LEF, 1-7 (1923-25), & Novyi LEF, 1-24 (1927-29) [Russian, English]

LEF (“ЛЕФ”) was the journal of the Left Front of the Arts (“Левый фронт искусств” – “Levy Front Iskusstv”), a widely ranging association of avant-garde writers, photographers, critics and designers in the Soviet Union. It had two runs, one from 1923 to 1925 as LEF, and later from 1927 to 1929 as Novyi LEF (‘New LEF’). The journal’s objective, as set out in one of its first issues, was to “re-examine the ideology and practices of so-called leftist art, and to abandon individualism to increase art’s value for developing communism.”

Although LEF was catholic in its choices of writers, it broadly reflected the concerns of the Productivist left-wing of Constructivism. The editors were Osip Brik and Vladimir Mayakovsky: fittingly, one a Russian Formalist critic and one a poet and designer who helped compose the 1912 manifesto of Russian Futurists entitled, “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”. The covers were designed by Alexander Rodchenko, and featured photomontages early on, being followed by photographs in New LEF. Among the writings published in LEF for the first time were Mayakovsky’s long poem About This, and Sergei Eisenstein’s The Montage of Attractions, as well as more political and journalistic works like Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry. The journal had funding from the state, and was discussed critically, but not unsympathetically by Leon Trotsky in Literature and Revolution (1924).

The later New LEF (“Новый ЛЕФ” – “Novyi Lef”), which was edited by Mayakovsky along with the playwright, screenplay writer and photographer Sergei Tretyakov, tried to popularise the idea of ‘Factography’: the idea that new technologies such as photography and film should be utilised by the working class for the production of ‘factographic’ works. In this it had a great deal of influence on theorists in the West, especially Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht. Linked journals also appeared such as the Constructivist architectural journal SA (edited by Moisei Ginzburg and Alexander Vesnin) and Proletarskoe Foto, on photography. The New LEF closed in 1929 over a dispute over its direction between Mayakovsky and Tretyakov, and under pressure for its ‘Formalism’, which jarred with the incipient Socialist Realism. (from Wikipedia)

LEF at Monoskop wiki

LEF, 1-7 (ZIP; updated on 2012-7-19)
Novyi LEF, 1-24 (ZIP; updated on 2012-7-19)
All issues in PDF (added on 2015-7-21)
All issues in HTML (added on 2015-8-11)
English translations of selected essays (trans., ed. & intro. Richard Sherwood (LEF) and Ben Brewster (Novy LEF), Screen 12(4), Winter 1971-72; added on 2015-7-21)

Kinema Ikon catalogue (2005) [English/Romanian]

Kinema Ikon is the oldest active experimental art group in Romania. Founded in 1970 as a multimedia atelier at the art school in Arad it is currently hosted by the Arad’s History Museum and Art Museum. Coming from the various fields (art, literature, architecture, photography, music, programming), its members created in over four decades an astonishing variety of works ranging from experimental film, video art, through hypermedia to interactive installations.

The catalogue accompanied the Kinema Ikon retrospective exhibition held at the MNAC, Bucharest in October-December 2005, curated by Raluca Velisar and Stefan Tiron. The first volume covers the experimental films and videos produced by the group, the second volume features hypermedia works, and the third volume is dedicated to Intermedia magazine published since 1994.

Editor Kinema Ikon
Concept and design by Calin Man
Publisher MNAC – The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; Museum Arad; Centrul Cultural Judetean Arad
102 / 104 / 48 pages

authors
Kinema Ikon on the Monoskop wiki

PDF (Volume 1)
PDF (Volume 2)
PDF (Volume 3)
View online (Issuu.com, Volume 1)
View online (Issuu.com, Volume 2)
View online (Issuu.com, Volume 3)

Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory, No 1-5 (1997-2011)

Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory #5 (2007-11)
Neurobiopolitics, Pluripotentiality and Cognitive Capitalism, a work in progress…
View online (HTML articles)

Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory #4 (2005-07)
Conference of Neuroaesthetics
View online (HTML articles)

Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory #3 (2003-04)
Buildings, Movies and Brains.
View online (HTML articles)

Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory #2 (2000-02)
Cinema and the Brain
View online (HTML articles)

Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory #1 (1997-99)
Introduction to Neuro-Aesthetic Theory
View online (HTML articles)

Contributors: Warren Neidich, Charles T. Wolfe, Andrew Patrizio, Philippe Rahm, Meena Alexander, Michael Madore, Martina Wicklein, Martina Siebert, Norman M. Klein, Michael Salcman, Nicholas Wade, Nicholas Chase, Nathalie Angles, Martha Trivizas, Nicola Diamond, Mark Cohen, Lev Manovich, Laura U. Marks, Lucy Steeds, Mark Bishop, Olafur Eliasson, Margarita Gluzberg, Marcos Novak, M. A. Greenstein, Marquard Smith, Paul D. Miller -DJ Spooky, Vivian Sobchack, W. H. Zangemeister, Thyrza Goodeve, Warren Sack, Zoe Beloff, Yann Beauvais, William Hirstein, Stuart Brisley, Peter Brugger, Ralph Greenspan, Penny Starfield, Kodwo Eshun, Sarat Maharaj, Scott Lash, Steven Holl, Karen Beckman, Colin Gardner, Conerly Casey, Christiane Paul, Chloe Vaitsou, Daniel Blaufuks, Diana Thater, Ken Jacobs, Dennis Balk, David J. McGonigle, Charlie Gere, Armen Avanessian, Arnold H. Modell, Anjan Chatterjee, Andreas Roepstorff, Barbara Marie Stafford, Brian Massumi, Bernard Andrieu, Beau Lotto, Elizabeth Cohen and Michael Talley, John Welchman, Janet Sternburg, Elizabeth S. CohenJonathan Green, Joseph Kosuth, Andrea Grunert, Juli Carson and Lindi Emoungu, Jules Davidoff, Isabelle Moffat, Israel Rosenfeld, Francois Bucher, Eric Duyckaerts, Ellen K. Levy and David E. Levy, gruppo A12 and Francisca Insulza, Gregg Lambert and Gregory Flaxman

Initiated by Warren Neidich