Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät | Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie | Fachgebiete | Westslawische Literaturen und Kulturen | Guest Lecture by Daniel Schwartz (McGill University): "Between Sound and Silence: Arseny Avraamov's Symphony of Sirens in Baku (1922)"

Guest Lecture by Daniel Schwartz (McGill University): "Between Sound and Silence: Arseny Avraamov's Symphony of Sirens in Baku (1922)"

On July 10, 2025

  • Wann 10.07.2025 von 18:00 bis 20:00
  • Wo Dorotheenstraße 65, 10117 Berlin (Raum 5.57)
  • Name des Kontakts
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On July 10, 2025, Daniel P. Schwartz—Assistant Professor at McGill University—will deliver a lecture on Arseny Avraamov's Symphony of Sirens in Baku, and offer us insights into his research findings from his monograph City Symphonies. Sound and the Composition of Urban Modernity, 1913-1931 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024).

 

Between Sound and Silence: Arseny Avraamov's Symphony of Sirens in Baku (1922) 

Most of us are familiar with the city symphony films of the 1920s and 30s. We've seen or even taught films such as Walter Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of a Great City or Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera in classes on the avant-garde, urbanism, and modernism. As we know, these silent films organize the visual elements of urban experience according to musical principles such as rhythm, intervals, scales, harmony, dissonance, and counterpoint. But what if we look — or, rather, listen — past the musical analogy to the sounds of ostensibly silent city symphony films? Then we will perceive something different. Rather than seeing organizational structures, we will hear the sounds of cars, trams, pedestrians, machines, voices, and musical instruments. This talk examines this under explored sonic legacy of the city symphony in terms of non-cinematic works, specifically Arseny Avraamov's Symphony of Sirens. The Symphony of Sirens (1922) is not a film but rather a mass spectacle. Performed live in Baku, Azerbaijan, it attempted to re-sound the October Revolution through the city's oil-producing infrastructure on November 7th, 1922. The mass spectacle, I argue, is part of a tendency to treat city space as a sonic medium. It reveals the sonic and ideological qualities of urban networks as channels for waging war, extracting resources, and colonizing space. 

 

Daniel P. Schwartz is assistant professor of Russian and German cinemas at McGill University.

 

The lecture will be held in English. No registration needed.