Albums of nenad romic za novyi byte

nenad romić likes to explore doing things which he can't do "properly". he also likes to play with words, signs, meanings and concepts.

the name novyi byte is inspired by novyi byt (new way of life) from bolshevik revolution. bolshevik activists self-consciously viewed themselves as the vanguard of a militantly modern new way of life (novyi byt) at mortal odds with an old way of life (staryi byt).

one of the story goes like this (from http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/109.5/hernandez.html):

"A small group of Bolshevik activists from the Bol'she-Polianskii district (raion) Communist Party Committee arrived in the village of Novoe Pokrovskoe in the Russian Central Black Earth Region on January 17, 1930. They had come for the church bells.

Someone from among the village faithful spotted their approach and managed to climb the bell tower before it was too late. The bells loudly sounded the alarm during the ensuing scuffle between parishioners and activists. More and more villagers rushed to the scene in response to the tocsin, shouting their indignation not only at the plan to remove the bells, but also at the recently imposed collective farm (kolkhoz).

Once the crowd reached menacing proportions and threatened the activists with physical, even mortal, harm, they wisely fled. Having won the battle, villagers then organized themselves to guard the church should the defeated activists return for another attempt at the bells.

Indeed, a second attempt was made only a few days later, except this time officials from higher up the Bolshevik hierarchy arrived, hoping that a more authoritative delegation would force the village's acquiescence. Nevertheless, this delegation faced yet another angry crowd, hastily assembled at the sound of the tocsin. The crowd's list of complaints against Bolshevik policies now expanded beyond the bells' confiscation and the establishment of the collective farm to include the excessive "insurance" payments required by the regime for the church as well as the arrest of the local parish priest"

more to explain how byt became byte (from http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/v28/v28n1.kiaer.html) :

"Constructivist theorists and artists, then, although famed for their commitment to technological production, also invented the concept of the everyday material object of socialist consumption as a socialist thing. This thing would be an active "co-worker" or "comrade" of the human subject rather than a mere commodity to be possessed. The very mundanity of cheap printed cotton fabric--its absolute usefulness in the "new everyday life" (novyi byt) being promoted by the Bolsheviks after the revolution--made it an exemplary Constructivist thing. But it is exemplary only if Constructivism is acknowledged as a practice that sees that the subject is formed as much through the process of using objects in everyday life as by making them in the sphere of production."