. Such was the likeness, one could barely tell apart Caragiale’s sketch from the rest

Одной из характерных особенностей детской субкультуры в России является «двоемирие»: ребенок существует как бы в двух разных мирах – в мире реальном и в мире вымышленном. Вымышленный мир может локализоваться в каком-нибудь укромном уголке. Иногда детская утопия актуализируется во время игры, которую фольклористы и антропологи называют «игрой в “страну-мечту”». Образец подобной игры хорошо известен по повести Льва Кассиля «Кондуит и Швамбрания». Однако далеко не всегда путь в «странумечту» пролегает через игру. Гораздо чаще для того, чтобы перенестись «в страну безоблачных грез и фантазий» (Хёйзинга), вполне хватает детского воображения.

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Именно эта ситуация изображается в добычинском романе. Его герой- ребенок нашел свою «страну-мечту» в гоголевских «Мертвых душах»: «Мы могли бы купить себе бричку и покатить в город Эн. Там нас полюбили бы. Я подружился бы там с Фемистоклюсом и Алкидом Маниловыми» (курсивом выделено то, чего не достает ему в реальном мире). Особенность восприятия маленьким героем книги Гоголя заключается в том, что он совершенно не ощущает ее иронического и пародийного смысла, о чем свидетельствуют и все последующие упоминания о городе Эн и его обитателях в добычинском романе. Очевидно, что рассказчику оказывается доступным лишь их прямой, предметный план. Добычин изображает детское, наивное восприятие текста, которое противостоит не только школьной традиции, но и культурной мифологии модернизма, актуализировавшейся в начале 1930-х гг. (Андрей Белый, Сергеев-Ценский, О. Форш). A l e x a n dr Be lo us ov

lo r e l la b o s co : Rewriting life every day: Emmy Hennings’ “Dada” S e ssi on 47

My paper will focus on the role of Emmy Hennings within Dada historiography and on her understanding of life writing. Hennings, by 1916 an experienced performer and poet, still awaits a full recognition of her own contribution to the success of the Cabaret Voltaire. In her (mainly) (auto)biographical works she only briefly mentions her own and Hugo Ball’s engagement in the Dada movement, thus “taking revenge” on her male colleagues who had found in her the ideal scapegoat to carr y the blame for Ball’s defection and for his later conversion. She also significantly claimed to have invented the ver y name

“Dada”, thus establishing a female (counter)genealogy of Dadaism. Her Ball books, however, resemble ver y closely the technique of Dadaistic collages with their non-linear and fragmented structure of loose episodes, reflections, dreams, omissions and even of contradictions. Life, like art, wants to be shaped not only at certain times but at ever y moment, in a continuous process of transformation. Despite their deep catholic commitment, Hennings’ as well as Ball’s (autho)biographies could be read as a part and as a prosecution of the avantgarde search for artistic Urbilder whose exemplarity is not to be confined to the realm of aesthetics. lorella bosco LELIA (L ettere Lin gue Arti), University of Bari , ITALY

fay brauer: Magnetic Modernism: Frantisek Kupka’s Mesmeric Abstraction and the Revolution of Consciousness Session 85

Far from animal magnetism abating when František Kupka arrived in Paris, the opposite ensued, par ticularly through its practise at Salpêtrière , Bicêtre , Hotel Dieu, Charité, and by Hippolyte Baraduc , Auguste Liébault, Jules Bernard Luys and Alber t de Rochas. Given the burgeoning of electromagnetism and radioactivity alongside Camille Flammarion’s Cosmic Magnetism, this period has been aptly called Neo-Magnetism. As it flourished, Neo-Magnetism intersected with Neo-Lamarckian Transformism alongside Spiritism, Bergsonian Vitalism and Anarcho-Communism, as ar ticulated by Elisée Reclus and imaged by Kupka in which the evolution of mutualist society was touted alongside the revolution of consciousness. By no means were these connections unrealized by ar tists sanctioned by the Radical Republic as demonstrated by Clémentine-Hélène Dufau’s murals commissioned for the New Sorbonne , par ticularly Le Magnetisme

et La Radioactivité. Yet unlike Dufau, Kupka deployed magnetism as a medium and as an ar tist not only to combat capitalist corruption but also to ignite “superconsciousness” of an anarchist ecological and cosmological utopia, par ticularly through their manifestation in abstraction. By examining Kupka’s relationship to magnetism modernism, as both a medium and ar tist, this paper will consider how his mesmeric abstractions were produced to transmit and emit “magnetic waves like those of the hypnotizer” to generate a revolution in consciousness.

little magazine , on the emergence across Europe of new forms of exclusionar y nationalism. Christina Britzola k is english, Univ ersity of Wa rwik , UK

Christina Britzola k is: Hemingway’s subtractive method and the modernist event Session 93

fay b raue r Art s and Dig ital Industries , University of E ast Lon d on , uk

C h r i s t ina Brit z o lakis : Exiles: Community, Cosmoplitanism and Authorial Self-Fashioning in the Little Review S e ssi on 51

This paper explores the tensions inherent in the avant-garde little magazine’s role as a vehicle simultaneously of individual and communal performance . It will examine an iconic ar tefact of modernism, the April 1923 ‘Exiles’ number of The Little Review. Including work by Stein, Loy, Hemingway, Antheil, Leger and Cocteau amongst others, the issue’s linkage of the motif of ‘exile’ with modernist experimentalism, I will argue , grounds the subsequent canonization of modernism. From Loy’s Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose to Stein’s Idem the Same: A Valentine for Sherwood Ander son and Hemingway’s recycling of his newspaper dispatches in In Our Time, this narrative was enabled by the modernist salon’s ethos of combined intimacy and semi-publicity, its collaborative mobilization of the author’s name and biography as performative phenomena, and its incipient forging of a currency of celebrity. Moreover, I argue , the various stories of ‘exile’ told by the texts, images and music gathered in the little magazine reflect, within the restricted cultural field of the

‘Perhaps You Were There at the Time’ – Hemingway’s

Subtractive Method and the Modernist Event

In this paper, I propose to examine the generic instability of the modernist shor t stor y via the prehistor y of Hemingway’s volume , In Our Time (1925). The stories in the collection began as a series of prose paragraphs, published in The Little Review ‘Exiles Number’ of April 1923, drawing on Hemingway’s news dispatches, mostly dealing with European politics, for the Toronto Star newspaper. These prose vignettes, ranging in geography across France , Belgium, Spain, Asia Minor and Greece , and in time from 1914 to November 1922, reference inter alia the 1914 Battle of Mons in Belgium, one of the first engagements of the Great War, a bullfight in Spain, the forced removal of Thracian Christians from Adrianople , and the execution by firing squad in late 1922 of the Greek ministers held responsible for the Asia Minor defeat. The Little Review paragraphs proved to be pivotal for Hemingway’s career, launching him as a modernist author, while the collection of stories, titled In Our Time, and published in 1925 by Boni and Liveright, established his reputation. In par ticular, they cemented the critical commonplace that Hemingway drew on the techniques of journalism to create his poetics of omission. The genre of The Little Review paragraphs – variously described as ‘vignettes’, ‘sketches’, ‘miniatures’ and even ‘prose poems’ – is indeterminate . At stake in this indeterminacy is not

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just, obviously, the vexed boundar y between fact and fiction, but also a felt incommensurability between historical and ar tistic events. Their canonization as a locus classicus of modernist stylistic renovation – and the accompanying authorial mythography – raises the question of what it might mean to consider formations of modernist cosmopolitanism and ‘exile’ in relation to the historical event.

hits bac k, 1937) in which the subaltern strikes back against the colonial oppressor. a nna brus Media studies , U niversität Siegen, GER M ANY

robert buch: Montjouvain: Obscenity and Transgression in Marcel Proust

C h r i stina Br it z o lakis

Session 69

e n g l i sh , Un ive r s it y o f Warw ik, UK

an na b rus : “The Savage hits back”- The Utopian Vision of Julius Lips S e ssi on 94

At the beginning of the 20th centur y the so called primitive ar t was greatly admired in European avant-garde circles. Especially the German Expressionists thought of the “Primitive” as simple , unadulterated and emotional, living in a timeless »other space«. The imagined »primitive« became a source for projections of a life freed of rigid social conventions. The German anthropologist and curator Julius Lips inver ted the »allochrony« at the hear t of these Utopian dreams in an exhibition-project. Since the 1920s, and as director of the Rautenstrauch Joest Museum in Cologne , he collected depictions of Europeans from colonised regions. These sculptures and pictures were often realistic in their precise descriptions of posture , details of clothing and accessories, showing that the “Others” were coeval subjects sharing the same time-space of the colonial order. The objects became thus the medium of an experience of estrangement that reversed the world of one‘s own into a world of strangers, in which the European becomes the actual Barbarian. This paper explores Lips’ ver y own utopian vision, elaborated in a book during Exile (The savage

At first glance , obscenity in Proust seems an unlikely topic . Even though we know that the author admired some of the illustrious poètes maudits, the great writers of the obscene of the nineteenth centur y, notably Baudelaire and Huysmans, we would hardly place Proust in this lineage . And yet, Proust was claimed early on by no less a figure than Georges Bataille for the literature of evil and transgression. The paper looks at two scenes to discuss obscenity in Proust: the narrator’s first encounter with Gilber te and the voyeuristic Montjouvain scene . The first is an instantiation of the negative epistemolog y at work throughout the Recherche turning cer tainties into errors and vice versa. The second forms par t of the narrator’s erotic investigations, especially of samesex desire . It also ser ves as an impor tant foil for the novel’s poetics of illumination and redemption. Montjouvain opens the space of erotic dystopia, it returns as a traumatic memor y that triggers the narrator’s tormented jealousy and haunts the novel’s triumphant finale . robert buch Hum anities & Lan guages , U niversity of N ew South Wa les , AUSTRALIA

asi ya Bulatova: The Lost Utopia in Shklovsky’s Two Editions of Zoo, or Letters Not about Love S e ssi on 115

Viktor Shklovsky wrote Zoo, or Letter s Not about Love while living in exile in Germany. The book was first published in Berlin in 1923 and reprinted in Leningrad only a year later, in 1924. Although the two editions were published almost back to back, the second version was substantially different from the first. Zoo is written as a series of letters to Elsa Triolet (“Alya”), who forbids the author to write about love . Both texts juxtapose these two figures, an unrequited, “silenced,” love and a “forbidden” homeland, which results in an attempt to create a new literar y form that is most suited to express the experience of exile . This paper will consider this instance of selfcensorship and suggest that by omitting twelve letters from the second edition Shklovsky cuts out the par ts of the text which question the dichotomy between the privileged life in Soviet Russia and a grim picture of the state of society and culture in the West. Moreover, the added five letters create an uneasy link between the utopian technological imager y and the depictions of sexual crime , thus reemphasising the writing subject’s own transgressive relationship with Alya and his geographical, political and cultural displacement. asi ya bulatova E ng l i sh and American S tudies , T he University of Man ch e s t e r , uk

the Second Moscow Art Theatre he was responsible for the artistic and ideological work of one of the leading Soviet Russian theatres of the 1920s. Chekhov studied theatre art and gained his knowledge of it from the standpoint of the actor and not that of the director as did Meyerhold. The actor, his technique and personality, was always paramount for Chekhov. In his theatre Chekhov developed his theor y of the ‘theatre of the future’ and fulfilled the twofold function of actor-director and actor-philosopher. The few productions staged in MAT-2 under Chekhov’s direct management, Hamlet and Petersburg by Andrei Bely were landmarks in the mastering of new methods of acting. Chekhov’s ideas found their reflection in his articles, influenced by Russian Symbolism, and the methods at rehearsals. He propounded a method of acting that differed from Stanislavsky’s teaching in many respects. Chekhov asserted the theor y of imitation, the law of the three states of consciousness, and objectivity vis-à-vis the character during the performance. Chekhov attempted to solve the basic problem of the actor, that of the personality and the artist, and the actor is meant to be the creator of a certain ideal and liberated life. In the West (from 1928) for Chekhov the process of cultural adaptation was a series of painful experiences. However, in Paris (1930-32) Chekhov managed to realize his theor y rhythmic acting in musical drama. However, Chekhov´s vision of the ‘international theatre’, which was opened up by the experiments in expressive movement and music, achieved relatively little on the stage. The practicalities of directing often defeated Chekhov, especially when he tried to bring his utopian visions to the stage.

l i i sa Bycklin g: MICHAEL CHEKHOV IN THE 1920S: THE QUEST FOR THE MODERN S e ssi on 8

Michael Chekhov expressed the spirit of the turn of centur y Russian culture, symbolist poetr y and non-naturalistic theatre. As the head of

liisa Byck lin Depa rtment of World Cultures , Univ ersity of Helsink i, F INLAND

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p e r Bäcks t r ö m: “All people are different, but everyone is of equal worth”. Three manifestoes by öyvind Fahlstrom S e ssi on 76

In 1953 the Swedish concrete poet and internationally renowned avant-garde artist Öyvind Fahlström (1928–76) wrote the worlds first manifesto for concrete poetr y, inspired by the historical avantgarde and the neo-avant-garde that at the same time was on its rise, but also by Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète. What is little known, though, is that this manifesto was followed by a string of others, of which I here will discuss three utopian manifests from 1962, 1966 and 1976. The first manifesto took its incentive from the exhibition Movement in Ar t, and introduces radical ideas about involving the audience in the artwork/s itself. The intention was to erase the barrier between artist, artwork and audience. In the two later manifestoes Fahlström – after his move to New York 1961 – takes a more explicit political stance. In the manifesto from 1966 he draws up a Utopia without war, commercialism, and poverty, where citizens have equal rights and live in ”the ecstatic society” with free sex and drugs, ideas a few years ahead of the 1968 revolt. And, finally, in the last manifesto he visualises a totally new society, based on Equality, freedom, decentralisation, work as a creative activity, and free ser vices and goods.

a collaboré avec les représentants majeurs de l’avantgarde théâtrale (Rivas Cherif, Valle-Inclán, Alberti…), se situe au cœur des réflexions sur la rénovation de la scène espagnole. A la croisée des avant-gardes esthétiques et politiques européennes, F.G.Lorca par vient à donner une dimension à la fois poétique et sensorielle, documentaire et sociale à ses comédies, drames et tragédies. Fidèle à l’esprit progressiste de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza, ce « nouvel humaniste » met en scène l’individu contemporain (souvent une femme) face aux interdits de la société. Le théâtre lorquien offre ainsi une galerie de portraits de femmes: depuis Amor de don Perlimplín jusqu’à La Casa de Bernarda Alba, toutes ses pièces sont habitées par des héroïnes – Belisa, doña Rosita, la Zapatera, la Novia, Yerma, Adela –, qui lui permettent de poser la question des droits et de l’émancipation de la femme espagnole, et de relayer les débats féministes de l’époque, débattus sur une autre scène, politique cette fois, par Victoria Kent, Margarita Nelken ou Federica Montseny. isa belle CABROL Institut d’ Etudes ibériques , Univ ersité Pa risSorbonne (Pa ris 4), F RANCE

j oyce Cheng: Between Provocation and Performance: Picabia, Satie and Relâche at the Ballet Suédois (1924) Session 61

p e r Bäcks t rö m Co m parat ive lit e r at ure , Kar ls tad un ive rs it y, SWEDEN

i sa be lle CABROL: La q uestion de l’émancipation de la fe mme e spagn o le dan s le t h é ât r e de F. García Lo r c a des an n é e s 1920 e t 1930 : t h é ât re , uto pie e t s o ciété. S e ssi on 49

Federico García Lorca, poète et dramaturge engagé dès le début de la Seconde République espagnole dans l’entreprise pédagogique et utopique du Teatro Universitario La Barraca, et qui, dès les années 1920,

Francis Picabia’s and Erik Satie’s 1924 production of Relâche for Ballet Suédois is an ambiguous event in the histor y of Dada. No doubt both Picabia and Satie saw the two-act ballet with a cinematic intermission (“Entr’Acte”) by René Clair as highly provocative. For Picabia, the scenario and décor of the ballet were a testament of his “instantanéisme,” which he rallied against André Breton’s emerging Surrealism (“Dada travesty en ballon réclame,” wrote Picabia derisively of his former friend’s new movement). As for Satie, annexed since 1919 by the

Zurich Dadaists as their composer of choice and a participant in Picabia’s review 391 since 1920, Relâche was a musical manifesto directed against Jean Cocteau’s neo-classicism but also against Satie’s own former allies, the avant-garde group of composers known as “Les Six.” But by inviting the Parisian public to “bring dark eyeglasses and something to plug your ears,” Relâche simultaneously transformed its own insurgent status into high-society spectacle. What is more, the producers invited “ex-Dadaists” to protest the performance with the cries, “Down with Satie! Down with Picabia!”, thereby making the disintegration of the Dada movement itself into a subject of the same spectacle. This paper will analyze Relâche, focusing on the aesthetic parallels between Picabia’s scenario and décor and Satie’s music. In turn, the paper seeks to address how Picabia’s machine aesthetics and Satie’s irreverent “musique du placard” helped to end Paris Dada through the scandal of success. j oyce Ch e n g I n st i tut d’Et ude s ib é r ique s , Un ive rs it é Par is S o r b on n e ( Par is 4) , FRANCE

j u i p i Ch ie n : Pablo Picasso’s Three-C ornered Hat revisited in light of moral creativity S e ssi on 114

It has been well asserted that Picasso’s acquaintance with African objects enabled him to freely combine daily objects in his own artistic output. In tackling the influence of African art on the development of cubism, critics who adopted anthropological and cognitive approaches have advised going beyond concrete similarities spotted between African objects and avant-garde practices: they encouraged us to engage with our emotional and cognitive responses so as to on the one hand discover artists’ changing aesthetic principles, and on the other enhance our appreciation of the intrigues hidden in

their art. This study thus draws on our mental power of associating and synthesizing different forms – a unique experience relevant to our growth of moral creativity while viewing Picasso’s later cubist works – as a locale for problematizing and engaging with the notion of utopian alternatives. By comparing and contrasting the Spanish novella The Three-Cornered Hat (1874) and Picasso’s costume design done for its stage production (1919), this study argues for a certain implied social and political criticism previously ignored in anthropological and cognitive approaches. It is suggested that we obser ve not only Picasso’s absorption of the African art, but also his appropriation of certain fascinating stories found in his own native tradition. j uipi chen Dept. of Forei gn Lan guag es and Literatures , National Taiwan U niversity, TAIWAN

ma rtina ciceri: The utopian lure of community: Olive Garnett and the Republic of Letters Session 51

Engaging in the question of utopias means to discuss physical or textual spaces that are not inscribed in the map of human experience which nevertheless depict alternatives to the status quo of dominant cultures. In this paper, I propose to explore the utopian spaces as they came to be interpreted and represented in Edwardian England by some members of the Russian community, a phenomenon that had great impact both on social life and on the aesthetics of modernism. Not only did Russian migration to England pave the way to the creation of utopian communities – the numerous Tolstoyan colonies in Essex are highly relevant to the issue –, but it also redrew the borders of one of the most famed literar y groups of the period, namely the so-called Republic of Letters gravitating in Sussex around James, Conrad and Ford

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Madox Ford. In this context, the Garnett family played a role of paramount importance, as it established both personal and professional contacts with most famed Russian expats, thus encouraging artistic crosscultural fertilization. The intent of this paper is to investigate the issue of utopia and modernist aesthetics in relation to Anglo-Russian transactions and as it emerges in Olive Garnett’s In Russia’s Night and in Stepniak’s Career of a Nihilist, and to assess whether and how the workshop of modernity the authors in question belonged to can be re-read as a utopian artistic community. m art i na cice r i E u r o p ean, American, and Intercultural S tudies , U n i v e rsity of Ro me S apienza, ITALY

si m one ciglia: Artopia: utopia and dystopia in contemporary art. From 1989 till today S e ssi on 103

This presentation wants to be a guide to the exploration of the island of Utopia at the frontiers with contemporar y art. In the beginning I draw a possible map of this notion which, as a palimpsest, has been continuously rewritten in the course of histor y. Two distinct paths are traced: a literar y one (where, among other things, we notice the birth of a new paradigm resulting from the reversal of utopia, that is dystopia), and a philosophical one (with particular attention to the presence of utopia in aesthetics). Subsequently I start the effective exploration into the realm of art, examining the relationship between art and utopia. After having traced out some historical roots, there is a return to focus on the period examined (from 1989 till today), in which we discover a partial revival of utopia. In the second part of the presentation I propose a taxonomy of the different ways in which art and utopia are related. One of the most interesting attempts to “achieve utopia” is represented by

micronations: pseudo-states which mimic, totally or in part, the characteristics of a sovereign nation. This phenomenon has important outcomes in art too. The creation of a community is also accomplished by Michelangelo Pistoletto, whose work especially during the last two decades was enlightened by utopian tension. Utopia has an historical and political dimension which emerges conspicuously from the comparison between two artists: I selected Ilya Kabakov and Sam Durant as ambassadors of their countries – respectively the former Soviet Union and United States – who had opposed each other during the Cold War, producing two different visions of utopia. Already present in the work of Durant, the link between modernism and utopia is the key point of a recent artistic trend which uses modernism as a central reference, implementing various strategies from quote to deconstruction. Through the exploration of one of the most fascinating cultural archetypes, this presentation offers a contribution to historicize the art of the last twenty years. simone ciglia History o f Art, “Sapienza” University of Ro m e, ITALY

ma ssimo colella : A case study of montalian modernism: «Fine dell’infanzia» Session 6

My paper deals with the analysis of the poem Fine dell’infanzia (Ossi di seppia), focusing on its distinctly modernist features that emblematize and exemplify the modernist characterization of the first stage of Montalian poetr y. The starting point of the study is the essay Modernismo e poesia italiana del primo Novecento (‘Allegoria’ 63 (2011): 66-82), that highlights that one of the crucial sides of the Modern is the exceptional awareness of the present age: “The Sense of the Present creates the Myth of the Past,

the nostalgia for an individual and global childhood, the anguish at the separation from the ‘ancient roots’ (‘antiche radici’) and from the ‘happy shores’ (‘sponde felici’) of a lost paradise (…) where it was still possible to give meaning to life because “rapido rispondeva / a ogni moto dell’anima un consenso / esterno, (…) il nostro mondo aveva un centro” (‘Fine dell’infanzia’)”. Particular emphasis will be given to the complex intertextual relationships with the Italian literar y tradition (thematic and stylistic elements ‘attraversano’ or ‘pass through’ Dannunzian and Pascolian poetr y and ‘rediscover’ Leopardi’s lesson) and to the suggestive connections with the European ‘fin-de-siècle’ epistemological crisis.

By commenting on some paradigmatic poems by Gozzano, Sbarbaro, and Montale, I will re-define the poetic line “crepuscolari-Sbarbaroprimo Montale” under the light of modernism. In so doing, I will provide a preliminar y sur vey in order to investigate the development of Italian modernist poetr y in the first half of twentieth centur y. a lberto compa rini F rench a nd Ita lia n, Sta nford Univ ersity, USA

rey Conquer: ‘Innere Notwendigkeit’ and the utopian artwork in Kandinsky and Rilke Session 1

m assi mo co le lla I tal i a n Lit e r at ure , Un ive r s it à di Fire n z e , ITALY

al be rto Co mparin i: The first Generation of Italian Modernist Poets: Gozzano, Sbarbaro, and Montale. S e ssi on 4

The question of whether exists Italian Modernism or not has been on the center of the ver y recent literar y debates in Italy and in USA. Moroni and Somigli, on the one hand, and Luperini’s school, on the other hand, have started working on the Italian modernist canon, focusing, though, mostly on novel. However, the issue of modernist poetr y has not been raised yet. Hence, the caesura between the “poeti laureati” and the first generation of twentieth centur y poets has still been read according to the passage from pre-modern to modern time. In this paper I aim to challenge this interpretation by studying Gozzano, Sbarbaro and Montale’s poems under the categor y of modernism. Their works share some elements that constitute the cornerstone of Italian modernism: the shredding of the knowing subject; the trans-figuration of reality and the role of consciousness in its perception/construction; the relationship between cityscapes and dystopias.

The art theories of Wassily Kandinsky and Rainer Maria Rilke are both driven by the ‘innere Notwendigkeit’ that they see conditioning the creation of the artwork. This paper explores the utopian potentials of an artwork created under this dictate; paying special attention to colour, its ontology and its effects, I argue for the emancipator y role of the metaphysical claims that recourse to ‘inner necessity’ makes. Whereas Kandinsky posits physical, spiritual and symbolic significance for colours in painting, Rilke is more circumspect with regard to external meaning, and pares down the role of colour to some sort of essential core. Nonetheless, colour’s rightness in a painting is dependent on constraints set by the interplay of points and sense of balance within the artwork, not entirely explicable in terms of ‘ever yday’ experience. This desire to locate colour in a (quasi-) spiritual realm unites Rilke, whose relationship with the avant-garde is perhaps fraught, with Kandinsky, as do their similar projects to renovate an understanding of the ‘sister arts’, both in theor y and practice, and envision utopia both in the realm of the artwork and in the future of artistic creation. rey Conquer Germa n, Univ ersity of Oxford, uk

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ch i ar a co ppin : Instances of modernism in Paola Masino’s narrative S e ssi on 9

The paper identifies instances of modernism in Paola Masino’s narrative starting from modern cityscapes. In MonteIgnoso, real places are transfigured in metaphorical space to explore the themes of death, love, motherhood, crises of roles. In Periferia the urban places are the stage on which are represented the neighborhood life from children’s perspective, the moral degradation of the family, the ineptitude, the disorder of passions with a corrosive intention against the myth of family touted by fascism that reminds Gli Indifferenti. Masino connects to peripher y the theme of evil, the relationship authenticity / exteriority, fiction / mask, the incommunicability. In Nascita e mor te della massaia, cityscapes reflect the drama of the protagonist torn between what she is and what she seems to be. The theatrical vocation, the theme of “double” refer to the cultural context of Masino: Bontempelli and Pirandello were her masters, she frequented Savinio, Gòmez de la Serna; but Masino affirms her originality, “introduces a note of disorder” (Baldacci, “Gadda-Masino: classici del disordine”), reach an unconventional narrative. She is “smisurata”, she alters the ever yday life, explores the dream’s world with a “cr yptic” language to break the limits between rationality and irrationality and show the absurdity of reality. ch i ar a co ppin Co m parative Literature, “ L’O rintale” University of Na p l e s , ITALY

j oa na Cun h a Le al: Building a North-South axis. Local and international avant-garde strategies in Portugal and Spain (1914-1918) S e ssi on 84

This paper aims at discussing the tensions and correspondences between local and international

avant-garde strategies during the 1st WW in Portugal and Spain. It considers the importance of autochthonous movements, while also pondering on the arrival at Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona of the Parisian émigrés led by the war to participate in those putative “peripheral” scenarios. These émigrés gathered Portuguese and Spanish-born artists and poets previously established in Paris, as well as foreigner protagonists of the avant-garde. Different agendas and perspectives were mingled in these encounters, particularly those involving the Delaunays, and the project they envisaged in Portugal of an international exhibition to be held at Barcelona. As Sonia explains, Corporation Nouvelle’s exhibition would gather artists from “Moscow, Portugal, America, Switzerland and Italy”, as well as from the Nordic countries (through A. Ciacelli’s galler y in Stockholm), along with poets like Cendrars (and apparently Apollinaire). This exhibition would bring in a “simultaneist international” led by the Delaunays, or as they also put it a “North-South axis” determined to fight cubism’s influence. I also want to consider the overlaps, contrasts, paradoxes, common projects and networking between local actors and the Delaunays through a critical perspective irrespective of common binar y oppositions as center/peripher y or leading artist/second hand follower. j oa na Cunha Lea l A rt History, U niversidade Nova de Lisboa, PORTU GAL

eliza DEAC IOANA: Between Destruction and Reconstruction . Tristan Tzara and the Revolutionising of the Book Session 103

Tristan Tzara is mostly known as the author of some the most radical manifestos of ultimate destruction. His view on the poetic process overtly promotes the random combination of words and the arbitrariness of meaning. However, the fact that he regularly abstracted his texts from their initial environments and ordered them in carefully designed

and illustrated books denotes a calculated and constructive attitude. The constancy of this practice seems to contradict the flamboyant rhetoric of nihilism that characterises his manifestos. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse the three volumes of poems published during World War I and immediately afterwards: La Première Aventure Céleste de Monsieur Antipyrine (1916), Vingt-Cinq Poèmes (1918), Cinéma calendrier du cœur abstrait Maisons (1920) as well as the collected manifestos – Sept Manifestes Dada (1924) – in order to highlight the convergence or divergence in meaning resulting from the complex interactions between the linguistic content and the bibliographic code and to investigate the possibility that the constancy with which Tzara transferred his texts from various publication ephemera to the stable form of the book may reflect a utopian dream of the total work of art disguised under the rhetoric of its dissolution. e l i z a DEAC IOANA DEPARTMENT O F ROM ANIAN LITERATURE , LITERARY THEORY, BABES -BOLYAI UNIVERSITY, ROMANIA

k at y De e pw e ll: Woman’s Place and other 1970s feminist art initiatives in Britain

feminist art exhibitions were held in the 1970s and at the cusp of the 1980s, marking the histor y of second-wave feminism in Britain in an expanded dateline from 1968-1982. Notable among them is Womanpower (1973), Woman’s Place (1974), the first showing of Mar y Kelly’s Post-Par tum Document at the IC A (1976), Feministo (1977), Women’s Images of Men/ About Time (1980). Underpinning these exhibitions are the temporar y groups and personal friendships which emerged: from the Women’s Workshop of the Ar tist’s Union, Women’s Free Ar t Alliance, Berwick Street Ar t Collective, Hackney Flashers, and Fenix which led to the founding of more formal arts organisations like Circles and the Women’s Ar t Librar y in the 1980s. This paper will look at these utopian moments in a histor y and reactions to them which ranged from censorship to scandal, to fierce debates about the values and strategies within the developing feminist movement. It is written by someone who was not part of this movement until 1982 when she became an art student and these attempts to look back are undoubtedly coloured by constructions upon events from the perspective of later developments. k aty Deepwell Art a nd Design Faculty, M iddlesex Univ ersity, uk

S e ssi on 57

The historiography of feminist art in Britain in the 1970s is framed by two distinct books: Griselda Pollock and Roszika Parker’s Framing Feminism (1987) and more recently Kathy Battista’s Renegotiating the Body: Feminist Ar t in 1970s London (2013). Most other documentation about the 1970s remains in individual women artists’ archives, in their oral histor y, as well as the publication of numerous articles in feminist magazines and art journals. In 2013-2014, several key figures in the feminist art scene of the 1970s and 1980s, Alexis Hunter, Monica Ross and Rose FinnKelcey passed away, leaving open the question of how to commemorate and mark their achievements, alongside those still living and working. Numerous

la ra Demori: Defining Brazilian Modernism: Antropofagia or the culture of ingestion Session 38

The Brazilian version of Modernism pursued a twofold challenge. Firstly, it strived to rediscover its pre-colonial past; secondly, it attempted to perform metropolitan artistic expressions for international export. The adoption of internal and external sources created an equivocal attitude among Brazilian intelligentsia. On one side scholars ‘paralleled São Paulo with Milan and set futurist literature as the aesthetic frame of Brazilian Modernism’ (Martins,

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1971); on the other side, artist Anita Malfatti was accused to have abandoned her Brazilian identity in the favour of a futuristic style. This unequal approach was apparently solved when poet Oswald de Andrade made Brazilian society more aware of its archetypal consciousness. His idea of Antropofágia,‘the permanent transformation of taboo into totem’, restored the balance between a brutal cannibalism of the other and its sacred assimilation. Through a comparative approach between visual arts and literature, this paper aims to address the paradoxical roots of Brazilian reading of Modernism and to reassess its progressive emancipation - from a post-colonial ‘marginal’ position to the establishment of an autonomous Avant-garde trend - by sur veying three key moments: Anita Malfatti’s solo exhibition (São Paulo, 1917); the Semana de Ar te Moderna (São Paulo,13-18 Februar y, 1922); Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropofágo (1928).

Nationalism, often combined with paradigms of terroir. Historically based studies (and Hegelian dialectics) supplanted rule poetics, but the conform adaption to a collective identity was left unchanged. Somewhat later, a musical modernism seemingly exposing a more marked individualism developed, whose main representative was Debussy. The main characteristics of the transcendental individualism of Debussy were a lack of obvious systematic regularity in the work, as also the lack of an explicit systematic poetics. Thereby his œuvre early became the target for quite different interpretations. jacob Derk ert Depart ment o f Musicolo gy and Per for m ance Studies , Stock holm Univ ersity, SWEDEN

luis dia z: Utopia as projective thinking in the work of

lar a de mo ri H i sto ry o f Art, Th e Un ive rs it y o f Edin bur gh , uk

jaco b De r ke rt: The ambiguities of individualist versus collectivist interpretations in the early reception of Debussy, and their contexts . S e ssi on 112

The French musical life around 1900 was dominated by collectivist conceptions of the (ideal) role of music, with rather well explicated aims and poetics, and heated debates. One of the main parties was the Academic, a form of extremely centralized education of citizens, according to which artistic technique was treated as a discipline, and a dogmatic rule poetics based on authority was the central tenet. In the late 19th and the early 20th centur y, it was on the defensive, though perhaps less than in other arts is this to be ascribed to an offensive of artistic individualism. In music, the main opponent of the Academy was a current (“the Franck School”) exposing historical idealism, invoking Catholicism and

Mondrian’s theory, painting and Paris studio Session 15

Using Karl Mannheim’s definition of utopia this paper investigates the idea of a perpetually deferred utopia in the work of Mondrian. The paper focuses on the use of his Paris studio as a laborator y in tandem with his evolving writings and neoplastic paintings. This method treats the studio as a spatial interface between the visual world of paintings and the textual world theories. The surface manipulations in the studio test ideas about the relationships of the interior to the city-at-large and shed light on Mondrian’s conception of a utopian world where the arts disappear in neoplasticism-as-life. The paper explains how Mondrian conceived of a deferred utopia with periodically changing criteria as a way of critically investigating concepts while propelling the work (studio, writing & painting) forward. The paper exposes contradictions in the method but also suggests that Mondrian’s conception of utopia, and its use as a tool rather than goal, remains a valuable and critical model today. This also challenges teleological interpretations

of both Mondrian’s work and utopia, seeing both (and modernism) as more process-oriented than generally believed.

la rs Diurlin: A synthesis of the arts in the experimental f ilm s of Peter K ylber g, in relation to the art theories of Wa ssily Ka ndinsk y & Arnold Schönberg . Session 1

lu i s d iaz A r ch i t e ct ure , Un ive r s it y o f Br igh ton , uk

j o sh ua Ditt rich : P r i m itivis m, P hoto montag e and Ethno g raphy in H an nah Hö ch ’s Fr o m an Et h n o gr aph ic Mus eum ( 1 9 2 4 -34) S e ssi on 94

Hannah Höch was a prolific visual artist associated with Berlin Dada. Her montage work of the 1920s juxtaposed images of mass culture and modern urban life to question evolving gender stereotypes of the Weimar era. Yet Höch’s work also extensively sampled ethnographic photography, and in particular her series “From an Ethnographic Museum” adds an ambivalent racial and colonial dimension to her social critique of Weimar Germany. I approach these challenging images (in which fragments of African masks, European nudes, and pictures from illustrated magazines collide in a placeless, sculptural void) as a kind of “contact zone” (Mar y Louise Pratt). In the layers and juxtapositions of a single work, we can see ethnography in tension with European modernity; fer vent primitivism clashing with a savvy critique of the exotic Other ; and a celebration of primal femininity alongside satiric condemnation of the “New Woman.” As fragments of images from Europe and its colonial peripher y come into contact and conflict with one another, Höch’s montages visualize the contact zone in their ver y tactile, material form, demanding a new mode of engagement with primivitism reinvisioned as a tool of a critical avant-garde aesthetic. j o sh ua Ditt rich i n st i tut e o f Co mmun icat ion , Cult ure an d T e c h nolog y, University of Toronto, CANADA

According to film scholar and avant-garde filmmaker Malcolm Le Grice, the whole abstract film movement can be seen in relationship to Wassily Kandinsky’s aesthetics. This paper aims to continue that line of argument and to particularly study the impact of Kandinsky’s art theories, as well as composer Arnold Schönberg’s ideas on composition, upon the Swedish experimental filmmaker, composer and painter Peter Kylberg. Kylberg was a unique figure in the landscape of Swedish film in the 1960s. In an industr y heavily laden by literar y adaptations and realism Kylberg solely represented a pure utopian vision of audiovisual synthesis of the arts influenced by the works of Schönberg and Kandinsky and their mutual negation of representation and tonality, favoring instead abstraction and atonality. Kylberg’s debut, the abstract oil painting in musical movement Cadence , premiered in Berlin in 1961 and his feature debut, the daring synesthesic and expressionistic audiovisual color experiment I, was screened at New York’s MOMA in 1967, both films featured his orchestral composistions in free tonality. Like his avant-garde peers Kylberg was an artisanal totalitarian artist, taking control over image, music, editing as well as scriptwriting. The result was to be a synthesized total work of art, echoing Richard Wagner’s idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk. la rs Diurlin Centre f or Lan guag e and L iterature, Lund University, SWEDEN

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CARLA ALEXIA do di:

M a rija n dov ic:

Ca i r o and Alexandria (Egypt): U topian and

Fro m Autarky to “ Barbarian” Cosm opolitanis m:

Dys topian Visions of U rban Modernity in Youn g

The E arly Avant-Garde Movements in Slovenia and

Mu si c an d Lit e r ary Pro duct ion .

Croatia

S e ssi on 9

Session 49

The Egyptian revolution of 25 of Januar y (2011) – which led to the overthrow of the regime of President Hosni Mubarak – was also called the ‘Revolution of the Youth’ (Thawrat al-Shabab). Young people and artists played a significant role in the protests. A new public culture appeared and many genres of arts emerged such as street art, music and different form of literature. Enthusiasm and hopes for a better future involved new utopian visions of modern life in the Egyptian cities. Following the latest political events (President Mohamed Morsi removal after the so called ‘June 30 Revolution’ of 2013), new cultural forms appeared in Egyptian cities in order to celebrate or criticize the new Egyptian ‘modernity’ and possible future. My purpose is to explore recent visions of modernity related to the Egyptian main cities (Cairo and Alexandria), in order to understand if/how there was a transition from utopian to dystopian images of the near future. For this aim, I will particularly examine the latest Egyptian young music and literar y production, such as rap/mahragan music and utopian and dystopian fiction. The final step of my research will be a comparison with cultural production (and transformation) which came from (and after) analogous revolutionar y phenomena of European modern histor y (e.g. the Italian protests of 1968).

The paper will discuss the most radical avant-garde movements in Slovenian and Croatian literature and other arts in the period 1914–1930. Special attention will be placed on their relationship to contemporar y cosmopolitan network of European avant-gardes and on their unique attempts in the 1920s to redefine the space of European arts and cultures. From this perspective, the early Croatian attempt (futurist circle of Zvrk in Zadar, Dalmatia) was slightly more promising than its Slovenian counterpart (The Podbevšek-Kogoj group and The Three Swans) that was autarkic and internationally unambitious. In contrast, the subsequent avant-garde wave (Zagreb/ Belgrade-based Zenitist circle of Micic and his Zenit, and its Trieste/Ljubljana-based successor Tank) attempted to place the Balkan avant-garde into the international arena with much greater success. Special attention will be given to one of the most provocative Zenitist utopias, namely the idea of a Slavic-Barbarian, a primitive genius, invading the rotten and decadent West. M a rija n dov ic Institute of Slov enia n Literature, ZRC SAZU, SLOVENIA

konsta ntina Dra kopoulou: guerrilla art in the streets of Athens: utopia in action

CARLA ALEXIA do di

Session 13

ITALIAN DEPART MENT, CAIRO UNIVERSITY – FACULTY OF ARTS , EG YPT

It is a well known fact that during the last few years of global financial turbulence, Greece is engulfed in her most acute debt crisis ever and currently experiencing harsh austerity measures imposed by the IMF and the EU in the form of stern rescue packages. Public dissent; intense social upheaval; urban poverty; political, social & economic

exclusion; unemployment; ongoing lack of social and health-care ser vices, all ser ve to inform the narrative of Athens’ decline – its own Age of Uncertainty – as this is depicted on urban walls and surfaces through paste-ups of drawings, murals, stencil graffiti and sprayed or painted slogans. Such artistic inter ventions in public space – based on the aesthetic of vandalism – reclaim urban space as a canvas for encouraging, communality, democracy, equality and love, while they challenge the dominant hegemony in a way that resists and defies all explanations. The politicized urban art ser ves as a reminder not to be complacent and highlights the fact that our contemporar y society is in constant need of something. There is always something missing, hidden, tacit, ineffable or unspoken, and while the artist cannot in any way or form fill or patch these gaps, he or she can certainly demonstrate their existence; reveal their inner workings; and bring them into view for ever yone to behold. This is a primarily critical and utopian enterprise that invites us to keep looking and keep articulating – even in the face of the grimmest of circumstances. We are dealing here with utopia in action whose future lies within the realm of the unknown. Be that as it may, this particular species of utopianism is a sine qua non in today’s Greece and even more so in our globalized world which is now facing yet another Age of Uncertainty. konstan t ina Drako po ulo u B y z a nt in e Ph ilo lo gy an d Fo lklo re , Sch o o l of P h i lo sophy University of Athens , GREECE

kons tan t in Dudakov-Kas h uro : Constructivist concept of sound: utopian music? S e ssi on 45

The paper assesses mostly underestimated theme – approaches to music, its theor y and social function in writings and practice of Russian constructivists. Among various trends in musical experimentation of the 1910’s?1930’s Russian

constructivism has never played distinct role, as there was no any single composer or noticeable event, which could be strictly labeled as constructivist. However, one should take into account few original and prolific projects, outlined in the early 1920’s by leading Proletkult theoreticians, as well as semi-musical events that took place mostly as a part of theatrical performances or as a mass Bolshevik festivals. By shedding light on this largely obscure phenomenon, we argue why and to what extent the constructivist sonic ideas may deser ve utopian feature and can they still be a reference point for contemporar y sound-art productions. konsta ntin Duda kov-Ka shuro of Com parative Studies in L iteratures and Cultures , Lomonosov M oscow State Univ ersity, RUSSIAN F EDERATION

El ena Dushechk ina / Елена Душечкина Антропонимический взрыв эпохи модернизма (От традиции к утопии) Session 26

После Октябрьского переворота были сняты ограничения на состав имен. Родители новорождённых детей получили полную свободу в наречении детей любым именем, что породило в обществе небывалую имятворческую инициативу. Результатом стало резкое увеличение количества присваиваемых имён. Ономасты назвали это явление „антропонимическим взрывом“. Имятворчество 1920–1930-х гг. свидетельствует о напряженной творческой работе населения. Это был настоящий авангардистский прорыв в „новый мир“, ведущий человечество в „светлое царство коммунизма“. Построение „нового мира” осознавалось в тесной связи с формированием „нового быта”, „нового календаря” и, конечно, „нового человека”, которому необходимо было входить в «жизнь“ с „новым именем“. Большинство возникших в это время имен были именами „идеологического звучания“

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(Виленин, Владилен, Сталий, Сталик, Революта, Октябрина, Восмарт, Революта, Авангард и многие другие, гораздо более изощренные). Поскольку личные имена, помимо идентификации человека, функционируют в качестве знаков и символов культуры, присвоение новых имен вводило новорождённых в теснейшее соприкосновение с коммунистической идеологией. Список этих имен может быть рассмотрен как своеобразная „антропонимическая модель“ советской идеологии, Когда к середине 1930-х гг. намеченная идеологическая траектория претерпела изменения, когда пришло осознание того, что мировая революция отодвигается на неопределенный срок, имятворческий процесс постепенно пошел на убыль. Изжили себя (за редким исключением) и утопические мессианские интенции, столь свойственные эпохе „антропонимического взрыва”.

Their works reveal the aspiration to achieve the synthesis of traditional and modern art forms for realizing an idea of new art. This idea was fulfilled in theoretical and creative works of several artists before being interrupted by the censorship during the dominance of socialist realism in the Soviet Union. The paper will investigate new visions and approaches which defined a shift in art and culture of the mentioned period. The arguments will be based on creative and theoretical works of the most distinguished Georgian modernist artists. natia Eba noidze Art History a nd Theory, Tbilisi State Aca demy of Art, GEORGIa

k atherine Ebury: Not a heaventree but a Utopia ( Joyce, Ulysses): Modernist Utopian Universes .

Ele na Dushechkina / Елена Д у шечкина

nat i a Eban o idz e : Modernism in Georgia: quest for a new idea of art S e ssi on 60

The 1910-20s, modernism in Georgia was one of the most distinguished phases in Georgian art histor y. Unlike European avant-garde, which was characterized by rebellious nature and radicalism, Georgian modernism except developing specific formal approaches was oriented towards traditional forms and intentionally kept traditional values. Medieval wall paintings and contemporar y European art became the bases for new artistic quest. Tbilisi, the capital of the countr y, with its multicultural environment and active artistic life had been formed as a cultural centre of the Caucasus. A flow of new cultural information fastened the development of processes. Georgian artists studied abroad and returning back they were actively involved in creating new cultural forms.

Session 54

This paper takes as its origin the moment in Ithaca when Leopold Bloom reflects on the nightsky as ‘heaventree of stars’ but then suggests that the spectacle of the cosmos is ‘a Utopia, there being no known method from the known to the unknown’. Joyce has in mind the ‘no place’ definition of utopia here, as the wider astronomical universe is characterized by myster y and unreality; but also suggests an apparent connection with Ulysses’s self-description of himself as ‘Noman’. In short, Bloom is ‘Noman’ and the cosmos of Ulysses is ‘no place’. I will use this moment to explore modernist authors’ constructions of the stars and the wider universe as utopian fictional spaces, considering especially Joyce’s and Woolf ’s differing use of the Einsteinian revolution to create avant-garde, politicized textual worlds. k atherine Ebury School of English, Univ ersity of Sheff ield, uk

m ar kus En de r & in grid fue rh apt e r:

nina enema rk :

“ Imm er e in e s Ko mme n de n t r äch t ig” - Uto pis che und

Mary and “the wicked April moon”: a ritual fight for

a p o kalyptische V isionen in der Z eitschri ft “ Der

religious regeneration in Hope Mirrlees’s Paris .

B r e nn e r ” 1910-1954

Session 80

S e ssi on 54

Die 1910 gegründete kunstund kulturkritische Innsbrucker Zeitschrift Der Brenner wurde zunächst von einer utopischer Idee des mit sich und der Natur in Einklang stehenden Menschen geprägt, die bald vom Konzept einer religiösen Individualität, die den Sprung in den Glauben wagt, überlagert wurde. Verschiedene Dichter und Philosophen betonten zunehmend die Schuld des Menschen und der erlösungsbedürftigen Schöpfung. Liebesutopien von der dionysisch-rauschhaften Verschmelzung von Mann und Frau trafen auf apokalyptische Vorstellungen, die zwischen Unschuld, Verstrickung, Sehnsucht nach Reinheit und Hoffnung auf Erlösung zu einem neuen Menschentum changierten. Der Vortrag zeichnet nach, wie der Brenner seine ursprüngliche partielle Aufgeschlossenheit gegenüber der expressionistischen Moderne, die von der Konzeption des Neuen Menschen inspiriert war, verliert. Es soll gezeigt werden, wie über einen Zeitraum von vier Jahrzehnten verschiedenste Vorstellungen von Utopien und Apokalypsen kompiliert werden, die nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in eine Synästhesie von eschatologisch-mystischen Visionen und einer wertkonser vativen, katholisch überformten Utopie von Dichtung als Offenbarung der verborgenen Heilsgeschichte münden, derzufolge der Dichter der Zukunft zur Wirklichkeit verhelfe, “indem er sie heute schon als möglich erscheinen” lasse.

This paper investigates the way in which Hope Mirrlees’s long experimental poem Paris (1920) enacts a performance of regenerative ritual in the wake of the War. Mirrlees (anticipating e.g. Eliot, John Cowper Powys, Mar y Butts) weaves primitive myth and ritual into a modern setting in order to refresh a spiritually barren, devastated modern world poised at a point of transition into an unknown future. Following specifically the thinking of Mirrlees’s intellectual mentor the classicist Jane Harrison, Paris seeks to effect this rejuvenation by excavating imaginatively the ’primitive’, pre-Olympian matriarchal potencies of which Harrison writes. Within the liminal, dreamlike atmosphere of the poem – unpredictable, unstable but also full of affective possibility, an atmosphere mirrored in the unwieldy texture of the poem – these powerful mythical female figures are invoked and contrasted with the figure of Mar y belonging to the descendant of classical religion, Catholicism, which is presented as a defunct per version of its earlier incarnation. The ritual, seeking to purify and retool conventional definitions of religious experience, offers, if not hope, then at least a vision of a radical rebirth of the Church, reflecting the modernist quest for dissident spiritual meaning. nina enema rk School of Critica l Studies (English Literature), Univ ersity of Gla sgow, uk

m ar k us En de r Fo r sch un gs in s t it ut Br e n n e r-Ar ch iv, Un ive rsity of I n n sbruck, aus t r ia i n g r i d Fue r h apt e r Fo r sch un gs in s t it ut Br e n n e r-Ar ch iv, Un ive rsity of

ma ria Engström: Post-Imperial Sublime: Alexey Beliayev-Guintovt’s neo-avant-garde dreams of Eurasian Empire Session 59

I n n sbruck, aus t r ia

Post-Soviet imperial conser vatism is an extremely eclectic and contradictor y amalgam of

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traditionalism, Soviet nostalgia and radicalism.The return to the Avant-Garde and Stalinist aesthetics and reassessment of the Soviet period have become a massive phenomenon in Russia, which can be explained by different factors, for instance, the strengthened role of the state during Putin’s terms as president and the need of seductive and mass appealing political imager y. The neoconser vative discourse that emerged in the late Soviet period in the midst of the Moscow and Petersburg non-conformist underground is today in the process of becoming the ideological mainstream. One example of contemporar y radical imperial art is the work of Alexey Beliayev-Guintovt (b. 1965), who has been the art designer of the Neo-Eurasian movement since 2002 and became famous in 2008 as a winner of the Kandinsky Prize, the most important award for contemporar y art in Russia. I will discuss his projects Novonovosibirsk from 2000 and New Moscow from 2010 in which he is offering a neo-avant-garde vision the Eurasian Empire. m ar i a e n gs t rö m

co sa na e ram: Writing Of(f) Dada History S e ssi on 47

In 1931, George Ribemont-Dessaignes published fragments from his never achieved project of a Histoire de Dada in the monthly journal La Nouvelle Revue Française (No. 213 in June and No. 214 in July). Tristan Tzara’s corrosive reply immediately followed in the August issue of the same prestigious publication. Starting from a close reading of Ribemont-Dessaignes’s almost forgotten texts, the paper analyzes in detail his theoretical claims. The argument discusses RibemontDessaignes’s dialogue with Tzara as well as the consequences of writing of/off a histor y of the Dada movement. Why did Tzara react against RibemontDessaignes? How do such short pieces contribute to a definition of Dadaism? More specifically, what are the similarities, differences and contiguities between

Ribemont-Dessaignes and other Dadaists who wrote theoretical texts, such as Tristan Tzara or Georges Hugnet? The rapprochement between words and life or their écart thereof leads to a permanent tension in the life of Dadaism. By looking at lesser-known aspects of Dada collective memor y, we can reveal new knots and dots in the multifarious tapestr y of the movement. cosa na era m Modern Lan guag es and L iterature, University of the Pacific, USA

erik Erla nson: Ritual Poetry and the Spiritualization of Experience in the 1960’s Session 53

This paper investigates ritual structures in poetr y from the 60’s and 70’s. I argue that there are structural similarities between a certain use of writing enacted by poets such as Inger Christensen, John Ashber y, and Michel Deguy (among others) and the function of writing in Hellenistic and Roman spiritual exercises. Building on this structural similarity I claim that a certain spiritualization of experience takes place in their poetr y, i. e. in order for experience to take place, in order for the world to appear, it is necessar y to perform a number of transformative operations on the subject. Furthermore, I examine how this ‘ritual poetr y’ or ‘ritual use of writing’ is at once seperated from and related to experimental poetr y, such as concrete poetr y and the aesthetic program of OuLiPo. I argue that they sometimes use the same poetic strategies, but to different ends. Where experimental performs operations on language, a ‘ritual poet’ performs operations with language on the relations that constitute the subject’s mode of being. erik Erla nson Compa rativ e Literature, Lund Univ ersity, SWEDEN

e m e l i n e Eude s : Let’s go placeshaking! Part 2. Inhabiting/ Researching public space on a guerilla mode. S e ssi on 13

What if today’s avant-guarde is actually not recognised as avant-guarde, because it is not occurring under the traditional artistic mode? And what if inquiring about this phenomenon can only be done from non-artistic disciplines such as geography, economics, political sciences? This proposal stems from a research work about guerilla gardening practices in the Paris Greater Area. Having such a research object brought me to design an adapted methodology which has transformed myself into a guerilla researcher. Using my activist background to get acquainted with the community I had to follow, browsing from squats to forbidden lands, and communicating about this in the academic field (even teaching it) has led me to define and argue about my own position and status in the research world. Coming from the art world and being a Dr. in aesthetics, I am now a researcher in a laborator y mixing geographers and economists, where we mostly work about urban public policies. For this presentation, I want to look both at this new urban guerilla culture, its creative processes and the way it affects academic reflexivity and its categorization work. Hoping to shake not only our ever yday practices, but also the way we, academics, look at ourselves. e m e l i ne Eude s G e og r aphy, LADYSS-CNRS , F RANCE

V lad imir Fe s h ch e n ko : Dystopia vs factuality: E. Zamyatin’s We and E.E. Cummings’ EIMI S e ssi on 45

The paper juxtaposes two experimental prose writings of the early Soviet time: E. Zamyatin’s dystopia We and E.E. Cummings’ Soviet travelogue-

cum-novel EIMI, “I AM”. Both texts contain caustic satire of the early Soviet society. In the first, far better known Zamyatin’s novel, the narration unfolds in the dystopian genre, depicting an imaginar y world of the future “One State”. By contrast, the less studied Cummings’ epic portrays the Stalinist totalitarian state on the basis of the author’s documentar y evidence of visiting Soviet Russia in 1931. At that, both texts are created in the form of a diar y – Zamyatin’s narrator’s notes, in the first case, and American visitor’s travel notes, in the second. The novel We appears as the first specimen of dystopia as a literar y genre, whereas Cummings’ avant-garde travelogue is modeled as quasi-fictional, which, too, represents a new hybrid genre. Both analyzed anti-Soviet writings employ the techniques of the psychological “stream of consciousness”, which allows to consider them as modernist narratives of different subgenres (dystopia, on the one hand, and non-fictional or quasi-fictional travelogue, on the other). Vla dimir F eshchenko Depart ment o f Theoretical Ling uistics , I nstitute o f Linguistics , RUSSIAN F EDERATION

Ca rl findley III: Innocence & Erotic Utopia in Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities Session 28

In The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil re-defines innocence in modernist, erotic, and utopic terms as an imaginative state of mind from which an alternative model of pan-European regeneration might arise. Through the innovative combination of erotic imager y and eschatological language that fundamentally upends the traditional conception of innocence as a moral and religious concept, Musil examines how innocence can emerge through a series of moral and erotic transgressions. The erotic experimentation of the hero and heroine in The Man Without Qualities , the brother and sister, Ulrich and Agathe, and their search for a post-moral, liminally erotic, dream-like utopia,

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results in a form of innocence that ser ves as a modern foil to earlier, more ancient conceptions of innocence as a morally simplistic and untutored state. Drawing on concepts such as Hegelian Aufhebung as dialectic sublation, Schiller’s “regained naiveté” and Nietzsche’s post-moral “second innocence,” this paper demonstrates how Musilian innocence emerges from both the shedding of attachments to fin de siècle haute-bourgeois morals and the retreat into unconventional forms of eroticism. Musil offers a radically new concept of innocence as an alternative model for socio-moral regeneration, one that avoids the impending nihilism of collapsing social structures and gender roles. d r . C ar l fin dle y III I n t e r dis ciplinary St udie s , Me r ce r Un ive rs it y, USA

f i n n Fo r dh am: M o d ernism and the avant-garde transf ormed: U to pias in transition and the outbreak of W orld Wa r II. S e ssi on 63

The outbreak of World War I was itself remembered and echoed at the outbreak of World War II. Histor y was repeating itself, not as farce but rather as tragedy; as frightened pessimism rather than enthusiastic optimism, as Harold Nicholson wrote. In the repetition of a crisis, cyclical histor y seemed to confound teleological, Hegelian and Whiggish histories. This cyclicality was reflected in works by Joyce, Eliot and Benjamin, skeptical of the Messianic goals of Utopian progress. The crisis however brought on the ‘telos’ of war aims, and Utopian thinking persisted, appearing in surrealism, socialism, liberalism and spiritualism. By examining the diverse Utopian reactions at this period, I will question the quality characteristically projected onto the period, perceived as a rupture in the culture of rupture. I will suggest that, by experiencing a rupture of a radically different form than had been imagined, avant-garde thinking and cultural activity, begins to undergo its most important

metamorphosis since the Russian Revolution. War will come to be seen as a necessity, a means to an end of preser ve practices whose struggle aims for a new and different order – a Utopian order of representation and critique. finn F ordha m Univ ersity of London, uk

laura F rav el: Staging Modern Ruins: Eugene Berman’s Dystopian Cityscapes of the 1930s Session 14

Eugene Berman’s initial impression of Paris was of a dark and empty city. In the early 1930s, his oil sketches revealed skewed buildings in dimly lit side streets. By the end of the decade, his landscapes increasingly drew on allegor y, and were populated with the mythological figures that he encountered in his work for the stage. This paper will examine the development Berman’s cityscapes throughout the 1930s within the context of his set designs for the theater. I argue that in response to the growing sense of crisis in Europe, Berman moved away from urban scenes and instead sought to stage a world already beyond war. His early dystopian alleyways gradually transformed into post-apocalyptic ruins. I also consider how the architectural forms in Berman’s cityscapes changed upon his arrival in the United States at the end of the decade. Drawing on a large collection of postcards, Berman looked to the past – both the ancient past and a more recent histor y – in piecing together fantastical urban spaces. Displaced, the artist drew on his memories of Europe to create a conceptual alternative to the present crisis. His staged ruins offered a space for imaginative projection, a retreat from modern life. laura F rav el Depart ment o f A rt, University of North Carolina at Cha pel Hill, USA

v e r on ica Fr ige n i: The messianic modernity of Antonio Tabucchi. From Utopia to Heterotopia S e ssi on 52

Taking the lead from the analysis of the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi, specifically by complicating his interaction with both modernity and postmodernity, I intend to posit the image of Walter Benjamin’s constellation as a metaphor to innovatively think the way in which Tabucchi fictionalises several temporal modes in his texts – for instance how, assuming a backwards standpoint, he performs what Benjamin defines as weak messianic power – as well as a conceptual tool to reground the historicity of his theoretical positioning between the two epochs. Since in his texts modernity and postmodernity become the two faces of a unique experience founded on a mutuality between time and meaning, I shall delineate my interpretation of Tabucchi’s messianic modernity – also in Agamben’s terms – as the attempt to fully realize those unfulfilled potentialities of the modern through the historicalontological categor y of the possible and of the repetition. Besides I shall contend that what today goes under the name of liquid modernity already appears in Tabucchi as the attempt to reground the writer’s approach to the past, for which detaching from postmodernism and disentangling modernity from the teleological process to which it seems doomed, are, for the author, one and the same thing.

was irrational: full of historically-accumulated nuance, nationally peculiar and a barrier to international peace. The desire to produce an international writing system produced two general approaches. The first approach – pursued by Herbert Bayer, Jan Tschichold – accepted alphabetical orthography as the ultimate stage of writing’s development and sought only to clarify and improve it. The second approach rejected the alphabet. The alphabet was an arbitrar y system of signs which required learning. Iconic writing, it was hoped, could be spontaneously understood by ever yone. This idea provoked Otto Neurath’s Isotype, as well as experiments with photographic-writing by László Moholy-Nagy. Aspects of these two approaches were uniquely synthesised in Kurt Schwitters’ Systemschrift project. Schwitters’ pursuit of an alphabet with systematic relationships between symbols and sounds, lead to him to a degree of phonetic analysis unmatched by his peers. Further, the characters in Systemschrift were not entirely arbitrar y, as they iconically represented the articulator y position of the vocal organ. Schwitters’ project was largely misunderstood by his peers, and remains overlooked today. This paper will outline the grammatological and phonetic ingenuity of Schwitters’ project. robin F uller School o f Lan guages Literatures & Cultural Studies , Trinity College Dublin, IRELAND

v e r on ica Frige n i I tal i a n St udie s , Un ive r s it y o f Ke n t, uk

Reinhold fäth: Die Künstlerkolonie Dornach 1913 und die anthroposophische K ünstler gruppe AENI GM A,

r o bi n Fulle r: kurt schwitters’ alphabet of utopia

M ünchen 1918 Session 40

S e ssi on 3

Many designers in inter-war Weimar Germany, tasked themselves with creating an international form of printed writing. Existent writing

Seit den 1960er Jahren wurde die kunstgeschichtliche Forschung zunehmend auf Verbindungen von avantgardistischen Künstlern der europäischen Moderne mit spirituell-okkulten

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Strömungen (Esoterik, Spiritismus, Theosophie, u.a.) aufmerksam (1). Wenig erforscht wurde bisher die anthroposophische Künstler-Kolonie Dornach, die seit 1913 ihre Utopie einer „Gemeinschaft freier Geister“ in der Schweiz zu realisieren suchte. Ein Zentralgebäude, das erste Goetheanum, ein gewaltiger Holzbau mit zwei Kuppeln, beschnitzt und im Inneren bemalt, wurde 1913 begonnen, 1920 eröffnet und Silvester 1922/23 durch Brand zerstört. Während der Bauzeit gelang es, das Ideal eines Gesamkunstwerkes weitgehend zu verwirklichen, indem Künstler und Helfer aus 17 Ländern – Angehörige der verfeindeten Nationen während des Ersten Weltkrieges – friedlich miteinander arbeiteten, während der Kanonendonner von der nahegelegenen französisch-deutschen Grenze hörbar war. Anhand von Bildmaterial soll das damalige Geschehen veranschaulicht und erörtert werden. Neben dem ländlichen Dornacher Zentrum wurde 1918 in München die anthroposophische Künstlergruppe AENIGMA (2) gegründet, die eng mit den avantgardistischen Künstlerkreisen Deutschlands und Österreichs verbunden war, und zugleich einen eigenen anthroposophisch ausgerichteten Weg verfolgte, um die Kunst mit sozialen Zielen – jenseits von l’art pour l’art – zu verbinden, mit Zielen in Richtung Gesamtkunstwerk, die dem „esoterischen“(3) Weimarer Bauhaus verwandt waren.

Cinzia ga llo: modernist myths in Marino Moretti’s lapis Session 6

As Luperini asserts, the crepuscolari represent the first example of modernist Italian poetr y. The analysis of Marino Moretti’s work, in particular the collection Poesie scritte col lapis, confirm this. First of all, the crisis of the poet’s conception as a prophet is evident: “Poeti, vecchi fanciulli, /[...]/, il mondo vi chiama grulli!”, as Moretti says in Il salotto rococò. A sense of foreignness and disorientation prevails, making one feel sad, lovely, wear y, melancholy (“Dove son io? Perché son qui? Che attendo?”). So the dominant colour is “il colore triste di tutto /il mondo che non à sole / e piange tacito e vuole /vestirsi di mezzo lutto”. The places (the convent, the hospital), the things (the travelling bags, the books), the situations (the dream, the leaving) transmit this sense of exclusion, so “Mi pare che i miei sensi, il mio cer vello /i miei pensieri, tutto mi sia tolto”. Regression to childishness and withdrawing into a life “senza ideale” are other signs of exclusion. In this way, Moretti elaborates subiects peculiar to Leopardi e Pascoli in an original way. The combination of innovation and tradition, typical of Modernism, is evident ad structural level too. Cinzia ga llo

1

Sixten Ringbom: The Sounding Cosmos. A Study in the Spiritualism of Kandinsky and the Genesis of Abstract Painting. Acta Academiae Aboensis, Vol. 83 nr 2. ?bo, 1970 Maurice Tuchman; Judy Freeman: The Spititual in Art – Abstract Painting 1890 – 1985. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986. Okkultismus und Avantgarde: Von Much bis Modrian 1900-1915. Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1995. L’Europe des esprits ou la fascination de l’occulte. 1750-1950. Musée d’Art moderne Strasbourg, 2012

2

Siehe Katalog: AENIGMA, Kunsthaus Das Reich, München 1918.

3

Christoph Wagner : Johannes Itten – Wassily Kandinsky – Paul Klee. Das Bauhaus und die Esoterik. 2006.

R e i n h o ld fät h K u nst im So z iale n , HKS Ott e rs b e r g, G ERMANY

F ilologia moderna , Cata nia Univ ersity, ITALY

Rubén Ga llo: Marcel Proust’s Erotic Utopia Session 69

Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu has been read as a war novel, as a chronicle of the belleépoque on the wake of its disappearance, and as an arrière-garde project. It can also be read as a manifesto for an erotic utopia, for a world in which erotic and aesthetic pleasures go hand-in-hand, and for a society in which gender and sexual identities are never fixed but always malleable. In Time Regained, World War I

and sadomasochistic practices make an appearance, inviting readers to draw a parallel between erotic warfare and militar y sadism. This paper will analyze the dimensions and characteristics of Marcel Proust’s erotic utopia, as charted in his novel. The discussion will also address Proustian erotic dystopias, since utopia is always the flipside of dystopia.

ingrid Ga ltung Dep. o f Forei gn Lan g uages and Translation, Univ ersity of Ag der, NORWAY

dia na ga rv in: How to Build the Per f ect Mother: Rationalist Obstetric Clinics , Taylorist Breast f eeding, and the Construction of Industria l M otherhood in Fa scist Ita ly

Ru bé n Gallo

Session 72

P r i nce ton , USA

i n g r id Galt un g: gender and cosmopolitanism in jean rhys’s good morning , midnight S e ssi on 92

The proposed paper explores Jean Rhys’s late modernist novel Good Morning, Midnight (1939) through the lens of cosmopolitanism. Narrated from the marginal position of the transcultural flâneuse, the novel critically examines the processes of social construction and classification of gender and national identities in a fictionalized late-thirties Paris. Per vaded with references to beauty and fashion regimes, the novel presents a society that valorizes exteriority and artifice. The normative version of woman is prescribed by the capitalist marketplace, embodied by the department store’s display mannequins. In a parallel fashion, the 1937 Paris Exposition, which forms a part of the novel’s backdrop, showcased idealized representations of national identities. Thus, oppressive and exclusionar y templates govern individual and communal identities. Drawing on recent literature on modernism and cosmopolitanism, the paper investigates the ways in which Rhys’s modernist practice expresses a gendered cosmopolitanism which envisions a transcultural, transnational community based on “the touch of the human hand.” With particular attention to the novel’s imager y of coldness and hardness, the paper reads the novel as a critique and challenge to its time and cultural context.

