Proletkult: How They Tried to Create a Human Being

What if a human being could be designed? Not metaphorically, but literally — through labor, art, science, and even blood.
In the first years after the revolution, Proletkult attempted the impossible: to create a new human — collective, rational, immortal.

During Sunday’s session, we will discuss:

• How labor turned into a form of religion and art.
• Why the factory was imagined as a temple of the future.
• Why the artist was expected to become an engineer of human emotions.
• How the aesthetics of machines displaced “old” culture.
• Why blood transfusion became a social utopia.
• And how the dream of immortality became part of a political project.

Proletkult is a story about the boundary between art and power, science and faith, utopia and the human body.

This session is for those who want to understand why the 20th century so desperately tried to remake the human being — and what remains of that ambition today.

The meeting will be led by Pan Volynsky — philosopher, historian, and descendant of Polish-Soviet dissidents.