20th September 2013
A Screen That Receives Images by Radio…
Focusing on Ivan Leonidov’s project for a ‘club of the new social type’ (1928-29), this presentation examines how architecture operates at the intersection of vision, sensation, and subjectivity. Born of the social and technological upheaval of the Soviet Union’s First Five-year Plan (1928-31), Leonidov’s project participated in the cultural revolution that this drive for industrialization entailed. While attending to the historical specificity of his work and its relationship to the Russian avant-garde, this presentation approaches Leonidov’s project from an oblique angle—one that captures its relevance for contemporary architectural thought. It will follow Leonidov into discourses and practices that are far from those usually considered in relation to Soviet constructivist architecture. It will describe how his work brings the procedures of photomontage, documentary photography, radio transmission, and television to bear on architecture – how his work gives us an anticipatory formulation of the effects in spatial organization of hearing-at-a-distance, seeing-at-a-distance, and other technological extensions of perception.
Richard Anderson specializes in the history of modern and contemporary architecture in North America, Europe and Eurasia, with emphasis on German- and Russian-speaking regions. His research and teaching explore architecture’s relationship to modern media and modes of economic reasoning. He is currently Lecturer in Architectural History at the University of Edinburgh’s school of architecture and landscape architecture (ESALA).