In Fascist Italy, the Regime used Rationalist obstetric clinics as a form of architectural propaganda to demonstrate the modernity and scientific acumen of the National Board for the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood (ONMI). In this talk, I will use film stills of ideal clinics from ONMI’s propagandistic film Alle Madri d’Italia (1935) to suggest that the film’s denigration of the midwife, the former authority of medicine in the domestic sphere, parallels its endorsement of the Regime-affiliated doctor and government clinics. I contend that this dichotomy plays out through the rhetoric of moral hygiene: the film fuses imager y of literal and metaphoric cleanliness in a succession of public and private spaces in a bid to change women’s attitudes towards the prevailing medical establishment. Ultimately, I argue that Alle Madri d’Italia’s ideal Rationalist clinics ser ve to naturalize a new model of parenting that we might term “industrial motherhood:” a factor y-like vision of childcare, wherein the doctor functions as an omniscient factor y boss, and the mother as a biddable worker engaged in ceaseless production of children. dia na ga rv in Roma nce Studies , Cornell Univ ersity, USA

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i r i na G e n ova:

Vibek e Petersen gether:

I n s e arch of utopian visual lang uag e or visual

Futurism and Art Deco in Denmark

la ng uag e to uni f y the avant- gardes – the traffic o f

Session 108

i m ag e s in t h e Avan t-garde magaz in e s S e ssi on 60

The image aspect of the avant-garde magazines, their outlook and the reproductions on their pages are the focal point of this presentation. Since the second decade of the 20th centur y, the magazines and books of the avant-gardes in Europe had become a powerful means of quick dissemination of images. For the first time those editions made possible the wide circulation and propaganda of images created in the contemporaneity. The typography occupation was characteristic of the editors at that time. The protagonists of those editions often manifested themselves as artists too. In this sense, the Bulgarian editor, poet and translator Geo Milev was no exception. As a central knot in a wide net of avantgarde magazines, Der Sturm channels a great flow of information. Images are of particular interest to us in this case. In the short period between the end of World War I and 1925, Bulgarian magazines Vezni [Scales] and Plamak [Flame], just like the ephemeral Crescendo, participated in the large exchange network, created among the numerous long-lived and shortlived avant-garde magazines in different European countries. The translations of literar y works as well as the reproduced images and photographs of equal merit ser ve of the idea to establish a common language of the avant-garde.

If one tries to appreciate the impact of the Futurism in Denmark, one has to understand its links to the Art Deco style. Some of the paintings by the Danish artist Jais Nielsen (1885-1961) have been labelled as a mix of Cubism and Futurism. What needs to be studied more is how the Futurist movement created a link between avant-garde art and modern life in Denmark. Danish art and design have always been looked at separately. What the Futurist movement did – much more than Cubism and Expressionism – was to merge art and design together. Not only Jais Nielsen but also other Danish artist such as Svend Johansen (1890-1970), Mogens Lorentzen (1892-1953), Georg Jacobsen (18871976) and several more had their artworks labelled “Decorative Cubism” or unpretentious or humorous or ambiguous. In 2003, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London mounted the exhibition Ar t Deco, art and design were merged together. For me, it opened a new way of looking at the Danish art from 1920 to the 1930s, with Futurism as a ver y important base. In my paper, focus will be on the issue of Futurism and Art Deco, looking at the Futurist contributions to the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels, in order to define the links and overlaps, and then focus specific on Jais Nielsen’s works. Vibek e Petersen gether

i r i na G e n ova Art S tudies and H istory o f Culture, New Bulgarian U n i v e rsity, BULGARIA

pietro Girgenti: Giorgio Caproni’s intertextuality in Il muro della terra: fragments shored against human ruins Session 16

Giorgio Caproni is one of the most original Italian poet of the second half of the twentieth centur y; the last part of his poetr y mixes a prosaic, musical

style which reminds of Saba, and a metaphysical, tragic attitude which leads to Eliot and Montale. In particular, the use of intertextuality in Il muro della terra (1975) establishes some relevant connections to Modernism. Firstly, I will show how Caproni, who primarily refers to Dante’s Commedia, Beethoven, and the opera or operetta, uses quotations and references as “fragments shored against his ruins”: so, unlike Postmodernism, he can both innovate and place himself into tradition, as well as talking about the crisis of human language while being supported by other authors’ words. Secondly, I will examine Caproni’s technique of composition inspired by Beethoven’s theme and variations, made by repeated keywords which are part of dreamlike recurrent narrations: entering the world of the fable, Caproni builds a sort of new mythology, making his verses easy to read and memorize but alienating at the same time. Moreover, the recurrence of the desert landscape, or of images representing emptiness and disappearance, outline a dystopian world comparable to The Waste Land or Montale’s works.

and the process of Modernization encountered the recruitment of Modernism. The reception of the European modernist movements in Greek theatre formed part of a general reaction against the native histor y dramas and ‘local colour’ comedies and vaudevilles of the nineteenth centur y. This took place against the background of the language question, which became a widespread issue at the turn of the centur y. Both contemporar y Greek theatre criticism and post-war theatre historiography have pointed out the influence of foreign movements (mainly Ibsenism and Symbolism) on the Greek dramatists of the era. I suggest that the overall result was an incongruous introduction of Modernism as Modernization within the overall fixed focus of the Greek theatre on a kind of Europeanization. a ntonis Glytzouris School of Dra ma , Aristotle Univ ersity of Thessa lonik i, GREECE

irina Golovacheva : Brave New World and Russian avant-garde Session 34

p i e t r o G irge n t i Lat i n culture and lang uag e, Colle g io della G uastalla, Mon z a ( MB) , ITALY

an ton is G lyt z o ur is : Modernist and/or Modernized: Turn-of-the-Century Modern Greek Theatre with a Foot in Both Camps S e ssi on 7

Obviously, we all know that there was no single European theatre Modernism. But, all in all, the picture becomes even more complex when linked to the reception of theatre modernism by ‘regional’ societies such as the Athenian ‘fin-de-siècle’. This paper addresses to the non-familiarized with Modern Greek theatre English speaking reader ; and the particular issue that it attempts to discuss forms a kind of short-circuit which took place in the Greek Theatre of the 1890s, when the concept of Modernity

The poetics of Aldous Huxley’s famous Utopia is related to his views of Modernism at large and Russian Avant-garde in particular. The prevailing tenor of his essays of the 1920s devoted to modern Russian art is rather disdainful. In them he also discusses the issue of the Russian Revolution. In 1920 Huxley reviewed the freshly published translation of Alexander Blok’s poem The Twelve. In spite of his disapproval, Huxley borrowed from Blok his messianic vision of the Revolution. In the review Huxley anticipated Nikolai Berdyaev’s ideas about the Russian Revolution that gained currency only after the publication of The End of Our Time (1924) which Huxley read in 1927 later to use for the epigraph for Brave New World. The correlation of the Bolshevik ideology and revolutionar y aesthetics is the theme of Huxley’s seminal essay The New Romanticism (1931). Here

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one finds his criticism of formalism that, in his view, manifests “a romantic and sentimental admiration of machines.” To prove his point Huxley, surprisingly, quotes a translation of Vladimir Mayakovski’s poem. The Chicago cityscape, represented in Mayakovski’s 150 000 000 (1919-1920), ser ved Huxley as an artistic model for his futuristic Fordian London which is six hundred years in the future. i r i na G o lovach e va P h i lo lo gical Facult y, St.Pe t e r s burg Stat e Univ ersity, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

al e x go o dy: ‘ i n e xtremis’: violence and erotic dreamin g in the ava nt- garde poetries o f Baroness E lsa, Mina Loy and J oyce Man s o ur . S e ssi on 80

This paper explores the dreams and fantasies of erotic encounter in the poetr y of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Mina Loy and Joyce Mansour. All three writers have been connected to prominent avant-garde movements that expressed differing responses to women, the body and the erotic; Baroness Elsa with Dada, Loy with Futurism, Mansour with Surrealism. This paper will read their erotic poetries as a dialogue with the masculinist selves articulated in the aesthetic rhetorics of these avantgardes, examining the linguistic and formal strategies of their work and their connection to an imagined, amator y body. Each writer articulates a contrasting conflation of violence, sex and the negation of the forces of female creativity but all three, this paper will argue, utilise the heuristic value of poetr y. As the lover’s body is violently deconstructed or attacked in their poetries, so the language and form of the poetr y undergoes an intense de-formation, rupturing the closure of the lyric and reimagining a new connection between subject and object (of desire). By examining the violent forces that emerge at poetic moments of extremis – forces that deconstruct the lovers’ bodies

and break down syntax and composition – this paper will show how Baroness Elsa, Loy and Mansour redream the avant-garde self. a lex goody En glish and Modern Lan g uages , Oxf ord B rookes Univ ersity, uk

roni Grén: Surrealism and the poetic lie of animality Session 83

Although the dark primitivistic tendencies of the Surrealist movement have been much debated, the question of the primacy of the animal world has been constantly overlooked. From Paul Éluard to André Breton, and from Max Ernst’s collages to early works of Luis Buñuel the animal world was often seen either as a counterforce of the bourgeois world of work criticized in the Surrealist arts, and/ or as an emblem of violent and sacred forces situated in the subconscious. In these limits the animal was repeatedly given a curious and paradoxical status – often neglected even by the artists themselves – which opened representational possibilities from worst sexual nightmares to utopian visions. Finally, in 1947, this way of seeing the animal world had its logical outcome in a theoretical work when the extra-academic (then Surrealist) philosopher Georges Bataille wrote his Theor y of Religion in which he stated that the poetics (i.e. the arts) and the sacred had their mutual origin in the so-called ”poetic lie of animality”. But how animality succeeded to get this unusual status in the works of the Surrealists? And by what measures animality took its place as the border of Surrealist dreamland? roni Grén Art History, Univ ersity of Turk u, F INLAND

p e rtt i G rö n h o lm: Nostalgia for the modern . Re-imagining the avantgarde in the music of Kraftwerk S e ssi on 112

As an iconic electro pop act Kraftwerk have had a ver y distinct way of looking into the past. Especially in the 1970s they sang about the Autobahns, railways and radio in a way that suggested that the band is more interested in the past than the future. Kraftwerk seemed to celebrate the power of human technology and predicted a future that was saved by human creativity and man-machine symbiosis. I argue that Kraftwerk should be understood not only as a modernist band but as a group that was inspired by the past futures and the histor y of modernism. Kraftwerk were inspired by the social progress achieved by technical and artistic advancement in the Weimar era Germany and during the post-war reconstruction in the 1950s. In Kraftwerk’s concept nostalgic reflections on modernism are mixed with retro-futurist, even ironical look on the past. For example, German expressionism, the Bauhaus School and the films of Fritz Lang were constantly referred and reinterpreted in albums such as Radio-activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977) and The Man-Machine (1978). Kraftwerk transformed pieces of traumatic histor y into an alternative basis for West German youth in its search for identity in the 1970s. p e rtt i G rö n h o lm G e n e r al His to ry, Un ive r s it y o f Tur ku, SUO MI

r i i k k a h aapalain e n : Rediscovering Utopia in Francis Alÿs’ When Faith Moves Mountains (2002) S e ssi on 75

According to Bertolt Brecht utopia emerges where ”etwas fehlt”, something is missing. Hence, utopia is to be found in ever yday life as a tendency towards something that is not yet; a weak potentiality that is not yet articulated nor imagined.

Utopia as ‘something is missing’ calls for open structures and hospitality for the unknown. In art, this could mean temporar y repositioning of the familiar and insignificant. Familiar but insignificant were indeed the sand dunes just outside Lima, Peru, where When Faith Moves Mountains, a participator y art project initiated by Belgian artist Francis Alÿs took place in 2002. The project involved hundreds of volunteers, who were assigned to move one of the dunes 10 centimetres from its original position with shovels. This one undistinguished sand dune was temporarily transformed into a significant centre, where new set of relations and potentialities could emerge. In my presentation I will examine the utopian aspects of this monumental art project. riik k a ha a pa la inen Depart ment o f Philosophy, History, Culture and Art, Univ ersity of Helsink i, F INLAND

sylv ia Ha kopia n: Children’s U topia, Fascist Utopia. An Analysis of Children’s Textbooks and Subjection Under Italian Fa scism Session 72

In this paper, I concentrate on the way in which elementar y school textbooks contributed to the Fascist subjection of children in Italy. Using Louis Althusser’s Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatus as my framework, I discuss the ways in which the Fascist subjection of children found its roots in Giovanni Gentile’s 1923 Education Reforms. I argue that Gentile’s initiatives with the “Commissione centrale per l’esame dei libri di testo” laid the groundwork for a specific textual apparatus that would subject children to Fascist ideology. Within the body of my thesis, I ask: what do Italian Fascist textbooks and education reforms assume about children, Italian nationalism, families, and learning; what are their utopian impulses? My answer appears on the course of my close readings

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of the Gentilian reforms in addition to passages taken from textbooks published by the Libreria dello Stato between 1928 – 1944. My findings, for instance, reveal an enigmatic and paradoxical representation of Italian children as both mature yet naïve figures and lead me to raise skepticism regarding the subjection of children to Fascism. This then allows me to discuss the presumed failures of the Fascist project within the educational apparatus and relate it to limitations within Althusser’s notion of ideology. sy lv i a Hako pian R o m a nce St udie s , Co rn e ll Un ive r s it y, USA

h e r b e rt Hart e l: The Transcendental Painting Gro up, 1938-1941: Ab s traction and Idealism in the S outhwestern U n i t e d Stat e s S e ssi on 96

The Transcendental Painting Group was a small, short-lived coterie of painters who worked in abstract styles in the 1930s to 1940s while living in New Mexico and California. This period in the histor y of American art is one in which figurative styles and socially aware subjects dominated. The most famous American artists of this period include Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Ben Shahn, and Jacob Lawrence. The interest in current social and political issues and America’s cultural and historical identity and uniqueness isolated the United States artistically from what was happening contemporaneously in Europe, where Surrealism flourished and abstraction was sustained by Piet Mondrian, Josef Albers, Lazslo Moholy-Nagy, and Jean Helion. The continuation of modernist, abstract art in America during the Great Depression and World War II is commonly overlooked. It is important to remember that numerous European artists fled occupied Europe at this time, and these artists brought firsthand knowledge of European modernism to Americans eager to learn about it. What is far less known is

that there were many artists active during this period who sought to organize their efforts and resources to promote abstract art that adhered to the ideals of the pioneers of abstraction in Europe in the decade of World War I and the Soviet Revolution. Many of these artists who were so committed to a utopian world born from the promulgation of abstraction were not living in the big cities of the Northeast, but were spread across the United States, in particular New Mexico and California. In 1938, several of them – Raymond Jonson, Emil Bisttram, Agnes Pelton, Lawren Harris, Stuart Walker, Florence Miller Pierce, Horace Towner Pierce, Ed Garman, and Will Lumpkins – came together to form the Transcendental Painting Group. It was legally chartered as a non-profit organization in the state of New Mexico, issued its organizational bylaws and manifesto, and organized several exhibitions of works by its members for the several years it exists. After 1941, the members had dispersed to various locales, some were ser ving in the militar y, the talented Walker died young, and financial problems took their toll on the struggling organization. The Transcendental Painting Group was eventually formally disbanded a few years after it had ceased all group activities. Although it was a short-lived experiment whose success was minimal, it is one of the numerous idealistic, utopian collectives of the inter-war period that advocated and upheld the original goals and ideals of abstract art. It deser ves wider recognition for the example it set. Although there is not much to constitute a common style for the Transcendental Painting Group, the works by its members from this period were motivated by a shared utopian promise for abstraction and exude this optimism with their effects of shimmering light, evocative space, cosmic forms, and esoteric, mystical imager y. herbert Ha rtel F ine Arts , Hofstra Univ ersity, USA

i r m e li h autamäki:

sa ra h hayden:

Rationalization in Modernism

Mina Loy as ‘sleeping philosopher’; her Visitation as

S e ssi on 110

Breton’s dream that thinks . Session 22

Theodor Adorno presented in his philosophy of modern art ideas that open out a general possibility for comparison of different modernisms. According to Adorno with the liberation of modern musical material from the presuppositions of classical music there arose the possibility of mastering it technically. Schoenberg’s serialism is an example of this development, which Adorno calls “rationalization” in modern art. It is well known that Kandinsky’s orientation to experiments that led to abstract painting come from Schoenberg’s music. These experiments encouraged Kandinsky to develop an entire system of visual elements whose idea corresponds to music. This means that what Adorno called rationalization in modern art holds not only on music but also in painting. Kandinsky got ver y little understanding to his experimental system within his day; it was taken too formalistic and technical. However, several similar theoretical systems were under development within 1920s: Paul Klee’s and Malewich’s pedagogical systems are examples of these. My questions are: have the humanities today better understanding of these theoretical systems? What are general theoretical requirements necessar y to reconsider such rationalized systems in modern art? Can we benefit form recent developments in the natural sciences like cognitive neuroscience in exploring experimental systems of modernism? (a proposal for open panel no 1)

If, for Breton, the resolution of dream and reality is the ver y substance of the surreal, then the Visitation of Insel is – formally and functionally – the most surreal of Loy’s writings. Reading this holograph fragment (c.1938) against Loy’s short poem, Evolution, I will posit the Visitation as the apogee of her utopian dream of a further, electric, evolution. Informed by Freudian and surrealist conceptualizations of oneiric potentiality, Loy stages her revelation scene within the emancipator y, atemporal space of the dream; locus for the materialization of psychospiritual speculations which had, until that point, remained ‘increate’. There, various sub rosa themes (addiction, betrayal, guilt) elsewhere suppressed or censored can be fed into the machine of consolator y dream logic. Impossible, confessional, revelator y, fantastic and redemptive, the work carried out by the Visitation text is manifestly the work we give to dreams. It ends, accordingly, in the abrupt restitution of the banal, domestic Real. Composed as transatlantic adjunct to a luminous Parisian ür-narrative, the Visitation was later excised by the author and left – a penumbral amputation – among the disjecta of Unidentified Fragments at the Beinecke Librar y. In this paper, I will propose Loy’s Visitation as the realization of Breton’s call for an oneiric philosophy.

i r m e l i h autamäki

sa ra h hayden

Ae s t e htics , philosohy, history, culture and art

School of English, Univ ersity College Cork , IRELAND

st u d i es , FINLAND

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g e n e vie ve He n dr icks : Charlotte Perriand and the Misery of Paris S e ssi on 14

In 1936, as part of the Exposition de l’habitation, Charlotte Perriand created a huge photomontage over 60 meters long – a first in France – which denounced the appalling living conditions and hygiene in the City of Light, entitled La Grande Misère de Paris. This mural, unique in the histor y of photography in France, addressed an essential issue in the social and political histor y of the period between the two wars, one that concerned all large cities in industrial countries. It presented a long travelling shot that began in Paris and ended in the countr yside, made up of sequences that developed as the spectator moved along; an epic with anonymous characters, midway between documentar y and fiction. Her goal was to alert Parisians to the fact that the deplorable planning of the capital was not inevitable, that the urban environment conditioned their life, and that this was a political issue and not limited to a small group of intellectuals, architects, politicians and speculators. I propose a contextual reading of Perriand’s photomontage in light of the larger urban and architectural crisis facing Paris in the 1930s and reveal how her work articulated the anxieties facing the profession as a whole. g e n e v ie ve He n dr icks V i sua l Art s , Pars on s t h e Ne w Sch o o l fo r De sign, USA

the collection, The Green Moment (Henrik Visnapuu and Richard Roht), and articles on Futurism (Semper et al). A second period came around 1919-1920. Erni Hiir and Albert Kivikas wrote nine manifestos and published the first Futurist books (Hiir : World of Dances; Hiir and Kivikas: Sacrificed Frog, Kivikas: Flying Pigs et al). Semper published an essay, Futurism, which contained excerpts of important manifestos by Marinetti Visnapuu published a collection of poems, Silver Bells and an essay on the ego-Futurist Igor Severjanin. The third period showed a weakening of Futurist influences around 1924-1927 (works of Hiir and Kivikas; Barbarus and his poems influenced by French Simultaneism). Estonian Futurism concentrated on the destruction of language, texts and the concept of the book. My presentation will concentrate on two topics: the experiments with language: in-freedom, glossolalias, Futurist onomatopoeia, neologisms et al;

wordsanalogy,

the experiments with texts: destruction of syntax, Estonian zaum’, simultaneous texts, stile telegrafico. I shall also address the connections between Estonian Futurism, Marinetti and the Russian Futurists (Vassili Kamenski, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Igor Severjanin). tiit Hennoste

t i i t He n n o s t e :

Univ ersity of Ta rtu, Estonia

“Break, arise, and bloom!”: Experiments with Language and Books in Estonian Futurism S e ssi on 119

fredrik Hertzberg: Gunnar Björling’s gay utopia

The first period of Estonian Futurism was around 1910-1914. Some young men (Johannes Semper et al) corresponded with Marinetti and received Futurist publications from him. In 1914, the first publications influenced by Futurism appeared in print:

Session 69

In a letter to a close friend, the 20 year old Gunnar Björling (1887-1960) wrote: ”You don’t know what the ’belief ’ in ideal societies means, they

are heaven on earth”. In a letter tinged with repressed desire, this takes on a more hidden significance. Although it refers to ”old times”, when Björling was a socialist and activist, it was written in a time during which Björling simultaneously discovered the liberating moral relativism of his philosophy professor Edward Westermarck and the poetr y of Vilhelm Ekelund, quivering with desire, showing a method for projecting desire onto nature, the landscape, and language; queering language, creating a ”gay” utopia. It points forward to what was to become one of the most radically innovative poetries of the twentieth centur y, through the avant-gardist phase of Quosego in 1928-1929, through to Björling’s radical love poetr y of the 1930s. In this paper I will be investigating the cultural links between Westermarck as a pioneer of homosexual liberation, queer poetics and the release of desire during the brief avant-garde phase in which Björling collaborated closely with Henr y Parland.

whom she herself identified. Kallas and many others emphasized Ruth as a complex symbol of Young Estonians´ aspirations and values, ethical and aesthetic: Ruth represented ever ything that Young Estonians wanted to be. Through what contradictor y discourses did the Young Estonians, the most important avantgarde movement in Estonia at the beginning of the 20th centur y – construct their utopian identity? What comparative perspectives avail themselves in relation to utopian identity constructions of intellectuals and modernizers of culture elsewhere? I shall argue that L. Oner va´s Mirjda (1907) can ser ve as a fruitful textual parallel. mirja m Hinrik us Institute o f Estonian Language and Culture, Tallinn Univ ersity, ESTONIA

Benedik t Hja rta rson: f r e d r ik He rt z b e rg F i n n i sh, Finno-Ug rian and S candinavian S tudies , U n i v e rs it y o f He ls in ki, Fin lan d

m i r ja m Hin rikus : J . Randvere´s Ruth (1909) as the utopian identity construction of Young Estonia (1905-1915) S e ssi on 4

In 1909 a 56 page essay-novella by J. Randvere (alias Johannes Aavik) entitled Ruth was published in the third Young Estonia Album, consisting almost entirely of the narrator’s description of the ideal woman. Immediately thereafter, Finnish-Estonian writer Aino Kallas claimed that for the first time in Estonian literature, „a totally contemporar y spirit has appeared – a modern man.” Kallas’ astute reaction demonstrates her recognition that Ruth carried many traits characteristic of the modern, male intellectual in fin de siècle European literature. In subsequent articles (Nuori-Viro. Muotokuvia ja suuntaviivoja, 1918) Kallas associated Ruth with the “new woman”, with

“A New Move m ent in Poetry and A rt in the Artistic Countries Abroad”: The Reception o f Futuris m in Icela nd Session 119

The period from the late 1910s to the early 1930s saw a heated debate about the new European isms in the cultural field in Iceland, as the aesthetic avant-garde came to play an important role in discussions about the relationship between traditional national culture and cultural modernity. References to Marinetti´s writings were current in these debates and Italian Futurism played a key role as one of the most radical manifestations of avant-garde aesthetics. The paper will present an over view of the reception of Futurism in Iceland, from the first references to the movement in the works of Jóhannes Kjar val, Þórbergur Þórðarson and Jón Björnsson in the late 1910s to Halldór Laxness´ critical reflections on Marinetti´s movement in the 1930s. The paper will present a broad picture of the specific role that Futurism played in the debates about the European avant-garde in the Icelandic setting, by focussing on the appopriation of

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its aesthetics in the works of Icelandic artists and poets, newspaper reports about the movement and critical responses to Futurist aesthetics.

j osef Horacek : A Shouting Match: The Role of Scandal in Futurism and Dada Session 39

B e ne d ikt Hjartar s on U n i v e rs it y o f Ice lan d

dav i d Ho pkin s : Balls to You: Duchamp’s Refusal S e ssi on 50

Dada revelled in its own internal divisions and ruptures, but it might be argued that this ver y fractiousness created a matrix in which Dada could thrive. In historicising the insult or refusal within Dada, this paper will pay particular attention to two brief telegrams sent by Duchamp; the first containing the blunt “Pode Bal” (Peau de Balle / Balls) message to Tzara of June 1921, directed at the idea of exhibiting in a Dada show; the second containing the words ‘Good God, not likely’, which were addressed to Picabia concerning possible collaboration on a film project. Duchamp’s mode of disdain in these instances is of quite a different order to the types of boisterous avant-garde provocation that are familiar to us from, say, the squabbles between Tzara, Picabia and Breton, and springs from a more personal response to the possibility of creating art at this point in time. In 1921 Duchamp was toying with the idea of abandoning art for chess. At the same time, he was involved in the one-off issue of New York Dada which would explicitly link Dada to commodity production. By 1922, we find Duchamp writing to Tzara, in apparent seriousness, concerning a money-making scheme whereby the letters ‘DADA’ would be worn around people’s neck’s on a chain. This paper aims to show how Duchamp’s vaccilation between attitudes of nihilism and capitulation at this time reflects his own specific understanding of Dada, as well as his critique of the utopian aspirations of the avant-garde. dav i d Ho pkin s H i sto ry o f Art, Un ive r s it y o f G las gow, uk

Many theorists situate the end of the modernist era at the moment when the public grew accustomed to avant-garde excesses and started responding to new art with malaise rather than outrage. In other words, the accepted view sees scandal as essential to the definition and utopian program of the avant-garde. But even though scandal has become a rarity in the contemporar y art world, the modernist critical framework based on opposition and utopian models still per vades today’s art criticism. As an alternative, Johanna Drucker in her study Sweet Dreams seeks to describe contemporar y art in terms of affirmation and complicity and invites scholars to reconsider the legacy of the avant-garde in similar terms. Using Drucker’s critical model, I will reexamine the role of scandal in dada art. The dada movement is typically portrayed as deeply adversarial, but I hope to recast the artists’ attacks on mainstream society as requests for audience participation, a challenge that the audience readily accepted. As the many existing first-hand accounts of dada events suggest, the artists cultivated a special, ritualized relationship with their adversaries, who in another light may be described as not only participants but even collaborators in the creation of the new art. j osef Horacek English, Louisia na State Univ ersity, USA

na omi hume: Anarchism and Lebensreform in František Kupka’s Abstract Paintings Session 85

František Kupka exhibited abstract paintings for the first time at the Salon d’Automne in 1912. Kupka’s previous work did not prepare viewers

for the strikingly simple composition of red and blue arcs against a black and white background in Amorpha: Fugue in Two Colors. I explore the convictions that lead Kupka to believe that abstract art could promote political, social and spiritual well-being. Following anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin’s insistence that new models for social organization be devised scientifically, in his book, Creation in the Visual Arts, Kupka drew on contemporar y psychology, anatomy, and chemistr y to defend his view of art’s role in realizing humanity’s ideals. In Girl with a Ball, a preparator y series for Amorpha, the uninhibited nudity of Kupka’s stepdaughter echoes the iconography of central European Nacktkultur movements that celebrated the body and a return to nature to combat the effects of industrialized society. Since the mid-1890s, Kupka had adopted a regimen of naked exercise out of doors, cold showers and sun-worship, declaring these activities to be necessar y physical preparation for an artist. Kupka believed he had composed Amorpha scientifically with a clarity of mind derived from daily attention to nature and his own body, such that the painting offered the viewer a direct experience of the vibrancy that anarchist social reform could make possible.

Lithuanian art with million of spotlights”. Among the authors of the manifesto was a poet, editor, actor and artist Juozas Petrenas, better known under his penname, Petras Tarulis. He introduced the principles of Futurism to book design. In the same year, the magazine for the school teachers, Švietimo darbas (The Work of Education), in issue ? 12 of 1922, reported on Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s proposal to organize in Lithuania an exhibition of contemporar y art, followed by lectures and competitions, which would include members of the Cubist circles, of the L’Esprit nouveau and Section d’or groups, as well as Italian and German modernists. The exhibition did not take place, but in 1922 several interesting manifestations of Futurism took place in Lithuania. The artists Vytautas Biciunas, Olga Švede-Dubeneckiene and Vladimiras Dubeneckis applied their notions of Futurism to the fields of book design, graphic design and scenography. Hovewer, Futurism like other radical avant-garde movements did not take roots in Lithuanian culture. My presentation will discuss the manifestations of the Futurism in Lithuanian art of the early 1920s and present the reasons for the short life of this movement in Lithuania.

na o m i h ume

giedre Ja nk ev iciute

Fi n e A rt s , Se att le Un ive r s it y, USA

A rt History, L ithuanian Institute f or Culture Resea rch, LITHUANIA

g i e d r e Jan ke viciut e : Manifestations of the Futurism in Lithuanian visual art of the early 1920s S e ssi on 108

At the beginning of WWI, about 300,000 residents of Lituania were evacuated to the Russia. After the end of the war, many of them returned to Lithuania and helped to spread the ideas of the Russian avant-garde, especially Futurism. The spirit of Futurism is evident in the first modernist manifesto proclaimed in 1922 by the group Keturi vejai (Four Winds). The text concludes with an authentic Futurist slogan: “Dynamo machine of our minds illuminates the twilight of new

patrick Jeff ery: The reconstructive soul-making utopia of John Middleton Murry’s Adelphi Session 42

This paper will investigate the relative success and failure of John Middleton Murr y’s Adelphi in its aim to revitalize England into a spiritualized, romantic, proto-socialist utopia. After significant post-war success as an explicitly reconstructive circulator of modernist writing at the Athenaeum, John Middleton Murr y formed the Adelphi to transmit his “faith in life”, derived primarily from his figurative “meta-biological”

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heroes, John Keats and Jesus. Murr y imagined a utopian future for England where each individual could fuse the modern mind to a Lawrentian vitalist body through the process of Keats’ “vale of soul-making”. He rejected the “formless” experimentalism of Eliot, Proust and Joyce in favour of Hardy, Chekhov, Blake and Dostoevsky as totemic guides, alongside a mythic, semi-secular Jesus representing Murr y’s perfect new man. The Adelphi’s phenomenal initial success, particularly in the industrial north, and critical derision from Eliot and Woolf, will be studied with regards to assessing what constitutes a valid ‘modernism’ and why Murr y’s romanticism is so often excluded from the canon. I will also investigate the origins and purposes of Murr y’s self-creating Jesus figure in the context of early 20th centur y idiosyncratic spirituality, and how this came to develop into the conception of a marxistsocialist communal living project. Were the vague, utopian aims of all the above always destined to fail and be largely forgotten? pat r i ck Je ffe ry

and the show of the Italian futurist painters in Copenhagen in June 1912, “Futurism” became a buzz word in Danish public discourse in the 1910s. As a rule, Danish artists and intellectuals reacted skeptically to the messianic utopianism in Marinetti’s manifesto, and the “simultaneous” style of the Futurist painters was refused by leading modernist painters, while being effectively ridiculed by cartoonists in the bourgeois press. Generally, Futurism was conceived not as a utopian vision for a new art, but rather as a clever marketing term. Yet, by the end of the First World War, the violent rhetoric of rupture from Marinetti’s Futurist manifestos finally finds an echo in a number of visionar y poetical texts by young Danish poets including Emil Bønnelycke, Tom Kristensen and Rudolf Broby-Johansen. This paper offers an account of the most important and exemplar y events in the early Danish reception of Futurism between 1909 and 1922. torben Jelsba k A ssistant pro fessor o f Danish Literature and Media Studies at Rosk ilde Univ ersity, denma rk

E n g l i sh , Un ive r s it y o f Ke n t, Uk boja n Jov ic: to r b e n Je ls bak: Lifeless glaciers: Futurism in Denmark

Primitivism and the Serbian avant-garde Session 49

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“Scandinavia remains neutral, even in poetr y. Lifeless glaciers” (“la Scandinavie reste neutre, même en poésie. Glaciers deserts”) the French-German poet Ivan Goll wrote in the preface to his 1922 anthology of international avant-garde poetr y Les Cinq Continents. This somewhat disarming assessment is hardly to be seen as an acknowledgement of the revolutionar y powers of contemporar y Scandinavian poetr y insofar as “neutrality” is generally not considered a positive categor y in avant-garde discourse. Yet, Goll’s assessment may ser ve as an adequate description of the early reception of Futurism in Denmark. In the wake of F.T. Marinetti’s 1909 Manifesto of Futurism

After giving a brief introduction to some characteristics of the problem of Primitivism in European avant-garde art, both in its Western (Expressionism, Les Fauves, Der Blaue Reiter, Picasso, Leger) and Eastern (Futurism, Kruchenykh, Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Malevich) actualizations, this paper presents positions, strategies and esthetical doctrines of Serbian artists, writers and intellectuals of the avant-garde period (B. Popovic, M. Bogdanovic, S. Stefanovic, M. Crnjanski, Lj. Micic, D. Aleksic, R. Petrovic, M. Nastasijevic) regarding important aspects of the primitivist impulses in European art and literature.

