Truly, only having taken account of his own “imitativeness,” but also of the “imitativeness,” the reproducibility of poetic subjectivity as such, transforming it into the poem’s constructive principle, could Prigov step up to a completely different level, that of “Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov, Academician of Belyaevo.” Like Warhol, taking as his material the signs of mass production, comics, advertisements, labels, photographs from street periodicals, and so on, DAP utilized Soviet ideological discourse in its profane, “domesticated” form, which previously had been considered taboo by unofficial artists, and simultaneously socio-cultural fetishes, or “brands” (“Pushkin,” “Chaikovsky,” “Policeman,” “Moscow,” etc.). Warhol’s techniques, in spite of their cynical manipulativeness, or perhaps precisely because of it, lay open and bring to the surface the occult mechanisms of consumerist society, mirroring back to the public the secret of its commodity fetishism; in his work, the euphoria of consumption rhymes with anesthesia, effacement and death. A comparable duality, but here in relation to (post-)Soviet society and ideology, is the distinctive feature of the mechanized method—transposed from the field of the visual to that of textual production—the industrial-serial method of DAP.
Golem Soveticus: Prigov as Brecht and Warhol in One Persona
Aleksandr Skidan
Translated by Kevin M.F. Platt
May 2020
Skidan applies tactics of radical questioning, posing crucial contemporary questions…
Dmitry Golynko
Golem Soveticus: Prigov as Brecht and Warhol in One Persona places Dmitri Alexandrovich Prigov, one of the most significant poets and artists of the late-Soviet underground, into transnational historical context. Aleksandr Skidan, an award-winning Russian critic and poet, describes Prigov’s “mass production” of poetry and approach to ideology critique as elements of the global transformation of art practices in the late twentieth century.
* For an additional $13, you can order this pamphlet together with Soviet Texts, the first selected volume of Dmitri Prigov’s poetry and experimental prose texts to appear in English. Simply select the dropdown option at checkout.
This pamphlet is part of UDP’s 2020 Pamphlet Series: twenty commissioned essays on collective work, translation, performance, pedagogy, poetics, and small press publishing. The pamphlets are available for individual purchase and as a subscription. Each offers a different approach to the pamphlet as a form of working in the present, an engagement at once sustained and ephemeral. To view a full list of pamphlets, click here.
About the Author
Aleksandr Skidan, born in Leningrad in 1965, has published five poetry collections in Russian, one of which was awarded the 2006 Andrei Bely Prize. An award-winning essayist, Skidan has published four books of essays (Critical Mass, The Resistance to/of Poetry, Summation of a Poetics, and Theses Toward the Politicization of Art and Other Texts), as well as a novel. He translates American and European literary theory and American poetry. He is a member of the art and activist collective Chto Delat? and a co-editor of the New Literary Observer. His first book in English translation, Red Shifting, was published in 2008 by Ugly Duckling Presse. In 2018, he was awarded the Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship in poetry and spent the fall in Rome and Venice. He lives in St. Petersburg.
Praise
Praise for Previous Work
In his books [...], Skidan applies tactics of radical questioning, posing crucial contemporary questions: Who is a poet today? Who is an intellectual? Who is a political subject? Who is the speaking and writing “I” and who is “she” when she sets the machine of writing in motion? He himself responds to these questions brilliantly, precisely, in revolutionary manner, at times provocatively, brashly, and most importantly, in unexpected and finely honed poetic illuminations.
Dmitry Golynko
About the Translator
Kevin M. F. Platt is a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His scholarly work focuses on Russian poetry, culture, and history. His translations of Russian poetry have appeared in World Literature Today, Jacket2, Fence, and other journals. He is the author or editor of several scholarly books, the most recent of which is Global Russian Cultures (University of Wisconsin Press). He translated the collection of contemporary poetry by the Orbita Group, Hit Parade (UDP).
In the News
Links
Aleksandr Skidan: Two films, two poems, and an interview, featured on Jacket2
Three Poems by Aleksandr Skidan, translated by James H. McGavran III
Panel Discussion on Prigov from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University
Dmitri Prigov & his Soviet Texts: A Bilingual Bacchanal presented by Globus Books
Publication Details
ISBN: 978-1-937027-89-6
Pamphlet
Staple-bound. 40 pp, 5 x 8 in
Publication Date: May 01 2020
Distribution: Asterism Books (US), Inpress Books (UK)
Series: 2020 Pamphlet Series