Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics : Science, Art and Technology in the Early Soviet Union

Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics presents an innovative look at the Russian avant-garde and its cultural encounters with the sciences in the 1920s. The book examines some of the lesser known entanglements between architects, filmmakers and philosophers, on the one hand, and experimental psychologists and physiologists on the other. In Russia, famous avant-garde artists, such as El Lissitzky, Vassily Kandinsky and Dziga Vertov, helped propagate a movement referred to as "psychotechnics" that was emerging at the time in Germany and the United States and eventually led to a "psychotechnical boom." At the end of the story told in the book, it becomes clear that this boom continues to the present day. By analyzing concrete projects undertaken by Russian artists and scientists in cooperation with one another, and by drawing on as-yet-unpublished archival material, Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics challenges the established notion of socialist sciences. At the same time, it provides an entirely new picture of what was thought to be modern art, thereby demonstrating that artistic experimentation had much more than a mere metaphorical meaning in Russian arts in the 1920s. In 2007 Avant-Garde and Psychotechnics was acknowledged with an award for interdisciplinary research by the Wilhelm-Ostwald-Society, Großbothen. In 2011 the book received funding from the VolkswagenStiftung to be translated into English and Russian (the Russian edition was published by NLO books in 2019). The original German edition also received favorable reviews in NZZ, NTM, Derive, Junge Welt and Sehepunkte. "The book presents a different history of the Russian avant-garde and its cultural encounters with the sciences. It is focusing on the entanglements of architects, filmmakers and philosophers with experimental psychologists and physiologists in the 1920s which are hardly known yet. Famous avant-garde artists like El Lissitzky, Vassily Kandinsky and Dziga Vertov helped propagate a movement in Russia - psychotechnics -, that was actually coming from Germany and America and can be characterized as "psychotechnical boom". At the end of the story told in this book, it becomes clear, that this boom has not finished until today. By analyzing concrete co-operations between artists and scientists and on the basis of not yet published archival material, this book challenges the notion of socialist sciences. At the same time, it gives an entirely new picture of what was thought to be modern art and makes clear, that artistic experimentation had much more than a metaphorical meaning in the arts of the Russian 1920s. In 2007 the book was acknowledged with an award for interdisciplinary research by the Wilhelm-Ostwald-Society, Grossbothen. In 2011 the book received funding by the VolkswagenStiftung to be translated into English and Russian (the Russian edition was published by NLO books in 2019). The book got reviews in NZZ, NTM, Derive, Junge Welt, Sehepunkte"-- Provided by publisher