Attention is drawn to the common attributes: first, in the Serbian avant-garde there is a fusion of accepting the modern age with all its features, including those scientific and technical, with the exploration of (folklore) primitivism (typical for the Russian avant-garde and foreign to Western artists); second, awareness of the importance of contemplating the essence of the national spirit in the new circumstances and its possible artistic expression is widespread. Immersion in the core of the national, or human – usually through returning to the elemental – is seen as a prerequisite for salvation of individual as well as collective (folk) artistic expression, as well as the essential component in the construction of a new European Era and Man.

imperialist (Briginshaw 2009, 36-37) and made this new dance a perfect fit for Fascist politics of the 1930s. Key sources: Briginshaw, Valerie A. 2009. Dance, Space and Subjectivity. London: Palgrave Macmillan (2001). Carter, Alexandra & Fensham, Rachel. 2011. Dancing Naturally: Nature, NeoClassicism and Modernity in Early Twentieth-Centur y Dance. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Fritzsche, Peter. 2001. “Specters of Histor y: On Nostalgia, Exile, and Modernity.” The American Historical Review 106:5, 1587-1618.

ha nna jä rv inen The Theatre Acade m y, The University of the A rts Helsink i, F INLAND

k a isa k a a k inen: b o ja n Jovic Se r b i an L iterature in E uropean Cultural Space, I n st i tut e fo r Lit e rat ur e an d Art, SERBIA

h an na järvin e n : T h e Nostalg ic Utopia o f E arly-Twentieth- Century Dan ce . S e ssi on 110

As discussed by Peter Fritzsche (2001) amongst others, the concept of nostalgia has both a temporal and a spatial dimension: nostalgia is longing for a utopian past as well as for a lost place that in twentieth-centur y modernism increasingly became the inaccessible homeland of the exile. In this paper, I argue that in early twentieth-centur y modern dance, nostalgic longing for an imagined golden age of humanity (usually in Ancient Greece) provided the ground for utopias of the future. This dance eschewed any signs of modernization – there were no factories, railroads or fashionable dresses in this utopia – and embraced a universalizing discourse of the ‘natural’ body (see Carter & Fensham (ed.) 2011). This discourse of healthy and unhealthy bodies – of individuals, societies and races – resonated strongly with the reassertion of the lost power of the white

Anachronism and Futurity in Peter Weiss and W. G . Sebald Session 52

The paper investigates the potential of modernist anachronism as a mode of historical narration through the work of postwar Germanlanguage authors Peter Weiss (1916-1982) and W. G. Sebald (1944-2001). Both authors reach back to poetic experiments of the historical avant-garde and literar y modernism to develop strategies for post-genocidal, transnational historical narration. While Weiss and Sebald share an interest in non-linear narrative forms, their narratives engage with the future in ver y different ways. Sebald’s narratives portray the present and future as an empty, posttraumatic space and evoke a melancholic notion of traumatic histor y. Weiss’s novel The Aesthetics of Resistance (1975-1981), a postwar novel on antifascist resistance during the Second World War, highlights the potential of nonlinear narrative modes to mobilize the wayward historical imagination of embodied future readers not determined in advance. Hence, Weiss employs anachronism for a narrative futurity not caught in the logic of teleological historical development. However, the paper also demonstrates that even in Sebald

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the anachronistic narrative strategies suggest active and situated modes of reading that counteract any generalized notion of histor y as trauma. The analysis ultimately shows that modernist anachronisms may highlight literar y imagination beyond the alternatives of teleological progress and redemptive melancholy. k a i sa kaakin e n Co m parat ive Lit e r at ure , Un ive r s it y o f Tur ku, F INLAND

as Neubesetzungen des Kunst-Raumes . Feministische Kunstausstellungen und ihre Räume , 1972-1987, transcipt-Verlag, Bielefeld. monik a Ka iser Ag entur, Die Ka iserin, GERM ANY

timo Ka ita ro: Surrealist and Situationist Urbanism: From Bricolage to Utopia Session 40

m on ika Kais e r : T h e i n t e rnat ional Ex h ib it ion Kvindeudstell i ngen pa C h arlottenb o rg in Ko pe n h age n 1975 an d th e ide a o f Fe min is t art s pace . S e ssi on 57

I want to present a spatial reconstruction of Kvindeudstellingen pa Charlottenborg using documental material, such as Fotos, articles and inteviews. Kvindeudstellingen pa Charlottenborg was a remarkable international Feminist Exhibition in 1975, artists such as Valie Export, Marina Abramowicz and others went to Denmark to participate in it. Kvindeudstellingen is a prominent example for the concept of Feminist Art Space of that time, which is hardly forgotten in the histor y of art. The Exhibition had a great influence on other experimental Feminist Exhibition Projects. The german artist Sarah Schumann went 1975 to Kopenhagen, to see the Exhibition, because she planned an international woman Artists Exhibition in Berlin. I want to confront the more radical spacial concept of the Danish Exhibition with the much more conventional spacial concept of the Berlin Exhibition Künstlerinnen international 1877-1977. The Idea of Feminist Art Space which can be seen in Kopenhagen was not accepted in the conventional context auf established art spaces. For that reason, woman artists, even if they saw themselves as feminists, had a critical and often paradoxal attitude towards the idea of Feminist Art Space. My presentation is a part of my Dissertation, finished at Universität der Künste, Berlin (Prof. Renate Berger) in 2012 and published in 2013

Compared to some elaborate urban utopias of the Situationist’s (such as Constant’s New Babylon), surrealist urbanism seems rather conser vative: they were usually more interested in using existing urban structures in novel ways than planning new structures. And when they made plans to transform or modify existing structures under the title “Sur certaines possibilités d’embellissement irrationel d’une ville” in Le surrealism au ser vice de la révolution (no. 6, 1933), they let their imaginations run rampant without bothering themselves with the possibilities of realizing their suggestions. The plans the future Situationists made in the Lettrist journal Potlach (no. 23,1955) seem in fact more realistic, being as their title “Projet d’embellissements rationnels de la ville de Paris” indicates more rational than the irrational plans of the surrealists. The latter seem to be utopian in the sense that no city planner would take them seriously. When we reach the urban utopias of Constant, we enter a utopia in a completely different sense: the complete and radical transformation of the urban landscape. In contrast to the plans of the surrealist, Constant’s plans were obviously meant to be taken seriously. Paradoxically, they seem more utopian by being more realistic: they are closer to rational urban planning than the artistic exercises in creative imagination of the surrealists. I argue, however, that this tendency of the avant-garde tradition to move from the imaginar y towards rational projects for the realization of the imaginar y reflects the basic tensions of surrealist

politics after its Marxist turn: difficulties inherent in attempts to “realising art” without sacrificing its freedom and autonomy.

visible within the Exposition’s fairgrounds, foretold catastrophe. k ate k a nga sla hti

t i m o Kaitar o

Art Historia n, Independent Schola r, BELGIUM

d e p t of philosophy history culture and art studies , U n i v e rs it y o f He ls in ki, fin lan d Josephine k a rg: The ornamental desig n and its nationalistic force k at e kan gas lah t i: T h e uto pian pro mis e o f w o r k, t e ch n o lo gy a nd l e i sure in Ro b e rt an d Son ia De launay’s pan ora mic

in Russia and Galicia at the end of the nineteenth century Session 55

m u r als fo r t h e 1937 Expo s itio n Internatio nale des a rts e t t echniq ues dans la vie mo derne in Paris S e ssi on 14

Robert and Sonia Delaunay’s mural schemes for the aeronautical and railway pavilions, showcasing two recently nationalized industries, thrilled spectators at the 1937 Exposition Internationale in Paris. Covering some 2,500m 2 , the artists created sweeping, imagined vistas inspired by travel and its technologies. Neither wholly abstract, nor strictly representational, their designs exploited structural parallels between the repertoire of forms they had developed and the mechanical forces animating modern transportation. Concentric disks and sinusoidal semicircles conjured propellers, gearwheels and railway tracks; compressed space and fragmented forms evoked the vertiginous sensation of flight and views snatched from a speeding train. This paper will examine the Delaunays’ individual landscapes while also reading each overall scheme as a vast panorama underpinned by utopian thinking. From this perspective, I intend to contextualize the artists’ designs in relation to the following: contemporar y discourse advocating the mural as a collective form uniting the painter, architect and public; the Querelle du Réalisme and the avant-garde search for socially eloquent art true to the condition of modernity; the rise of the Front Populaire and its promotion of work, technological progress, and popular leisure; and, lastly, the optimistic embrace of technology’s promise, even as international hostilities,

The beginning of a modern form vocabular y in Eastern European countries coincides with nationalism and patriotic imager y. This paper argues that the reinvention of the ornamental design in Russian and Polish decorative and visual arts led to a vision of national identity and a national art. The art colony Abramtsevo near Moscow reflected medieval architecture from the north of Russia. Artists, working there after 1880, anticipated vernacular form vocabular y and Byzantine ornamental design. They formulated a ‚nationalistic’ pictorial language and created an idealized peasant village, when they synthesized these sources to a propagated ‘Russian style’ in architecture, crafts and painting in Abramtsevo. In Zakopane near to Cracow (Galicia/ Poland), another example of an ‘invented peasant village’ was created by Stanislaw Witkiewicz and his circle. In parallelism to Abramtsevo, vernacular material forms were made to demonstrate a national style of ‘Polish art’ in architecture and crafts. Indeed, these anticipated and transformed forms of wooden architecture were transferred from Switzerland. Ignoring this fact, the ‘Zakopane-Style’ became popular as ‘Polish folkloristic architecture’. These parallel phenomena reflect an ‘invention of tradition’ and the creation of ‘imagined communities’ to articulate an original ‘national’ art of two disparate geopolitical regions. Josephine k a rg Int. Graduate Centre f or the Study of C ulture, Justus-Liebig-Univ ersity, Giessen, Germa ny

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Mi ch ae l G . ke lly: Rationality, Cynicism and Utopia. Modernist Ambivalence in Pessoa’s Anarchist Banker S e ssi on 92

Fernando Pessoa’s Anarchist Banker (O Banqueiro Anarquista, 1922) is a dialogic meditation on the figure of the individual understood as prior to and in opposition with what is there termed ‘social convention’. The eponymous figure impresses upon a sceptical interlocutor the position that he best and most authentically ser ves the ‘anarchist’ refusal of such convention through an energetic engagement in his professional pursuits, in which the pure play of financial logic is the sole operative reality. Aside from the almost excessively stark points of relevance for contemporar y readers, whether ‘peripheral’ or ‘core’ in location, Pessoa’s text provides a literar y framework for reflection on the relations between three key terms at play in political and social debates both at the time of its publication and in the present: rationality, cynicism and utopia. This paper seeks to outline Pessoa’s (in)direct engagements with these in the dialogue in question; to argue for the critical ambivalence of his text; and to relate this ambivalence to Pessoa’s wider artistic sensibility as a major figure of the early twentieth-centur y European modernism – not least to the foundational problematization (through his several heteronymic oeuvre(s)) of modern artistic individuation.

close to Novembergruppe, Bauhaus, Der Sturm, Maxy espoused cubist practices / socialist ideals / functionalist predictions. Back in Romania he engaged in modernization. 1924: organized the International Exhibition of Contimporanul. 1925: founded the constructivist magazine Integral then established the art-factor y Studio Maxy. Though apparently a technocrat fit to capitalism Maxy’s expertise faced social indifference. Integral was shut in 1927, Studio Maxy in 1930. Still, Maxy backed the current society as historical apex. Utopia of the present, his manifesto The Integral Man posited “the integralists synthesize the will of life. Submerged in collectivity,the integralists produce its style,following the instincts.” Instinctual voluntarism typical for fascist discourse burst “New art, that is ART, refuses itself to democracy, to vulgarity.” Avant-garde dissented from the given. Integralism consented to it. Maxy’s attraction to extremes grew. 1930: organized Marinetti’s visit to Romania. 1933: participated in the fascist exhibition in Rome. His early leftist penchants resurfaced. Late 30s marked a step back from his previous constructivism to sentimental / socialist lumpenproletarian imager y. After 1944 this will pave his way to communist ranks as ideologue of Socialist-realism and Director of the National Museum of Art. – not least to the foundational problematization (through his several heteronymic oeuvre(s)) of modern artistic individuation. erwin Kessler Institute o f Philosophy, Rom anian Acade m y, ROM ANIA

Mi ch ae l G . ke lly La nguag es , Literature, Culture and Comm unication, U n i v e rs it y o f Lime r ick, IRELAND va dim Khok hrya kov : Andrei Platonov in the Context of Russian Avante rwi n Ke s s le r : Thistopia. M.H. Maxy and late avant-garde’s apology

garde: Was Platonov a Modernist? Session 18

of the given S e ssi on 71

Investigates avant-garde turn from contesting artistic/ social/political given to supporting it via idolatr y of progress. In Berlin, 1922-1923,

Russian avant-garde in its most radical variant tends to minimalistic forms, almost deprived of meaning, and yet with the broad possibility of consequent designation (Malevich’s Black Square and his supremacist paintings, Kruchonykh’s poetr y etc.).

Due to the genre characteristics of the prose, it opposes such tendencies of mineralization, so that writers resort to the cycles of minimal texts (Rozanov, Babel et al.). Platonov, on the contrar y, is alien to cyclisation. His prose is characterized by large narrative forms. However, these large narratives are open: their elements can function on their own and can be treated as detached texts (e.g. in the case of Chevengur). Another striking feature of avant-garde is breaking with figurative art (with Kandinsky being a pioneer). It should be noted that in Platonov’s prose the character stops playing dominant role. The unifying element of the prose is no longer a character, but a style. Russian avant-garde is also characterized by employing the devices of naïve, archaic, primitive, folk, and children art. Such devices can be found in Platonov’s poetics as well.

little accordance with polish actuality of the regained independency and newly formed social structures. The hybrid artistic forms of “skamander” group, reconciling modernist impact with the petty bourgeois glamour so long refused, is one of many paradoxical effects of this situation. The case of polish modernism illustrates the limits of using the broad notions applied usually in depiction of modernist artistic phenomena and enables to distinguish between the mere imitative components and those individual, historically and geopolitically relativized. Recently issued “modalities of modernism” is one of crucial reference in this proposal. Ag nieszk a k luba Depart ment o f Historical Poetics , Institute o f Litera ry Resea rch, POLAND

Ka roly kok a i: The Utopian Blueprints of Hungarian Neo-AvantGarde Literature Session 99

va d i m Kh o kh ryakov D e pa rtment o f History o f Russian Literature, Saint P e t e r sburg Stat e Un ive r s it y, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Ag ni e s z ka kluba: modernizing polish literature and the concept of local modernisms S e ssi on 48

The paper examines the idiosyncratic forms of polish modernism with a special attention paid to its avant-garde movements. Polish reception of avantgarde ideas and artistic forms of expression exposes the relativity of these transmissions: close analyses and situating them within historical and cultural contexts reveal that in poland the transnational idea of modernity inevitably interfered with the local cumbrance, mainly the reality of post-partition legacy. Modernizing of polish literature and arts did not necessar y mean modernizing polish reality in a way representative for western societies. What existed in the ver y nature of avant-garde ideas – the utopian gesture aimed against bourgeois culture – was in

From its ver y inception, the avant-garde acted as the utopian branch of modernism. Its utopianism did not cease to exist, nor was it lessened by difficulties, failures or any proofs of unrealizability. This lecture will discuss passages from Hungarian avant-garde literature by Erdély, Szentjóby, Hajas, Ladik, Bujdosó, Nagy and Tubák which can be interpreted as hints at or sketches of “utopian blueprints”. The parallel world of the neo-avant-garde – often called the underground or the second public – displayed all aspects of utopia. A group based on common interests came into existence in spite of an uncontrollable reality: the chimera of the real socialist utopia. By means of the avant-garde – the encr yption of politically, socially or aesthetically controversial messages coinciding with innovative production processes, the distribution of texts through private or illegal channels, the reception of literar y works in small and selected circles – a specific social world came into being in which virtually ever y member participated as a creative part of the collective.

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Examining the “utopian blueprints” of Hungarian neoavant-garde literature, it becomes increasingly evident that the avant-garde itself was the utopia, which by definition could not turn into a living social reality – a fact that made its utopian existence both desirable and possible. K a r o ly ko kai E u r o p ean and Co mparative Literature and La nguag e S , University of V ienna, AUSTRIA

m ar i e Ko kub o : Cesare Pavese’s Modernism: Influences from European and American Models S e ssi on 16

This paper aims to explore modernist aspects in Cesare Pavese’s work, taking into consideration influences from both European and American modernism. Despite the large body of studies on Cesare Pavese, little reference seems to have been made to the concept of modernism; in discussing his work, most critics have preferred to use, rather than modernism, such terms more common to Italian literar y criticism as realism, neorealism, symbolism, and decadentism. While some scholars have started in recent years to explore “Italian” modernism, sufficient attention has yet to be paid in this regard to Pavese’s work. This paper examines the possibilities involved in including Pavese in Italian modernism, focusing particular attention on his poetr y. The poems collected in his Lavorare stanca, for example, exhibit certain modernist features, notably the collage of fragmented images, particular attention to physical perceptions, and strong subjectivity behind an outwardly objective style. Examining the characteristics of Pavese’s modernism and exploring influences from both European and American models, this paper attempts not only to see his work from a new point of view but also to contribute to the

enrichment of our understanding of Italian modernism in all its complexity and wide variety. ma rie Kok ubo Conte mporary Literary Studies , U niversity of Tokyo, JAPAN

Lj ilja na Kolesnik : Sinturbanism: socialist legacy of utopian spatial thinking Session 101

Croatian architect Vjenceslav Richter published his treatise on Sinturbanism in 1964, at the moment when the influence of high modernism on architecture and urbanism in Yugoslavia was reaching its peak. It was also the moment when harmonious post-war urban transformation and planed urban growth suffered a serious blow by series of political and economic reforms resulting – at the end of 1960s – with a significant structural changes of Yugoslav society that also revealed incapacity of modernist urban planning to fully embrace egalitarian dimension of self-managing socialism. Richter responded to this “flaw in the system” with the utopian vision of the city as a complex structure of self-contained living units fulfilling all existential and social needs of their inhabitants and ser ving as “spatial modulators” of social interactions. Setting rational and clearly legible spatial relations – a defining principle of Sinturbanism – in direct connection to rational organisation of Yugoslav socialist society, Richter clearly pointed the social ambitions of his proposal, but the rigidity of that correlation almost turned sinturbanism’s utopian dimension to its opposite. Preser ved by elaborated relation between built and natural environment and imaginative application of technology it is important legacy of utopian spatial thinking from the period of socialism that deser ves our attention. Lj ilja na Kolesnik Modern and Conte m porary A rt, Institute o f Art History , CROATIA iva na Ha nica r - Bulja n

an d re as krame r:

sa bine Kriebel:

Dada’s Globe: Territory, Globality, Geographics

Insult, Regression and Harmonic Totality: Post-Dada

S e ssi on 50

as Anti-Dada? Session 61

Rather than focus on personal arguments among Dadaists, my paper intends to examine how Dada uses geography to protest against totality. Partly in tribute to the unrealised Dadaglobe, and prompted by Breton and Jakobson’s early accounts of Dada as geographical revolutions, I will explore the visual and textual rhetoric of the terrestrial globe, using examples from Hausmann, Baader, Mehring and Picabia. The globe (a totalising view of the world if ever there was one) feeds into Dada’s geographical imagination but the aim will be to show how it operates both negatively and positively – as a rejection of a view of terrestrial space as finite and subject to national and imperialist competition, and as a cue for the figuration of alternative forms of mapping and sovereignty beyond the restrictions of terrestrial space and its cartographic representation. In order to describe more precisely the operation of Dada’s ‘global’ imagination, the final part of the paper will attempt to develop Louis Marin’s model of ‘utopics’ into a more specific ‘geographics’, a term whose technical and ludic senses seem particularly relevant to Dada. The hope is also to add precision to Benson’s recent reading of Dada geographies as both utopian and heterotopian, by suggesting that Dada geographics offers figurations of geography whose actual experience and theoretical perception becomes possible only later.

This paper investigates dadaist selfnegation, exploring three Dadaists’ conflict with their own Dada legacy. John Heartfield, Otto Dix, and Christian Schad were pivotal in their dadaist interrogations of form, offering the innovative forays into montage, collage, and photography that cemented their place in histories of the avant-garde. Yet, by the mid-1920s, all three had seemingly abandoned their dadaist disruptions to pursue holistic, mimetic representations that suggest a (false) reconciliation with the world. Even more egregiously, Dix and Schad doggedly pursued a painterly practice deemed regressive by critics, then and now, for its embrace of pre-modern representative modes and its proliferation of patriarchal, bourgeois subjectivities. Was Dada merely a laughing harlequinade and a political deadend, as Erwin Piscator (another self-loathing Dadaist) declared? Or did Dada insult transmute as historicallycontingent response, insinuating itself into other critical forms into the 1920s? This paper will consider the tactics of dadaist sell-out as both progressive and regressive enterprises. sa bine Kriebel Univ ersity College Cork , Irela nd

Jens Ta ng Kristensen: Avantgardism as an utopian ideology implemented

an d r e as krame r: E ng l i sh and Co mparative Literature, Goldsmiths ,

in the Danish Factory Industry. Session 76

U n i v. o f Lon don , UNITED KING DO M

The Danish avantgarde-artist Paul Gadegaard first assignment, was to create the largest work of social art in Denmark, and part of his research process was to be hired as a regular salaried worker at the Angli-factor y in Herning, Jutland in 1953. Gadegaard’s, art is in general the evidence of how Concrete artists, based in the development of

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geometric-abstraction in Post war Denmark attempted to dissolve the boundaries between art and ever yday life, and how this program in general was adapted by other avant-garde artists and movements in the factor y industr y in Herning. J e n s Ta n g Kris t e n s e n D e pa rtment o f Arts and Cultural S tudies , University o f Co pe n h age n , FINLAND

Ru ne tt e kruge r: Mondrian’s utopia in the fourth dimension and third space. S e ssi on 15

For Ernst Bloch, utopias are united in their proclivity for ‘dreaming forward’, which is what produces a future distinct from the present. The (European) Modernist utopia of a centur y ago can be seen as a yearning for social calm and stability, and international fraternity. The abstract compositions of Piet Mondrian are arguably unparalleled artistic manifestations of such a utopian desire for a world united. This paper discusses Mondrian’s compositions as the embodiment of the utopian ideal ‘unity in diversity’, which encapsulates a non-material, universalist solution to the brutalities of nationalism as experienced by Mondrian and his contemporaries. The only home for such a nir vana was a quasi-mystical version of the fourth dimension. To address the evolution of utopia as it relates to diversity over the course of a centur y, Mondrian’s conception of unity in diversity is related to postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha’s (1994) notion that cultural renewal takes place in diverse ‘third space’, posited as the ‘location’ of culture. Thus the fourth dimension is juxtaposed with third space within the framework of utopia as it relates to diversity. Ru ne tt e kruge r F i n e and Applied Arts , T shwane University of T e ch n o lo gy, SOUTH AFRICA

Ek aterina Kudryav tseva : The Afterlife of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square Session 60

This paper provides a historical and theoretical framework to the interpretative possibilities generated by Malevich’s Black Square . Focusing on the transformations of this work from an easel painting to a Unovis revolutionar y icon, and to a signature in Malevich’s late figurative paintings, I have argued that from the moment of its conception as the “first” Suprematist painting, the Black Square resisted being read as producing any single meaning. This resulted in the painting’s repeated reinterpretation – by the artist himself, by his students, and later by art historians – in an effort to maintain its position of political and aesthetic relevance under shifting historical circumstances. The paper also addresses more general questions about the engagement of the Russian avantgarde with politics putting forward a more nuanced reading of Malevich’s engagement with the tsarist regime, Anarchism, and, finally, Bolshevism, accounting for the artist’s different strategies of negotiating the meaning of Suprematism vis-à-vis the limitations imposed by each of these political systems. k atya Kudryav tseva k reativ e Arts , Stetson Univ ersity, USA

k a isa k urik k a : Fabulation and Utopias of Authorship: On the Uses and Abuses of Author-Names Session 62

In What Is an Author? Michel Foucault is wishing for a future where the author-function would disappear and ”the anonymity of a murmur” would take its place. In my paper I wish to reconsider author-names (a) as tactics of acquiring a collective name and (b) as tactics of getting rid of the authorfunction/the power of author-names by concentrating

on the polyonomous authorship of a Finnish writer, Algot Untola (1868-1918). Untola used 45 different author-names in his writings expanding from realism to experimental fiction, from novels to newspaper articles. I argue that ’Untola’ appeared as a collective, a multiplicity on its own. Using different author-names with different ways of expression is a way of fabulating a new possibility of becoming-author. Simultaneously it is a way of resisting prevailing notions of authorship which identify the proper name with the personality of the writer in question. I conceptualize authornames as order-words but also as sites of resistance and creative fabulation following the formulations created by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Untola’s fabulation turned out to be ’utopian’. During the civil war of Finland (1918) he was imprisoned and shot dead because of what one of his author-names had written. k a i sa kur ikka Fi n n i s h Lit e rat ur e , Un ive rs it y o f Turku, FINLAND

altt i kuus amo : Overdramatizing of Utopia with Ornaments? S e ssi on 66

Nowadays ornaments remind us that there is no universal development in art, contrar y to the famous belief of Adolf Loos who thought that the disappearance of ornament and cultural development go hand in hand. Before we ask: Can ornament still ornate the eulogy of some new utopias?, we have to answer to two basic questions: 1) What is the place of ornament in some mythic machiner y and how it can generate compositional positions for which we can give the meaning of an ornamental function? 2) Can an ornamental function change in different compositional systems, for example in Mondrian, Dadaism etc. And… are screws on the walls of late functionalist houses ornaments?

Or is it better to think that an ornament can be a force to make forms which determine frames of the so called composition in art? Ornament has never played a central role in the utopia of (modern) Art. Nowadays when speaking of visual culture “as such”, can parergon-function finally take a place in the middle of a composition? Moreover, how far can the papergon-function reach? Aby Warburg spoke of “accessories in motions” which can determine new emerging ideas in art. For Kant ornaments are supplementar y and adjunct structures which frame the main subject in the work of art. If the world view determine the place of an ornament, can the royal road be: Myth, sex, parergon, composition. Nowadays a piece of an ornament can also be a redemption from the sin of purity in art, as in Leaf house of Jan Erik Andersson. To be sure: Ever y myth creates its own ornament. Indeed, in that way can ornament be sex of a myth when being a eulogy of some new mythical force? Mythical thinking, adoration and ornamentation really create a chain. In this sense the ever repeating verbal adoration of pure art in modernism was invisible ornamentation (read: framing) in the mythical system of modern Art – without sex. Why sex? Let us take an example: How and why “overdramatizing” in a work of art is closer to ornament (read: pattern-making) than “underdramatizing”? When leaving this thought open one can only refer to the 16th centur y Mannerism’s interesting chain of concepts: ornato – copia – varietà. Is the same kind of chain possible in postmodernism – when it (postmodernism) finally emerges? Waiting for the Godot of ornament: How can we “overdramatize” a utopia? a ltti k uusa mo Art History, Univ ersity of Turk u, F INLAND

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altt i kuus amo : Pure Dots , Pure Music in Kandinsky? S e ssi on 15

I’ll examine the curious bridge which Wassily Kandinsky has tried to build between the visual art and music in his two books Point and Line to Plane and Concerning the Spiritual in Ar t. The relationship he describes between music and visual matters – verbally – is far from a self-evident or a straight connection. He thinks that there might be a kind of straightforward way to music and that he can describe it visually better than a typical score does (Point and Line…). In addition to that he speaks about “material notes” of Wagner and advocates for more immaterial “notes” in Debussy’s music (Concerning the Spiritual…). From the point of view of our day he does not recognize or acknowledge the sign function of visual score which describe music as visually as his dots in his book Point. Kandinsky really thought that his dots are more abstract because they are simpler and have no conventional connection to a typical score. He does not acknowledge the value of the sign to his dots. In this way Kandinsky writes a kind of competing score without noticing it. The ways Kandinsky denies the sign function and tr y to do visual “music” as such is of my special critical concern.

Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) associated the new Gothic style with Catholicism, John Ruskin (18191900) employed of a pre-Reformation Protestant England and merged them with Gothic style. Pugin mixed his Catholic enthusiasm with nationalism and pungent social criticism. He regarded Gothic as the historical style of the north and as the only regional English language of architecture and ornament. Ruskin associated with Gothic style the times before the division of labour and was hoping for a new happy and socially just society brought about by new products and new conditions of production. He was supported by Karl Marx. William Morris (1834-1896) shared the views of this social reformer but expressed this with a new handicraft of reduced forms. His cloth and wallpaper patterns however quoted historical patterns from all over the world. This lecture will show in which way Arts and Crafts combines ornaments with political and social meaning. susa nne König Material and Imm aterial Cultural Heritage UNESCO, Univ ersity of Pa derborn, GERM ANY

erik a la a ma nen: It is nothing but an ear-ring anymore. The Pastoral

altt i k uus amo A rt H i s to ry, Un ive rs it y o f Turku, FINLAND

su san n e Kö n ig: Ornament as political statement: the Arts and Crafts movement S e ssi on 66

In the 19th centur y historism was the preferred style in architecture and art. It was characterised by quotes from different eras and supported by industrialisation. Arts and Crafts was a countermovement to historism referring to the Middle Ages and favouring Gothic style. However, while Augustus Welby

Fall and the Work of Art in Finnish Modernism Session 48

This paper examines Finnish post-war Modernism from the standpoint of Lauri Viita’s poetr y (1916—1965). Viita can be characterized as an antimodern modernist, for he challenged in his poems the new poetics that were being promoted by the dogmatic modernists. Regardless of his criticism Viita faced the same issues as his contemporaries. Being equally modernist, he offered an alternative to the changed world to which art needed to adjust. I focus on two interconnected themes. Firstly, I examine the experience of loss that characterizes Viita’s works and that can be considered as a profound modernist

feature. Secondly, I study the view of Art for art’s sake which, although it aimed at preser ving the autonomy of art in the modern world, was Viita’s object of criticism par excellence. In my analysis, I apply the concept of the antipastoral and the ideas expressed in Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Ar t in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Viita was responsive to the phenomena of the zeitgeist, and his contribution to the debate on modernistic poetics is valuable. An examination of his poems provides insights to some underlying modernist principles that were common to a variety of Finnish poets and their European forerunners. e r i k a laaman e n F i n n i sh, Finno-Ug rian and S candinavian S tudies , U n i v e rs it y o f He ls in ki, FINLAND

j o r d i Lario s : Modernity as pathology: Llorenç Villalonga’s Andrea Víctrix (1974) S e ssi on 28

In his first novel (Mor t de dama / Death of Lady, 1931), Llorenç Villalonga (1897-1980) relied on a number of intertextual and metafictional strategies to launch a scathing critique of 19th-centur y Majorcan society and the alleged parochialism of Catalan literature. Paradoxically, this critique was laced with nostalgia for the past, a nostalgia that would resurface in all his subsequent novels, from Mme. Dillon (1937), where he used the Joycean method of recycling an old myth in order to fictionalise the decline of European civilisation, to Bearn o la sala de les nines / The Dolls’ Room (1956, 1961), which hankers back to a Nietzschean Arcadia, to Les fures / The Ferrets (1967), which can be read as an example of pastoral of childhood. Andrea Víctrix (1974), the last of Villalonga’s novels published in his lifetime, reformulates this nostalgia for the past through a pessimistic depiction of the future that evokes Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). The purpose of this paper is to analyse the dystopian world of Andrea Víctrix, where Villalonga redeploys a series of

narrative strategies much in evidence in Mor t de dama, represents modernity as pathology, and takes to task a range of 20th-centur y discourses on progress and personal or social liberation. j ordi La rios Univ ersity of St Andrews , Uk

peter Lawson: Rudyard Kipling’s Dystopian Turn: As Easy as A.B .C . (1912) Session 82

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is conventionally regarded as an optimistic exponent of the grand narrative of modernity. Indeed, science under the guiding hand of its British imperial masters is habitually presented in Kipling’s short stories as progressive and benign. Coupled with Law, Orrder, Duty an’ Restraint, Obedience , Discipline! (McAndrew’s Hymn), Kipling’s science seems to offer the prospect of a global utopia. Such a vision is illustrated in the first of his two science-fiction stories about the Aerial Board of Control: With the Night Mail (1905). By contrast, Kipling’s second stor y about the Aerial Board of Control, As Easy as A.B .C . (1912), flips this confident grand narrative on its head. Rather than championing technical master y of the skies – ‘Transportation is Civilization’ (With the Night Mail) – As Easy as A.B .C . imagines the socio-political implications of an ‘semi-elected, semi-nominated’ technocracy. Set in 2065, it shows the reader a dystopian world where democracy, political activism, art and emotion have all been suppressed in the interests of ‘civilization’. Whereas With the Night Mail has air travel unite ‘our tolerant, humorous, lazy little planet’, As Easy as A.B .C . presents a dystopia where people are intimidated into submission to a form of totalitarian control. peter Lawson Arts Faculty, The Open Univ ersity, uk

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sa r a h le e :

Eliza beth legg e:

Vorticism’s dual-vision of technology

Paris Dada and the Bourgeois Carcass

S e ssi on 65

Session 50

As a hybrid, interdisciplinar y movement with characteristically dualist visions, Vorticism’s aesthetic vision of the machine is similarly filled with ambivalence, inconsistencies and even paradoxes: examples include the dual concern on machiner y and primitivism, as well as the baffling co-existence of adoption and criticism of fetishizing technology. These seemingly contradicting notions, however, made Vorticism’s relationship with technology open to multivalent readings. In my paper, I will explore Vorticism’s dualist relationship with technology through its theories, polemics in BLAST and works of art. I will discuss the differing visions of the machine among the Vorticists, for example Lewis’s and Hulme’s theories on machiner y in art, and the interpretation and incorporation of the notion in Lewis’s, GaudierBrzeska’s and Epstein’s works. Particular emphasis will be placed on the allegorical significance of the machine in the Vorticists’ artistic creation, and how this affected their perspectives on art, the ‘real’, and the relationship with the audience. Last but not least, I will relate the Vorticists’ machiner y aesthetics with the European avant-garde, namely Italian Futurist and German Expressionist views of technology, and demonstrate Vorticism’s vision as a combination of inspiration, dialogue and criticism of its counterpart movements’ ideals. sa r a h le e E ng l i sh and Co mparative Literature, Goldsmiths Co l l e ge , Un ive rs it y o f Lon don , Uk

In May 1920, just as Dada launched in Paris, the obscure novelist Louise Faure-Favier wrote of Dada’s professed ambitions to destroy and create a “new world”: “The Dadas grew up, became men who fulfilled their destiny, which was to be notaries, doctors, and lawyers like their fathers. Their daughters married.” In this scenario Dada ditches its utopian ideals to conform to bourgeois expectation. At the same time, the “Section d’Or” Cubist Albert Gleizes, in the thick of combat with Dada, argued more politically that Dada’s efforts were not the intentional work of individuals tr ying to bring down corrupt structures, but rather that Dada itself was a product of a set of conditions at a turning point in histor y. Fluent, affluent, well-mannered, upper middle class boys that these Dada leaders may be, Gleizes wickedly added, they cannot bring down the bourgeois structure, because Dada itself is part of the rotting cadaver of a disempowered bourgeoisie. Dada’s contradictions could not undo the fundamental contradiction of being outside and beyond social and ethical systems, while at the same time signalling to a literar y peer group and patrons with wit, erudite allusion, and the mot juste. Dada’s devastating one-liners aligned with a tradition of elegant aphorism: “In France ever ything ends in rhetorical flourishes,” said Aragon. This paper explores the familiar theorized processes of avantgarde embourgeoisement within Dada production, and the relative agency exercised by individual Dadas in deploying it. Eliza beth legg e Art, Univ ersity of Toronto, CANADA

ja m e s Le ve que : The Imperfect is Our Paradise: Apocalypse and AntiUtopia in The Poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire S e ssi on 73

Through the poetr y of Guillaume Apollinaire, this paper studies a particular trend within the avant-garde that emerged in the first two decades of the twentieth centur y. Apocalyptic themes in Apollinaire emerged as early as his 1913 collection of poems, Alcools. However, by the beginning of World War I he was explicitly declaring, in poems such as La Petite auto (1915), the arrival of a new age in terms reminiscent of biblical apocalyptic literature. While apocalyptic rhetoric within the avant-garde was common as advocacy of experiment and the future, avant-gardists did not foresee a Christian eschatology where ‘the future was mortal’ (Octavio Paz) and subject to a utopian non-time of eternal present-ness. Apollinaire militates against this state of perfection through poetic experiments with visual art and sound that dissolve the distinctions between artistic genres, highlighting the apocalyptic moment and its collapse of conceptual categories without suggesting any progression or utopian state beyond that moment. Furthermore, Apollinaire presents the theme of the poet as a marginalised figure existing in a state of continual becoming. Apollinaire’s apocalyptic discourse therefore envisions a distinctly anti-utopian state of continual creation and dissolution, where experiment and conflict are the eternal values of art.

