ИСТИНА

The paper focuses upon early avant-garde poetic practices such as first live poetic performances, hosted by poetic communities (in particular, the Cubo-Futurist community). The receptive orientation of a live performance targets a potential ally, whose creative energy and participation are solicited by the poets. Over the course of a live performance, a new type of readerly public is being envisioned, the one that provides an active participatory response, engaging in a poetic event. The unity of the poetic utterance, its performative staging, and an anticipated participatory readerly response translates into the Futurist book, not a conventional poetry collection but rather a media device avant la lettre. The goal of that device is to enable the reader to actively interact with the text as a material artefact, a platform with various media affordances, in order to "replay" a performance virtually, in the absence of a poet. Such a book is meant to be consumed, actively used and disposed of in an instant, much like modern media installations. As it could be seen, an analysis of Russian avant-garde performative practices informed by modern media sensibility reveals an important precursor to later participatory cultures of reading, capitalizing on live events and its media dissemination.