Grisha Bruskin: Alphabets of memory

The article is devoted to Grisha Bruskin's project Alefbet as sub specie semioticae. Bruskin's visual work is explicitly shaped by linguistic models; however, it also transcends them by being not only an "alphabet," but also a "text" in broader semiotic sense. Bruskin's work is clearly composed of differently encoded texts (because he is a ternary artist: Russian, Jewish, and Soviet), but also of texts that are intertextually related (between word and image). Thus, what is "one's own" ("svoe") is clarified by what is "of the Other" ("chuzhoe"). The article examines the Bruskin's project as the "text" not only through semiotic analysis (mainly by using Juri Lotman's theory of semiosphere) but also by putting it in the context of Soviet and post-Soviet Conceptualism.