a reading by Bogdan Ablozhnyy and Yulia Rudenko

19th and 20th of February, 15:00 @Aula, Städelschule

Alexander Ilyanen (b.1958) is a contemporary Russian author of short stories and several novels (I Finn, The Road to U., Boutique Vanity). Ilyanen’s first-person mosaic narratives effortlessly deconstruct syntax and structure into a distinctive stylistic technique, from which emerges a new kind of subjectivity, ephemeral and almost divorced from social context, yet deeply rooted in time and space. Translation and readership are deeply embedded in his texts, which are flooded with multi-lingual world play and allusions to other authors, directors, artists. Bogdan Ablozhnyy and Yulia Rudenko view writing a translation of his work as a natural form of engagement with Ilyanen’s universe and an investigation into interpretation’s embeddedness in life and art.