#tatlin's tower

[bettyfrancis]

The Polyhedron and Tatlin's Tower

"I appreciate it. It's a brilliant monument to the aspiration of the human mind."

Pathologic 2 / Camilla Grey, The Russian Experiment in Art / Vladimir Tatlin / Ice Pick Lodge / Baron & Tuchman The Avant Garde in Russia: New Perspectives / Pathologic Classic HD / Ice Pick Lodge / Vladimir Tatlin / Pathologic Classic HD / Model of the Monument to the Third International in Leningrad's Mayday Parade 1925

[rwpohl]

jeremy dixon: tatlin's tower, the royal academy of arts london 2011

[laughingpinecone]

Aspects of the void. To a crumbling future. My love letter to the actual protagonists of the actual book. They're gone, gone, gone.

For Hot Entropolic Summer, a fanfest for Sacred and Terrible Air's 10th anniversary.

[yellow-yarrow]

they are playing jenga

[greenjeweledforest]

I have the strangest dreams...

[pasdetrois]

it’s a materialized miracle, it’s a monument to the aspiration of the human mind, it’s an impossible dream, it’s exactly what was supposed to happen

[scarletfasinera]

Does anyone remember when I wanted to be a sculptor and like specifically work with two things: welding, and also specifically using one material and making it look like another material (like making a sculpture out of concrete but making it look as if it was made out of marble, and other similar things) and then I just never did that. I also wanted to dabble in architecture a little bit. The more I read this book about Modern European Sculpture 1918-1945 the more I feel nostalgic for that period of my life. I used to like so many videos on Youtube of people making materials look like other materials in like flooring/architecture as study references I was obsessed with using that and applying it to sculpture and I NEVER DID.

[nem0c]

Ignus Nilsen's Tower of History (Disco Elysium) // Monument to the Third International (Vladimir Tatlin)

[estherax]

Generating plasm and stacking matchboxes: how to build a better future through collective consciousness.

Alternatively - Steban and Ulixes were building Tatlin's Tower so I have to talk about the symbolism or I will explode!!

While completing the communist vision quest you get an opportunity to build a model of "The Tower of History", depicted on the last page of "A Brief Look at Infra-Materialism": a leaning tower wrapped in a dramatic helix. The scale model you make is a mirror image of Tatlin's Tower - a design for a grand monumental building to the Third International: the government organization advocating for world communism.

The main idea of the monument was to produce a new type of structure, uniting a purely creative form with a utilitarian form. Meaning it would function as an office building while also serving as a symbol of cultural significance. And let me tell you, this bad boy can fit so much symbolism in it.

Tatlin was commissioned to develop a design in 1919, after the 1917 February Revolution - a parallel to Disco Elysium's Insulinde we're witnessing post-Antecentennial Revolution.

Tatlin's work was inspired by high revolutionary goals, which are evident in the visual direction of the tower as well, expressing the ideological strive for achieving something that has never been done before, overcoming the odds. The structure "oscillates like a steel snake, constrained and organized by the one general movement of all the parts, to raise itself above the earth. The form wants to overcome the material and the force of gravity..."

The tower has meaning packed even in the materials. For example, the glass structures (marked A, B, C on the architectural rendering) were meant to serve legislative, executive and informative initiatives while rotating around their axes at different speeds. The material signified the purity of initiatives, their liberation from material constraints and their ideal qualities.

But here's the best part. The spirals.

"The spiral is the movement of liberated humanity. The spiral is the ideal expression of liberation: with its base set in the earth, it flees from the ground and becomes a symbol of the suspension of all (...) earthy interests." They are "the most elastic and rapid lines which the world knows" that represent movement and aspiration, continuing the themes of progress and freedom, but they also refer to something else.

In the process of building the matchbox model Rhetoric points out: "It's almost exactly as Nilsen's sketch imagined, a physical manifestation of the dialectical spiral of history."

The shape of the tower is a representation of dialectical development of history, first visualized as a spiral by G. W. F. Hegel. He pictured transformational change as "both linear and circular in order to be short-term responsive, i.e. possibly negating itself, and long-term strategic, i.e. a process of development."

Hegel's dialectics would later be reinterpreted through the prism of materialism by Marx and Engels to create dialectical materialism - the basis for historical materialism.

"Still, this idea, as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegels’ philosophy, is far more comprehensive and far richer in content than the current idea of evolution is. A development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis, (...) a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line; a development by leaps, catastrophes, and revolutions; (...) the interdependence and the closest and indissoluble connection between all aspects of any phenomenon (history constantly revealing ever new aspects), a connection that provides a uniform, and universal process of motion, one that follows definite laws - these are some of the features of dialectics as a doctrine of development that is richer than the conventional one."

The tower embodies progress in materialist understanding of history while also indicating the connection to ideological plasm, a manifestation of "the proletariat's embrace of historical materialism", necessary to create a better future.

