Dmitrij Prigov's Iterative Poetics

What I term an iterative poetics characterizes much of Dmitrii Prigov's practice, from his recycling of existing texts, hackneyed quotations, and clichés, to his performance and video art, to the serial or template structure of many of his written texts and visual works. By treating these diverse strategies as part of an iterative poetics, I address three problems raised by Prigov's work and conceptual art and writing in general. First, rather than separating Prigov's literary and artistic output, I show how his work operates as a single multimedia whole founded on the principle of intra and inter-media iteration. Second, I approach the problem of whether to treat the concept or its realization as primary in conceptual works by arguing that Prigov's repetitions both stage the subordination of content to form, example to concept, and, like Gertrude Stein's “insistences,” highlight the uniqueness of each apparent repetition within a conceptual structure, each iteration of a particular image, or each performance of a given text. Finally, I read the relationship of example to concept, text to performance, idea to instantiation in Prigov's iterative practice as an allegory for the relation of the local and the particular to wider systems of power. In this sense, Prigov's iterative poetics emphasizes both the unfreedom of endless repetition and the freedom of each gesture within the infinite possibilities of iteration.