Die historischen Avantgardebewegungen haben mit dem Angriff auf die Autonomie der Kunst ein Erdbeben erzeugt, das sowohl die zeitgenössische Kunstpraxis als auch die ästhetische Theorie nachhaltig bewegt. Das Vermächtnis der historischen Avantgarden bleibt insofern als the Living Dead bestehen, als die Forderung, politisch wirksame Kunst zu schaffen, seit dem Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts immer wieder begraben und wiederbelebt wird. Auf der Ebene der Theorie pendeln diese Debatten zwischen der Konzeption einer autonomen Kunst einerseits und einer heteronomen Kunst andererseits, wobei Erstere einer philosophischen und Letztere einer soziologischen Kontextualisierung von Kunst entspricht. Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt diese beiden Perspektiven – einmal die ästhetische Theorie von Jacques Rancière und einmal die Gesellschaftstheorie von Niklas Luhmann – nebeneinander und zeigt, wie ein künstlerisches Schaffen – hier Marko Peljhans Projekt Makrolab – zugleich politisch wirksam und politisch unwirksam sein kann. Mit diesem Schritt wird die Diskussion über politische Kunst auf die Diskussion über die Wirksamkeit verschoben. Es wird festgestellt, dass die Frage nach politisch wirksamer Kunst nur im Rahmen einer kulturhistorisch spezifischen Vorstellung von Wirksamkeit möglich ist. Wird diese Vorstellung von Wirksamkeit durch eine andere ersetzt, verliert die Frage nach politischer Kunst ihren Sinn, es erschließt sich jedoch ein neues Verständnis des gesellschaftlichen Wandels, das weit über die Themen der Kunst hinausgeht. / By attacking the autonomy of the arts, the historical avant-gardes caused an upheaval which has resonated in the contemporary artistic practices as well as in art theory to this day. The legacy of the historical avant-gardes remains in the state of the living dead, since the demands to make political art have since the beginning of the 20th century repeatedly been buried and resuscitated. On the level of theory, these debates have been oscillating between the concept of an autonomous sphere of art on the one side and the heteronomous sphere of art on the other, whereas the former corresponds to a philosophical and the latter to a sociological contextualisation of the arts. This text combines both of these perspectives, putting Jacques Rancière’s philosophy of art and Niklas Luhmann’s social theory side by side in order to show how a singular artwork – here Marko Peljhan’s project Makrolab – can be understood as politically efficient and not politically efficient at the same time. With this step the discussion about political art is shifted to a discussion about efficacy and brought to the conclusion that the question of political art is only possible within a frame of a culturally and historically specific conception of efficacy. When this specific conception of efficacy is replaced by another, the question about political art loses its meaning. However, it is exactly at this point that a new understanding of social change opens up, which reaches far beyond the domain of art theory.

Die Dissertation untersucht einen Paradigmenwechsel in der Rezeption der historischen Avantgarde in (medien-)künstlerischen Projekten der 1980er und 1990er Jahre in Ex-Jugoslawien und Russland. Dieser Paradigmenwechsel liegt im veränderten Verhältnis zum Begriff der (politischen wie künstlerischen) Utopie begründet. In den 1980er Jahren zeichnet sich die Rezeption sowohl im sogenannten sowjetischen Postutopismus (Il’ja Kabakov, Ėrik Bulatov, Oleg Vasil’ev, Komar & Melamid, Kollektive Aktionen) als auch in der jugoslawischen Retroavantgarde (NSK, Mladen Stilinović, Malevič aus Belgrad etc.) durch ein ‚diskursarchäologisches’ Interesse an potentiell totalitären Elementen der Avantgarde aus. Seit Beginn der 1990er Jahre lässt sich eine signifikant veränderte Rezeption der historischen künstlerischen Avantgarde in Projekten junger KünstlerInnen aus dem östlichen Europa festellen (Neoutopismus, Retroutopismus). Die Utopien der Avantgarde werden im sogenannten Retroutopismus (Marko Peljhan, Vadim Fishkin) nicht mehr primär mit totalitären Tendenzen gleichgesetzt, sondern sie werden jetzt vor allem auf ihre medientechnologischen Projektionen und Entwürfe durchgesehen. Diese wurden nicht nur von einzelnen Avantgarde-Künstlern und –Theoretikern (Velimir Chlebnikov, Bertolt Brecht), sondern auch von Wissenschaftlern und Ingenieuren (Nikola Tesla, Herman Potočnik Noordung) am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts entwickelt. In den 1990er Jahren wird in künstlerischen Projekten somit ein verstärktes medienarchäologisches Interesse für frühe utopische Technologiephantasien der Avantgarde wahrnehmbar, das symptomatisch für ein signifikant verändertes Verhältnis zur Utopie bzw. zum Utopischen ist: Das Utopische löst sich von seinem eindeutig negativen, da politisch-totalitären Beigeschmack (verstanden als ‚Utopismus’) und wird wieder verstärkt positiv politisch konnotiert, d.h. als emanzipatives oder auch visionär-gespinsthaftes Potenzial verstanden (‚Utopizität’). / The dissertation researches a paradigmatic shift in the way artists reflect the historical avant-garde in visual and media art projects of the 1980s and 1990s in (ex-)Yugoslavia and Russia. The reasons for this paradigm shift can be found in the changing relationship to the notion of utopia, both in its political and its artistic connotation. In the 1980s, the reception both in so-called Soviet postutopianism (Il’ja Kabakov, Ėrik Bulatov, Oleg Vasil’ev, Komar & Melamid, Kollektive Aktionen) and in the Yugoslav retro-avant-garde (NSK, Mladen Stilinović, Malevič from Belgrads etc.) is characterized by a ‘discourse archeological’ interest in the potentially totalitarian elements of the avant-garde. Yet this point of view changes fundamentally during the 1990s in a younger generation of artists (neoutopianism and retroutopianism). Retroutopianism (Marko Peljhan, Vadim Fishkin) no longer primarily equates the utopianism of the avant-garde with totalitarian tendencies, but is reexamined with regard to its media-technological projections and designs, which were not only developed by individual avant-garde artists and theoreticians (Velimir Khlebnikov, Bertolt Brecht) but also by scientists and engineers during the early 20th century (Nikola Tesla, Herman Potočnik Noordung). Artistic projects of the time reveal an increasing ‘media-archeological’ fascination for the avant-garde's early utopian fantasies of technology. This fascination, in turn, is symptomatic for a significant change in the relationship to utopia and utopian thinking on the whole: utopian thinking per se separates from its unambiguously negative, political-totalitarian aftertaste (understood as 'utopianism') and takes on a new positive political connotation. It is now understood as an emancipatory or visionary-spectral potentiality ('utopicity').

Bengt Lidforss (1868–1913) was professor of botany between 1910 and 1913. But after the turn of the century he also emerged as a charismatic leader within the Swedish working-class movement. He became one of its foremost publicists. In the social democratic newspaper Arbetet in Malmö he wrote about natural sciences but also about political, philosophical and literary issues. As a literary critic Lidforss was the keenest protector of the Scanian literary school, and his struggle for Ola Hansson and Vilhelm Ekelund has made its mark in Swedish literary history, as have his contributions in favour of Gustaf Fröding and August Strindberg, culminating in the polemic articles during the Strindberg Feud (1910–11). Skönhetsdyrkare och socialdemokrat. Studier i Bengt Lidforss litteraturkritiska gärning (Worshipper of Beauty And Social Democrat. Studies in Bengt Lidforss’ Achievement As A Literary Critic) emphasises the paradoxic combination of Lidforss’ fundamentally socialist views and a strong belief in art. To him art was not isolated from society but quite the contrary; a significant factor in the changing of society. The new socialistic human being should be ennobled by arts instead of emasculated by religion. With the help of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “field”, it is shown how Lidforss, by attacking leading middle-class newspapers and publicists, created for himself and Arbetet a constantly stronger position within the field of journalism. Within the field of literary criticism he attacked the middle-class critics, and thus participated in associating Strindberg and Fröding as well as the young Scanian writers with the working-class movement. Lidforss’ literary taste was seen as an alternative to middle-class taste and the worshipping of beauty thereby became fashionable among socialists. The fact that one finds sympathies not only for symbolism but also for decadent descriptions with Lidforss the socialist, has to do with the fact that the descriptions of the discomfort of the heroes revealed the disadvantages of the capitalist society. Nevertheless Lidforss’ issued warnings against programmatic pessimism, since he was of the opinion that literature should strengthen people in their struggle. When it came to the plight of the human being under capitalism he was a pessimist, but he believed the stronger in a future socialist society. The terms for the artists would be more tolerable in such a society, he prophesied. He admitted that revolutionary poetry could be useful but was of the opinion that the quality of art would lessen if it consciously served politics. The revolutionary poetry he praised in his reviews was poetry he found genuine and coming from the heart. He did not favour pronounced tendencies, but he liked to use poetry in a political context. / Bengt Lidforss (1868–1913) var botaniker, men också publicist och socialist. Skandalomsusad och färgstark har han porträtterats av ett stort antal skönlitterära författare, allt ifrån August Strindberg till Inger Alfvén. Hans mångsidiga medarbetarskap i Arbetet hjälpte tidningen fram till en uppmärksammad position. I denna bok skildras hans kamp för en ledande position också inom det litterära fältet. Lidforss var en skönhetsdyrkare av stora mått men samtidigt socialdemokrat. Detta ledde till att han stred på många kulturella arenor – inte bara mot kritiker, författare, och Svenska Akademien, utan också mot inflytelserika män inom kyrka och politik. Skönhetsdyrkare och socialdemokrat ger oss oväntade svar på vad dessa bataljer handlade om och vi får möta Lidforss samtida giganter som Fredrik Böök, Vilhelm Ekelund, Albert Engström, Verner von Heidenstam, Oscar Levertin, August Strindberg med flera.

