Tektology, Russian constructivism, and Man with a Movie Camera

• Main Author: MacKenzie, Melody A.
• Other Authors: Antliff, Allan
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Russian Film; Russian Studies; Alexandr Bogdanov; Proletkult; Alexandr Rodchenko; Dziga Vertov; UVic Subject Index::Humanities and Social Sciences::Communication and the Arts::Art > History
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/1089

The Constructivists wholeheartedly endorsed the future of Soviet socialism and they took a leading role in shaping proletarian ideology. Drawing on Bogdanov’s theories of tektology and proletarian art, the Constructivists synthesized their artistic vision with the proletarian cultural movement. The Constructivists’ desire to organize the collective as “worker-organizers” through “production” art was indebted to Bogdanov. In this regard, Constructivist work during the laboratory phase is paramount for understanding the role that Bogdanov’s tektology played in the development of Constructivist theory. In 1929, Dziga Vertov produced Man with a Movie Camera, and an analysis of tektological methods used in this film reveal Vertov’s ideological motivations. It is on this basis – building ideology – that tektology furnished a viable solution to the Constructivist pursuit of uniting the theoretical and the practical in their art.