Russian Electronic Literature Today
Submission Type
Paper
Start Date/Time (EDT)
18-7-2024 3:30 PM
End Date/Time (EDT)
18-7-2024 4:30 PM
Location
Narrative & Worlds
Abstract
The proposed Panel session suggests a discussion of contemporary Russian electornic literature in light of its origins dating back to the Soviet literary avant-garde of early and mid-XX century, and in light of contemopary state of Russian culture both within and beyond the country.
The talk will touch upon labor practices introduced by poet and scholar Alexei Gastev (1882-1939), whose take on industrial progress closely related to his writing method and constituted a complex approach to craft and art made in close, organic and sensitive, coordination with the machine.
Also, Soviet avant-garde literature focusing on mechanical industrialisation will be presented by Andrey Platonov (1899-1951), whose prose reflects on both mechanical and human nature of written language.
Other period of pre-digital avant-garde writing that influenced later Russian electronic literature will be presented by conceptual poets such as Vsevolod Nekrasov (1934-2009) and Dmitry Prigov (1940-2007). These poets focused on the limits and benefits of their "paper" medium and enabled new mediaspecific perspectives on poetry which later were a major influence on digital literature in Russia.
Early Russian electronic literature segment of the talk includes a review of works by Olga Lyalina and Alexey Shulgin, seen as deriving from conceptual poetry, but also focusing on material nature of new media.
Digital writing in Russia of the recent decades - presented, among others, by authors like Michael Kurtov and Alexander Frolov - engage with politics of radical freedom and, on the contrary, radical censorship of the Net.
I will introduce the Web-Almanac Russian electronic literature project made to overcome academic and cultural isolation of contemporary e-lit in Russian, and will share thoughts on how the new digital literature in Russian relates to formal and political avant-gardes of other literary trends in the Russian underground writing.
References:
On Alexey Gastev:
https://monoskop.org/Aleksei_Gastev
On Andrey Platonov: A more interesting grief: on Andrey Platonov by McKenzie Wark
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-more-interesting-grief-on-andrey-platonov/
On Olga Lyalina:
https://rhizome.org/editorial/2016/nov/10/my-boyfriend-came-back-from-the-war/
On Alexey Shulgin:
https://www.v2.nl/people/alexei-shulgin
Recommended Citation
Azernyi, Kirill, "Russian Electronic Literature Today" (2024). ELO (un)linked 2024. 2.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/narrativeandworlds/schedule/2
Russian Electronic Literature Today
Narrative & Worlds
The proposed Panel session suggests a discussion of contemporary Russian electornic literature in light of its origins dating back to the Soviet literary avant-garde of early and mid-XX century, and in light of contemopary state of Russian culture both within and beyond the country.
The talk will touch upon labor practices introduced by poet and scholar Alexei Gastev (1882-1939), whose take on industrial progress closely related to his writing method and constituted a complex approach to craft and art made in close, organic and sensitive, coordination with the machine.
Also, Soviet avant-garde literature focusing on mechanical industrialisation will be presented by Andrey Platonov (1899-1951), whose prose reflects on both mechanical and human nature of written language.
Other period of pre-digital avant-garde writing that influenced later Russian electronic literature will be presented by conceptual poets such as Vsevolod Nekrasov (1934-2009) and Dmitry Prigov (1940-2007). These poets focused on the limits and benefits of their "paper" medium and enabled new mediaspecific perspectives on poetry which later were a major influence on digital literature in Russia.
Early Russian electronic literature segment of the talk includes a review of works by Olga Lyalina and Alexey Shulgin, seen as deriving from conceptual poetry, but also focusing on material nature of new media.
Digital writing in Russia of the recent decades - presented, among others, by authors like Michael Kurtov and Alexander Frolov - engage with politics of radical freedom and, on the contrary, radical censorship of the Net.
I will introduce the Web-Almanac Russian electronic literature project made to overcome academic and cultural isolation of contemporary e-lit in Russian, and will share thoughts on how the new digital literature in Russian relates to formal and political avant-gardes of other literary trends in the Russian underground writing.
References:
On Alexey Gastev:
https://monoskop.org/Aleksei_Gastev
On Andrey Platonov: A more interesting grief: on Andrey Platonov by McKenzie Wark
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-more-interesting-grief-on-andrey-platonov/
On Olga Lyalina:
https://rhizome.org/editorial/2016/nov/10/my-boyfriend-came-back-from-the-war/
On Alexey Shulgin:
https://www.v2.nl/people/alexei-shulgin
Bio
Kirill Azernyi (writer, translator, literary scholar), born in 1990 in Sverdlovsk, USSR. Stories, short stories and poems were published in English (OffCourse Literary Journal, Gone Lawn, Flatbush Review, etc.), and in Russian (“Novyj Mir”, “Ural”, “Nosorog”, etc.).
Participant of the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa (2015). Participant of Electronic Literature Organization Conferences (2020, 2021).
Two books of prose were published in Russian.
Hosts a site devoted to electronic and experimental literature and arts (https://illitera.com/).
Lives in Israel, Haifa.