‘supranationalism’ and ‘anationalism’. That its practice in Zurich was framed by exilic experience has also been established. This paper explores the insult in a related dimension of Dada’s cultural politics: an ambivalence and sometimes acute, highly subjective resistance local, parochial, ‘native’ and national cultures, targeted at ‘Zurich’ and ‘Switzerland’ more widely. Hugo Ball quipped that the Swiss were “more interested in yodelling than Cubism.” Richard Huelsenbeck sneered at the “fat and utterly uncomprehending Zurich philistines” and called Switzerland a countr y of “compulsor y national stultification.” Such formulations were modified by more magnanimous, if still clichéd Dadaist characterisations of Switzerland and by serious attempts to engage with local culture. This paper argues, however, that the isolation of exile is reformulated as an intellectual and political isolation against which Swiss culture, defined as stagnant and reactionar y, is a foil for Dada, vital and revolutionar y. It also proposes that the Dadaists’ complex relation to Switzerland both collectively and individually, is itself revealing of tension within Dada. The apparently flippant insults, provocations and assertions of cultural superiority may thus tell us more about the seriousness of Dada’s cultural politics in the face of European disaster. debora h Lewer History o f Art, U niversity of Glasgow, UK

roberto ludov ico: Modernism in 1930s Italy. Solaria’s model

ja m e s Le ve que Co m parative Literature, University of Edinbur g h, UK

d e b orah Le w e r: Yodelling or Cubism? Zurich Dada and perceptions of Switzerland S e ssi on 39

radical

It is known internationalism,

that Dada involved anti-nationalism, even

Session 35

After addressing the role played by Solaria in systematically connecting Italian literature of the 1920s and 1930s with the outposts of European Modernism, this paper will focus on the timing of such operation, which ended, with two late issues of the periodical, at the threshold of the Congrés International des Ecrivain pour la defense da culture

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held in Paris in June 1936. Aiming at rallying the European intellectual forces as the antidote to the Nazi-Fascist degeneration, and failing to do so, the Parisian congress marked the end of the traditional image of the modernist intellectual. While Solaria was an attentive witness to this process, it also initiated the formulation of a new figure of the intellectual, more in tune with the society that was about to emerge from the ruins of WWII.

Manet, Munch, Segantini, Favretto, Sargent, Whistler, and Krøyer. ta nja M a lycheva Paula M odersohn-Beck er M useum, M useen Boettcherstra sse, GERM ANY

Aria nna Consuelo ma rcon: the finnish long journey towards avant-garde: finnish poetry between 1920 and 1970 Session 4

r o be rto ludovico D e pa rtme n t o f Lan guage s , Lit e rat ur e s & Cultures , U n i v e rsity of Amherst, USA

tan ja Malych e va: Cosmopolitism as the Driving Force in the Artistic Development of Valentin Serov S e ssi on 31

It is not a coincidence that Valentin Serov’s contemporaries considered him to be one of the major renovators of Russian art around 1900. From my point of view, his body of work is one of the most striking examples of artistic links between Russia and Western Europe before the Revolution. In my dissertation I am discussing what works by European artists Serov could have known und to what extent he received them in his own art, which is an absolutely new approach to his oeuvre. In my talk I will discuss how Serov interpreted light in such early works as At the Window (1886), Riva degli Schiavoni (1887), Girl with Peaches (1887), Young Woman in Sunlight (1888), which already show him thinking along the same lines as his European counterparts. In this context, the attention will be focused on early visits to Europe – Germany, Holland, and Belgium in 1885, Italy in 1887 and France in 1889. In particular, I am going to take a closer look at the Exposition Universelle in Antwerp, Esposizione nazionale artistica in Venice, and Exposition Universelle in Paris where Serov encountered, inter alia, works by

In the Finnish poetr y scene of the early twentieth centur y it is not easy to identify an unanimous literar y movement(s), which could be regarded as emblematic of the avant-garde trend spreading all around europe and russia in those years. In finland the development towards an experimental poetr y freed from the canons of tradition took place slowly, covering a time span of nearly forty years and several attempts made occasionally by isolated authors. This is partly due to the relatively recent histor y of Finnish literature (literar y works written and published in finnish language date back to the late nineteenth centur y) and to the complex sociopolitical context after the civil war of 1918 and the years preceding the world war II and the winter war in Finland. The aim of this paper is to offer an over view of the changes, which took place in finnish poetr y with a special regard to the language itself and the visual and graphical typesetting of the poems. In order to outline chronologically this development I will proceed by analyzing some poems, which feature the main steps from the early modernism attempts, through the modernism of the fifties, to postmodernism and lettrism in the sixties and seventies. Aria nna Consuelo ma rcon Com parative Literature, University of Helsinki, F INLAND

e d uardo Marks de Mar que s : From Party Politics to Body Politics: Reading Modernist Dystopian Fiction as Postmodern Fiction S e ssi on 54

Dystopian fiction shares its literar y identity with the science fiction, given their common birth in the end of the 19th centur y. However, there seems to have been a distancing between the two genres in the first decades of the 20th centur y which has created a tendency of close reading of dystopian fiction as political allegories. A closer look at the resurgence of the genre in the end of the 20th centur y suggests, however, different forms of reading it. This paper is an attempt at presenting a form of reading modernist (i.e. second-turn) dystopian fiction as a precursor of the questions that go beyond mere political allegories and that are part of postmodern dystopias, namely the centrality of deformed, abnormal or transfigured bodies through which the imperfect worlds are created. e d uardo Marks de Mar que s Ce n t r e o f Letters and Co mmunication, Federal U n i v e rs it y o f Pe lotas , BRAZIL

scott Mc Cr acke n : The Mood of Defeat: Jules Vallès and the Fall of the Paris Commune S e ssi on 116

Is there a utopian mood? Does dystopia have its own feel, its own atmosphere? Or are the ideas of utopia and dystopia too abstract, too rational, to garner the nebulous associations of affect and feeling implied by the term ‘mood’? Following recent moves to introduce the concept of mood into cultural studies, this paper addresses the mood of defeat felt after the fall of the Paris Commune in the 1870s through Jules Vallès remarkable semi-autobiographical Vingtras trilology. Begun and largely written in exile in London, these three novels, L’enfant, Le Bachelier, and L’insurgé represent an early response to the political

defeat that was to become the paradigm of failed revolution in the twentieth centur y. While Zola’s anti-Communard Le Débâcle is better known, Vallès trilogy is formally much more interesting. The intense, fragmented form of L’insurgé, in particular, represents a clear break with earlier French fiction and a prototype for later modernist experiments. As this paper will argue, in coming to terms with dystopia of defeat, it manages to capture the utopian moments of intense experience that characterised the Commune’s brief existence. scott Mc Crack en English, Keele Univ ersity, uk

a ndrew Mc Na ma ra : Primitivism and utopia: a confounding configuration Session 83

The term, “primitive,” like “bourgeois” or “petit-bourgeois,” is rarely one that anyone readily identifies with. They are some of the most uncomfortable terms in the histor y of modernism. Early avant-garde art understood the aesthetic as an antidote to the alienation of modern bourgeois culture, an aspiration that fueled anticipations of a new communion with community (or specific communities), with nature, or (alternatively) with a future historical destiny. While no one freely identifies as “primitive,” the spectre of primitivism was a magnet of attraction as well as of critical refusal. It resided on the knifeedge of envy and denunciation, as well as for the projection of alternate imaginative utopias and the worst forms of racial chauvinism. This paper will assert that primitivism endures as a provocation as much as a utopian aspiration. The spectre of primitivism amplifies the quandaries of modernist cultures – both alerting one to the aesthetic alternatives to modernist cultures, yet also highlighting the fate of traditional culture pitted against modernist cultures. At the same time, it juxtaposes aesthetic universalism against the

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claims of cultural specificity. Examining Sigmar Polke and Clifford Possum, among others, this paper asks whether primitivism is the “natural” provocation of modernist cultures. an d r e w Mc namar a V i sua l Art s , Q UT, AUSTRALIA

patricia M c neill Iberian Latin Am erican Studies / Centre Social Sts , Queen Mary U niversity of London / Coim bra Univ ersity, uk

Siofra Mc Sherry: Marianne Moore and Joseph Cornell: gift exchange as a model for cross-disciplinary comparison Session 38

Pat r icia M c n e ill: Past Futures: Bi-directionality and Heterochronicity in the First Portuguese Modernism S e ssi on 41

This paper examines the co-existence of avant- and arrièrre-garde tendencies in the first Portuguese modernism as an instance of heterochronicity attendant on peripheral modernist manifestations. The movement’s bi-directionality is illustrated by the disparate contributions to Orpheu (1915), the founding magazine of Portuguese modernism, encompassing symbolist, decadent and futurist production. This aesthetic syncretism capable of incorporating heterogeneous artistic movements and different temporalities is encapsulated in ‘sensationism’, coined by the movement’s leading figure, Fernando Pessoa. Nonetheless, the neoclassical principles underpinning the aesthetic orientation of the magazine – apparent in its title and in the introduction to its first issue – attest to a passéism which is corroborated by Pessoa’s claim that its roots lay in ‘the mythology of the ancient’, which, he adds, ‘my radically pagan spirit never tires of reminiscing’ (Correspondência, I, 172-173). In this letter from 1915, Pessoa states that, like a river whose waters resurface over the course of time, Orpheu would have future incarnations. Hence, the paper traces a subsequent resurfacing of the neoclassic spirit of Orpheu, notably the magazine Athena (1924), which publicly launched Pessoa’s anti-modernist heteronyms, Alberto Caeiro and Ricardo Reis, and Portuguese neopaganism, a materialisation of his pagan utopia that sought to revitalise modern Portuguese culture.

This paper applies the theor y of gift exchange in a comparison of the works of the American modernist poet Marianne Craig Moore (1887-1972) and assemblage artist Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), through close readings of their works and correspondence. These two key avant-garde figures engaged in an exchange of letters, ephemera and artworks that defined their friendship and provided material for their respective works. The social system of gift exchange, derived from Marcel Mauss and complicated and updated by Marilyn Strathern, Miwon Kwon and others, provides a means of comparing Moore’s poetic texts with Cornell’s visual works in terms of their aesthetic, philosophical and procedural concerns, and assessing their wider relationships, both with their modernist community of peers and the public. By representing the exchange of shared ideas and conceptions – as well as physical texts and artworks – as a gift system, the shifts and transformations achieved between their different media can be traced, with texts and artworks positioned in a non-hierarchical, cyclical and continuous relation to one another. This paper presents extracts from the Moore-Cornell correspondence alongside Moore texts such as The Jerboa, demonstrating the action of the gift exchange and the creative opportunity its obligation and response patterns provided. Siofra Mc Sherry J .F. K . Institute f or North Am erican S tudies , Freie Univ ersity, GERM ANY

h an na Me re to ja: The nouveau roman and the dream of the new man S e ssi on 73

The nouveau roman has often been regarded as a formalist and apolitical avantgarde movement, in contrast to the socially committed existentialism. Alain Robbe-Grillet, for example, wants to replace social commitment with a “commitment to literature”. However, according to him, it is precisely through such commitment, through transformative work on literar y forms, that literature can have subversive potential and can take part in creating a “new man” who constantly creates himself anew. In a typical avantgarde spirit, Robbe-Grillet suggests that the destruction of old forms and order enables a new beginning, the building of l’homme nouveau. Rather than providing a concrete image of this utopian “new man”, however, the focus is on the movement of dismantling old order, liberating the reader from conventional, naturalized structures of meaning and from the “myth of naturalness”. This paper analyses the tension, underlying Robbe-Grillet’s vision of the “new man”, between society as a sphere of unfreedom and art as a sphere of freedom. Moreover, it explores the idea of the “new man” in relation to Nietzschean and Foucauldian ”aesthetics of existence” and to the crisis of European humanism after the Second World War, expressed in the nouveau roman as a profound suspicion of all social ideologies. h an na Me re to ja Co m parative Literature, University of Tampere, FINLAND

an n e li Mih ke le v: The Grotesque and Magical Realism as Contemporary Avant-Garde S e ssi on 105

The grotesque is a ver y old phenomenon and magical realism was avant-garde style in the 20th centur y, before and after the World War II. The aim

of the present paper is to analyse how contemporar y literature uses grotesque and magical realism, and how grotesque and magical realism represent crises in culture and society. The main texts that my analysis focuses on are Andrus Kivirähk’s (1970) and Mehis Heinsaar’s (1973) novels and other works. Kivirähk is a ver y popular Estonian writer who is well known in Estonia because he uses national myths in his works. But he presents national myths with irony, qrotesque and in a satirical manner, or at least humorously. It is possible to interpret his works in different ways, including as warnings of crises. Mehis Heinsaar’s stories are not as tragic, and he uses many intertextual relations in his stories. The term “magical realism” characterizes Heinsaar’s style ver y well. Heinsaar’s typical character is a funny and kind-hearted man who does strange things, and all his life is full of mystical adventures which are melancholy and humorous. Heinsaar’s typical character is a strange man who has physical deformations and/or mystical abilities. a nneli M ihk elev Institute o f Estonian Language and Culture, Tallinn Univ ersity, ESTONIA

M a lcolm miles: The end of modernity’s end? Session 112

This paper speculates that if the end of modernity began with the failure of revolt in 1968, the end of the end of modernity is the triumph of neoliberalism and effective abandonment of the state now. I approach this through two sources, one from art histor y, the other from critical theor y: Tim Clark’s Farwell to an Idea (1999) and Peter Sloterdijk’s In the World Interior of Capital (2013). Clark writes of the modernist past as a ruin which cannot now be understood because the conditions which it predicted have arrived. He also says, but does not unpack, that modernism and socialism died at the same time. Sloterdijk writes that capital has gone beyond

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the operations of the market in an attempt to put work life, wish life and expressive life – the whole of life – within its containment, taking the Cr ystal Palace (1851) as a figure of this containment, seen through Dostoyevsky’s account. Perhaps the model of containment which becomes market-totalitarianism, after Herbert Marcuse’s idea of a totalitarianism of consumer culture, is the future predicted in modernist functionalism and instrumentalism. Dystopia takes the place of the desired utopia, which was always undermined by these traits. Between the end of socialism and the triumph of capital, however, emerges a contingent mode of thought which re-casts the problem and may be conducive to an extrication of the utopian content of modernism from its wreck. The paper tries to say … incompletely … what this might be.

discussion of the past achievements of Danish Modernism and to question the relation between the modernist art magazine and the traditional art canon of Danish art histor y. Can the study of a relatively unknown art magazine add to our understanding of Danish modernism or is this materiel (admittedly coming from the peripher y of art histor y) just confirming the boundaries of the traditional center of the concept?

Malcolm mile s

Modernist explorations of ritual as a basis of communal action (positive or negative), sociability, even spirituality, often touched upon a form of ritual that had become a significant social and spiritual locus during the late-19th centur y occult revival, and that is esoteric initiation and invocation. While London audiences were grappling with modernist art at Roger Fr y’s Manet and the Post Impressionists exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, many also were given a glimpse of occult ritual at Aleister Crowley’s performance of The Rites of Eleusis at the Caxton Hall in October and November 2010. This paper explores the 19th centur y roots of esoteric ritual (emerging in the Golden Dawn and other secret Hermetic orders of the day that blended western esotericism with masonic systems of initiation into grades), and its development in modernist and surrealist literature, art, and performance in the 20th centur y. I will focus on the example of Gustav Meyrink’s apocalyptic war novel and esoteric tour-de-force, The Green Face (Das grüne Gesicht) (1916). Meyrink’s novel presents a modernist understanding of esoteric ritual’s ability to negotiate social, cultural, and spiritual collapse through a transhistorical syncretic vision held up against the

A r ch i t e ct ure , Un ive r s it y o f Plymo ut h , uk

i n g e lis e Mo ge n s e n Be ch : Modernism and the Danish magazine Buen, 1924-25 S e ssi on 64

This paper will investigate the Danish art magazine Buen (The Arch), which was published 192425 by the artist Otto V. Borch. Focusing on this ver y specific empirical material I want to examine the possible benefits of magazine studies for the understanding of the concept of modernism within Danish art histor y. How can analyzing a magazine as Buen add to our understanding of Danish Modernism? Which methodological and theoretical perspectives are relevant when integrating magazine studies into art histor y? How can our understanding of the of modernism benefit from a broadening of the context in which we explore the possible meanings and futures of the concept? Taking these questions as a point of departure I intend to broaden the context of the

inge lise M ogensen Bech Depa rtment of Aesthetics a nd Comm unication, Aa rhus Univ ersitet, DENM ARK

ma rk M orrisson: Modernism and Esoteric Ritual Session 110

apocalyptic destruction of civilization facing Europe during the war. m ar k Mo r ris s on

Vla da mûller: The dialogue between image and text in the works of Anselm Kiefer and Ilya Kabakov Session 38B

E n g l i sh , Pe n n Stat e Un ive r s it y, USA

e l e a no r Mo s e man : Karel Teige’s defense of social visionary Bohumil Kubista as ideal artist for communist Czechoslovakia S e ssi on 71

Czech avant-garde artist Bohumil Kubišta (1884-1918) was regarded by his contemporaries as a visionar y whose art, art criticism, and art theor y challenged convention by means of social critique. Kubišta advocated for quality art criticism that heralds the progressive potential of avant-garde art, with modern form applied to socially oriented content. Kubišta believed in art’s fundamental role in transforming society from within. He took seriously the responsibility of all artists and art critics to use their work to critique existing structures and advance the cause of modernity, a significant challenge in the face of Habsburg imperialism and hegemony of Parisian art. In this paper, I argue that Kubišta’s involvement in art, art criticism, and socially progressive dissent led radical artist and critic Karel Teige to recognize in Kubišta a leader whose impact should be perpetuated as an exemplar of utopian ideals. In 1947 Teige coedited a complete reprinting of Kubišta’s artistic and theoretical publications at a moment when artists of the new communist state of Czechoslovakia were being offered a role in shaping the new society. That Teige regarded Kubišta’s ideas as worthy of study speaks to the power and insight of Kubišta’s contribution to progressive art in a modern age.

I consider the problem how two most significant post-war artists of Germany and Russia – Anselm Kiefer and Ilya Kabakov – developed a new artistic language to adequately represent phenomenon of totalitarianism that took different forms in their countries: nazi- and communist dictatorship. Despite their different approaches, the creative point of view of Kiefer and Kabakov concur on the question that a modern work of art is not really complete, if it exists in the local sovereignty of a visual image. Through adding text to visual images they not only cross the boundaries separating two art forms – painting and literature, but unite various spheres of perception: intellectual, visual and acoustic. The belonging to different national cultures defines the approach of the artists to the text. For Kiefer the presence of high literature, as poetr y by Paul Celan is fundamental. Kabakov is affected by Russian literar y tradition of a ‘little person’ and uses understated, mundane language. Kiefer moves in cosmic histor y where ever ything is connected. Kabakov, in contrast, stays in a confined space of a totalitarian state. But both of them, combining text with visual representation defy the oblivion and create a space of memor y which is the common denominator of their works. Vla da mûller Faculty of Arts , Univ ersity of Helsink i, F INLAND

Seba stia n M usch: Asia as a rememdy for the decline of the west in german-jewish writing

e l e a no r Mo s e man

Session 10

Art a nd Art H istory, Colorado S tate University, USA ( p r e se n t e d b y Is ab e l Wün s ch e )

German-speaking Jewish writers at the beginning of the 20th centur y often turned to Asia as offering a remedy to the ailments of Western

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modernity. The decline of the West was only to stop by an infusion of authenticity from the Far East. In many of these concepts Judaism could ser ve as a bridge between Europe and Asia and thus contribute to overcoming the global divide between East and West. By reconciling Western modernity with the more original way of life in Asia, Judaism would fullfill an messianic task and solve many of the troubles that immanent to modernity. Comparing better known figures like Martin Buber with lesser known figures like the cultural critic and philosopher Theodor Lessing and the travel writer and painter Paul Cohen-Portheim, I will discuss in my paper how their concepts of Asia and Europe, the East and the West, and modernity can be compared and how they are related to their own German-Jewish identity. S e ba st ian Mus ch J e w i s h T hou g ht and I ntellectual History, University o f H aifa / He ide lb e r g, ISRAEL

S v e t lana Ne de ljkov: Literature is news that STAYS news: Ezra Pound, Politics , and Modernism S e ssi on 33

Ezra Pound devoted his life to writing, translating, and educating those willing to be initiated to new, modernist writing. Pound was also, however, a poet of megalomaniacal and utopistic ideas, believing that he could change the world by educating “the nation.” His devotion to edification is evident in his correspondence, numerous pedagogical textbooks, and his book-length epic, The Cantos. His idées fixes regarding sociopolitics and economics, which became inescapably obvious in the broadcasts over Rome Radio in the early 1940s, remain a constant motif not only in his letters, but also in the rest of his work, reflecting his imprudent fascist, anti-Semitic, racial, and economic views. While Pound’s innovative ideas established him as one of the leading modernists and helped shape the movement in the early twentieth centur y, the controversy behind his sociopolitical

views, trial, and subsequent imprisonment has greatly affected the state of scholarship devoted to the poet. By analyzing the “Pound enterprise,” to use Donald Davie’s term, the aim of this paper is to investigate the implications that Pound’s questionable positions have had for the evaluation of his work. Sv etla na Nedelj kov En glish, University of New Brunswick, CANADA

k ristoff er Noheden: Surrealism in 1947 and cinema – myth and magic in L’Invention du monde and Eaten Horizons Session 27

In Jean-Louis Bédouin and Michel Zimbacca’s documentar y film L’Invention du monde (1952), the surrealist poet Benjamin Péret narrates a collage-like, poetic inquest into the function of myth. In Wilhelm Freddie’s experimental film Eaten Horizons (1950), the Danish surrealist artist enacts what appears to be a magic ritual. These two films stand as pertinent examples of the often neglected post-war development of surrealist cinema. They are also directly related to contemporar y surrealist activities. André Breton and Marcel Duchamp organized Le Surréalisme en 1947 as a search for a utopian surrealist “new myth”, structured as an initiation. This, in turn, was meant to point the way towards a mar vellous renewal and magical rebirth of a shattered society. In this paper, I examine how surrealism’s turn towards myth and magic is reflected in L’Invention du monde and Spiste horisonter. The former is a lyrical valorization of man’s capacity to reinvent the world through myth, while the latter is a considerably darker evocation of the magical capacities of art. Combined, they resonate with the “new myth” as the result of an initiatic rebirth, and so afford new perspectives on the multifaceted surrealist utopia as it was conceived at the time. k ristoff er Noheden Depart ment o f Media Studies , Stockhol m University, SWEDEN

n e i l l OD w ye r : Driessens and Verstappen, Chance Operations in the Age of Computation S e ssi on 74

By analysising of the work of Driessens and Verstappen, an art duo from the Netherlands who work in the artificial-life genre, this paper shows how the avant-garde strategy of using chance operations, for the production of content, has evolved in the age of computational art. I will synthesise theories of the modern avant-garde, outlined by Adorno, Burger and Poggioli, with theories of artificial-life put forward by Whitelaw and Langton. The theoretical strategy of mimesis shall also be addressed. Of particular importance here is the slippage the term suffered during the outset of modernism compared with the new definitions that the term undergoes in the context of the artificiallife aesthetics, and thus, what are the implications for current subjectivities? Central to this discussion is the questioning that interrogates where the avant-garde strategy of chance has migrated to now, in the age of cybernetics, genetic engineering and nano-technology? And how can these strategies offer meaningful aesthetic discourse? The reason for proceeding with this questioning is to show that, not only are these strategies still actively engaged by contemporar y artists, but so too do they offer fresh and provocative work-internal tensions that maintain the potential to foreground concerns of subjectivity and identity in a socio-historic context. n e i l l ODw ye r Art s T echnolo g y Research Lab , T rinity Colle ge D u b l i n, IRELAND

of experimental spatial projects. They appeared to be forecasts and warnings, thus providing important background for the contemporar y social change. In the context of events of the ‘60s and the ‘70s, the International Exposition of Intentional Architecture TERRA was founded. It took place in Wroclaw in 1975 and it accompanied the Congress of AICA, engaged that time in Warsaw. About two thirds of invitees answered the invitation who represented the international environmental architects, urban planners and artists. The initiator, the curator of the exhibition and also the participant was Stefan Müller. He tried to answer the question on what the architecture was, however using completely new concept, which was the intentional architecture, thereby defining the area explored by the participants of the exhibition as the borderline architecture, including the areas of art, technology and social issues. The discourse will be an analysis of the Terra X project by Stefan Müller, in the context of all the other works at the exhibition, with particular emphasis on the relationship between human, the environment and the technology. The projects represented a clear statement towards the development of the technology, thereby illustrating the impact of the technology as both a regressive as well as a progressive factor for the civilization itself. ewa Odyja s Faculty o f Architecture, Silesian University of Technology, POLAND

ewa Odyja s: Contemporary Spatial Utopias as an Effect of the Creative Risk Management. Session 3

e wa Odyjas : Intentional architecture. TERRA X, TERRA Y, TERRA Z. S e ssi on 74

In the second half of the twentieth centur y, in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, utopias took forms

Contemporar y utopias are an attempt to shift the bridge between two worlds: subjective – artistic and purely objective approach towards the innovation in science. [van Berkel] Events and discoveries in the field of

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knowledge, such as the first prototype of the microcomputer (1960), the first computers massproduction (1954), the first concept of the nanomaterial (1959), the discover y of the DNA structure (1953) have permanently changed the contemporar y reality. They have set up a new path of the development. Each subsequent event defined a field of uncertainty associated with the future. The spatial utopias clearly define the areas of uncertainty, which is accompanied by the greatest tensions. They show alternative development possibilities, focusing on the disclosure of the risk factors and their positive or negative consequences. They appear to be sketches of an expected course of events, depending on which risk factors and how they can change their course. The author suggests the identification of the spatial utopia phenomenon within the context of risk management discipline. The objects of the research will be the contemporar y spatial utopias, since modernism and avant-garde. The aim of the research will be risk identification, evaluation and analysis of the risk treatment. The discourse will be a summar y of initial research on the risk in the area of knowledge – technology. e wa O dyjas Fac u lty o f A rchitecture, Silesian U niversity of T e ch n o lo gy, POLAND

Mi ch iko o ki: Kafka’s Odradek – Thoughts of Distortion and Transformation S e ssi on 28

This presentation examines Kafka’s character Odradek appearing in his short stor y The Cares of the Family Man, a strange animated objectcreature who resides in the threshold area of the household. I argue that Odradek allegorically expresses a place of distortion, thus violence, in the socialising system in modernity and evokes the social criticism,

especially a critique of humanism. Odradek has been variously discussed as a prototype of distortion, the remnant of an entity produced at a tangent to itself by the anthropocentric forces at work in forming the subject as well as histor y. Drawing on Freud’s idea of the uncanny and Adorno’s understanding of aesthetic experience, I argue that Odradek is both an allegorical expression and an allegorical experience of what makes social criticism possible when the individual entity is transformed into a transcendent social being. Freud’s idea of the dubious lures of narcissism of self-objectification has the capacity, here, to open up the self to space of reflection and obser vation. This object-creature, a doubling of the human, that signals the distortion fundamental to the socialising process, further prefigures the discourses on posthumanism in the postwar era, in which the idea of ‘human’ is contested and challenged interdisciplinarily. M ichiko ok i: School of Europea n La nguages , Culture & Society, Univ ersity College London, Uk

florin Oprescu: L’avant-garde roumaine et l’utopie du pouvoir Session 79

Dans son manifeste « Dada 3 » de 1918, Tzara déclarait, comme tout avant-gardiste véritable, qu’il était contre les systèmes, et que « le plus acceptable des systèmes est celui de ne pas avoir, par principe, aucun ». Il s’agit du gout de l’anarchie de tout artiste avant-gardiste, mais pourtant il faut s’interroger si vraiment cette utopie antisystème n’a pas été un seul projet rhétorique, comme plusieurs idées avant-gardistes. Est-ce que cette avant-garde a vraiment réussi à maintenir sa position subversive dans des conditions particulières? Pendant presque 40 années d’excès de pouvoir politique, entre les extrémismes des années 30 et la soviétisation des années 50, l’avant-garde roumaine a essayé à garder son esprit libre en dénonçant l’utopie du pouvoir. On propose donc une image de l’avant-garde roumaine,

du constructivisme synthétiste de Vinea et Janco, surréalisme de Naum, Luca, jusqu’à la néo-avant-garde des années 60, par rapport aux pouvoir. Le but d’une telle analyse est celui de voir quelles sont les stratégies subversives de l’art avant-gardiste contre les systèmes qui voulaient imprimer leur « hégémonie culturelle » (Gramsci). Est-ce que l’avant-garde roumaine a gardé son esprit de révolte et quels ont été ses sacrifices et ses sacrifiés?

through the representation of reality, a paradise of possibilities in the quotidian spaces of the city.

f lo r i n Opre s cu

In the stories of the collection Spillway (1962), Djuna Barnes builds museum-like interiors showing the past in a distorted, decayed form. The borderline between the interior and its surroundings becomes fuzzy, the inside and outside forming a mass of abundant textures. Beyond the interior there is the presence of a city, and beyond the city, a cosmopolitan world for the characters to appear from and disappear into. These characteristics contribute to an ambiguous, dreamlike quality of the interior descriptions, wavering between fantasy and nightmare. This paper is a reading of Barnes’s short fiction, viewed through Walter Benjamin’s idea of dream as an individual and collective phenomenon, phantasmagorical but also radical in containing the seeds of a different future. Barnes depicts, with a mixture of nostalgia and parody, the bourgeois interiors of 19th centur y Paris that Benjamin writes about in his Arcades Project. How does the ambiguous relation to the interior work as a narrative strategy and a means of signification? Is it possible to view Barnes’s dream world as radical in the Benjaminian sense? Further, the paper raises the question of the layer of nostalgia added by a present-day reader’s position, and its effect on these possibilities.

