Vlad Strukov

Russian Aviation and Space: Technology and Cultural Imagination, Workshop, 29 October 2010, University of Leeds

From Blok to Malevich and Maiakovskii, from film chronicles to feature film, Russian cultural responses to man’s newly acquired freedom from gravity have reflected and contributed to Russian self-perception. From early public displays of heavier than air technology in Russia, flight and aviation has also been important to the world’s perception of Russian and Soviet identity. Konstantin Tsiolkovskii, the internationally recognized father (along with the American physicist, Robert H. Goddard) of theoretical rocket propulsion and space flight, enabled early aviation-generations world wide to visualize, and therefore believe in the possibility of actualizing this dream.

This workshop will explore mutual influences between the cultural imagination and science in terms of aviation and cosmology. It will look at material which relates to the decades between aviation’s origins up to Gagarin’s first manned space flight in 1961. It seeks to contribute to an understanding of relationships of cultural and scientific modelling. It seeks to explore the scientific and artistic mediums by which aviation, aero, and outer-space are imagined, studied and communicated.

For more details please visit the project’s website.