Rhythm and Projection. Possibility Thinking in the Soviet Avant-garde

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Georg Witte
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280555253

The project aims to contribute to a reevaluation of the Soviet artistic avant-gardes of the 1910s to 1930s. Rather than a mode of thinking putatively fixated on utopian notions, it posits forms of potentializing thinking as the basic gesture of these avant-gardes. The starting hypothesis is that such an emphasis on the possible is embedded in the two guiding categories of rhythm and projection. On the one hand, rhythm and projection need to be reconstructed as concepts in the theoretical discussions of the avant-gardes. On the other hand, they must be investigated as techniques and practices that establish close connections both between different art-forms and between the arts and the sciences. Concepts of rhythm as experiential forms of chance, renewal and potentiality should be contrasted to a restricted understanding of rhythmic practices as mere instruments of disciplining and conditioning, e.g., through methods of training and automatization in gymnastics, labor management, dance and theater. The concept of projection likewise should be accentuated in contraposition to any schematically understood utopianism of the avant-garde. Projection implies a form of thinking in through drafts, a tentative and experimental practice of anticipation that proceeds by way of variables and possible alternatives. It also concerns the technical apparatus of optical projection, as manifested in the defining medium of film. The project has a collective work program that inquires, from a theoretical perspective, into the conditioning relations between rhythm and projection within various discourses and artistic practices. Beyond this, three case studies will treat the projects theme in greater detail, each pursuing a specific focus. The examples are as follows: Study 1 investigates how rhythm and projection appear as concepts and practices of making possible in the following domains: the cooperation of the artistic avant-gardes (literature, theater, film) with physiological research into movement; the creative transfer of movement rhythms, conceived as a projective transference, between different media and art-forms; and the rhythmically-based dynamics of cultural evolution. Study 2 concentrates on Projectionism in the Russian theatrical avant-garde and its rhythmic foundation. Study 3 inquires into the relations of psychological and poetological research into verse rhythm as an open dynamics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants