Investigations on the major milestones of Russian formalism took me to the foundations of constructivism. I found the following books informative on the historic role of constructivism in shaping a social aesthetics of art and literature in the modern times. However my pursuit to find the critical role of constructivism in shaping up a materialist consciousness in the emerging literary groups of Soviet Union needs further references.
In the book: Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in A Digital World, I came across an interesting article by Mayakovsky here: How are Verses Made?. Quite thoughtful indeed. This book mentions that environment design and artifact design need to be worked upon separately.
The same book says about another conjecture that the markets are inherently reflexive when the author is speaking about the ‘open textured’ nature of designs. The rationale is that whenever the interpretations of human action can change the course of subsequent action and interpretation, it is said to be reflexive. While searching online, I could see that constructivism is almost used synonymous with the category ‘social constructionism’ and many authors perceive Marxism itself as a philosophy centered on social constructionism.
Going through one such book, Building Knowledge Cultures, we can see that there is a recent attempt to create mystery around the concept of constructivism. This book presents an argument that constructionism and constructivism are entirely different schools of thought. I will need to examine the authenticity of this laughable proposition.
On going further, the book Unfolding Social Constructionism speaks about a critical approach to cognitive psychology and its representational paradigms. It says that memories, perceptions, motives etc are not psychological entities, rather constructed in conversation.
The book, The Russian Experiment in Art, 1863-1922 says that constructivism achieved its most complete realization in the early films of Sergei Eisenstein. Another book, Realist Constructivism says that a constructivist will take a clearer position on the ontological role between individual and society than on the questions surrounding the power.
Constructivism in Film: The Man with the Movie Camera : a Cinematic Analysis has finally landed me on the history of the movement in Russia at least. According to this book, constructivism was famously defined in the ‘Realist Manifesto’ issued by the brothers Naum Gabo and Antonin Pevsner. They wrote that ‘art is the realization of our spatial perception of the world’. The rhythms of the working men and the machines play an important role in the constructivist theater. Constructivist photo-montage is based on the principle of self reference and it precedes the emergence of the self referential cinema.
Like other constructivists, Alexander Rodchenko emphasized the self referential aspect of the photograph achieved through the dualistic relationship between the images content and the means by which the image is constructed. He suggested that the photographer should find the most expressive view point that would alert the viewer of the potential use of the medium. Implicit in this approach is the formalist’s method of ‘defamilarization’. This is an interesting development that constructivism becomes a tool to break the false consciousness.
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