I n s t i tute for Ro manistic, V ienna University& West U n i v e rs it y o f Timis oar a, AUSTRIA

D e s O’Raw e : Somewhere in the City: Joseph Cornell’s New York Stories S e ssi on 81

Joseph Cornell’s New York films from the 1950s are an extension of his better-known collage and assemblage art, as well as his earlier found-footage experiments; and their uncanny documentar y forms flicker between realism and symbolism, transfiguring the busy capital into a city of fables and allegories, a fragile utopia of the imagination. Focussing on four films (The Aviar y, Nymphlight, Angel, and A Fable for Fountains), the paper discusses the aesthetic and metaphysical nature of these films in relation to three contexts: firstly, the visual – especially, photographic and documentar y – culture developing in New York in the 1950s, a culture that included Cornell, even if he did not ‘officially’ belong to any of its coteries; secondly, the people he worked with on these productions, especially his collaborations with Rudy Burckhardt and Stan Brakhage; and thirdly, the relevance of this work to a wider discussion about documentar y film practice, and how it relates to more abstract, non-realistic expressive forms. For Cornell – who lived all his adult life in a house along Utopian Parkway, Queens – documentar y filmmaking involved revealing the real

Des O’ Rawe Creativ e Arts , Queen’ s Univ ersity, Uk

laura Oula nne: The dream interiors of Djuna Barnes’s short fiction Session 9

laura Oula nne Com parative literature, University of Helsinki, F INLAND

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k u k ka paavilain e n : How woodcut changed Ellen Thesleff’s paintings S e ssi on 84

The Finnish painter Ellen Thesleff (18691954) developed her way of painting vigorously from 1906 and on. It was then she started to use a palette knife instead of a brush. I concentrate in the years 1906-1912 when Thesleff didn’t use her normal tool – brush – instead she used two knives: a palette knife and a woodcut knife. In 1907 Thesleff learned the woodcut technique and started to work with it. The influence of another technique can be seen immediately in her paintings. Changes in paintings improve gradually as she proceeds in the field of printmaking. The last known painting made with palette knife is from 1911. After that Thesleff turned back to brush. In 1912 she painted a piece that is however the climax of the influence of woodcut in her carreer – painted with brush. For Thesleff woodcut was the primus motor of reformation but palette knife was the actor. Firstly Thesleff started to develope an independent brushstroke, whitch was free from the conventional layer of oil colour, that covered the whole painting. Secondly her experience from woodcut changed the way she saw the space in the painting: the conventional layer of oil colour became first broken, ragged, and then multilayered.

and artist. Fascinated by the dream-like atmospheres of an avant-garde New York, embodied by Alfred Stieglitz, O’Keeffe soon discovers the illusor y patriarchal system around her, and plans an evasion driving her to New Mexico. Looking for a bold alternative to the European-oriented artists who paradoxically speak of America Art, O’Keeffe retreats into a private world mapping a new liberating community. Mingling with the native and with controversial personalities such as Jean Toomer and Sherwood Anderson, she establishes the liminal role of her personality. This work, articulated within visual studies, literature and culture, analyzes a selection of letters O’Keeffe exchanged with Stieglitz, Toomer, Anderson, and excerpts of her autobiography (1976). It aims at considering O’Keeffe’s modernism taking into account Edward Said’s theories on secular criticism. Acknowledging the imperatives of the European “dominant culture” in art still carried out by male artists, O’Keeffe contrasts them with “individual consciousness” recognizing the limits of such dominion. Self-exiled in a border countr y, O’Keeffe overcomes her nationalism and creates an affiliative and trans-national cultural scheme that still contributes to her legacy. cristia na Paglia rusco Huma nities , Univ ersità degli Studi di Trento, ITALY

lynn pa lermo: Reexamining Surrealism in a tropical dystopia Session 114

k u k k a paavilain e n fi n n i sh Acade my o f Fine Arts and University of H e lsi nki, FINLAND

cr i stiana Pagliarus co : The Affiliative Scheme in Georgia O’Keeffe’s Artistic Path S e ssi on 64

I consider the life of Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), American artist, as one example of the Modernist utopic conquest of an identity as woman

In 1941, André Breton fled occupied France to take refuge in the United States. On a layover in Martinique, he was arrested for being a writer. Mar tinique , charmeuse de serpents (1948) emerged from this experience: it is a fragmented work that includes an aesthetic dialogue on surrealism and exoticism, prose poems, and an exposé of the corrupt power structure on the island. In Martinique, Breton must acknowledge colonialism and fascism as stepchildren of the Third Republic. His experience in exile of the paradisaical tropical forest on the one hand, and

the dystopian capital city under repressive rule on the other, upend notions of primitive and civilized. Using Benjamin’s Experience and pover ty, Torgovnick (1991) and Anders Olsson (2007), this paper focuses on Breton’s use of notions of “primitivism” and “civilization,” and the trope of the tropical paradise to reassess surrealism itself. Can surrealism exist and remain relevant under an authoritarian regime? Can surrealism be politically committed without sacrificing its aesthetic, its fundamental intent to liberate the mind? Breton’s homage to the rich, committed voice of Aimé Césaire, who is French and not-French might signal a shift in his thinking from juxtaposition to hybridity. ly n n pale r mo : M o d e rn Lan guage s , Sus que h an na Un ive r s it y, USA

ly nn pale rmo : Looking Back to Move Forward: Le Corbusier on the Decorative Arts in the Modern Age S e ssi on 46

The 1925 Exposition in Paris was conceived to reassert the primacy of the French decorative arts, an industr y in crisis. In Europe, France had dominated the decorative arts since the 17th centur y, but with the rise of mass production – especially German industrial design – French design seemed to have lost its direction. Le Corbusier rejected the Exposition organizers’ celebration of Art Deco as modernism. In his book L’Ar t décoratif d’aujourd’hui, published to coincide with the exposition, Le Corbusier argued that only by viewing “folk” and “primitive” cultures as models would the French decorative arts see their way to attaining true modernism. In so doing, the decorative arts, along with architecture could create a living environment designed to cultivate a “modern man” for the machine age. Viewing the modern and the primitive through the lens of Calinescu (1987) and James Clifford (1988), respectively, among others, I will use word and image to analyze Le Corbusier’s attempt to merge the modern and the primitive in a

hopeful bid to forge a new society that would rise above the nationalist hubris that had laid waste to Europe in World War I. lynn pa lermo: M odern La nguages , Susqueha nna Univ ersity, USA

j ustin pa rk s: The Intellectual Worker and the 1930s Crisis of Cultural Production Session 116

“Intellectual workers of the world unite!” John Dos Passos once quipped. “You have nothing to lose but your brains!” This tongue-in-cheek remark calls attention to a noteworthy tendency of 1930s cultural production in both Europe and the United States, namely the variegated attempt to envision forms of solidarity between workers and writers, chiefly through writers’ arrogation of the role of producers or technicians. This paper sur veys the period-specific phenomenon of the writer-as-producer or technician in the work of Dos Passos, Tillie Olsen, Walter Benjamin, and others, and argues that examining the changing role and status of the writer reveals faultlines existing within modernism as a set of representational prerogatives and aesthetic and cultural agendas. The first wave of modernism – associated with figures like Pound and Eliot – was still dominated by a model of the individual genius-as-producer inherited from romanticism. The left-leaning period following the 1929 Stock Market Crash departs significantly from this model: urban-industrial modernity – with its Fordist and Sloanist forms of production – was evidently in crisis, and writers seeking to alleviate the crisis worked to fashion themselves as technicians as they sought to turn the tide of capitalist modernity by appropriating its own techniques to radical ends. j ustin pa rk s English, Univ ersity at Buffa lo / Univ ersity of Turk u, F INLAND

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sa nde e p Parmar : ‘The dreams have reached my waist’: Trance and Ritual in Hope Mirrlees’s Paris

obsession with the past as an encounterable state in an ever yday reality.

S e ssi on 80 sa ndeep Pa rma r English, Univ ersity of Liv erpool, uk

Although Hope Mirrlees made extended visits to Paris before the onset of the First World War, spending several months writing and researching the city’s histor y from 1913 onwards, it was the spring of 1919 – during the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles – that she immortalized in her long poem Paris. Imagined as a walk, though impossible to physically undertake, Paris responds directly to an inheritance of male flânerie (Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Reverdy, Cendrars) and its associations with anonymity, emotional velocity as well as the flâneur’s inscription of his own ego onto the city’s ever-fluid topography. Mirrlees’s flâneuse is unobser ved, transcendent even, and her wandering is caught up in a state not of obser vation but mostly of trance, allowing a kind of time travel through Paris’s histor y from the Middle Ages to her present day. Perhaps suggestive of the city’s endurance in a time of crisis, Mirrlees’s poem largely avoids expressing hopeful optimism or despair over recent losses, instead it favours images of a cyclical ritual nature – the Spirit of the Year, the birthing of babies, the dying, the inanities of children’s play and the regular violence of monarchs and empires. Held as if in a trance, Paris’s speaker is both removed from and bound to the present through her interpretation of the city’s histor y, not through physical movement. Trance states allow not only for non-linear time in Mirrlees’s flânerie, but also provide the poem’s speaker with unconventional and sometimes magical exits from the poem’s materiality: its context and content as well as the poem’s syntactical and typographical boundaries and directions. My paper will show how Paris‘s use of trance as a kind of waking dream-state also anticipates Mirrlees’s foray into avant-garde experiments in prose (plot-bending in The Counterplot and fair y fantasy in Lud-in-the-Mist) along the lines of the antiquarian’s

bo Pettersson: The literary spark for the First World War: The imminent dystopia of The Battle of Dorking Session 29

Since this conference commemorates the centenar y of the breakout of the First World War, it may be appropriate to consider the rather neglected role of dystopian literature in sparking it. In 1871 the British Lieutenant-Colonel George Tomkyns Chesney was so disturbed by the strength of the victorious German forces in the Franco-Prussian War that he wrote The Battle of Dorking, a novella on how Germany conquers Britain. It was immensely popular in Britain and abroad, initiated invasion fiction, which within forty years included over 400 titles, and contributed to the warmongering preceding the First World War. I suggest that it is worth studying The Battle of Dorking in some detail in order better to understand the power of the influential rhetoric of this dystopia set in the immediate future. Having been written by a high-ranking militar y official, it makes use of a number of fictional techniques as well as militar y strategy. In fact, The Battle of Dorking (and subsequent invasion fiction) was so persuasive that it changed foreign policy in Europe and ultimately sparked the First World War. This by now rather forgotten novella is simply one of the books that have “changed the world”. bo Pettersson Depart ment o f Modern Lan guages , University of Helsink i, F INLAND

Mar i ana Pin to do s San to s : The Ernesto de Sousa case. Building a portuguese avant-garde. S e ssi on 81

In the forties, ES was a neo-realist and also a critic and main promotor of film societies and magazines, as well as a photographer and movie director. In the late 1960’s he changed to a defense of experimental film and performative art, establishing relations with the Fluxus movement. Also in the 1960’s, ES deepened his studies in popular culture which he had started years before, and which had led him to promote crossings between “high” and “low” art, and to appropriate features he found in folk art for a renewal of neo-realism. The consolidation of his studies and his movement from the neo-realist cause to experimental art forms related with the international neo-avantgarde, led him to advocate for an avant-garde rooted in national folk art, as well as in the first portuguese modernists. His method of mixing his interests and giving them an use value is based in his reading of Bertolt Brecht. I will discuss Ernesto’s marxist-based effort to find new languages for the portuguese art and the implications of this example in the widening of a concept like modernism in peripherical Europe.

American woodcraft skills and Arthurian chivalr y, the organisation, led by charismatic artist John Hargrave, was more than just another manifestation of the backto-the-land movement. With wide-ranging ambitions including educational and economic reform, the Kinsfolk’s utopia combined historical revivalism with a notable futurist sensibility, seen most keenly in the distinctive art and design of the organisation, which combined Egyptian, Anglo Saxon, Constructivist and Cubist motifs in a range of striking insignia, regalia and costume. While backwards-looking, Kibbo Kift was also forward-thinking. Hargrave explained, ‘The Kin is always experimenting with new ideas because it considers this civilisation to be past its zenith and on the decline.’ As Tim Armstrong has noted, modernism works ‘with notions of temporality which overlap, collide, and register their own incompletion’. As will be shown, KKK’s sprawling, complex and paradoxical (anti)modernism was marked by dynamic, multiple chronicities as it simultaneously engaged with, rejected and embraced futures, presents and pasts. Annebella pollen School of Huma nities , Univ ersity of Brighton, uk

sa ra h Posma n: Modernism at the Front? Temporality in Literary Contributions to WWI Journals

Mar i ana Pin to do s San to s

Session 29

A rt H i s to ry In s t it ut e , FCSH -UNL, PORTUGAL

A n n e b e lla po lle n : Utopian futures and imagined pasts in the ambivalent modernism of the Kibbo Kift Kindred S e ssi on 63

As one of a number of progressive youth organisations in interwar Britain, Kindred of the Kibbo Kift had radical ideas for the making of a new society, in their case, based on world peace, handicrafts and camping. Combining eclectic influences from esoteric spirituality and simple life impulses to Native

In Lectures on Ideology and Utopia Ricoeur, drawing on Mannheim, presents utopia and ideology in a dialectical relationship. Where ideology is the social context, the present in which we live, utopia is “the leap outside,” by which we escape from that context. The proposed paper considers how this dialectic functions in war-time writing. In a time of war what counts as ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ is at once sharply established (in the nationalist discourse and the projection of victor y) and called into question (doubting, dissenting voices). I focus on temporality in the literar y contributions to WWI journals and

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intend to explore the temporal strategies by which the writers of such pieces attempted to make sense of their present and its possible alternatives. The Great War counts as prime modernist rupture, the all-encompassing crisis signaling a new era. We readily link the avant-garde to this moment of crisis, but we don’t tend to associate less radical wartime writing with modernism. While scholars of British modernism have tended to focus on the effects of the war in 1920’s and ‘30s literature (T.S. Eliot, David Jones), WWI-scholars such as Winter highlight the return to traditional vocabularies of mourning in WWIwriting. The question this paper intends to answer is: to what extent can the representation of time and temporality in literar y texts produced during the war be considered modernist?

living space of residents, the way ease-of-parking and nuclear-family-optimization are built into the grid and housing landscape we are given in late-capitalist übermodernism. In particular I will tr y to show how procedural architecture addresses reversing the fate of the post-übermodernist body by inspiring its aspiration to full architecturality, and not having to die. The architectural body, fully-or-at-leastmaximally-more realized and enlivened, is the utopia of embodiment procedural architecture opens up to us and inspires us to pursue, and that in its scale of envisioned impact certainly could salvage certain remains of the modernist legacy – by reversing the destiny they project for us. a la n Prohm

sa r a h Po s man

Aca demy, GERM ANY

L i t e r a ry St udie s , G h e n t Un ive r s it y, BELG IU M ( p r e se n t e d b y Ce dric Van Dijck ) Cha rlotte purk is: Promotion, patronage and mentoring in post-war alan Pro h m: Procedural Architecture: Reversing the Destiny of Functionalist Modernism

London: origins , ideals and consequences of the Watergate Theatre Club. Session 62

S e ssi on 101

The notion of procedurality, built into the design philosophy and practice Arakawa and Gins call Procedural Architecture (in the ser vice of what they call Reversible Destiny), constitutes a major advanceof-play in the game of experimental art and design practice, not only in relation to high functionalist Modernism, but also to wave on wave of after-workings of the Modernist project. Procedurality undoes function to restore the body to architecture and architecture to the body. I will tr y to clarify the kind of move it would be to make, to move from a functionalistmodernism design society, to a reversible-destiny/ procedural-architecture-based society – to a society that could build in change-of-course and cease-dyingnow-at-least-in-that-way to the urban planning and

Velona Pilcher (1894-1952) was an AngloAmerican theatre director about whom little is documented because of her limited creative output. In her writing for British and American magazines, and roles at London theatres from 1920s -40s, Pilcher connected to a range of artists and intellectuals, bringing to bear her experiences of European travel and expertise in performance critique. Her career and artistic significance are ripe for exploration in terms of British Modernism which connected to and was formed by contacts with creative networks, on both sides of the Atlantic. Digging deeper than the associations surrounding institutions, into the circumstances surrounding Pilcher’s personal artistr y and her friendships and locations, uncovers further contacts, through, for example, letters and committee minutes, connecting her to other groupings significant in British Modernism between the wars, for example,

Smallhythe farm, Farley Farmhouse, P.E.N, Festival of Britain, and the emergent ICA. This paper presents and evaluates both the scope and nature of her connections, and also what emerges from an example of her participation. A case-study of The Watergate Theatre Club alters how we might look beyond creative production and individual authorship to review the operations and consequences of networking for promotion, patronage and mentoring within the avantgarde. C h ar lott e purkis P e r f o r min g Art s , Un ive rs it y o f Win ch e s t e r, uk

and its principles of image creation left a legacy. Thus, we are dealing with the impact of an ‘indirect Futurism’, its images, and ‘wandering motifs’. Futurist trends can be detected in the works of those artists who applied the stylistic methods of art creation of Symbolism, Expressionism and other trends of art in their creative work. Ra mute Rachlev iciute Vilnius Aca demy of Arts , LITHUANIA

emilia no Ra nocchi: The Polish Cyborg . A Reflection on Modernity in Polish Modernism Session 65

R am ut e Rach le viciut e : ‘Wandering motifs’ of Futurism in Lithuania S e ssi on 119

Over the last decade, art historians and exhibition curators have revised the twentieth-centur y art histor y of their countries and have increasingly taken note of the artistic scene in the Baltic countries. The definition of one epoch or another, or of a stage in the histor y of art, usually rests on the dominant tendencies and their contribution to the countr y’s histor y of art. However, not only ‘major’ novelties emerged at each stage, developed and prospered subsequently. There also existed ‘small’ innovations, which by contrast help to define the prevailing phenomena and remind one of what has eventually vanished and has not sur vived until the present time. In the histor y of Lithuanian art, Futurist works belong to the ‘margins’ and to the countr y’s ‘minor’ art historical narratives. Expressionism occupies a major position in the canon of Lithuanian art (primarily painting). Because there was no programmatic Futurism in Lithuania, or any influence of Futurism in the second half of the twentieth centur y, in this paper I shall discuss Futurism on the background and in the context of Lithuanian Expressionism. There is no doubt that there were manifestations of Futurist trends in Lithuanian art. Futurism as a Modernist movement

Far from enthusiastic “modernolatr y” of Italian futurism, Polish futurism demonstrates an attitude of ambivalence toward modernity. This is particularly evident in the Polish approach to that ver y synecdoche of modernity, which is the machine. The leader of the group, Bruno Jasienski, in his essay from 1923, compares the fetishistic cult of machine, which characterizes the Italian approach, with the utilitarian one of the Russians, exemplified by a quote from Mayakovski. To these two propositions, as a sort of Hegelian synthesis, he adds a Polish one consisting in the conception of machine as the prosthesis, a continuation of the human body. Thereby he introduces an idea later known as the “cyborg”. The categor y of the cyborg is also useful to understand the work of another forgotten Polish writer of the twenties, Jerzy Sosnkowski. He was the author of a short novel, A Car, You and Me (Love of Machines), in which a whole chapter concerns the chief character’s dystopian nightmare in that machines take control over the world. Thirty years before Wiener both Jasienski and Sosnkowski seem to have sensed the social and political implications of the mechanization of work. emilia no Ra nocchi Dipartim ento di Lingue e Letterature S traniere, Univ ersità di Udine, ITALY

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j e d R as ula:

tuula rautio:

Guidebooks for the New

Echoes of Ovid and Petrarch in The Finnish Poetry.

S e ssi on 27

About Metamorphosis in Sonnets of Eino Leino, Kaarlo Sarkia and Teemu Manninen Session 33

The summit of utopian aspirations in modernism was in the decade following the Bolshevik Revolution, when the international avant-garde repeatedly pledged faith in the New Man, a figure either thought to emerge from the New Society, or in a Nietzschean sense understood as the forerunner of a renovated social order. A striking phenomenon during these years was the appearance of synoptic guides to modernism written or compiled by vanguard artists. These works ser ved a dual function: as indexical rosters of the latest trends, genealogical in orientation, and as manifestos, eschewing the inflammator y rhetoric of the manifesto form in order to align themselves pragmatically with new institutions like the Bauhaus. These publications include Das Buch neuer Künstler by Moholy-Nagy and Kassák, Ismus by Arp and Lissitzky, Photo-Auge by Roh and Tschichold (1929), Es kommt der neue Fotograf! by Gräff, Filmgegner von Heute , Filmfreunde von Morgen by Richter, and Contemporar y Ar t Applied to the Store and its Display by Frederick Kiesler. After a preliminar y review of this publishing phenomenon, I propose to concentrate on Kiesler’s book. Although it is by far the least familiar, it is the most explicitly utopian. Like the other titles, it is predominately pictorial, but Kiesler (as a European exile in New York, writing for a largely clueless American audience) found it expedient to spell out the terms by which he understood modern art to be a practical resource for social reorganization. Reading his book today, we can see with unparalleled clarity the faith in modernism as a world-historical program emanating from the arts.

In my presentation I shall analyze how the theme of metamorphosis exists in the sonnets of three Finnish poets, Eino Leino (1878–1926), Kaarlo Sarkia (1902–1945) and Teemu Manninen (1977–), representing new romanticism, late symbolism, metamodality and language-poetr y. The metamorphosis that originates from Greek mythology is in many ways essential to the sonnet: thematically, in allusions, in motifs. The sonnet can be identified by its formal structure. However, in the post-modern sonnet the content, methods and expression means are new. Comparing the sonnet Porraspuulla (1898) of Leino to the sonnet Koivun tuoksu (2012) of Manninen, the one hundred year difference in language conception and genre transformation is demonstrated through similarity of content. The Italian sonnet has a bipartite speaker structure: ”I” in the present and another point-ofview representing ”I” in the past. Is the speaker of today different? Laura is the object of Petrarch’s poetic love. What is the modern Muse like – does she or he exist? Comparing the variations of the sonnets of Sarkia may reveal the development of the poet’s poetic identity. When the structure shows the relationship to the classic sonnet forms, the content analysis indicates intertextualities with the tradition of Ovid and Petrarch. tuula rautio F innish literature, Univ ersity of Helsink i, finla nd

j e d r a s ula E n g l i sh , U. o f G e o r gia, USA

m ar i e Re b e cch i: The Utopian Dimension of the Abstract Cinema (1920-1940) S e ssi on 27

By the 1920s, abstract film became a means to further consideration of the status of a work of art and its reproducibility, and to enhance experimentation in abstract art and synaesthetics. In this sense, the experimental and technologically innovative role of the abstract film can be made tellingly clear through a comparison of cinema’s original properties and the political dimension of the synesthetic work of art. From this point of view, the numerous and pioneering technical tricks of which abstract films were the product constituted the construction material for a new language and an unprecedented form of expression founded on the specific technical properties of the cinematic medium: a universal language (Universelle Sprache) – as it was ambitiously defined by Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling in a writing of 1920 that has been lost – from which to draw an optical-musical alphabet capable of describing the utopian dimension of the synesthetic work of art, where sound, image, rhythm, color and movement would be condensed in a single work insatiably charged with tension. m ar i e Re b e cch i C i n é m a e t Audiovis ue l, So r b on n e No uve lle – Pa ris III, FRANCE

se a n Re yn o lds : My fatal plurality: Arthur Cravan and the wasted life of the témoignage S e ssi on 47

At the open of the second issue of Maintenant (1913), poet and boxer Arthur Cravan recounts an afternoon spent in his Parisian apartment lazily contemplating how he might make a fortune through poetr y. What follows in the issue is not Cravan’s poetr y but a testimony of the afternoon he spent unsuccessfully tr ying to woo the wealthy

author André Gide. At the close he writes, “I’ve shown you the man and now I would happily show you the work if, on a single point, I should not have to repeat myself.” Cravan thus sets up an equivalence between a writer’s body of work and the testimony of his life that would guide the rest of his “poetic practice.” Cravan, beginning in this moment of procrastination, engages upon a deliberate project of wasting his talent in order that a series of third party témoignages of his life should arise as his “collected works.” Even a cursor y glance at the 1987 edition of the Cravan’s Oeuvres, reveals how the “poetr y” is far outweighed by the témoignages of his contemporaries. My paper argues that Cravan sets up a model for Dadaist memoir as the collage of conflicting or confabulated testimonies. Cravan achieves ultimate Dadaist “negative work” of self-immolation by giving over his life and his myth to second-hand témoignages, dissolving into what he calls “My fatal plurality.” sea n Reynolds English, SUNY Buffa lo, USA

rossella Riccobono: Pavese modernist narrator in Lav orare stanca Session 16

As Walter Benjamin emphasises in his essay The stor yteller (1936) after the events of WWI one of the post traumatic symptoms in the organisation of community life id that of the disappearance of the central role of ‘the narrator’ in a scarred modernising society. In this paper I would like to point out how Pavese struggles to assume in his poetr y the role of a Homer-like narrator in Lavorare Stanca by creating in this way a possibility of creating a modern epic poem which may narrate and chant a scarred society. rossella Riccobono Ita lia n, Univ ersity of St Andrews , uk

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m o r gan ridle r: Kandinsky and Bauhaus Wall Painting S e ssi on 1

In June 1922 Wassily Kandinsky was named Master of Form in the Bauhaus’s workshop for wall painting and his appointment provided the workshop with much needed unambiguous leadership. At first students assisted Kandinsky in executing his large mural paintings for the 1922 Jur yfreie Exhibition in Berlin. They were soon painting their own works and some, like Herbert Bayer’s 1923 murals on the back staircase of the Weimar Bauhaus, show Kandinsky’s direct influence. By 1924 however a shift occurs and Kandinsky argues that the wall painting workshop’s main concern was not industrial production or murals that look like easel paintings but color and its impact on form. Students like Alfred Arndt and Hinnerk Scheper start creating wall color schemes, molding and enhancing architecture with color. By the time of his withdrawal from the wall painting workshop in 1925 only a few Bauhaus wall paintings looked like Kandinsky’s own work; he and his students had transformed Bauhaus wall painting. This paper, a segment of my dissertation on Bauhaus wall painting, considers Kandinsky’s important leadership of the workshop and his theories on the synthesis of the arts, tracing his changing philosophy of wall painting and his impact on the students.

privileging of scientific reasoning in the modern age, the surrealists used a Freudian pre-historical topos to outline the fact that, however technologically advanced, humankind is irrefutably defined by instincts that were determined by early biological and social development. Ernst Haeckel’s theor y of recapitulation was fundamental to Freud’s thinking on the correlations between the development of the individual and the species. Freud used this ‘Biogenetic Law’ in his theor y of the neuroses, positing that different stages in individual life corresponded with different stages in human pre-histor y. At the turn of the twentieth centur y, literature and popular culture were replete with images of atavistic regressions and the return to more primitive states of being, and the surrealists engaged with this in an imaginative and provocative manner. This paper will discuss how surrealist concerns with the “primitive” were underpinned by the influence of evolutionar y theories, and that the surrealists utilised (both directly and indirectly) an evolutionar y discourse within their critique of the dominant positivist vision of social and cultural progress. donna roberts A rt History, Glion Institute o f Higher Education, SWITZERLAND

eric Robertson: m o r gan ridle r

hollaka hollala anlogo bung: dada’s subversive

A rt H i s to ry, Th e G r aduat e Ce n t e r, CUNY, USA

glossolalia Session 39

d on na r o b e rt s : The Radicalisation of Recapitulation: Surrealism, Evolutionary Theory, and the Critique of Progress S e ssi on 41

Following WWI, the surrealists rejected a seemingly blind belief in the notion of “progress”, as theorised by the philosophers of the French Republic from Condorcet to Comte. In response to the over-

Language is central to the iconoclasm of Zurich Dada. Yet the accounts of erstwhile Dadaists repeatedly insist upon the coherence of the group’s goals: ‘We aspired to a new order which could reestablish the balance between heaven and hell’ (Arp). But to what extent do such claims bear up to the reality of Dada and the experience of reading texts that typically lack any such coherence? Language

in Dada is variously scrambled, distorted, multiplied – so many ways of undermining a text’s essential function as a conveyor of meaning; yet for all their subversions of semantics, Dada texts still articulate a powerful attack on the Western powers and their institutionalised abuse of language. This points to a fundamental paradox in Dada: as Jeffrey T. Schnapp obser ves, Dada is ‘for and against. For and against unity. For and against affirmation and negation; for equations as long as they do not equate, against them when they do.’ This paper will examine the various ways in which Dada’s glossolalia, from multilingual simultaneous poems to Ball’s sound poems and Arp’s negotiations of French and German, alternately affirm and deny the communicative capacity of language and convey an understanding of reality that was both creative and destructive.

The thought of utopia comes across for instance in the paintings’ reach towards an open space in the landscape. The reach for openness can be seen as a continuation to the avant-garde paintings by Kandinsky. These contemporar y paintings discuss the conflicting relationship between external postmodern and the inner displaying traces of the surrounding living world in the created ideal space. Avant-garde art comes to the viewer thus as an insight into psychological human relation to nature. hilja Roiva inen Art history, Univ ersity of Turk u, F INLAND

M a rk eta Russell Holtebrinck : Into the Centre of Space with No Return Ticket. An Inquiry into the Space Construction of the Late Modernism. Session 52

e r i c R ob e rt s on S ch o o l o f Mo de rn Lan guage s , Lit e rat ur e s and C u lt u r, Royal Ho lloway, Un ive rs it y o f Lon don, uk

h i l ja Ro ivain e n : Avant-Garde Now: Individual’s Expression of Hope in a Painted Utopian Landscape Space S e ssi on 70

I suggest that one form of avant-garde art now is utopian hope in an affective painting of an idealised landscape. As Ernst Bloch (1986) notes, utopian hoping and dreams of a better life are common to all humans. This utopian form of avantgarde is open to viewers and connected to any art that acquires these concepts. Utopia is present as an idea in contemporar y Nordic painters’ ways of dealing with landscape. The idea of utopia provides a new viewpoint to the landscape painting genre. Through a consciously created landscape space artists express their feelings of life and ideas of happiness. Finnish contemporar y painters Anna Tuori and Petri AlaMaunus present the idea of utopia through polarity or Kitsch that is connected to the paradise imager y.

