Dvizhenie

Dvizheniye [Movement] was founded by Lev V. Nusberg in 1962 as a group of young artists, primarily students at the art school affiliated with the Surikov Institute in Moscow. Its activities ranged from early, static works in painting and sculpture to kinetic constructions, performance, installations and projects related to urban planning.

Besides Nusberg, the first members were Mikhail Dorokhov, Francisco Infante-Arana, Viacheslav Koleichuk, Anatolij Krivchikov, Viacheslav Scherbakov, Viktor Stepanov, and Rimma Zanevskaya. Later, Vladimir Galkin, Juri Lopakov, and others joined the group. From around 1966, Vladimir Akulinin, Galina Bitt, Tatiana Bystrova, Alexander Grigorjev, and Natalia Prokuratova were also members. The group was active on both an artistic and a theoretical level (producing manifestos, scripts and articles as well as artworks), and followed three principles: movement, synthesis, symmetry. The group’s manifesto was written by Nusberg in 1966. It ceased to exist by autumn 1974 after Nusberg moved to the United States.

In the mid- to late-1960s, the group turned from the suprematist and constructivist systems to more synthetic environments, or “artificial spaces,” which became Dvizheniye’s main focus for the duration of its history. These took the form of functional design (eg. urban designs celebrating the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1966 in Leningrad) and interior design, and outdoor performance (e.g. the Galaxy Kinetic Complex in 1967).

"Nusberg tested out constructivist principles, while Infante engaged and explored the influence of Naum Gabo and Kazimir Malevich (hence his utopian, "supreme" projects, such as a skyscape remade along geometric lines). The collective proclaimed kinetic art meant for mass, ecstatic viewing, and created in an urban setting various synthetic wonders, with flashing lights, transparent plastics, screens, mirrors, smoke, and noise pouring out of loudspeakers. For the most part, this ideological design remained utopian, unhindered by the authorities. "The Movement"'s "live machines" continued El Lissitzky's later illusionist project, first by aspiring to hyper-individualism, but also in their critique of "dry" and "one-sided" geometry. Quite predictably, these artists rejected Western kineticism as too individualistic and its construction as moribund. The collective performances directed by Nusberg essentially appealed to the senses and sexuality -- reliable antidotes to geometry. The group dissolved after Nusberg emigrated to the United States; beginning in the 1970s, Infante worked independently, creating conceptual photographs of artificial objects in nature." (source)

Margareta Tillberg on Dvizheniye

"Dvizhenie was the first art group in the Soviet Union that worked with cybernetics. In addition to practicing artists, the group cooperated with actors, musicians, chemists, engineers in radio-electronic and light-technology, psychologists, architects, physicists, poets and performing dancers. The text accompanying their exhibition at the Palace of Culture of the Kurchatov Institute for Nuclear Research stressed the necessity of contiguity between art and science. In future cooperation between art and technology, “art is not to be limited to ornamentation, but to be inculcated in the production processes”. The notion of the participation in the “intensive rhythm of life” as one important task – is reminiscent of a slogan from the 1920s.
The cybernetic art of Dvizhenie has the form of kinetic light-colour-sound environments with “life-transforming” content. In 1967 their Cyberevents was shown in the engineering block of the Peter and Paul fortress in Leningrad, followed by Little Eagle, a cybernetics pioneer game-amusement camp in Odessa, and Cybertheater. The Artificial Bio-Kinetic Environment from 1969, was a utopian virtual reality project presenting a future city of 35-40 million people. Paradoxically enough, Dvizhenie’s members were able to move in the circles both of the extremely official (propaganda produced for international trade shows, military and space research, design for control rooms at airports and big industries) and the in-official (free jazz, long hair, drugs, existentialism and Hemingway) - that the people interested in cybernetics, new technology, design, art, bionic-architecture and future urbanism and city planning frequented.
Dvizhenie was the first group in the Soviet Union that succeeded to produce big exhibitions “without content” from the point of view of Socialist Realism ideology. " (source)

Works

Cross (1963), Programmed Picture (1963), Soul of Crystal (1964), Space-Movement-Infinity (1963-64), The Flower (1965), The Square of Nine Muses (1965), Galaxy (1967), Cyberevents (1967), Artificial Bio-Kinetic Media (1969).

Exhibitions: Towards a Synthesis of the Arts (Central House of the Artists, Moscow, 1964); Performance of Kinetic Art (House of the Architects, Leningrad, 1965), KunstLichtKunst (Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1966).

See also

• Lev Nusberg
• Francisco Infante
• ARGO

Literature

• Vyacheslav F. Koleychuk, "The Dvizheniye Group: Toward a Synthetic Kinetic Art", Leonardo, Vol. 27, No. 5, Prometheus: Art, Science and Technology in the Former Soviet Union: Special Issue, 1994, pp. 433-436.
• Lev Nusberg, "Cybertheater", Leonardo, 1969, pp. 61-62.
• "Russian 'Movement' Group" (From "CMeHa", No. 1, January, 1968), Leonardo, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Jul., 1968), pp. 319
• The group wrote the "Manifesto of the Russian Kineticists" while preparing for the 1966 exhibition.
• [1]
• S. Bojko, M. Ragon, Progressive Russische Kunst - Der Abbruch bis 1930/ Lev Nusberg und die Moskauer Gruppe "Bewegung", 1973
• David Crowley, "The Art of Cybernetic Communism", 2011.
• Jane Sharp, "The Personal Visions and Public Spaces of the Movement Group (Dvizhenie)", in David Crowley and Jane Pavitt (eds.), Cold War Modern, London, 2008.