Lauren Warner-Treloar

Research project: 'Sound Art and Visual Culture: The Anti-Book Experiment in the Romanov Empire and the USSR, 1881-1932'

Abstract

I am engaged in research on the futurist books produced by artists and writers in Moscow, St Petersburg, and Tbilisi, with a particular focus on the collection held by the British Library. This project examines the innovative multi-sensory books, or ‘anti-books', produced through the experimental collaborations of the early twentieth-century artists and writers known as the futurists. Artists of all descriptions throughout the twentieth century engaged in the book experiment, consisting of the interplay of sound, text, image, materials, and performativity, resulting in an important, yet under-explored, artistic platform: the artist's book. For the first time, the anti-books' performativity is addressed, and they are examined within the wider context of the turbulent political, cultural, and artistic developments of the period. 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 a few 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.