The Language of the Soviet Avant-garde at the End of Time

29 November 2025, Slavic Institute, Schulgasse 2, Heidelberg

The seminar is a cooperation between the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna and the Slavic Institute at the University of Heidelberg.

Programme

11.30 – 11.40 Welcome address by Prof. Urs Heftrich (Head of the Slavic Institute, University of Heidelberg) and introduction to the seminar by Clemena Antonova (Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna and Fellow at CAPAS, University of Heidelberg).

11.40 – 12.30 Keynote lecture by Prof. Boris Groys (New York University and Karlsruhe, Germany), “Lord of the Rings: Evald Ilyenkov and His Project of Artificial Apocalypse.” 

12:30 – 14.00 Lunch break

Presentations

14.00 – 14.30 Ilya Kalinin (Humbolt University, Berlin), “The Resurrection of the Word/World: Nikolaj Fedorov and Viktor Shklovsky.”

14.30 – 15.00 Gayle Lonergan (Ruskin College, Oxford), “Utopia versus Apocalypse: Views from the Russian Civil War, 1918-1922.”

15.00 – 15.30 Clemena Antonova (IWM, Vienna and CAPAS, Heidelberg), “Kazimir Malevich’s Writings and Man-Godhood: The Modernist Inversion of a Theological Dogma.”

Tatiana Levina (Ruhr University Bochum), moderator.