Join us for an evening with Sezgin Boynik, Eugene Ostashevsky and Nikolay Karabinovych, dedicated to the avant-garde writings published by Rab-Rab Press, moderated by Isabel Jacobs. We will focus on the eight Rab-Rab books dedicated to the French-Russian-Georgian Futurist poet and typographic artist Ilya Zdanevich (Iliazd), and the new publication of Shop-Signs in Kharkiv, a collection of poetry and prose by Maik Yohansen, a Ukrainian modernist of the 1920s. Bringing together a broad spectrum of texts and perspectives – from Futurism to language politics, poetry to typography – an evening of literary experiment awaits us.
Sezgin Boynik is the founder of Helsinki-based Rab-Rab Press. He will present bie-bao series: militant zaum investigations – an octology dedicated to the multifaceted life and work of Iliazd (1894–1975), known for his beyond-sense (zaum) linguistic experimentation. Nikolay Karabinovych, a visual artist and curator, will share his own research and artistic practice around Iliazd – focusing on deconstructing the imperial narrative in Iliazd's legacy, and adding another dimension to discussions of the collision of language and art.
Alongside bie bao series, Boynik will also share Rab-Rab’s other avant-garde books, as well as a new translation of The Twenties by Varlam Shalamov that captures the vibrant post-Revolutionary culture.
Poet and translator Eugene Ostashevsky will talk about sdvig, his Rab-Rab series devoted to translingual avant-garde writing: including Lostlingual, a collection by Berlin-based poet Dinara Rasuleva, in which Tatar, English, German, and Russian call out, respond to, and transform one another; and most recently Maik Yohansen’s Shop Signs in Kharkiv, a showcase of his innovative and poetic play with language across genres, before his death as one of Ukraine’s Executed Renaissance in 1937.
Sezgin Boynik, based in Helsinki, runs Rab-Rab Press and is also co-founder of Pyke-Presje in Prizren, Kosovo, an alternative space building an archive and library that emphasizes local histories of people's movements. He has a PhD on the cultural politics of Novi Film in Yugoslavia between 1963 and 1972, and has published on experimental film, anti-fascism, punk, communism, and the avant-garde.
Isa Jacobs is a Barcelona-based philosopher, translator and film critic whose work focuses on Russia and Eastern Europe.
Nikolay Karabinovych is a visual artist and curator. Working across video, sound, performance, installation, and sculpture, his practice explores the intersections of language, cultural memory, identity, and political power. With an academic background in philosophy and a degree from HISK in Ghent, his work often engages with the legacies of the historical avant-garde, particularly their relationship to contemporary visual culture, popular media, and the politics of representation. Karabinovych was an assistant curator of the 5th Odesa Biennale. In 2022, 2020 and 2018, he was awarded the first PinchukArtCentre Prize.
His work has been shown extensively at public institutions: HKW, Berlin; M UHKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp; Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle; MAXXI, Rome; Albertinum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; Belgium Jewish Museum, Centre for Fine Arts Bozar, Brussels; w139, Amsterdam; Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; and many others.
He has also participated at the Steirischer Herbst (2026, 2024), Kaunas Biennale (2023), the Kyiv Biennale (2023, 2021), Survival Kit (2023) and in parallel program of Venice Biennale (2024, 2022).
Eugene Ostashevsky was born in Leningrad, grew up in New York, and now lives in both New York and Berlin. His recent book of poetry, The Feeling Sonnets (Carcanet, 2022) examines the effects of speaking a non-native language on emotions, parenting, and identity. An earlier collection, The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi (NYRB Poets, 2017), discusses communication difficulties between pirates and parrots. As translator and scholar of avantgarde and experimental writing, Ostashevsky edited and translated over a dozen titles, including OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (Northwestern UP, 2006), F Letter: New Russian Feminist Poetry (with Ainsley Morse and Galina Rymbu; isolarii, 2020), and Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets (Pushkin Press, 2022). His writing has been highly commended by The Forward Book of Poetry and Best American Poetry, and his prizes include the 2019 City of Münster Prize for International Poetry, the National Translation Award, and the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Literature Fellowship.
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