The Avant-Garde Prominence
A collection produced as the outcome of the Avant-Garde Writing Laboratory at the
This publication brings together poems, essays, graphic works, and other experiments at the intersection of language and visual practice created by participants of the Avant-Garde Writing Laboratory held at
We sought to shift habitual ways of perceiving language and redirect our attention toward discovering the new within what history has already shaped. [...] Did we come to understand what avant-garde writing means today? It seems we emerged with even more questions. But perhaps it is precisely in such continuous searching that the essence of avant-garde writing begins to reveal itself.
— Ekaterina Dmitrieva, Preface
We were less interested in tracing influences than in resisting them. To the best of our ability, we tried neither to imitate the avant-garde nor to follow in its footsteps. Instead, we attempted to break it open from within (our “keys” were more like lock picks). The forms and trajectories of the historical avant-garde were questioned, unsettled, and reconfigured.
— Mikhail Bordunovsky, Preface
The starting point for both the laboratory and the book was a series of “keys”—guiding concepts or artistic tools associated with particular authors, movements, and groups: Challenge, Zaum, Architecture, Disintegration, Replica, Frame, Project, Pause, Translation, Visual Poetry, Metabole, Irony, Search, Border, and Polystylism. These concepts served as entry points for exploring the forms and ideas of twentieth-century avant-garde poetry, before becoming instruments for creating new poetic works of the participants’ own.
Each section of the book opens with a commentary by poet, co-curator, and laboratory leader Mikhail Bordunovsky which introduces the poetic traditions and works included in that particular section.
All texts and artworks are published in the authors’ original versions.
Managing Editor
Ekaterina Dmitrieva
Literary Editor
Vyacheslav Nemirov
Graphic Design and Layout
Max Maslov
Proofreader
Daria Savinykh