Maja and Reuben Fowkes, directors of SAVA, who will be offering the following paper:

The Art of Socialist Hydroforming in Four and a Half Dams

Hydroelectric power stations were centrepieces of the planned economy, performing as engines of development, infrastructural hubs for resource extraction, drivers of social mobilization and markers of the enlisting of nature in the building of the socialist system. In this presentation we will consider artworks that engage with the construction of mega dams in the Soviet Union and beyond,  shedding light on the infrastructural interventions in hydraulic systems that epitomized the anthropogenic transformation of the Socialist Anthropocene. While the marshalling of fluvial energy through dam construction and the remaking of waterways followed the instrumentalizing logic of mastery over nature that was hardwired into five year plans, we also consider the extent to which socialist art could also give voice to an ecological critique of their social and environmental impacts.

11 February, 5pm, SC Lecture Theatre.

All welcome!