The present MA thesis analyzes how body and blood functions as historical and narrative elements in Yu Hua's novel Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (1995). In the novel, the story and the plot can not be regarded as disparate items; the two levels of the text are tightly interwoven by what the thesis introduces as a sangvinolent narration. The term conceptualizes the use of blood as a structural element and the thrust of the text, in this case how the ability to sell blood is a prerequisite for the story and the plot. Close readings reveal the structural correlations between the blood-selling main-character Xu Sanguan in the plot on the one hand, and in the story on the other, which can be detected to have, inter alia, an effect on the temporality of the narrative. Themes linked to identity, belonging and survival (performativity, mimicry, reification and alienation) permeate the text. In the novel the body and bodily fluids are sacrificed in order to form and enforce perceptions of identity and societal roles. The rhetorical use of ‘blood and tears’ (Ch. xue yu lei) indicates thematic connections to the Chinese revolutionary literature, and furthermore, the use of flesh and blood can be read in relation to the cannibalistic discourses crucial to Chinese modernity since Lu Xun.

This work addresses the history, development and conservation of the Werkbund exhibition estates in Europe. Specifically, these are six housing estates built between 1927-1932 in Stuttgart, Brno, Wroclaw, Zurich, Vienna and Prague as part of exhibitions of modern living. The aim is to compare the development in individual cities and above all their preservation and the way of conservation and restoration. The first chapter deals with the formation of colonies and their differences. In the next part we deal with the fate and the structural changes during the war and the first post-war years until the first colony was declared a monument. The third chapter explains the developments in the 1960s and early 1980s, the beginnings of monument conservation and the first comprehensive renovation of the housing estates. The last chapter focuses on today's housing estates, today's approach to the restoration of functionalist architecture and its pitfalls. In all chapters, we managed to compare the development and to show the specifics of the individual files, which made it possible to specify why the colonies need to be protected, the extent to which they are preserved today, how much they are preserved, and what problems the building regeneration brings. Due to the different status and approach in individual...

Thomas G. Winner (1917 in Prag geboren; ab 1939 in den USA; 2004 in Cambridge, Massachusetts gestorben) zählte zu den wichtigsten Vertretern der Semiotik in Amerika, gründete er doch an der Brown University das erste Semiotik-Zentrum der Vereinigten Staaten (Research Center for Semiotic Studies).1 Sein nicht minder großes, mit zunehmendem Alter noch wachsendes Interesse galt der tschechischen Avantgarde und dem Prager Strukturalismus,2 dem er in vorliegender Arbeit nicht nur auf inhaltlicher Ebene, sondern auch von seinem methodologischen Zugang her verpflichtet ist. Davon legt bereits ein kurzer Blick in die beigegebene Bibliographie (pp. 179–193) beredtes Zeugnis ab, in der neben Karel Teige, „the Breton of Czechoslovakia“ (p. 18), Roman Jakobson – er zählte zu Winners Lehrern, Freunden (p. 9) und seit 1975 auch Untersuchungsgegenständen – und Jan Mukařovský die am prominentesten vertretenen Autoren sind.

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) war eine englische Schriftstellerin, Verlegerin, Essayistin, Tagebuchverfasserin, sowie Literatur- und Kulturkritikerin, die als Wegbereiterin der literarischen Moderne gilt. In zahlreichen kritischen Essays und Romanen reflektiert sie die geteilten Lebens- und Bildungssphären der Geschlechter und kritisiert die materiellen Umstände der durch das Geschlecht determinierten sozialen Rolle. Eine genderfokussierte kritische Rezeption von Woolfs Texten, welche sich mit weiblichem Schreiben und Lesen, Frauengeschichtsschreibung und weiblicher Ästhetik befassen, findet seit Mitte der 1970er Jahre statt.

The central role that avant-garde music and dance theatre played in the interplay and synthesis of the arts and media in the 1920s, particularly in Paris, is well known. However, the creative potential of ballet has hardly been recognized in its manifold relationships with film and cinematic-inspired expression. The extent to which especially ballet music interacted with the latest cinematographic principles and techniques and referred to cinematic aesthetics in a variety of ways can instructively be seen regarding the productions of the Ballets Suédois. This is discussed in this article with an exemplary look at Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (1921), Within the Quota (1923), Skating Rink (1922) and Relâche (1924). By that it becomes clear that the transmedia inclusion of cinematographic ideas not only inspired the vocabulary of avant-garde dance and modern choreography, but was also distinctively reflected in the conception and composition of film-affected music.