Cubbin, TomUnknown
Bloomsbury Visual Arts (London, 2019) (eng) English9781350022003Unknown1st ed.SOVIET UNION; UnknownSoviet Critical Design is the first monograph to explore the socialist design practice of ‘artistic projecteering’, which was developed by the USSR’s Senezh Experimental Studio in the 1960s.
Tom Cubbin first examines the studio as a site for the development of the design discipline in the optimistic environment of the Soviet Thaw of the 1960s. He then explores how designers adapted to new realities of the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 80s. Over two decades, designers at the studio worked on critical projects that highlighted how the Soviet state’s treatment of citizens, urban heritage and the environment was manifest in daily life.
Drawing on previously unpublished visual material from private archives and also extensive interviews, this book presents a new history of the late socialist period in the USSR, which gives insight into the creative strategies of designers who engaged their practice as a contribution to broader discussions on alternative models for socialist existence. Overall, it argues that artistic projecteering must be read as a utopian activity which privileged the political and ideological over the functional.
Physical dimension
1 online resource (xviii, 222 p.)Unknownill.
Summary / review / table of contents
Front matter
Introduction: The Communist Surround 1–20
1. Art, Technology and Design in the Soviet Thaw 21–60
2. Senezh Studio and the Emergence of a Critical Practice 61–104
3. Semiotics, Environment and the Historical Turn 105–138
4. Design and the Projective Imagination 139–170
5. A Quiet Conversation Among Things: Memory, Agency and Materiality at the End of History 171–198
Conclusion 199–204
Back matter