About

This project examines the innovative multi-sensory books, or ‘anti-books’, produced through the experimental collaborations of the early twentieth century by artists and writers in the Romanov Empire and USSR known as the Futurists. It is the first in-depth study to focus on the performative aspects of these ‘anti-books’, comprising a dynamic interplay of sound, text, image, and mixed materials in the context of the turbulent political, cultural, and artistic developments in the late imperial and early Soviet periods.

Using case studies focusing on the collaborations of the poets Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922) and Aleksei Kruchenykh (1886-1969), and the painter Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964), along with some notable secondary collaborators, the project explores their engagement in the book experiment and how their results aligned with or departed from those of their European counterparts. The research is based on examination of extensive archival material (including letters, photographs, memoirs, reviews of the Futurists’ public debates, theatrical performances and impromptu street events); analysis of the British Library Collection of anti-books (a rarely examined resource that also provides the basis for comparisons with variant anti-book copies held in other collections) and a comparative review of institutional cataloguing systems in order to identify further anti-books, frequently unrecognised.

Working at the intersection of visual culture, literature, sound, performance and museum collections, the research brings together and extends the critical methods of Nancy Perloff whose 2016 study Explodity focused on the anti-books’ sonic dimension, the visual theorist Johanna Drucker’s ‘zone of activity’ framework to investigate the multiple material and conceptual dimensions of the anti-books, and Richard Schechner’s performance theories to re-contextualise them.

As the first interdisciplinary study to focus on performative aspects of these ‘anti-books’, the thesis will provide a new theory-based typology that locates their subversive role within the shifting cultural politics of the Romanov Empire, extends and deepens our understanding of the artist’s book genre, and aids identification and cataloguing of such works in public/private collections.