2025/02/02 by Urupin, Innokentij
#Moscow conceptualism #Russian avantgarde #early television #media archeology #mediology #pharmacon #telecracy #«поэтический вербатим» #медиаархеология #медиология #московский концептуализм #раннее телевидение #русский авангард #телекратия #фармакон #“poetic verbatim”
paper · doi:10.13137/2283-5482/36096
The article discusses the mediology of Andrei Silvestrov’s film Prorub’ (2017), and of the story-play by Vladimir Sorokin Belyi kvadrat (2017). In both works, an important role is given to “suprematist” geometry, squares; TV is linked to Russian state and its symbols. The motif of infantile and hypnotic consciousness arises in connection with television viewership. Keeping in mind these motific complexes, the article, firstly, touches on key moments of plot development in Silvestrov and Sorokin; secondly, it shows how the shared context of early television and avant-garde art can become a sign of the immanence of the state in television technology; thirdly, drawing on Sorokin’s early play S Novym godom! (1987/1998), the article considers the democratic mode of television in its dialectical connection with the telecracy of the 2010s; fourth, the focus lies on the “pharmacology” of Russian TV, which in Silvestrov and Sorokin acts as a medium of regression, similar to an infantilising drug.