Art as the production of life: The Russian avant-garde between Schiller, Deleuze and Guattari

The author examines the connection between Friedrich Schiller’s concept of aesthetic education and the project of the Russian avant-garde to integrate art into everyday life. Starting from Schiller’s idea that art, through the harmonization of the sensuous and formal drives, contributes to the formation of subjectivity, the paper demonstrates how the projects of the Russian avant-garde radicalize this aspiration by transforming art into a means of organizing perception and collective life. The theoretical framework of the paper is grounded in the conceptual apparatus of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari; through their concept of subjectivity as something produced, and desire as a productive force, Schiller’s aesthetic education and the project of the Russian avant-garde are interpreted as different modes of shaping the aesthetic organization of life. Viewed from this perspective, the paper argues that there is no discontinuity between Schiller and the Russian avant-garde, but rather a historical deepening of virtually the same problem: the way in which art participates in the production of subjectivity and the shaping of life.