Overcoming Time in Khlebnikov and Filonov. Towards the analysis of the “avant-garde consciousness”

Abstract

The present article explores how Bergson’s notion of vital time (duration) is transformed in the two projects of “overcoming time” presented, on the one hand, by the poet Velimir Khlebnikov, and, on the other, by the painter Pavel Filonov. This attitude towards time, according to the terminology of Valery Podoroga, can be understood within the framework of “avant-garde consciousness”, the distinguishing characteristic of which is projection, that is, modeling of the future. In the case of Khlebnikov we are talking about calculating the Laws of time in order to prevent historical cataclysms and foresee their consequences in the future. Filonov’s project of “knowing eye” capable of “intuiting”, i.e. predicting the form of any evolving thing, pretends to grasp the processes of its formation within the boundaries of the surface given by the canvas. Nevertheless, drawing on Bergson’s philosophy of duration, we can identify in both projects a component that seems to contradict the spatial schematization and construction of time specific to avant-garde consciousness. If Khlebnikov’s notion of time is rooted in the primary traumatic experience of its destructive nature, Filonov does not imagine an evolutionary process without the disintegration of matter, which he acutely experiences at the level of artistic form. Analyzing the two creative attitudes, I come to the conclusion that both Khlebnikov’s project of poetic word-making and Filonov’s idea of “pure evolving form”, appealing to the primary experience of time, provide, in fact, a dialectical leap, through which the conflict between the experience of time and its construction can be removed