Balázs Eszter: Art in action. Lajos Kassák's Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum, 1915-1927 - The avant-garde and its journals 3. (Budapest, 2017)

Gábor Dobó: Generation Change, Synthesis and a Programme for a New Society - Dokumentum in Budapest (1926-1927)

In addition to writing that constituted rational investigation of cities, Dokumentum assigned an important role to avant-garde poetry in reformulating the conception of the city. The editors also regarded the journal’s art- theoretical essays (usually on poetics) and literary pieces as “documents". They considered the irrational, intuitive artistic approach of poetry to be capable of showing - that is, documenting - a different face of cities and city people, complementing scientific and social-scientific investigations. Indeed, they saw no contradiction between the two approaches, and employed them in parallel. Thus, articles on town planning were accompanied by poems alluding the city as a mystical, unknowable place. The city as a place of aimless wandering (flânerie) was a long-established notion in European culture. References in Dokumentum, however, were unequivocally linked to French Surrealism, a movement with which some of the editors were already in direct contact.

[16.] Vkhutemas, partial model of the lye production facility of an old chemical factory in Moscow, Dokumentum, 1/3., 1927,18., Budapest

[17.] Vladimir Tatlin’s “glass tower” (Spatial structure), Dokumentum, 1/3., 1927,19., Budapest

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