Sounding the dissolution from a Cosmic Space
(2025)
author(s): Giada Dalla Bonta
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Whereas the sonic experimentations at the dawn of the October Revolution have been extensively documented, little research has been conducted on practices at the intersection of sound and art during the USSR dissolution. This article explores the political significance of sonic practices –alongside their cultural, artistic, and sensory dimensions– in late Soviet Russia's unofficial art scene, examining the case study of the New Artists group in Leningrad and their shift from mocking avant-garde legacies to a more organically interdisciplinary approach, presumably initiating rave culture in the region. This shift, along with the re-appropriation of cosmism, is framed as a sonic fiction made of music, dance, art, queer inclusivity that aimed at transcending the Iron Curtain and extending conceptually to the Universe. In particular, the paper aims to highlight the decisive influence, often overshadowed by the figure of Novikov, of musicians Valeriy Alakhov and Igor’ Verichev (New Composers) in such evolution by informing the group's poetic strategies and compositions in accordance with their sonic thinking and imagery. The understanding of “togetherness” as constitutive element of late Soviet underground culture and of the hypernormalized official ideology’s de-territorialization (Yurchak 2006) also demonstrates, through J.-L. Nancy’s theory of communal bodies, the role of participatory and corporeal sonic experiences in creating sonic fictions from “interplanetary sounds” able to penetrate socio-cultural dynamics. The artists’ “ubiquitous” (vsyochestvo) principle of absolute synthesis of the arts is thus extended to the realm of sonic materiality, multisensoriality and sonic agency, articulating afresh its appellation of “new avantgarde” of the empire’s dissolution. This article delves into the New Artists' initial evolution before their transition into the more reactionary "New Academy" formation, as some artistic strategies, successfully subversive under Gorbachev, faltered in the post-Soviet landscape and strengthened reactionary forces now intertwined with the ruling power. A forthcoming publication in the Journal of Sonic Studies (Dalla Bontà: 2024) will delve into this subsequent phase during the 1990s, offering insights into the intricate dynamics driving this seemingly contradictory development in the group and in certain figures in the Russian underground scene.
Under the Mirroring Surface
(2018)
author(s): Adam Kraft
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
In my work I experiment with interventional urban commons, through practices of altering and re-purposing existing structures. The work is both informal and transgressive in its methodology, with the core intention to investigate and participate in the shaping and making of the social city. Art and research can provide keys to accessing such a city in the making; a space where we can challenge the preconceptions of what is possible, and to imagine alternative strategies for the creation of realities.
This article presents a theoretical frame work together with a number of strategies practiced under the Lefebvrian concept of the ‘Right to the City.’
In my work I experiment with interventional urban commons, through practices of altering and re-purposing existing structures. The work is both informal and transgressive in its methodology, with the core intention to investigate and participate in the shaping and making of the social city. Art and research can provide keys to accessing such a city in the making; a space where we can challenge the preconceptions of what is possible, and to imagine alternative strategies for the creation of realities. This article presents a theoretical frame work together with a number of strategies practiced under the Lefebvrian concept of the ‘Right to the City.’open exposition comments (1)