The seventh volume of the series dedicated to the life and work of Ilya Zdanevich - Iliazd
presents the first English translation of the "Albanian" issue of Bloodless Murder magazine, published in Petrograd in 1916. It was the Albanian issue of this obscure magazine that inspired Zdanevich to experiment with zaum. After reading the Bloodless Murder magazine, Zdanevich performed a zaum play based on the theme and published his most revered book Yanko, King of Albania.
Almost completely unknown to avant-garde scholars and curators, the Bloodless Murder group of 1915-16 included artists such as Vera Ermolaeva, Olga Leshkova, Nikolay Lapshin, and Mikhail Le Dentu. Their "anarchist" publications and actions were intended to "insult and offend" liberal values.
Rab-Rab Press publishes the entire Albanian issue with extensive commentary by the researcher and curator Alexandra Strukova, who unearthed these documents from the RGALI archives. The volume also includes a brief retrospective and two letters from Olga Leshkova, one of the magazine's editors, to Zdanevich in 1924.
As with all the other volumes in the bie-bao series, there are extensive notes and supplementary essays. Renowned scholar and librarian Andrei Krusanov reconstructs the background and atmosphere of Zanevich's Dadaist performance inspired by the magazine, while poet and art historian Miklavž Komelj's essay and illustrations offer an unusual insight into the Balkan legacy of the project.
The bie bao series will include eight publications, covering many layers of Zdanevich's rich theoretical and artistic output. Each volume consists of a bio-bibliographical introduction, a commentary, a translation with annotations, and artistic intervention.
Iliazd (Ilya Zdanevich, 1894-1975) was a Russian poet, designer, typographer, theoretician, art critic, and publisher, close to the avant-garde circles and one of the promoters of
Futurism in Russia, author of a poetic work, drama written in
zaum abstract poetic trans-sense or "transrational" language, and novels.
Texts and commentaries by Olga Leshkova, Alexandra Strukova, Andrei Krusanov, Miklavz Komelj.
Graphic design: Bardhi Haliti.
published in March 2025
English edition
11 x 17 cm (softcover)
112 pages
12.00 €
ISBN : 978-952-65646-0-9
EAN : 9789526564609
currently out of stock