In the Crisis of the Novel (Krisis des Romans, 1930), Benjamin ecstatically reviews Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), communal epic of citable elements of urban experience, inseparable from the collective space of the city. Benjamin has one reser vation only, towards Franz Biberkopf ’s demise at the end of the novel and his acceptance of a lowprofile ever yday life. In the first major writing after the 1929 novel, Babylonian Wandering (Babylonische Wandrung, 1934), Döblin disperses fragments of the city in Hänsel-and-Gretel manner between the excavations of Babylon and the Parisian peripheries in La Vilette, leading his hero ever faster into an almost mythological place with no horizon. A part of my dissertation in progress, the paper discusses two directions, in which space is ‘demontaged’ within the novel, as a part of a broader, emerging tendency in the Central European novel of the late interwar period to foreclosing and unraveling of space: the progressive metamorphoses of montage fragments into opaque objects that perpetuate space, and a travel past the indistinct face of a rapidly passing

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landscape. Döblin’s project could thus be viewed as an oblique side of Herbert Cysarz’s ‘unstratified nonform’, a precursor to Benjamin’s panaromatic notion of histor y. Mar k eta Rus s e ll Ho lt e b r in ck C e n t r e fo r Co mparat ive Lit e r at ure , Un ive r s i ty of To r on to, CANADA

n i k la s Salmo s e : Nostalgic Utopia S e ssi on 70

There is another space/time for longing that we categorize as a utopian, mythical or fictive time outside the temporal reality. In nostalgic utopia we find a sort of pastness as is seen in the biblical paradise with its references to Eden, a Golden Age or an Elysium. In the utopian ideal of the future, an aspect of the virginal dreams of the past always resides, involving a return to myths or a former culture prior to industrialization. Utopian nostalgia then shares much with some of the essentials of nostalgia: a wish for immortality and the disillusionment of the present. Sylvia Mar y Darton writes in Nostalgia for Paradise (1965) that the “memor y of a ‘lost’ paradise’ has never ceased to haunt the minds of men, arousing in them a mysterious ‘nostalgia’, a longing for some perfection, some happiness, freedom and complete sense of well being of which it feels itself to have been deprived” (13). This urge was strong among modernist writers. This paper will investigate how their nostalgia is attributed to utopian ideals in their usage of symbols that are derived from the different paradise myths: the tree, water, and the garden. n i k la s Salmo s e E n g l i sh , Lin n e aus Un ive r s it y, SWEDEn

esther Sá nchez-Pa rdo: Progressive intelligentsia: the Young American Critics , utopianism and the spirit of dissent Session 62

This paper considers the fundamental and neglected work of an idiosyncratic generational group of writers and intellectuals who might have objected to be considered a “group” at all. Well known as central figures in the Greenwich Village “Little Renaissance” of the 1910s and in postwar debates about American culture and politics, their work can be read in a different light if we reconsider their achievements as part of a larger generational atmosphere, almost a Zeitgeist. In this paper we examine the critique of industrial American culture made by these so called “Young American Critics” – Van Wyck Brooks, Randolph Bourne, Waldo Frank and Lewis Mumford – during the first four decades of the 20th centur y. Their work has been read as the response of these intellectuals in the transition from Victorian to modernist culture covering areas as diverse as cultural and art criticism, politics, fiction, autobiography and transnational relations. In an attempt to understand and rehistoricize the Young American Critics contribution to the utopian political project of a democratic America that goes well beyond politics and includes artistic, psychological, anthropological, religious, and other aspects, we aim at both opening up debate on all those issues inspired by their thinking, and at reinvigorating current engagement with their legacy. esther Sá nchez-Pa rdo F ilología Inglesa II , Univ ersida d Complutense, SPAIN

e r i c San db e rg: Eileen Chang’s Sealed Off, Urban Dystopia, and the Redemptive Potential of Love S e ssi on 93

Although Eileen Chang‘s work falls late in the modernist period, and much of her work can be related to Qing vernacular fiction and Edwardian realism, some of her writing clearly displays its modernist heritage. Karen Kingsbur y describes the short stor y Sealed Off, for instance, as a “modernist slice-of-life anti-romance.” However, Sealed Off is a romance precisely insofar as it is modernist, using modernist textual and thematic tropes to create an alternative to a dystopian wartime Shanghai and its deforming social pressures. Much of Chang’s fiction deals with the failure of love in the face of, for instance, patriarchal expectation or political expedience, yet in Sealed Off, separation from the quotidian creates an explicitly modernist space of utopian potentiality within which love can thrive, if only temporarily. Isolated from the ‘normal’ city by a militar y emergency, by their presence on a tramcar, and by a textual separation enacted by a “line that cut through time and space,” the stor y’s main characters, Wu Cuiyuan and Lu Zhongzhen, are able to imagine a love outside their own limited and limiting lives. The stor y ends however, with the reassertion of a normality that reduces this modernist alternative to an “unreasonable dream.” e r i c S an db e rg L i t e r at ur e /Co mparat ive Cult ur e , M i ya z aki International Colle g e, JAPAN

k i mmo s arje : Ornament and Epoch in Eliel Saarinen’s Philosophy of Art and Architecture S e ssi on 66

Eliel Saarinen (1873–1950), a Finnish and American architect who had a distinguished international career, published in his late years in 1948 his major philosophical work The Search for Form in

Ar t and Architecture. This book was a highly personal and metaphysical study of the aesthetic principles and methods that he applied as architect and teacher. The question of modern ornament played an important role in Saarinen’s aesthetics: “Ornament represents the spirit of man in abstract form. It transposes the rhythmic characteristics of time into a significative pattern of line, form, and color… it always is – or should be – a product of true art.” The impulses of the Art and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th centur y had a strong influence on Saarinen’s views, and he considered ornament to be a natural element of contemporar y design. Ornament as true art is a vital factor of the culture, a source of beauty, “an elevated feeling”. In Saarinen’s metaphysics fundamental form, which was a categor y inspired by Oswald Spengler’s philosophy, represented the inherent potentialities of civilization, determining the soul of the age and directing the creation of form. A creative artist could intuitively sense the fundamental form of the time and express it. Saarinen maintained that since the Middle Ages Western architecture had lacked original quality. It was based on the repetition of classical motives. After centuries of degeneration, he felt that there was promise of development “towards a form-language of our own”. Saarinen, however, did not sympathize with the international style, which he considered “neither international nor style”. The elimination of ornamental elements of architecture and letting materials and construction appear in their ultimate nakedness was not enough for him. Nor could the post-modern recycling of historical forms have satisfied him. “Form does not speak through material and construction. Form speaks through proportion and rhythm infused into material and construction”, Saarinen writes. My paper focuses on Saarinen’s interpretation of the role decoration in architecture. k imm o sa rj e Adj unct professor of Aesthetics , Univ ersity of Helsink i, F INLAND

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sta nis lav Savit s ki: The Crisis of the Avant-Garde in the Late 1920s and the Early 1930s S e ssi on 18

The paper focuses on the reconstruction of intellectual context where the 2nd generation of the Formalism school and their young colleagues who belonged to the Left wing of the avant-garde tried to start literar y career as followers of the tradition of experimental aesthetics against an ideological background of the cultural revolution.

forme d’émancipation des contraintes de la réalité figurative et du médium pictural. Ce qui, toujours en termes hégéliens, revenait à rejeter toute opposition entre le contenu et la forme de l’œuvre. diego Sca lco Arts pla stiques et sciences de l’ a rt, Univ ersité Pa ris 1 – Pa nthéon-Sorbonne, F RANCE

v ik toria Schindler: The form and color theory of Wassily Kandinsky. Movement from theosophy to the science of art. Session 85

sta ni s lav Savit s ki Sm o l ny Co lle ge , St. Pe t e r s burg, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

d i e g o Scalco : Abstraction et métamimesis S e ssi on 79

Bien loin de rompre totalement avec la pratique de la mímesis, Kandinsky, Mondrian et Malevitch semblent avoir procédé à une méta-mímesis consistant, d’une part, à dégager la structure de la réalité phénoménale par une réduction eidétique et, d’autre part, à transposer sur le plan pictural la manière dont la création s’opère au sein de la nature comprise aussi en termes d’intériorité subjective. Le premier aspect de leurs démarches constituait une transition de la représentation des éléments accidentels de la vision à la représentation de sa structure transempirique, alors que leur deuxième aspect participait de la transcendance autopoïétique de la nature et de l’esprit. Ces deux aspects s’inscrivaient dans un processus au cours duquel le terme « abstraction » désignait d’abord l’activité abstractive puis son résultat. Ainsi les pionniers de l’abstraction considéraient que la morphogenèse abstraite suivait un schéma téléologique. À l’instar de Hegel, ils interprétaient les changements en termes de technique comme une libération progressive de l’art. Plus précisément, ils voyaient dans l’abstraction une

The focus of my talk is the early writings of Wassily Kandinsky’s The Primar y Elements of Painting. In On the Spiritual in Ar t Kandinsky examines the principles of elements of expression, their combination in the composition, and their impression on the human psyche in order to construct an abstract language and “grammar” for the painting. Specifically, Kandinsky’s theoretical writings on color and form from 1904-1914 are anchored in numerous theosophical doctrines. Kandinsky linked the medium of color with many different associations, imager y and extrasensor y phenomena. Color and form were loaded with spiritual content. Possibly because of this spiritualism, Kandinsky’s color theor y found few adherents among young progressive artists in Russia and thus he was forced to revise his fundamental statements. His later theoretical writings mark a radical transition as his analysis became sober and objective without employing an associative perception of color. Kandinsky’s scientific working process becomes evident in his unpublished lecture The Primar y Elements of Painting (1921), which he presented as vice president of the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences. With these efforts, Kandinsky succeeded in laying the foundation for an entirely new approach to art and for the establishment of the science of art as an academic discipline in Russia. v ik toria Schindler Kunsthistorisches Institut, Freie U niversität Berlin, GERM ANY

va d i m Sh ch e r bakov: The Constructivist Utopia of Vsevolod Meyerhold S e ssi on 8

Meyerhold was always fascinated by the ways life created concepts of art. He was deeply concerned by the Russians’ headfast unwillingness to obey the slow course of evolution. “A schoolboy pretending to be a Bolshevik” (as Michael Chekhov called him), he was passionately involved in overcoming the inert substance of the theatre both in the days of Symbolism and during the era of October in the Theater. The director’s experiments in establishing the performance as a mass meeting and his concept of monumental revolutionar y propaganda, as they had been manifested in The RSFSR-1 Theatre, proved to be successful and convincing. Nevertheless, the Moscow Soviet closed the theater. Meyerhold lost his stage and the opportunity to ser ve the New Power with his “extraordinar y performances”. As Meyerhold trusted the party leaders he considered closing his theater a proof of the fact that the Soviet countr y was in no need of professional stage art. Obviously it was a party instruction: the Bolsheviks retained old theatres as museums, but they preferred other forms of acting in the future proletarian culture. Thereby the constructivist idea of art which aims to design life in accordance with artistic laws shows the way out of the impasse. If the theater artist must be effectively involved in the process of creating a new harmonious human being, Meyerhold will develop the methods of actors’ training to bring him up. The method was found in Biomechanics. Meyerhold believed it could help the new man to control his body which would inevitably give him the power to overcome his emotions, feelings and psyche. Biomechanics allowed the actor to organize all kinds of human substance, and hence to rationalize them and to become free from dark passions and ugliness. While this method was taught only at drama schools, the actor would eventually develop into an exemplar y

harmonious personality. Eventually the triumphant pace of the constructivist approach to reality will inevitably lead to the mass production of the new human being. It was the real purpose of Meyerhold’s constructivist utopia. Biomechanics was the theatre director’s response to the manifestos of Art as Production. va dim Shcherba kov Institut for Art Resea rch, M oscow, RUSSIAN F EDERATION

timothy Shipe: The Dada Archive as Meta-Memoir Session 47

The early historiography of Dada was dominated by a wave of published memoirs that peaked in the 1960s during the flurr y of interest evoked by the fiftieth anniversar y of the movement. Controversy raged among the aging dadaists over the historical revisionism inherent in personal accounts of events that occurred half a centur y in the past – but even Hugo Ball’s purportedly contemporaneous accounts sur vive only in their 1927 published version, colored heavily by the author’s later religious beliefs. An alternative historiography could be based on unpublished autobiographical sources (diaries, correspondence, manuscript writings on Dada) to be found in the posthumous papers of the dadaists. In many cases, preliminar y drafts of published memoirs may demonstrate the extent to which the authors censored or recast their accounts during the revision process. In the 1980s, when most of these collections were still in private hands, the International Dada Archive at the University of Iowa undertook the project of microfilming many of these collections, both to preser ve them for posterity and to bring them together to form a sort of “meta-memoir” of Dada. This paper describes that project and some of the

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specific collections that are especially fruitful for an alternative historiography of Dada. t i m ot h y Sh ipe

sa mi sj öberg: Redemption, Utopia, and the Avant-Garde: Continental Jewish Visions of the Future Session 10

U n i v e rs it y Lib rarie s , Un ive r s it y o f Iowa, USA

Mi g u e l Silva G r aça: Critical readings on Photography and Modern Architecture: Interpretations on Teófilo Rego Archive and the Esc ola do Porto S e ssi on 46

This paper will address an ongoing project in the field of architectural photography based on the work of the Oporto photographer Teófilo Rego (19141993) that documents one of the most comprehensive portrayal of Modern Architecture in Portugal, illustrating two generations of architects – educated under the pedagogical influences of José Marques da Silva (1869-1947) and Carlos Ramos (1897-1969) – that would be internationally known as Escola do Por to. The idea of an Opor to Architecture School, or Escola do Por to, is not however consensual. If this concept has gained international acknowledgment and reputation (Frampton, 1987; Curtis, 2008), as a recognizable formal affiliation that relates to architects such as Fernando Távora (1923-2005) and Álvaro Siza Vieira (1923-…). Nevertheless, it is a disputable fact that Portuguese architecture only begins, from the point of view of international recognition, only with these two architects. But besides analyzing as photographic archives can play a major role in the reconstruction of the histor y of architecture, this paper will also tr y to understand – through this photographic archive – what kind of relationships were established between photographers and architects, in order to determine to what extent the photographer remained anonymous, while the image highlighted the author of the photographed object: the architect. Mi g u e l Silva G r aça C e n t r o de Es t udo s Ar naldo Araujo ( CEAA ) , E sco la Supe r io r Art ís t ica do Po rto ( ESAP ) , PORTUGAL

Published more than twenty years ago, Michael Löwy’s Redemption and Utopia (1992) mapped the relations between Jewish messianism and secular utopian thought. The book focuses on religious-philosophical thinkers and political figures but does not address the avant-gardists of Jewish origin. Yet, between 1910-1925 especially Germanspeaking Jewish writers involved in the avant-garde had various visions regarding the future, ranging from social-political utopias to romanticist and messianic ideas of a world-to-come. This paper looks at the various manifestations of utopian implications in the thinking of Jewish artists, which derive from rabbinic, kabbalistic and even non-Jewish messianism. The Jewish artists of Germany and Austria-Hungar y were generally informed by East-Central European Jewish myths and tradition, which is visible in the entanglement of traditional traits (e.g. mysticism) and more modern elements (such as experimental poetics) in their works. A renowned case is the Neue Club where Kabbalah-influenced philosophers such as Oskar Goldberg and expressionist poets such as Jakob van Hoddis and Else Lasker-Schüler met. However, such exchange of ideas was common in German-speaking Jewish centres across the continent. sa mi sj öberg Literature a nd Culture, KU Leuv en, BELGIUM

nata lia Sm olya nsk aya : Re-thinking Utopism / Re-discovery of the Russian Avant-gardes Session 34

Malevich understood art as the meaning of life and suggested that the natural world (nature) can be recreated according to the Suprematist canon. The ver y name of Malevich is the key element to

determining the avant-garde in its socio-cultural context: depending on the time of the definition, its accents may shift from experimentation in the 1960s to The Great Utopia in the 1990s. In the context of the young Soviet state, the Russian avant-gardes embody the unique, among other avant-gardes, experience of reflection and creation. They were engaged in the invention of the technique of changing ever yday life, including a person’s movements (Meyerhold and Nikritin’s biomechanics). To what extent does the concept of Utopia reduce today the experience of the Russian avant-gardes to social daydreaming, which is doomed to failure? Is it possible to rethink this experience today, taking into account the particularities of the hindsight of the 1990s, associated with the collapse of the USSR? natalia Sm o lyan s kaya Art H istory, Russian State University for the H u m an it ie s , RUSSIAN FEDERATION

p i ot r So b o lcz yk: Queer atopia via subversion: surpassing the utopia / dystopia inversion S e ssi on 114

Donald Morton introducing the term “cyberqueer” called queer theor y and queer thinking “atopia” and “atopic”. While in the area of gay & lesbian studies the dominant trope was - and still is inversion, as in the XIXth centur y sexologist accounts of “sexual inversion”, queer “atopia” is achieved though the process of “subversion”. This allows queer writers, readers and thinkers (and activists) to surpass the inversive and oppositional dychotomy of “utopia” vs. “dystopia”. What for gay people might seem an “utopia”, might respectively and insnantly be resignificated as a “dystopia” from conser vative positions and the other way round. I shall examine utopias/dystopias dealing with homosexuality, especially Wanton Seed by Anthony Burgess, The paradise of men by Hermann Melville and a short stor y about a homosexual paradise by a Polish (straight!)

poet Krzysztof Baczynski, and political dystopias by Stanislaw Witkiewicz (Farewell to Autumn), Margarte Atwood (Handmaid’s Tale) and several movies (f.e. Almost Normal) and social slogans and their cultural influence (Adam and Steve). My intent is to show how from a queer perspective one can “save” inversive texts through paranoid/reparative process of reading across and surpass the u/dys dychotomy. piotr Sobolczyk Historical Poetics , Institute o f Literary R esearch, POLAND

luca Somigli: Marinetti between Modernism and Avant-Garde Session 35

One of the consequences of the recent debate on Italian modernism is a more complex articulation of the critical categories through which early twentieth-centur y literature has been historicized (in Italy, but not only). A consolidated critical tradition, which includes Peter Bürger’s Theor y of the Avant-Garde and Joachim Schulte-Sasse’s interpretation of it, Guido Guglielmi’s essay Memoria e oblio della storia and Raffaele Donnarumma’s recent contribution to the volume Sul modernismo italiano, interprets avant-garde and modernism as two different ways on relating to tradition and the institution of art. Taking Marinetti’s novel Gli indomabili (1922) as an exemplar y text of a lineage of allegorical narrative that neither shares the anti-institutional extremism of the historical avant-garde nor attempts to establish a relationship, albeit estranged and deformed, with reality like much modernist narrative, my paper aims at exploring a sort of gray area that problematizes a rigid opposition between the two categories. In Gli indomabili Marinetti, now withdrawn from the political area, seems to be engaged in a renewed dialogue with the artistic institutions reviled and fiercely opposed during the early years of the Futurist movement (and art, in turn, becomes a refuge from the disappointments of politics rather than an instrument through which to

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unhinge the foundations of social life). The novel lies outside the sharp opposition between avant-garde and modernism delineated above, sharing with the former its hallucinated and anti-realist dimension and with the latter a renewed intention to establish a dialogue with tradition and to communicate with its audience. lu ca So migli I tal i a n , Un ive r s it y o f To ron to, CANADA

h e l e na Spurn á: The Wasted Dreams and Visions of the Czech (Theatre) Avant-Garde. S e ssi on 7

This paper is concerned with the fate of the interwar avant-garde in Czechoslovakia after the Communist rise to power in 1948. At the end of the 1940s, Socialist Realism was proclaimed the only official direction in Czech art. Prior to the War, the pro-Communist generation of avant-garde artists had a faith that changes in societal structure would bring about the birth of a new human accompanied by artistic freedom. These avant-garde artists viewed this revolution in art in connection with not only an enhanced sensitivity to social themes, but also in relation to, first and foremost, innovations in artistic expression, in a seeking out of new, non-illusive forms which would express reality. The doctrine of Socialist Realism brought about a major reevaluation of the concept of revolution in art. Artistic endeavours were now focused on “genuine” depictions of reality, on direct ideological tendencies, involvement and agitation. This paper will ser ve to present the tragic demise of the visions of leading figures of the Czech avant-garde after the War with a more detailed focus on the destruction of the initial aesthetic ideals in the work of the theatre avant-garde of the time (Jindrich Honzl, Jirí Frejka and Emil František Burian). h e l e na Spurn á D e pa rtment o f T heatre, Film and Media S tudies , Pa lacky Un ive rs it y in Olo mo uc, CZECH REPUBLIC

mela nia Sta ncu: Joining the Spanish avant-garde writers of the 1927 generation in a journey through an enchanted labyrinth Session 82

In 1928 Rosa Chacel published an allegoric short stor y, Chinina-Migone, about the rising of the avant-garde art. The male first person narrator tells the stor y of his wife – an ethereal and musical presence, an embodiment of the late 1800 art – and of their daughter – silent and dazzling – whom they fear and who eventually leaves home much to her family despair and grudge. Chacel’s stor y suggests a rather dystopian personification of young art disposed in a short literar y experiment through figurative discourse, constant shifts of narrative perspective, lyrical introspection and self reflective prose. Unlike Chacel, Benjamín Jarnés pledges in his 1926 hybrid narrative, El profesor inútil where “literature is a journey through an enchanted labyrinth of sensations”, for new art in terms of an utopian aesthetic locus amoenus. These two different perspectives on art represent the starting point of my paper. The main aim will be analyzing the literar y techniques – from humoristic reformulation of ancient myths, metafictional and autobiographical elements, Cubist and Surrealist imager y – which the Spanish avant-garde writers of the ’27 generation like Benjamín Jarnés, Rosa Chacel, Francisco Ayala, Max Aub, Antonio Espina make use of in their pursuit for creating or escaping a “radical, extreme, sharp and impersonal” art. mela nia Sta ncu Roma nce La nguages , Univ ersity of Bucha rest, ROM ANIA

k a i t l in Staudt: The Mystical Method: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, European Literary Modernism and the Turkish Literary Tradition . S e ssi on 33

Reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, Turkish novelist Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar writes: “As they are doing such things in the West, what am I doing here?” This question is valuable for locating Tanpinar’s texts in relationship to European literar y modernism, placing him both in the eccentric “here” of 1950s Istanbul, but also situating him within the twentiethcentur y Turkish world of letters, which focused largely on constructing a national literar y heritage out of the multiethnic Ottoman past. This paper argues that Huzur is structured on a “mystical method,” that looks simultaneously to James Joyce’s Ulysses with its Odyssean mythical parallel, and to the mesnevi romance, or Sufi mystic poetr y, in order to create a narrative form that adequately encompasses the conglomerate cultural legacies within the Turkish experience of modernity. Focusing on how Tanpinar’s narrative approach upholds mysticism as a local paradigms through which modern experience can be understood, this paper asks how Tanpinar’s distinctly modernist solutions to questions regarding the proper relationship of the writer to the literar y tradition and the continuity of the canon in face of radical cultural change work to unravel enduring discourses of belatedness and inauthenticity in the Turkish literar y sphere. k a i t l in Staudt O r i e ntal St udie s , Un ive r s it y o f Ox fo r d, uk

i va S te fan ovs ki: Supermatism and Gorgona S e ssi on 75

The Gorgona group was an artists’ collective that existed in Zagreb, Croatia between 1959 and 1966. The rarely met all together. Their aspirations

were towards beyond aesthetic reality. They acted like they did not lived in communism from which they run into irrational sphere, importing “dark ingredients” into existence. They worked silently, without publishing manifestos, proclamations or protests. Gorgona was a process of searching for artistic and intellectual freedom, the achievement of which was in itself the aim and purpose. This could be seen in their spontaneous gatherings and walks around the town or in the publishing of anti-magazine Gorgona. The influence of Malevich we can see in notion of “nothing” of Vaništa and the tautological repetition of one symbol meander in the works of Knifer. Malevich said “true creations rather than representations can best elicit true meaning and emotion” believed like Knifer that in the representations of his meander paintings our spirit can find some answers and meaning to our existentialist questions. I will present the influence suprematism had on the work of Vaništa and Knifer and the similarities and differences in its attitude toward society (escaping it and creating it). iva Stefa nov sk i Univ ersity of Tubingen, GERM ANY

a nn Stephen: totem and taboo Session 83

In the present era of globalizing capitalism, we are witnessing a renewed attempt to tackle the volatile subject of primitivism, to shift the critical impasse reached in the 1980s (pace MoMA’s Primitivism in 20th centur y ar t exhibition and the ensuing debates). Given the archival turn of contemporar y art, the modernist primitive now appears precocious in exploring museums, libraries and archives, and the discourses of anthropology and psychoanalysis for models of experimental practice. My paper will consider how art histor y can map the flow of ideas and capital that run through the avant-garde’s fascination with primitive origins and objects of colonial collecting. My

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paper considers two practices at either end of the spectrum: the South Pacific research undertaken by the artist/filmmaker Len Lye for his first animation Tusalavu, 1929, which included a study of Freud’s Totem and Taboo; and the ongoing project by the AlgerianFrench artist Kader Attia entitled Repair, first shown at documenta 13 in 2012. I consider what is at stake in their encounters with the indigenous body of the primitive, and in restaging the primal scene of horror visualised by Franz Fanon’s opening line in Black Skin White Mask, ‘Look, a negro!’

commissioned the painter to design emblems for a new civilian order that was called the White Rose of Finland and in which the heraldic rose emblem was included.

an n S t e ph e n

Although many 20th centur y avant-garde movements were characterized by utopian ideals and emancipator y objectives, destructive and anarchistic tendencies were part of avant-garde thinking, especially in Dadaism. In my paper, artistic destructivity and the ambivalence of destructive/constructive culture are discussed within the framework of Walter Benjamin’s cultural theor y and Alain Badiou’s philosophy by focussing on Berlin Dada, especially on the artistic work of Georg Grosz and John Heartfield. Walter Benjamin’s writings on art and culture have become an essential part of the art historical discourse, but so far, these writings have not been discussed in the context of Alain Badiou’s philosophy and art theor y. Despite the differences in their thinking, they both introduce similar questions concerning avant-garde and share, especially, the idea of negation as the initial characteristic of avant-garde. Although destructive approach is often seen as the antithesis of constructive thinking, both Badiou and Benjamin acknowledge the entangled relation between the constructive and destructive approach of avantgarde. Also in Berlin Dadaism, the connection between these two concepts is far more ambivalent. Benjamin’s essays on destructivity and Badiou’s notion of ‘passion du réel’ as the main drive behind avantgardistic thinking provide useful tools to analyse destructive tendencies of Dadaism.

University Art Gallery, University of Sydney, AUSTRALIA

K i r si Kais la Sun dh o lm: CREATING HERALDRY OR AKSELI GALLEN-KALLELA AS THE DESIGNER OF THE ORDERS OF CROSS OF FREEDOM AND THE WHITE ROSE OF FINLAND IN 1918 AND 1919 S e ssi on 84

During the Finnish civil war in March 1918 Akseli Gallen-Kallela, the painter out of the national epic (1865 - 1931) was invited to the militar y head quarters and nominated as the designer for the first honorar y emblems of the new state. Gallen-Kallela had been part of the artists´ universal community firstly in Paris of the late 1880´s and secondly in Berlin of 1895. In 1904 to 1906 he had been a member of the Activist Party in Finland and had kept contacts to Russian revolutionaries such as the writer Maxim Gorky. According to my view he had been contemplaining on suitable community building emblems for independent Finland in making for over two decades. In March 1918 he suggested a rose as the order´s main emblem. The H.Q. officers received the sketches as outbursts of romantic revivalism and their colouring was appreciated as fantastic and imaginar y rather than accurate or according to the grammar of heraldr y. Instead, the swastika was chosen for the main emblem in the Order of Cross of Liberty. Less than 12 months later though the State Guardian Mannerheim

Kirsi Ka isla Sundholm Art History, University of Turku, FINLAND

essi syren: Destructivity in Avant-garde Art Session 105

essi syren Art history, Univ ersity of Turk u, F INLAND

Me r s e Pál Sz e r e di:

Elna ra Ta idre:

The horizons of the Bildarchitektur – political

The Total Aesthetico-Philosophical System of Tõnis

messianism and artistic utopia at Lajos Kassák’s

Vint: an Example of Utopian Thinking in the Soviet

Activist circle in Vienna and Budapest

Estonia

S e ssi on 13

Session 31

Lajos Kassák and his Activist circle, as the most notorious protagonists of avant-garde and radical leftist ideology had a constant debate on the social status of abstract art during the early 1920s. Concerning either the expressionist messianism during the commune of 1919 or the utopistic constructivist Weltanschauung of the Vienna exile years, the views of Kassák was rejected and denounced as l’art pour l’art in political and artistic circles outside the borders of international avant-garde. This struggle for acceptance resulted in manifests and articles on both sides in Budapest and Vienna. The paper examines the changes of Kassák’s political messianism and artistic utopia, focusing on the Bildarchitektur and its cultural and ideological context. Considering László MoholyNagy’s impressions of the Glasarchitektur of Paul Scheerbart, Sándor Bortnyik’s and Kassák’s translation of this concept into constructivist practice, drawing both from western and eastern influences in the MA journal, Béla Uitz’s connections to Hans Tietze and the Kineticism as well as his answers to abstract art from the side of Proletkult I analyse the theor y and sources of Bildarchitektur from a new approach – the point of view of contemporar y debates between the Activists and the austrian and hungarian political and art world. Me r se Pál Sz e r e di I n s t i tute o f Art H istory, Eötvös Loránd University, HUN GARY

Tõnis Vint is a legendar y figure in Estonian art of the second half of the 20th centur y, whose art conception has inspired numerous representatives of different generations and fields of art. Relying on his erudition in the art of different cultures, Vint created a conceptual platform for the interpretation and synthesis of various visual phenomena. His aesthetic universalism and aspiration of creating a harmonious environment found expression in graphic works, book, poster, stage and interior designs, as well as in utopian urban visions. Vint’s art practices can be seen as a total work of art, which offers a model for ordering both intra- and extrapictorial spaces. Vint derived his conception of a new aesthetics and the future living space from the art traditions of the past; nevertheless his projects would take sometimes rather futurist or utopian forms. In the context of Soviet Estonia, Vint used his aestheticophilosophical system as a strategy of resistance to the totalitarian regime: constructing a hermetic aesthetical sanctuar y to escape the surrounding reality, but also finding possibilities to communicate alternative ideas to the broader public within official channels. The social optimism that followed the restoration of Estonia’s independence was supported by Vint’s more direct inter ventions, proposing projects from reforming the Tallinn flag to the large-scale redesign of Tallinn urban space. Elna ra Ta idre Collection Departm ent / I nstitute o f A rt History, A rt Museu m of E stonia / Estonian Acade m y o f A rts , ESTONIA

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j u n Tanaka: Dystopian Visions of Gilbert Clavel’s An Institute for Suicide S e ssi on 82

Gilbert Clavel (1883-1927), Swiss writer and artist from a wealthy family in Basel, is known by his labyrinthine architectural complex in Positano and the collaboration with Fortunato Depero, an Italian Futurist painter, on the puppet theater production of Plastic Ballet. In 1916, Clavel wrote An Institute for Suicide (Ein Institut für Selbstmord), a fantasy about methods of suicide that presented his metaphysical thoughts regarding life and death. Its Italian translation by Italo Tavolato was published with Depero’s illustrations in 1918. In this short stor y, the protagonist as the narrator visits an institute for suicide, where one can commit suicide in three ways: death from drunkenness, from lust, and from pantopon. The protagonist requests to be killed in all these ways. In this presentation, I will show the philosophical background of dystopian vision concerning the Kafkaesque bureaucratic killing system of the institute for suicide: archaic symbolism about life and death that was based on the ancient Egyptian religious thought, medieval vision of dance of death, and modern technological functionalism. The interconnection between processes of suicide and dissolution of the narrative will be also analyzed. j u n Tanaka D e pa rtment o f Interdisciplinary Cultural S tudies , T h e U niversity of Tokyo, JAPAN

Eliot and Rebecca West, showing that these writers imagined the Bolshevik Utopia and the resistance to it in religious sectarian terms. Despite the secular emphasis of the writings of Marx and Lenin, writers thinking about the Bolshevik revolution – including sympathisers, anticommunists, and those who were somewhere in between – often saw it as reproducing the institutional and psychological structures of a religion. This religion was often conceived as a kind of counter-reformation, or (in Walter Ong’s terms) secondar y orality, reactivating oral and spectacular modes of communication, borrowing features of the Russian Orthodox church (notably the icon), and holding the illiterate Russian peasantr y in its sway. Modernist engagements with the Russian Revolution, I argue, only sometimes conform to Shane Weller’s description of modernism as a ‘range of resacralizing … projects’ that react against a secular modernity. Instead of proposing a spiritual regeneration of culture and art in response to secular disenchantment, modernists often imagined their practice as mediating between different forms of religious experience and religious organisation. M atthew taunton Literature, Dra ma a nd Creativ e Writing, Univ ersity of Ea st Anglia , Uk

helen taylor: Live, local, loco-specific: Merseybeat performance and the creation of a scene Session 42

Matt h e w taun ton : The Bolshevik Utopia and the Modernist Counterreformation S e ssi on 72

This paper will address modernism’s tendency to theorise “political religions” through the lens of debates about the reformation. It will analyse depictions of the Soviet Communism as a religious phenomenon by Robert Byron, Koestler,

In 1960s Liverpool the Merseybeat poets saw poetr y as part of ever yday life. The Merseybeat movement thrived on ‘poetr y plus’ evenings created in order to attract and engage a local audience. These events – involving readings, music, comedy, visual art, and ‘happenings’ – were, importantly, both live and local: readings in pubs, clubs, and bars brought poetr y off the page and into the world of entertainment. It was through these regular live readings

and shared events that the idea of bohemian ‘Liverpool 8’ was created. The poets deliberately cultivated this scene: the movement began as a rejection of London-centric ideas of Art and Culture, represented by poetr y-and-jazz, which was seen as not relevant to local experiences, having been brought in from outside. Instead, their ‘poetr y plus’ performances used common cultural referencing, referred to ordinar y Liverpool life, and often relied on ‘knowingness’ in order to work. The Merseybeat movement was a sitespecific confluence of the avant-garde and British populist traditions. The poets took their inspiration from diverse sources, and re-presented these to their audiences as entertainment, in order to foster a direct and reciprocal relationship with their audiences: live, local, and loco-specific. h e l e n taylo r E n g l i sh , Royal Ho lloway, Un ive rs it y o f Lon don, uk

m o r gan t h o mas : Rothko’s late series and Kafka’s Trial S e ssi on 38B

The New York School painter Mark Rothko used to say that he was ‘not visual’ and that he wanted to raise painting to the level of poignancy of music and poetr y. In an intriguing case of the centrality of literature in his thinking, a copy of Kafka’s The Trial was chosen by Rothko as his engagement gift to his fiancée, Mel Beistle, in 1946. Here, with close reference to the formal and spatial structure of his later serial work (including the famous Seagram series of 1958-9), I suggest that the singular elusiveness and delicacy of Rothko’s paintings is closely allied to the transdisciplinar y attitude intimated in such declarations, and, further, that Rothko’s proximity to Kafka is specially illuminating with regard to the transdisciplinar y character of his art and his relation to modernism. I investigate how, in Rothko’s work as in Kafka’s, the scenography of law and the trial sets up

an aesthetic framework in which a testing of the limits of a medium (painting, literature) is bound up with a picturing of modern subjectivity – and modernist thought – as essentially provisional and fragile.thinking provide useful tools to analyse destructive tendencies of Dadaism. morga n thoma s Art History, Univ ersity of Cincinnati, USA

rik u toivola : Alexander Vertinsky’s Doleful Ditties: on the Gestures of the Text Session 8

The contemporar y memoires often describe peculiar mimics (“singing hands”) and dramatic intonations of Alexander Vertinsky’s (1889– 1957) performances. My hypothesis is that all this is embedded already inside the textual structure of his so called “doleful ditties”. In my paper I study the conditions that performance lays on the poetic texts: what features Vertinsky got for his performances 1) from the popular pantomimes, played in miniature theatres and cabarets of the early 20th centur y and 2) from the performances of other well-known singers, such as Morfessi and Kremer. The performances were influenced also by the tradition of“melodeclamation” of poetr y by Russian authors (Kuzmin, Teffi, Severjanin). As Vertinsky was also a film actor, many of his songs are dedicated to the movie stars of his time and got their trigger from the silent films of 1910’s. 3) How did the way of picturing things in Russian cinema – expressive poses, the use of props, angles of view, illusion of slowness and famous tragic final – influence on the poetics of the “doleful ditties”? I shall analyse the “gestures of text” by mapping the “poetical intonation” - specific features of the elementar y levels of the rhythm (verse, rhyme, stanzas) of Vertinsky’s texts. The study of intonation

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consists also of the analysis of the lexical and stylistical characteristics of “doleful ditties”. r i k u to ivo la D e pa rtme n t o f Mo de r n Lan guage s ,

matteo Trinca s: Social utopy influence on italian modernist architecture and urban reform: Adriano Olivetti’s communities aftermath. Session 46

U n i v e rs it y o f He ls in ki, FINLAND

d m i t r i To kare v: Escape from Utopia: the metamorphoses of the utopian dreams in the Russian avant-garde in exile S e ssi on 34

