Workers of Culture: The Purpose of Art in the Soviet and early Post-Soviet Era
In March 1932 during the height of a great famine under Stalin’s rule, Pravda and Izvestiya, two central Soviet newspapers, published a pamphlet titled “Who do you stand with, craftsmen of culture?” This pamphlet— an intellectual mockery of cultureal politics in the West— made its author Maxim Gorki, one of the key figures of the Social Realism school, the most influential cultural actor of the Soviet Union. 70 years later, Alexander Brener, a performance artist and key figure of Moscow Actionism after the fall of USSR, wrote the poem “Who do you work for, workers of culture?” The history that transpired between these two ideologically similar texts will be placed in an overview of visual art behind and after the Iron Curtain, from Propaganda to Social Realism.
When: Wednesday, Nov 20, 2019, 6pm,
Where: Engineering 307
On Elene Pasuri:
Elene Pasuri is an author, producer and curator from Tbilisi, Georgia. Originally a documentary filmmaker, her work has always been directed towards exploring the dialectics of culture and social reality. Her curatorial work is very closely intertwined with her background of structuring and programming various educational, cultural and artistic events, publications and experiences in different domains of cultural industry in Georgia. Politics of culture, creative pedagogy and socially engaged practices of art remain her central interest and field of work.
