Svetlana Boym
Svetlana Boym is writer, theorist and media artist. Native of St. Petersburg, Russia, she now lives and works in Boston, USA. Svetlana Boym is the author of several books including The Future of Nostalgia (2001); Ninochka: a novel, (2003), Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (1994), Kosmos: Remembrances of the Future (with photographer Adam Bartos) and Death in Quotation Marks (1991); In her work she explores the relationship between utopia and kitsch, memory and modernity, homesickness and sickness of home. She has contributed to Artforum, Artefact, Artmargins, Critical Inquiry, Harper’s Magazine, Berlin Journal as a critic and as an artist. She also took part in the symposiums and exhibits at Vienna Art Fair, Boston ICA, Kitchen, New York, Bauhaus, Dessau, Ljubljana Galereja Moderna and ZKM, Karlsruhe. When not working on her art projects, Svetlana Boym teaches in Slavic and Comparative Literature Department at Harvard University and contributes to the Program on History and Theory of Architecture in Graduate School of Design. At present she is working on the book Other Freedom and on the media installation Ruinophilia and Nostalgic Technology that explores technological errors and ruins of modern architecture.
Articles by Svetlana Boym
On Diasporic Intimacy
A “diasporic intimacy” [...] is not opposed to uprootedness and defamiliarization but is constituted by it . . . In contrast to the utopian images of intimacy as transparency, authenticity, and ultimate belonging, diasporic intimacy is distopic by definition; it is rooted in the suspicion of a single home, in shared longing without belonging.