2009

"Stepanova's 'Laboratories'." Andreas Broeckmann and Gunalan Nadarajan (eds.) Place Studies in Art, Media, Science and Technology. VDG-Weimer, 2009. Pp. 167-182.

With the growing number of art and science collaborations, the question of what it is exactly that artists and scientists do, as well as where and why they do it, and how their modus operandi relates to the public at large, is being posed with a renewed sense of urgency. One aspect of this development is the question of the locus of scientific or artistic work, usually identified as the studio in the case of an artist, and the laboratory in the case of a scientist. However, whereas art-science collaborations are not a new phenomenon, neither is the problematization of this 'labor division' between artists and scientists in studios or laboratories. This chapter examines one example of such an earlier problematization as presented in the work of Varvara Stepanova, with surrounding in her cultural transformation conceptualized and led by A. Lunacharsky in Bolshevik Russia and later in the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics in the early 1920s. Her work encompasses various art forms, creative collaborations, and writings. After presenting these disparate endeavors in relation to Stepanova's 'laboratories', I present a current example of art-science collaboration through a critical examination of how the concept of laboratory was posited within and especially as opposed to, the artist's studio.
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