According to Nilsen, the proletariat of a revolutionary state can generate enough plasm to create extra-physical architecture that "disregards the laws of 'bourgeois physics' and instead relies on the revolutionary faith of the people for structural integrity."

This function of plasm implies that The Tower of History can be created only under revolutionary circumstances - without a sufficient amount of plasm even the matchbox model didn't stay up. The exact same sentiment is expressed about Tatlin's Tower: "We maintain that only the full power of the multimillion strong proletarian consciousness could bring into the world the idea of this monument and its forms. The monument must be realized by the muscles of this power, because we have an ideal, living and classical expression the pure and creative form of the international union of the workers of the whole world."

Nilsen called it "the highest expression of Communist principles, a society whose literal foundation is the faith of its people."

Tatlin's Tower was a symbol of faith in the revolutionary future, the global triumph of Marxist socialism. A monument "made of iron, glass and revolution."

It was never built in real life, and neither was The Tower of History in the world of Elysium.

But you can try to see if there's enough plasm between the three of you. And the matchbox tower stays up for a long moment, quivering with an improbable energy. You believe it can say up - and it does.

So you have to believe; whether it's for collective action or generating ideological plasm. Then, together, maybe you'll be able to build as much as 0.0002% of communism.

[carouselcometh]

What the hell is Disco Elysium even about and why is is it mentioned on the Wikipedia page for Tatlin’s Tower. Do they build Tatlin’s Tower. Is Tatlin’s Tower there. Is Tatlin there

[bogusfilth]

tatlin's tower fucking rocked as a design. actually would make a killer tattoo as well.

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

20, 22?

What is your favourite piece of obscure Elysium lore?

One of Joyce's relatives (on her married name's side, possibly her husband?) will be voted enemy of the press AND worst person of the year. That takes dedication!

What is your favourite in-game reference to something or someone that exists in the real world?

Tatlin's tower would be the serious answer but also a stray Neverending Story (movie, even) quote socking me out of the blue, thank u Egg.

[ignitingthesky]

Visual calculus, rhetoric, reaction speed :)

visual calculas: what's your overall favourite moment of the game? your favourite line?

there are so many!! struggling to choose between the matchbox tatlin tower and lighting up the un jour je serai de retour près de toi aerograffito hhhhgh I realise they're both moments hinging upon art and maybe that's part of it, art becoming the medium to focus the intensity of longing and hope, to materialise that inarticulate vision. the very edges of an attempt to imagine what cannot yet be imagined.

to paraphrase myself losing it in chat about the latter:

the spark that ignites existing conditions of blood and rage into a flame [...] it's literally. fuel from RCM cars mixed with the blood of the people on the grounds of violent conflict in incendiary words forecasting change, maybe revolution, made visible from the airship, ignited by a cigarette [...] the cigarette is possibly the smallest part of the artwork but it sets off every other thing in it

WAIT MATCHBOX ALSO CARRIES THAT POTENTIAL TO BURN, ADDING TO THAT ANTICIPATION AND ANXIETY IN BALANCING WHAT WILL AT ANY MOMENT COLLAPSE. BUILDING WITH WHAT WAS MADE TO IGNITE.... anyway. obvious bias for concept of ignition is obvious

my favourite line: the next world mural

TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD -- FOR NEW PEOPLE IT IS TOO LATE FOR US WREAK HAVOC ON THE MIDDLE CLASS

sudden thought.... what if I made a poll for us to vote on the mural? our very own plebiscite?

rhetoric: what's your favourite copotype and political alignment? now, which is the most correct copotype/political alignment? now, which, in your mind, is the most canon hdb copotype/political alignment? explain any difference in as many words as you wish.

favourite: unironically art cop but I was also a conceptualisation main so know that there's a bias here... as the previous answer might've clued you in, that alongside the communist alignment.

most correct: now I'm not sure what correct means in this context if it doesn't mean canon but let's go with apocalypse cop. after all, he's not wrong.... also, I haven't played the moralist quest yet, but from what I've seen while avoiding spoilers I feel like it'd be so interesting to play a moralist apocalypse cop. so there!

most canon: sorry cop sjjdjs is this the most picked option? I don't know. but I know it felt so natural to apologize and the game was designed so sorrycop is ridiculously easy to get. he's a sorry communist cop to me, where sorry is the connecting element between a communist and a cop.

reaction speed: (i am simply giving you an ace's high)

THAT AND AN ACE'S LOW 💜👏

[permian-tropos]

now that I have an icon for my DE sideblog I need to think of what to put as the header its gotta be something really foolish right my first thought is tatlin’s tower with “heehee waterslide~💦” but that might be too foolish

[captain-lonagan]

realistically there’s some historical context to tatlin’s tower that i’m not getting but on another level an incredible monument to rival the eiffel tower with zero practicality and questionable structural integrity that never got built due to lack of funding is kinda dope

[yellow-yarrow]

i went to a museum last week, saw some art with a copy of the Tatlin tower <3 third international tower my beloved <3

also I accidentally dressed like this cool constructivist artwork so I had to pose with it lol