Feedback Environment: Rethinking Art and Design Practices in Tallinn During the Early 1970s
Feedback Environment: Rethinking Art and Design Practices in Tallinn During the Early 1970s

Summary/Abstract: This article studies artistic practices that emerged in Tallinn during the early 1970s from discourses and institutions associated with the course of Soviet modernisation and industrialisation: technological aesthetics and design, cybernetics and information theory. The article examines the role of graduates from the newly-opened department of industrial art in Tallinn who were also active participants in the artistic life of the period: Ando Keskküla, Sirje Runge and – closely associated with them – the architects Leonhard Lapin and Vilen Künnapu. The article considers how information theories from the 1960s contributed to the transformation of Soviet design discourse and how this was further appropriated by alternative art practices. It also discusses how this exchange with new theories and disciplines led to a redefinition of both the art object and human subjectivity. Finally, the article argues that this perspective enables the practices of these designers and artists to be viewed in the context of global processes associated with the demise of the disciplinary regime.

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