MWER · The Machine as a Code of the New Political and Social Order in the Artistic Avant-gardes in Western Europe and Russia after the First World War

MWER contributes to our understanding of and engagement with questions of Europe’s cultural diversity and of its past: it will inform the consideration of present problems and help to find solutions for shaping Europe’s future, a Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge.It explores the interconnections and circulation between different artistic avant-gardes in Europe, especially in Western Europe and Russia, after the First World War and Revolution with an emphasis on the history of discourse and of ideas. MWER concentrates on the pivotal topic of the machine, which connects the avant-gardes usually considered as separated entities throughout this period. The idea of the machine became a powerful discursive focus of the transition from an individualistic to a collectivistic vision of man and his social order and organisation in both the western and Russian avant-gardes, albeit in quite different variants. MWER’s objectives are: 1. To analyse, for the first time, the pivotal role the discourses on the machine played for the interactions and entanglements of the avant-gardes; 2. To investigate the insufficiently studied connections between artistic theory and practice, on the one hand, and the visions of political and social reorganisation after the First World War and Revolution which resulted from references to the machine, on the other hand; 3. To systematically reveal, for the first time, the circulation of protagonists, ideas and initiatives between the artistic avant-gardes of Western Europe and Russia after the First World War and the Revolution; 4. To analyse the extent to which (social) sciences, such as Bogdanov’s systems theory, scientific management (Taylorism) and social, economic and management theory (Fordism), affected the artistic avant-gardes and, through them, entire societies.