A Slap in the Face of Public Taste: In Defense of Free Art: Poems, Prose, Essays (1912) [Russian]
Filed under book | Tags: · avant-garde, cubism, futurism, literature, poetry, russia

A famous Russian futurist book is bound in sackcloth and printed on wrapping paper. It opens with a manifesto signed by David Burliuk, Alexander Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Viktor Khlebnikov, followed by two essays by David Burliuk on cubism and on texture [both signed Nikolai Burliuk], verse by Khlebnikov and Benedikt Livshits, and four prose sketches by Wassily Kandinsky.
Poshechina obshestvennomu vkusu. V zashchitu svobodnogo iskusstva. Stikhi, proza, stat’i (Пощёчина общественному вкусу. В защиту свободного искусства: Стихи, проза, статьи)
Publisher Georgy L. Kuzmin, Moscow, Dec 1912
114 pages
Wikipedia (Russian)
Commentary (from a book on the aesthetics and ideology of speed in Russian avant-garde by Tim Harte)
Sound recording of Kandinsky’s poem To See
Russian avant-garde on Monoskop wiki
Miguel Molina Alarcón: Baku: Symphony of Sirens: Sound Experiments in The Russian Avant-Garde. Original Documents and Reconstructions of 72 Key Works of Music, Poetry and Agitprop from the Russian Avantgardes (1908-1942) (2008) [EN, MP3]
Filed under book, sound recording | Tags: · art history, avant-garde, constructivism, futurism, history, music, music history, politics, proletkult, radio art, russia, sound, sound art

“A comprehensive overview of the complexity and breadth of the many early 20th-century Russian avantgarde movements, followed by detailed notes and contexts for the individual recordings – including summary biographies of the main actors; additional work notes about the process of the extraordinary Baku reconstruction; a bibliography, rare photographs, web research links, artwork, facsimiles of contemporary documents, a comparative timeline of European and Russian Avantgardes and the first English translation of an article by Avraamov about the symphony. This is a definitive library collection, some seven years in the making and possibly our most important release of recent years.”
Publisher: ReR Megacorp, London, 2008
ISBN 9780956018403
72 pages
PDF and MP3s (removed on 2018-8-21 upon request from publisher)
Comment (0)Stephen J. Collier: Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · anthropology, biopolitics, city, economy, modernity, neoliberalism, post-communism, russia

The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism these institutions were profoundly shaken–casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. In Post-Soviet Social, Stephen Collier examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. He turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state.
Drawing on Michel Foucault’s lectures from the late 1970s, Post-Soviet Social uses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book’s basic finding–that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity–lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.
Publisher Princeton University Press, 2011
ISBN 0691148317, 9780691148311
320 pages