The early years of Soviet rule signaled the arrival of a new Utopian era. Many avant-garde artists contributed to the construction of this brave new world which quickly degenerated into a nightmarish dystopia. Ironically, many avant-garde poets and painters emigrated from the soviet Russia in the early twenties just at a time when the range of possibilities still seemed enticing. Thus was born, mainly in Paris, the Russian avant-garde art in exile, a phenomenon which allows the obser ver an analytical perspective in which the concept of Utopia may be placed at the ver y centre of our reflections. For if the avant-garde longed for a radical transformation of life, society and art, did it make sense to continue or even to start such avantgarde developments so far removed from the countr y where these transformations were supposedly taking place? For example, the invention of transrational language was purely a utopian project, but why print this new language in the Cyrillic alphabet (as Iliazd did in 1923) rendering it inaccessible to the French avantgarde artists unless read aloud? Kruchenykh declared that Zaum could provide “a universal poetic language”, but this ver y language produced in a foreign linguistic environment couldn’t help but loose its utopian aura, leaving it at best a pure artifice.The abrupt end of the Russian avant-garde poetr y in Paris demonstrates that the émigrés had yet to elaborate their own alternatives. d m i t r i To kare v Co m parative Literature, Institute o f Russian L i t e r at ur e , RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Italy has a really special and perhaps unique experience about a successfully built utopia and modernism related to the movement Comunità led by Adriano Olivetti. Best known as charismatic industrialist, Olivetti was a fine urban and social planner and gathered around its company some of the best architects of his time, tr ying to design the suitable space for the new social order he simply called Community. Starting from his company town in Ivrea up to chair some italian reconstruction agencies after WWII, Olivetti has been an influent patron for Rationalist Architecture and left a deep mark in italian territorial planning, settling rural and urban communities extremely interesting by the point of view of their social governance and by the architectural expression showing in concrete way this strive toward a new order, especially evident in the works of Ludovico Quaroni, Giuseppe Pagano, Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini. It is still possible to recognize Olivetti’s legacy in his factor y, designed to reflect the strong participation commitment by workers and employees in the management of his own company in a process of constant critical growth of this small community, as well as in the experimental settlements designed for the rural reform in Sardinia. His achievements are once again a strong model for many of the new planning policies. matteo Trinca s Urba n Pla nning, Univ ersità di Caglia ri, ITALY a nna ma ria colav itti

r ona ld Tr o gdon : an exploration of the morality of architecture in Aldous Huxley’s Antic Hay S e ssi on 3

When Antic Hay was published in 1923, an advertisement taken out by Chatto & Windus in the Times Literar y Supplement predicted that the book would be ‘one of the peep-holes through which posterity will squint at London just after the period of the Great War’. This paper will examine this early, relatively unknown work of Aldous Huxley’s as an example of how post-war intellectuals conceptualised the ideal way of life. It is a discursive ‘novel of ideas’ which juxtaposes a method of moral examination with law-giving moral instruction, such as we find in Biblical parables. In ‘a chaos of Portland stone that is an offence against civilisation’, the young London set are afflicted with an ‘accidie’ for which the ‘mumbo-jumber y’ of the church can no longer be a panacea. Coinciding with the first exhibition by The Architecture Club, of which Huxley was a member, and the bi-centenar y of the death of Christopher Wren, 1923 was a year of great public interest in architecture. The character Gumbril, Senior, constructs a model of Wren’s plan of London and claims its vision is essentially moral rather than aesthetic. Given the chance to rebuild ‘the ver y mindset of the people’ after the war, this novel offers a chance to revive an ancient concept of morality that went hand-in-hand with the eudæmonic pursuit of a good, worthwhile life. r ona l d Tr o gdon E n g l i sh St udie s , Durh am Un ive r s it y, uk

al e x Trott: The Cercle des Hydropathes: A liberal utopia? S e ssi on 42

Although sidelined in art historical scholarship, the Cercle des Hydropathes marked an important turning point in the practices of liberal

French arts at the end of the nineteenth centur y. The weekly meetings led by Émile Goudeau boasted participants such as André Gill, Coquelin Cadet, Alphonse Allais and Charles Cros, yet the majority of the membership was formed by an anonymous crowd of local students from the Latin Quarter. Described by Goudeau as a ‘forum open to all’, the Hydropathe séances quickly became known for their convivial yet raucous atmosphere. It provided a space for artistic development, and equally an environment for the local community to gather around its common ideals that are argued to foresee the social freedoms later instigated by the ‘Republican Republic’. As part of research that proposes a revision of the dominant, yet limited scholarship surrounding the Cercle des Hydropathes, this paper analyses how the club’s collective identity was reproduced and affirmed by participation in ritualistic communal engagement. In so doing, I explore how the establishment of communal traditions promoted engagement with a utopian vision of a liberal Republican society. a lex Trott M edia Arts , Roya l Holloway, Univ ersity of London, uk

Kata rzyna Trzecia k : The Petrifed Utopia. Monumentality of Polish socialist literature and architecture parlante. Session 99

The text concers the case of Lenin’s ‘monumental propaganda’ and it’s influence on literature of that time. The essence of socialist realism anticipated by Lenin’s aesthetic and politcal project was the idea of totality understood as both aesthetic and social integrity aimed at restitution of ‘golden age’ of humanity and a medium transfering assumptions of communism. As such ‘speaking’ medium, socialist architecture (and sculpture) embodied the importance of the Lenin’s ideology of glor y. As such, architecture parlante (the French revolutionist’s concept also

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applied to socialist architectural doctrine) required verbal communications agency. The great buildings of communism meant in cooperation with the literature. Socialist poetr y dedicated to monuments and architecture ser ved as an explanation of visual symbols. Classic descriptive poem and emblematic poetr y presented iconic content of sculpture and architecture, as a kind of ‘reading’ of the building and maintained the visual-verbal socialist utopia of totality.

development; although modernists opposed to Soviet Utopian model, depicting a new man as a brutal and primitive avenger coming to rule the world of exhausted intellectuals. bela Tsipuria Institute o f Com parative L iterature, Ilia State Univ ersity, GEORGIA

ginta re Va itonyte: H. Parland: Quosego and Keturi vejai

K atar z yna Trz e ciak

Session 115

Fac u lty o f P olish S tudies , Jag iellonian University, POLAND

b e la Ts ipur ia: New World for New People? Socialist Revolution, Social Shift, and Modernism S e ssi on 41

Already in early 20th centur y Russian modernist had prevised, and even fatalized the social shift: the elite losing its dominance, followed by the domination of new people, and the new world being rebuilt on the ruins of old world. Expectation of unavoidable disruption of existing order is represented in works by Russian Symbolists; the famous poem by Valer y Br yusov The Coming Huns (1905) foresees the destructive nature of Bolshevism. Before the Sovietization of Georgia in 1921 Georgian modernism did not have this visionar y approach to the reality; however, since then, and especially after the suppression of national rebellion in 1924, their text reflect on the problems of forcible social shift and national subjugation. Poems by Titsian Tabidze suggest an eschatological vision of that historic moment; novels by Mikheil Javakhishvili and Leo Kiacheli represent in a moral dimension the establishment of new social order, and unjust social revenge by new social dominants. Soviet narrative imposed a linear vision of histor y in the light of Bolshevik/Socialist revolution as an only possible version of progressive

The aim of this paper is to find out, how being a part of Finnish Swedish modernist group, which was associated to magazine Quosego and being near another – Lithuanian moderinst group, who was associated around to magazine Keturi vejai (en. Four winds) affects Henr y Parland‘s production and visibility. Parland had written some of his texts in Quosego before he came to Lithuania, where he was met by another group of modernists. International communication between artists of modernism collapsed in H. Parlands surrounding and made the link between Finland and Lithuania due to modernistic manner. Who was Parland in this communication: translator or transistor? How does Parland‘s works, published in Quosego, looks like in the whole context of his writing? Quosego had published some of Parland‘s texts, including first poetr y, which was later put into this first poetr y book Idealrealization (1929). Then he came to Lithuania and some of his poetr y were translated and published also, but even 5 times he was asked to write into Lithuanian magazines about Scandinavian literature. Parland was the strong part of Quosego and the silent partner in the surrounding of Keturi vejai group. ginta re Va itonyte: ginta re Va itonyte Faculty o f Hum anities , V ytautas Magnus university, LITHUANIA

m ar ga Van Me ch e le n :

birgit Va n Puymbroeck :

Sigma and the Event Structure Research Group (ERG)

‘A thought outgrows a brain’: Transmutation in

S e ssi on 58

Nancy Cunard’s early poetry Session 51

Sigma and the Event Structure Research Group (ERG), with centres in London and Amsterdam, were paradigmatic for the counter cultural movements in the mid and late sixties. They had their roots both in the Beat culture of the fifties, the British Underground movement of the sixties, the Situationist International, Provo and Johan Huizinga’s utopian idea of a Homo Ludens. Both intellectuals and artists were involved; names connected to one or both groups were: Alexander Trocchi, John Latham, Simon Vinkenoog, Jeffrey Shaw, Sean Wellesley Miller, Theo Botschuyver, Remko Scha and Tjebbe van Tijen. Projects that draw public attention were the Continuous Drawing – chalk lines from London to Amsterdam, Corpocinema, MovieMovie, laser performances for Genesis, and numerous inflatable structures such as the ones for Sonsbeek 71. All these events, the key concept of these groups, were the outcome of pioneering and creative application of new visual media and other technologies, and only possible in interaction with a general public. Not only boundaries between artistic disciplines were negated but also those between art and life, more in particular the built environment. Exchanges of visionar y ideas at that time and also later on existed with architects and studios, as for instance Archigram, Archizoom, Superstudio, the Metabolists, HausRucker-Co etc. What remains nowadays of the legacy of Sigma and ERG, of this memorable intertwinement of revolutionar y ideas, utopian visions, advanced technologies, and ‘low profile’, creative events? m ar ga Van Me ch e le n A rt H i s to ry, Un ive rs it y o f Ams t e rdam, NETHERLANDS w w w. margavan me ch e le n .n l

This paper recovers Nancy Cunard’s early poetr y. Cunard, who is mostly known for her social activism, her printing press and her many love affairs with Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis amongst others, wrote exceptionally rich poetr y in the 1910s and 1920s. Her poems hover between reality and dream, stasis and motion, the spiritual and the profane, as is made clear by her early volumes Outlaws (1921), Sublunar y (1923) and Parallax (1925), the latter of which shows remarkable resemblances with Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). In this paper, I propose to read Cunard’s poems for the alternative vision they offer us on the utopia/dystopia dichotomy. Frequently referring to ‘mutability’ and ‘transmutation’, Cunard relishes in an in-between state where past and present, object and subject, body and brain come together. She draws on a discourse of alchemy and dream to show how disparate elements merge to form new wholes that are neither better nor worse. Her poetr y is remarkable for the way in which transmutation is experienced not as paralytic but as full of potential, a source of endless creativity. birgit Va n Puymbroeck English, Ghent Univ ersity, BELGIUM

ha ns Va ndevoorde: Generation and community art Session 116

Although publications like Generation dada (2013) or La Revue blanche: une génération dans l’engagement 1890-1905 (2007) suggest that speaking of ‘generations’ could be a legitimate way of looking at the avant-garde, present aesthetics offer few reflection about the meaning of this concept for the study of art and literature. My contribution will focus on the

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question if the artists that spoke about ‘community art’ in the early twenties (Fr.: ‘art communautaire’; G.: ‘Gemeinschaftskunst’), also operated with a ‘generation style’ in their artistic production. For these artists, the utopian idea of community art seems to cover two different meanings, each being the further development of ideas that circulated before the First World War. In the first meaning the central point is the ideal of the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, the integration of different art disciplines into one art, the second meaning highlights the production of art for the whole community. Both meanings merge in abstract-geometric tendencies and related literar y art at the beginning of the twenties, e.g. with the Belgian painters Jozef Peeters and Victor Ser vranckx and the poets Paul van Ostaijen and Michel Seuphor. visionar y ideas at that time and also later on existed with architects and studios, as for instance Archigram, Archizoom, Superstudio, the Metabolists, HausRucker-Co etc. What remains nowadays of the legacy of Sigma and ERG, of this memorable intertwinement of revolutionar y ideas, utopian visions, advanced technologies, and ‘low profile’, creative events?

symbolic art, represented by the popular Society of Polish Artists Sztuka (Ar t). In the thirties views of the two artists have definitely diverged, as shown by the discussion that took place on the pages of Forma – one of the most important journal of polish avant-garde. Both debaters advocate the utilitarian role of art, but they understand it differently. Chwistek, criticizing art genius and individualism, proposes intersubjective art, understandable even to the construction worker and giving him the leisure and entertainment. He proposes Antiunism as the evolution of Unism and Zonism. Strzeminski however supports the autonomy of artistic and historical processes. In contrast with Chwistek’s concepts, he defends an isolated, specialized sphere for artistic creativity and anti-illusionistic structure of a work of art. He believes in originality and in the ability of the work of art to organize life and its functions. This fierce discussion between two prominent artists of the interwar period showed the nature of the trends of Polish artistic and critical environment, where a sense of crisis and re-evaluation of principles resulted in the strong clashes even among defender of the avant-garde.

h an s Van de vo o rde D e p. o f Lin guis t ics an d Lit e rary St udie s , V r i j e Un ive rs it e it Brus s e l, BELG IU M

dia na Wa silewsk a Depart ment o f Philology, The University of Szczecin, POLAND

d i ana Was ile w s ka: A controversy between Chwistek and Strzeminski

Jobst Welge:

– two models of utopia in the Polish interwar art

Ambivalent Modernity: Massimo Bontempelli’s

criticism

Prosaic Revision of the Poetics of Futurism

S e ssi on 29

Session 35

Leon Chwistek and Wladyslaw Strzeminski were the most prominent artists and critics of the interwar avant-garde in Poland. Chwistek was a futurist painter and member of the Formalists, Strzeminski – one of the leading figures of Polish Constructivism, the author of radical modernist theor y of Unism. In the first decade of the époque their views on art were quite similar – both defended the primacy of forms, fighting against relics of impressionist and

In my contribution I would like to investigate how the Italian modernist writer Massimo Bontempelli, credited with the invention and conceptualization of movements such as “realismo magico” and “Novecento,” portrays the rapidly expanding city of Milan in some of his experimental, meta-narrative prose works, namely La vita intensa (1920) and La vita operosa (1921). Specifically, I would like to analyze the (dis-)continuities between his early, lesser well-known

Futurist poetr y (Il purosangue, 1919), concerned with his experience of World War I, and the prose works, where the poetics of Futurism is at once transferred into prose, as well as parodically subverted. Bontempelli’s works, I argue, lend themselves to a discussion of the interface between poetr y and prose at the beginning of the twentieth centur y. Moreover, the generic transition marks a historical and biographical transformation of an earlier Futurist utopia into a more guarded, ambivalent stance regarding technical and urban modernity, including the fear of alienation, which eventually gave rise to Bontempelli’s alignment with the regime of Fascism and its own ambivalence toward cultural modernity.

argue that the material ephemera at the surface of both poets’ work belies a deeper Nietzschean mythos and shared utopian longing for what Benn calls ‘the union of life and mind’ (Block II, Room 66, 1944), to be reached only by art’s re-enactment of the primal violence which first severed consciousness.

J o bst We lge

The 20th centur y brought numerous attempts to create an ideal city and to re-think its concept – from Howard’s Garden City, through futurist La Città Nuova to Le Corbusier’s outrageous Plan Voisin. For their planners it was possible and even desirable to create new, or completely rebuild the existing cities believing that a rationally planned environment will lead to a more ordered and efficient society. In this paper I will present a Polish contribution to utopian modernist urban planning, namely ‘Functional Warsaw’ – a 1931 project of multidirectional and unrestricted development of Warsaw area submitted by Jan Chmielewski and Szymon Syrkus and presented to C.I.A.M. delegates in London in 1934. The plan envisaged a great transcontinental line of communication linking Paris and Moscow via Warsaw with no national boundaries and cities having no borders but creating an extensive urban network. Given the project’s unprecedented scale and utopian dimension, which from the beginning was acknowledged by its authors, it was highly improbable that it ever became a reality. Yet, even though ‘Functional Warsaw’ never came to fruition, the project reverberated within the organisation and considerably influenced the post-

L i t e r ature/ Cultural S tudies , Universität Konstanz, G ERMANY

JT W e ls ch : Dark days of spring: the visionary violence of Dr Williams and Dr Benn S e ssi on 73

This paper will consider the role of violence in the utopian poetics of William Carlos Williams and Gottfried Benn. Although both poets’ medical careers are often cited in relation to bodily preoccupations in their work, I will focus on Williams’ and Benn’s ver y different experiences of the World Wars as a background for their similarly mythological, but differently idealised use of violence as creative metaphor. More specifically, I’ll show where different encounters with fascism’s ideological effects distinguish their visions for art’s violent future. On one level, Benn’s grim existentialism in the period, perhaps unsurprising in its German context, sits in stark contrast with the naïve bravura of Williams’ call for ‘a final and self-inflicted holocaust’ (Spring and All, 1923) or sense that ‘war elevates the artist’ (Midas , 1941), which might be read in relation to Williams’ distance from combat and conflicted feelings toward Dada’s nihilism or Pound’s fascism. Nevertheless, I’ll

JT Welsch English Literature, York St John Univ ersity, uk

micha l Wendersk i: Functional Warsaw. A Polish example of utopian planning Session 40

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war reconstruction and development of Warsaw which was almost entirely destroyed during WWII. m i ch al We n de r s ki

willem g Weststeij n: RUSSIAN NEO-AVANT-GARDE. RY NIKONOVA AND SERGEY SIGEY Session 59

Fac u lty o f E n g lish, Ada m Mickiewicz U niversity, POLAND

k at h le e n We n t r ack: 1970s Feminist Practice as Heterotopian: The Stichting Vrouwen in de Beeldende Kunst and the Schule fur kreativen Feminismus S e ssi on 68

The decade of the 1970s was an unprecedented moment for feminist art when women artists challenged their lack of recognition by establishing new education programs, alternative exhibition venues which often functioned as spaces for lectures and debate, and women’s art collectives to support and present their work. These heterotopian spaces functioned as real venues outside of the establishment but also created a shared intellectual space for feminist engagement. In Amsterdam the Stichting Vrouwen in de Beeldende Kunst (SVBK or Women in the Visual Ar ts Foundation) was established in 1977 to improve the position of women artists and promote their contribution to society. Approaching women’s position in the arts from a different angle, Ulrike Rosenbach established her Schule für kreativen Feminismus (The School for Creative Feminism) in 1976 in Cologne as a venue for female artists to come together to discuss their work and problems, to address women’s cultural histor y, to provide training in consciousness-raising, and to explore practical applications for feminist ideologies in creative work. This paper will analyze the early activities of these two case studies of heterotopian practice, but also consider ways in which they engaged the artistic community to further their work and legacy. k at h le e n We n t r ack Art & Desi gn, T he City University of New York, Q u e e ns b o ro ugh CC, USA

The Russian avant-garde, which made such a rich and unique contribution to Russian culture and, as we may confidently say, to world culture, virtually disappeared in the 1930s, when Stalinism, with its obligator y, disastrous and inept socialist realism took over. For several decennia there was no place any longer for the remarkable experiments of the avant-garde poets, artists, composers, stage- and film managers. However, the avant-garde in Russia was forbidden, but not forgotten. In the 1960s and 1970s it revived, not officially, but in the underground, emerging in open air exhibitions of unofficial art and samizdat publications. A prominent part in the revival of the historical Russian avant-garde played two poetsartists, Ry Nikonova (1942-2014), pseudonym of Anna Tarshis, and Sergey Sigey (1947). Consciously associating themselves with the earlier avant-gardists and in a new way continuing their experiments, they can be considered their true heirs and an important link between the historical Russian avant-garde and present-day avant-garde movements. Ry Nikonova was trained as a music teacher, but had a predelection for drawing and writing poetr y. In Sverdlovsk, the present Ekaterinburg, she met the artist Sergey Sigey. They married, assembled a group of young poets and artists around them and started a journal, Nomer, with a circulation of only one copy. In the 1970s they moved to the town of Eysk in the south of Russia, where they lived in the house of Nikonova’s grandmother. In Eysk they started a new handmade journal, Transponans (five copies per issue). Each copy of the journal is a work of art in itself, but more important is that Transponans became the center of the neo-avant-garde, publishing work of unofficial poets and artists from all over the countr y. Particularly worthwhile are the contributions, theoretical as well

as artistic, of Nikonova and Sigey themselves. Their experiments are highly original and represent a new step in the development of Russian culture. The Transponans project was brought to a conclusion at the beginning of the perestroika. In 1998 Nikonova and Sigey emigrated to Germany. Their important role as both guardians and original continuers of the tradition of the historical Russian avant-garde has still to be more widely acknowledged. w i l l e m g We s t s t e ijn

j u l i a Wie ge r: The VBKÖ’s Tea Parties as Heterotopias or How to Shut Oneself Off? S e ssi on 68

The paper will focus on the 1970s activities of an all women art space in Vienna, which was founded in 1910 and is still active today: The Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs (VBKÖ). The VBKÖ initially campaigned for the artistic, economic and educational interests of women in the arts and rented a space in the center of Vienna, where it still is today. Despite its progressive beginnings, the association decided to collaborate with the Nazi regime in 1938 so as to continue their activities during those years. From the perspective of the nascent Viennese feminist art movements in the 1970s, the association had fallen into oblivion. Nevertheless, it was active in the 1970s – it is just not clear what these activities were about. Who were the members? Did internal discussions about a post-Nazi position take place? Why was there no contact to the local feminist artist movements? We will look at the space of the VBKÖ that existed unnoticed and in parallel to the feminist movements in order to not only figure out how we can still inhabit it today but also how

a historical methodology might also be a political inter vention into the present. j ulia Wieger Architek tur, acacemy of fine a rts v ienna , AUSTRIA

paul wood: Their Pasts , Their Futures and Our Present Session 94

This paper is in two parts.The first historical part investigates the early 20th centur y avant-garde’s preoccupation with imagined pasts in terms of its concurrent fascination with imagined futures. Considered together,through discussion of texts by Gauguin and Marinetti, these can be seen as symptoms of a crisis in art’s relationship to the then present. In the second part, the focus shifts to our postcolonial present, and questions of how to deal with this legacy. Modern art museums all too frequently avoid the difficulty through a restriction to aesthetics, or at best offer a partial qualification of the aesthetic by providing a supplement of anthropological material. An alternative strategy has been suggested by the Weltkulturen museum, Frankfurt. Exhibitions there have begun to suspend the aesthetic and the putatively scientific together in a hybrid form of postconceptual installation. It remains an open question whether this mix of cognitive and aesthetic succeeds or not. It is evidence, however, of a provisional search for a productive relationship with multiple pasts: pasts which can unstably veer between the exciting or heroic, and the embarrassing or shameful. paul wood Art History, Open Univ ersity, uk

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k a r i Yli-An nala: The VILKE Collection of Finnish electronic art S e ssi on 81

Hidden history of Finnish electronic art The VILKE Collection of Finnish electronic art (timespan at the moment being 1977 - 2013) is an artists initiative to bring together works in which the consumer electronics and high technology used by industr y together with obsolete technology buried in the sands of time are wired into our lives and memories in ways that electronic artworks utilise, var y and bring to life from a new perspective. The collection reinstates many of these works of art that have fallen outside museum collections and the canon of Finnish art histor y. Both the pioneering strategies of the early video art and the newer post-internet sensitivity are presented in the collection. The inclusion of electronic and media art into the praxis of making art has created new challenges to preser ving art. An internationally adapted strategy is to “update” works to a new technological standard at specific inter vals, for instance ever y ten years. The works in the collection are not only preser ved in accordance to digital standards, the intention is to exhibit them in their original presentation form whenever possible. My presentation concerns of the historical and practical relations of the artworks presented in the collection, showing a hidden histor y beneath the official contemporar y art histor y in Finland.

created a vision of social and political impact of constructivist and functionalist art that was based on the ideas taken from the field of praxeology. Inspired by the solidarist and technocratic aspects of taylorist, which itself was a form of a praxeological theor y and praxis, they saw art as a biopolitical project of “organizing life” in its social and individual dimensions. They also turned to the praxeological ideas of the Polish engineer, Karol Adamiecki, the inventor of the harmonogram and the creator of a socio-political theor y that was ver y close and sometimes also inspired by taylorism. From these inspirations Kobro and Strzeminski draw a vision of art as a means of anthropological, cultural, economic and socio-political progress of Man, and a performance of a rational, productivist and solidarist community. Praxeological ideas remained a source of inspiration after World War II. The Polish KwieKulik duo made extensive use of Tadeusz Kotarbinski’s praxeological ideas to draw a vision of artists working with or as experimental researchers, so as to discover and develop new forms of human action, cooperation and organisation. They viewed their work as artistic and citizen praxis which aimed at improving social reality in Poland of the 70ties. Toma sz Za lusk i Media and Audivisual Culture, University of Lodz, POLAND

Piera ntonio za notti: The Japanese reception of Max Weber’s Cubist Poems

k a r i Yli-An nala Fi l m an d s ce n o graph y, AALTO Un ive rs it y, FINLAND

To m as z Zalus ki: Utopia and Praxeology in Polish Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde S e ssi on 99

In the 20-ties and 30-ties Polish avant-garde artists Katarzyna Kobro and Wladyslaw Strzeminski

as a site of interaction between local avant-garde practices Session 38

The Cubist Poems (1914) by JewishAmerican painter Max Weber (1881-1961) are a relatively little known experiment in intersemiotic interaction between different avant-garde media. This collection had a timely reception in Japan, where it was presented as soon as 1915 in the local critical discourse, and a complete translation appeared in

1924. According to modern Japanese scholarship, Weber’s poems influenced the earliest experiments in cubist poetr y by Tai Kanbara and Renkichi Hirato, who are considered among the first avant-garde poets of Japan. In my paper, I will tr y to show why this relatively obscure verse collection by a painter encountered such interest in Japan. The modernist poets in Japan perceived the local scene of “westernstyle” painting (the so-called “gadan”) as “one step ahead of the other arts” (Hagiwara 1916) in the localization of trans-national discourses and practices of “modern art.” The “gadan” represented an invaluable source of “avant-garde” materials for their own literar y practice, ranging from experimental techniques in representation and performance, to repertoires of modernist themes and critical tropes (like, in fact, “cubism”). The Japanese reception of the Cubist Poems can therefore be analyzed as a revealing case study within this larger framework, where the cultural hierarchies between different media in the same local avant-garde played a decisive role.

of the fragile wartime self. In the stor y, the protagonists escape brittle, verging on dystopian, London by imagining a utopian, yet markedly ambiguous, city of architectural solidity. Beginning with close readings of these overlapping urban landscapes, I argue that it is the material ruination and blurriness of wartime boundaries that creates such a desire for hallucinator y retreat. Analysing also the stor y’s language and syntax, I demonstrate how Bowen powerfully recreates such uncanny qualities at the level of style, structure and narrative architecture. Through such a reading, I position Bowen in a specifically modernist context, arguing that her work contributes to the legacy of modernism in the later decades of the centur y. References: Elizabeth Bowen, The Mulberr y Tree: Writings of Elizabeth Bowen (London: Virago, 1986). emm a Zimm erma n School of English, Univ ersity of Nottingha m, uk

a nnik a Öhrner: P i e r a nton io z an ott i D e pa rtme n t o f As ian an d No rt h Afr ican St udies , C a’ F o s car i Un ive rs it y, Ve n ice , ITALY

e mma Zimme r man : Wartime architectures of ruin and release: between dystopia and utopia in Elizabeth Bowen’s Mysterious Kôr S e ssi on 93

The short stor y form proved crucial to Elizabeth Bowen’s articulation of London’s ruinous wartime landscape. In the Preface to her short stor y collection, The Demon Lover (1945), she explains that these stories ‘acted as releases’ which ‘came through with force and rapidity, sometimes violence’ (1986, 94-5). Focusing specifically on Mysterious Kôr (1944), this paper aims to show how the short stor y—in its potential for fragmentation and rupture—enables Bowen to respond to the strains and enforced desires

Delaunay’s show in Stockholm 1916, Prismes d’electriques and alternative actions Session 84

The outbreak of the First World War meant that many avant-garde formations related to Paris were stratified. The moves of the artists were now, by necessity, dictated by the harsh war-logic. Interestingly, this also could mean that the center-peripher y logic of avant-garde communications became obsolete. In March 1916 a Sonia and Robert Delaunay show was presented at the Nya Konstgalleriet, run by the Italian artist Arturo Ciacelli in the ver y center of Stockholm. This paper intend to explore this previously under-researched exhibition, as an action of avantgarde strategy, from the side of the Delaunay’s that were stuck in Barcelona, as of Arturo Ciacelli, doing his ver y best through his own galler y and journal to create an avant-garde cluster of international standards in and from the Northern capital. It will

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especially investigate the works and strategies by Sonia Delaunay in this context, who used the opportunity of an international exhibition to show both recent mature works and new motifs that simultaneously were expressing avant-garde identity and agency. Thus, the aim of the presentation is to explore the nature of an alternative case of transnational avant-garde action, one that reached through Europe along a Northern and Southern axes. an n i ka Öh rn e r A rt H i s to ry, Sö de rtö rn Un ive rs it y, SWEDEN

m ar i an n e Ø lh o lm: Ritual as artistic practice in Lars Skinnebach’s Exercises and Ritual Texts S e ssi on 53

In the Danish poet Lars Skinnebach’s book Exercises and Ritual Texts (Øvelser og rituelle tekster) (2011) the ritual plays a key role and is an integral part of the development of Skinnebach’s artistic practice. In his earlier books Skinnebach has primarily been concerned with the relation between the literar y text and its reader, but in his more recent work this focus has been replaced by a commitment to the global ecological problems, or in Skinnebach’s words “the climate crisis”. It is in this context that Skinnebach explores the ritual as a basis for the literar y text, and the function of the ritual is part of what can be perceived as an avant-garde endeavour to cross the boundaries between art and other practices. The book takes as its starting point a hunting expedition to Greenland undertaken by the speaker and his father, and the nature of Greenland becomes the setting of the ritual of the hunt. The ecological crisis caused by the Western societies is viewed from what appears to be an outside position, and the ritual becomes an expression of a utopian desire for distance from the actual conditions which is, however, contradicted by

other elements within the framework of Skinnebach’s book. ma ria nne Ølholm Depa rtment of Arts a nd Cultura l Studies , Univ ersity of Copenhagen, DENM ARK

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appendix

K i e ne Br ille n burg Wurt h : The Afterlives of the Avant-Garde: Beyond Modernism? S e ssi on 38B

This paper explores the afterlives of the avant-garde in the interface between literature and the visual arts. My focus is on the modernist genre of the artists’ book and – within this genre – specifically on erasure and overwriting: an illegible kind of (hand) writing that is designed to craft a visual structure. Today, erasure and overwriting in the work of artists and authors from Heide Hatr y, Louise Paillé to Jonathan Safran Foer may be adequately conceived in terms of the digital revolution and the devastating effect of this revolution on (hand)writing and ‘analog’ modes of information processing. However, in this paper I will trace the long histor y of erasure and overwriting that originates with the earlier 20th-centur y avant-gardes. My aim is to account for the allure and ‘afterglow’ of modernism in the digital age. It is this afterglow— rather than the transition to new modes of data and information processing—that is being reworked in contemporar y artists’ books straddling the borders between the literar y, visual, and electronic arts.

V i su a l n a rr a t o l o gy ? Annaberg, Eastern Germany – these are the coordinates of the place where the artist Carlfriedrich Claus spent most of his life, since 1930 to 1998. Claus kept in touch with current world intellectual space which affected him and to which he was responsive in spite of his secluded way of life. Wide range of influences and various intellectual bases are obvious in his work (such as Martin Heidegger, Theodor W. Adorno, Karl Marx, Rudolf Steiner, Ernst Jünger, and Ernst Bloch.) He maintained contacts with significant š š š figures of contemporar y culture of his time and more precisely with artists connected with the movement of concrete poetr y as were Pierre and Ilsa Garnier, Raoul Hausman, Dieter Roth, Dick Higgins, Jirí Kolár, Jirí Valoch, Josef Hiršal, Bohumila Grögerová, and many others. Indeed, concrete poetr y took on the role of the artistic avant-garde in Central Europe of the 1960 and 1970 and the study of this movement is thus essential for ever y serious reflection on the evolution of the avant-garde in the Central European region after World War II. š Martin Kolár š Department of History and Theory of Art, Faculty of

K i e ne Br ille n burg Wurt h U t r e ch t Un ive r s it y, n e t h e r lan ds

š Art and Design, University of Jan Evangelista Purkyne, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic

Ha rrington Weihl: š m art in ko lár The Utopian Space in the Works of Carlfriedrich Claus S e ssi on 67

Carlfriedrich Claus – U-Topos / 4. August 1930 in Annaberg; † 22. Mai 1998 in Chemnitz

Our house is the future as well as the past: utopian space and utopian form in EM Forster’s Howards End Session 103

Howards End is often understood as a novel that is primarily concerned with place by virtue of its title alone; the title also marks the English home as the novel’s definitive ‘place.’ Forster’s conception of the

pastoral English home as an idyllic – even utopian – space has been well-documented. In this paper, I argue that the gap in the novel, identified by Andrew Thacker and others, between its traditional, Victorian literar y form and its fluctuating modernist content is resolved in the novel’s preoccupation with the utopian space of the English home. The lack of formal congruity between the novel and its content, I claim, is both covered and emphasized by a recourse to the architectural form of the house itself as the center of the novel’s symbolic economy. The Utopian vision of a ‘new England’ put forth by the novel echoes the utopian aesthetic vision of a literature capable of grappling with modernity in formal terms. The eponymous home itself is at the conclusion of the novel put forward as a utopian resolution to the class conflicts that the novel stages, just as the novel aesthetically suggests a utopian (that is, unachieved) resolution between the realist novel and an unrepresentable modernity. H ar r i n gton We ih l W e st Virgin ia Un ive r s it y, USA