SCSMI2017 Helsinki

This paper focuses on the little known collaboration between revolutionary Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, cultural psychologists Lev Vygotsky and neuropsychologist Alexander Luria. The research program that Eisenstein-Vygotsky-Luria conducted from the mid-1920s until the late 1940s crossed boundaries between natural sciences, social sciences and arts to explore the neural basis and semiotics of screen aesthetics. While Vygotsky’s legacy is associated primarily with the idea thatcultural mediation plays a crucial role in the emergence and development of personality and cognition, Luria laid the foundations of the contemporary neurosciences and demonstrated that cultural mediation also changes the functional architecture of the brain.Their integrative science of mind and brain outlined how psychological functioning is constituted by various features of the body, the natural environment, and the cultural and technical tools that humans use. It is in the context of this collaboration that Eisenstein produced his key later works: Non-Indifferent Nature (1945-1947) and Method (1931-1948), while Luria wrote The Nature of Human Conflicts (1932) and Vygotsky concludedLanguage and Thought (1934). My recent archival research demonstrates that thiscollaboration included not only theoretical discussions, but also joint experimental work in the areas such as hypnosis, psychological testing, motor regulation in embryos, cognitive development of twins, schizophrenia, and synaesthesia and memory. This experimental work often fed into Eisenstein’s practice as a film director, while also providing a sustained impulse for his work as a theoretician. As such, this uniquecollaboration forged the model of interdisciplinary work and collective action that anticipated current debates concerning third culture.