Defamiliarization of the Object: Notes from a Lecture-Conversation by Oleksandr Lebediev

In the spring of 2023, we conducted an educational program titled “Defamiliarization of the Object: An Attempt to Read ‘The Philosophy of Theatre’ and Practice the Ideas of Les Kurbas.” The program was developed by Larysa Venediktova and consisted of seven sessions. Four of them focused on reading and discussing materials from the book. We’re sharing notes from the first lecture-conversation, which took place on March 23, 2023.

Oleksandr Lebediev — a member of the TanzLaboratorium collective.

There’s a certain tone we tend to use when we speak about Kurbas; it’s usually exalted. We want to write or speak about him in such a way that everyone immediately thinks, “My God!” — as if lifted off the ground. But in my view, that’s not how one should talk about thinkers…

If you look at the history of Les Kurbas’ relationship with Hnat Yura (as one YouTuber has), and how that story ended, you begin to understand why Soviet Ukrainian cinema turned out so poorly…

“By pathos, we mean a prerequisite that allows us to believe in all sorts of conventions” (Philosophy of Theatre, p. 72). For the Greeks, for instance, that prerequisite made theatre possible in the first place.

World-perception is a crucial element in Kurbas’ theatre. “World-perception – as the primary formative principle of the forms of life. And not only the forms, but also the direction of life, that is, both its content and form. It is an organic force that governs us, that compels us not only to see in a certain way, but to act accordingly. It also determines ethics” (p. 97).

This idea of “world-perception” arises from Kurbas’ formula for understanding what art is:

“Art is a form of relationship between people, within which they, through an artwork, become attuned to a shared world-perception and sense of life… A communal world-perception of a public order is essential for the community; the individual may dwell within its framework. Thus, art is a method of tuning into the world-perception and life-sense of a class, and in this way relates primarily to collective psychology, not ideology. It’s deeper – it ultimately becomes ideology. In this way, art is a method of building life” (p. 96).

At a certain point, Kurbas says: let us consider where we stand, from the perspective of our communist present; and I, an idealist who studied philosophy in Vienna, will fight to ensure that all art becomes Marxist. Then, drawing from a rather crude understanding of materialism, he adds: every living being strives to feel life more fully, more intensely. What is primary for Kurbas is sensation: both as a concept and as a philosophical principle. Some beings, in addition to experiencing this heightened sense of life themselves, are also able to transmit sensation to others. “Thanks to the revolution, the need arises to see the world-perception of a class as something universal — as the world-perception of everyone.”

Good, for Kurbas, is concentration; evil is dispersion. This opposition forms the core of his theory. From the perspective of class-based science, he observes that bourgeois art scatters effort. It is old, feeble, and has lost the will to live – art fractures into various “-isms.” The proletariat, by contrast, reduces everything to a single criterion: whether something is useful or not “for its will to live.”

“We are an agrarian country, and we must create something different – a different kind of society,” Kurbas says.

In this part of the book, he lays out his political philosophy. We cannot speak of Les Kurbas the artist, of his technical innovations, without also acknowledging these dimensions.

When reading Philosophy of Theatre, one witnesses thought in motion.

You can see Kurbas articulating a vision of a new kind of art, a new communist Ukrainian art – one that would transform the entirety of life.

When we speak of our responsibility and our connection to the 1920s and everything that happened then, we are not pointing to anyone’s guilt. The point is that there are questions rooted in that time, and we, in the present, must respond to them. If we split Kurbas into categories – Kurbas the Marxist, Kurbas “with Ukraine in his heart,” and Kurbas the theatre director – then suddenly there are no more questions. Everything is tidy. Our “post-communist condition” seems to have come out of the blue. No one is demanding that Les Kurbas or his colleagues be held accountable, for the consequences of Leninist ideas were far from obvious were not obvious at their time. But for us, here and now, the consequences are clear. And so we must speak about them.

Les Kurbas did not create a methodology; he was no Stanislavski.

One of the practical assignments he gave his students was the following: take a large sheet of paper and try to trace the genealogy of art, starting from what we see today and going as far back into the past as possible (p. 102). Every director, and perhaps every actor as well, must have their own philosophy of art. They must come to their own understanding of what art is, where it comes from, and why it exists. Kurbas’ texts provoke precisely this: a drive to begin thinking independently.

In the 1960s, Les Taniuk tried to bring Les Kurbas back into Ukrainian culture. A Soviet official told him: “We rehabilitate people, but not their ideas.” But if we choose to engage with the ideas, if we refuse to discard any part of Kurbas, neither his Marxism, nor his nationalism, nor his mission as a cultural reformer, nor even his pathos, then we may begin to understand ourselves and our history more clearly.

The translation of this material was made possible through the Per Forma grant program, implemented by the Kyiv Contemporary Music Days platform with the support of the Performing Arts Fund NL and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands, aimed at developing the performing arts sector in Ukraine.

Notes from the lecture compiled by Larysa Venediktova

Translation by Yurii Popovych