Authors

Irina Riznychok¹;  ¹ Constructor University Bremen, Germany

Discussion

The paper explores the artistic practices of Uktus School (1965-1974) in Sverdlovsk and Eisk, peripheral Soviet cities, both isolated from the major cultural centers and virtually closed for foreigners between Thaw and Stagnation. The members of Uktus School, a circle of artists and poets, experimented with conceptual visual art and poetry, art theory, and samizdat publications. In doing so, they relied primarily on the legacy of ‘Russian’ avant-garde and western modernism, gradually familiarizing themselves with them through Eastern European journals, available Western books and correspondence with collectors, as well as avant-garde poets. However, the legacy of the Uktus School is still on the margins of the established canon of Soviet unofficial art due to the unequal access to representation and hierarchy, in addition to the loss of the early issues of samizdat journal “Number” [Nomer], the most important project of the group. Meanwhile, Anna Tarshis (1942-2014) and Sergei Sigov (1947-2014), the key members of  Uktus School, attempted to reconstruct the group’s activity in the 1990s, after the actual break-up of the circle. Evaluating their collective projects, they considered Uktus School as a prime example of conceptual art that emerged long before Moscow romantic conceptualism. The very fact of comparison with a center raises the center-periphery problem of Soviet unofficial culture in which Moscow is considered as a universal model for understanding regional art scenes. In my paper, I argue that Uktus School was an independent, idiosyncratic phenomenon, combining homegrown and western sources with the industrial and technical emphasis that was characteristic of the Ural’s intellectual circles of engineers and scientists. With my focus on the artistic production in peripheral regions of the Soviet Union, I wish to propose the decentralized model of Soviet unofficial art excluding the hierarchical dominance of the ‘capitals’.