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Revolutions: Material Forms, Mobile Futures Monday Night Lecture Series \| Spring 2020

Laboratory of the Future: Lenin’s Body between Biochemistry and Art Alexei Yurchak • University of California, Berkeley
April 27 @ 6 P.M. Zoom Conference: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/2771376308 In honor of Lenin’s 150th birthday… The Soviet sovereign project was organized around the figure of “Leninism”—a discursive and material construct that consisted of Lenin’s texts and quotes, images and sculptures, and Lenin’s physical body in the Mausoleum. As the center of Sovereignty, “Leninism” was constant and eternal; it was the only body of knowledge that could not be questioned or transcended within Soviet political discourse. In fact, however, to remain “the same” Leninism was continuously changed and reinvented throughout Soviet history. Leninist texts were censored and misquoted, Leninist images were re-edited and retouched, and Lenin’s physical body in the Mausoleum was continuously resculpted and restored with the help of biochemical and artistic techniques. This talk focuses on the sovereign center of the Soviet communist project through the prism of the scientific, artistic and discursive practices that have been mobilized to maintain and transform the Leninist body for the past 96 years.
Revolutions: Material Forms, Mobile Futures View Spring 2020 Lecture List

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Center for the Humanities: 50th Anniversary (1969-2019)

Laboratory of the Future: Lenin’s Body between Biochemistry and Art