Space cadets: imaginary trajectories in Lissitzky's Pressa installation

This paper looks at "imagination" through an investigation of the nature of "imaginary" space in El Lissitzky's 1925 text "A. and Pangeometry". In this text Lissitzky draws from mathematics to distinguish "planimetric" and "perspective" constructions of space from "irrational" and ultimately "imaginary" spatial constructs. The latter, for Lissitzky, are central to suprematism, where the picture plane is exploded beyond the two-dimensional glassed surface and outwards into real space. The mathematical constraints of planimetric and perspective space become the liberating and emancipatory contradictions exploited in the construction of imaginary space. This collapse of the figure-ground-a primary symptom of the spatial explorations of the historical avant-garde-and the priveliging of time (also characteristic of the period) is entwined in Lissitzky's theory as the consumption of A. (art) by F. (form). To summarise his premise, F (form) will be achieved primarily through the abolition of A. (art) and especially through the eradication of A.'s dependence on monumentality and eternity at the expense of temporality.