The second issue of Little Star carries about fifty pages of OBERIU conversations from 1933:
In 1928, a group of artists, poets, and provocateurs in Leningrad founds “Oberiu,” a nonsensical-sounding acronym for “The Association of Real Art.” Says patron Kazimir Malevich: “You are young troublemakers and I am an old one. Let’s see what we can do.” They shock and mesmerize the city with their outlandish performances and stunts. By 1930 Oberiu has been disbanded and its members driven underground. Amateur philosopher and polymath Leonid Lipavsky records their conversations as they gather to pursue their eclectic interests in private, and his friend Yakov Druskin saves the manuscript in secret for fifty years. They will appear for the first time in English in Little Star #2, due immanently and on sale now for a special price, in a translation by poet Eugene Ostashevsky.

Comments