During the last event in our series of new Russian Poetry, Perdu will investigate the role of poetry and the poetic act in present-day Russia. The program will feature the work of four ‘political’ Russian poets, who will appear in Dutch translation for the very first time: Aleksandr Skidan, Dmitri Golynko, Pavel Arsenev and Roman Osminkin. What characterizes their work is a critique of the capitalist system and the attempt to bridge art, theory and political activism.

Our special guests tonight will be Barbara Schurz and Alexander Brener, who infamously sprayed a dollar sign on Suprematism by Malevich in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam 1997, and poet and critic and activist Pavel Arsenev (1986). Arsenev, an active participant in the protest movements against Putin in 2011, is the editor in chief of Translit, a Petersburg journal for poetry and theory and a recipient of the prestigious Andrey Bely prize. He will read from his work and talk about his activities as a poet and activist in Russia.

A special publication on post-Soviet poetry, featuring the work of Kirill Medvedev, Dmitri Golynko, Pavel Arsenev and many more will be available as of tomorrow.