The history of postfuturism

Very little is known about the early history of Postfuturism.
One postfuturistic pioneer was Daniil Charms ( his artistic name, his real name was Juvacev) born on 17 December 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
He died on 2 February 1942 in a Leningrad prison by hunger and exposure during the blockade of the German army.
Charms acted on stage as a reciter and was a close friend of the younger poet Aleksandr Vvedenskij, but had constant problems with the cultural bureaucracy of Stalin. In 1926 he became a member in the Poet´s Association of Leningrad and also a member of the postfuturistic avantgarde group Oberiu ( Association for Real Art ), that mixed Dadaism and cabaret, a bit like the "Wiener Gruppe" in Vienna. The Oberiu group got strong support by the artist Kasimir Malevich, but in official reviews and in public their performances were denounced as literary "Hooliganism". From 1931 till 1932 Charms was banned from Leningrad, because of his postfuturistic activities.
After a time in prison and banishment he returned to Leningrad for the last years of his life, but in August 1941 Charms was imprisoned again and died during the blockade of Leningrad in 1942.
Charms wrote for the deaf, and some of his work in sign language have recently been performed on stage in Austria.

After the fall of the Sovjet Union postfuturism have reappeared in Russia. One example is the artist group BEERMA founded in 1990. BEERMA arranges exhibitions and performances,( Postfuturistic poezoconcert ). They are influenced by Gilles Deleuzes ideas about ”harmonic eclecticism”.

Other contemporary postfuturists:

• The Postfuturist Project, initiated in 1995 at Brown University, Providence, R.I., USA.

• Christian Greuel, working in California, USA. ”Postfuturist. Artist. Virtual Realtor. Noise Musician. Technophile. Garlic Eater. Time Surfer. Insomaniac. Writer.”

• The electro-pioneers ”Hope For the Future” from Manchester and their critically acclaimed album ”Postfuturism”.

• The Belgian artist Luc Deleu, born 1944, who wrote the book ”Postfuturismus?”, published in Antwerpen in 1987.

• The Czech artist Richard Fajnor and his exhibition ”Postfuturism of retroconceptual neoidealism” from 1998.

Swedish Postfuturism have roots in the early sixties and the alienated existentialist group ”Subsensitive Falange”. From this, soon disbanded, group grew ”The Peristaltic Movement”, a protopunkproject of the 1970:s that had a short flowering in and around Göteborg, before it dissolved into the 1980:s phenomena ”International Institute of Pataphysics”, a pataphysical splintergroup of pheripheric character that actively declined closer definition. From this philosophical compost grows the Postfuturistic Society.