Monuments Askew: An Elliptical History of the Factory of the Eccentric Actor presents a cultural history of the Factory of the Eccentric Actor (FEKS), an avant-garde collective of Ukrainian artists whose unique approach to monumental history generated a new kind of cinema for a modernizing Soviet era. Often lost in the shuffle of this period, FEKS’s vibrant and experimental cinematic output initiated a youthful and cheeky overhaul of Soviet revolutionary culture. Monuments Askew reveals the foundational role of this understudied group of artists—including Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg—and uses their own theoretical contributions to undo the “foundations” of our understanding of Soviet media and arts. As a counter to a solely cinema-focused conceptualization of this era, I develop a transnational media theory of eccentricity. Defining eccentric circles as warped, irregular orbits that force a realignment of centers, Monuments Askew shows how FEKS’s body of work inspires an eccentric realignment of the pillars of Soviet visual culture, and indeed of monumentality itself.
In a city reeling from Bolshevik revolution, a group of Ukrainian transplants formed the Factory of the Eccentric Actor—a collective devoted to the revolutionary overhaul of stagnant cultural institutions. The story of these artists and their first steps in cinema is perhaps the best kept secret in early Soviet culture.
