The dissertation explores the interrelationship between discourses of energy and the body in the early Soviet Union. It begins with the epistemological shift from a mechanistic to an energetic worldview, which transformed understandings of labour, material, artistic expression, and the body's interaction with artefacts and the environment. These configurations of energetic bodies facilitated new entanglements of forms of knowledge, material and aesthetic practices, and the utopian imaginaries of avant-garde movements. By analysing case studies in the fields of labour studies, painting and theatre, this PhD project will provide a novel and comprehensive understanding of the aesthetic, phenomenological, medial and epistemic shifts that provided collaboration between the arts and sciences, working towards a collective energetic future.

Doctoral researcher: Werner Boschmann