We’re pleased to partner with the Moscow Design Museum for a screening of Design In the USSR, a rare short documentary about a nation whose design practice was always, in essence, utopian.
The film will be introduced by the founder and director of the Moscow Design Museum Alexandra Sankova, who will also be participating in a Q&A after the screening along with art historian Konstantin Akinsha.
The screening accompanies the museum’s installation Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design at the London Design Biennale.
Doors 6:30pm
Introduction 7:00pm
Film 7:30pm
Q&A 8:00pm
Presented in collaboration with the Moscow Design Museum.
About the film
Design In the USSR (dir. L. Boldirev, Centrnauchfilm, 1980s) was made with the goal of promoting Soviet industrial design abroad and features commentary on their unique design of domestic products, work stations, vehicles, mechanical equipment and the built environment. It also introduces design organizations in the USSR such as VNIITE, the Aesthetics Institute in Minsk, and the Aesthetics Institute in Vilnus.
About the Moscow Design Museum
The Moscow Design Museum was founded in 2012 and is the first cultural institution in Russia specifically dedicated to design. The museum’s founders see their main objectives to be the popularization of national design at home and abroad, the collection and preservation of Russia’s design heritage and the introduction of Russian viewers to the best examples and main schools of international design.
Konstantin Akinsha is an art historian, contributing editor for ARTnews, New York, and Research Fellow at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. He has curated numerous exhibitions of Russian art including Russian Modernism. Cross-Currents of German and Russian Art, 1907–1917 at the Neue Galerie, New York (2015) and written a number of books including The Funeral of the Revolution (2008) and The Holy Place, co-authored with Gregorii Kozlov and Sylvia Hochfield (2007).
Alexandra Sankova is a curator, designer and cultural manager, and founder and director of the Moscow Design Museum. She previously worked as Senior Advisor at the Cultural Department of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and as the founder and director of the NGO New Graphics. In 2010 she published 23, a book of interviews with prominent Russia designers. In 2014, she was included on the list of “100 most influential people in Russian art” by The Art Newspaper Russia.
Booking terms & conditions
A deposit of £5 will be taken in lieu of a ticket, which will be fully refunded when you attend the event or send someone else in your place. Not attending the event and not sending anyone else in your place will mean you lose your deposit.
Please allow up to 7 business days for your refund to be processed and show up on your account. If it’s past that time, do get in touch with us so we can look into it.
We have a 12-hour cancellation policy, meaning you can cancel your ticket up to 12 hours before the event start time by emailing [email protected] and the deposit will be refunded to your account. For any cancellations made outside this time frame the deposit becomes non-refundable.
