On January 20 and 21, 2023, the DFG-project "Energy: Key Concept of Soviet Modernism" held its kick-off workshop, which aimed to review the avant-garde's energy concepts from a cultural and disciplinary comparative perspective. Over two days of lively and engaging discussions, a group of international scholars traced the migration of the energy concept from political philosophy to experimental painting, film theory, literature, and socialist urban planning. It became evident that the energy concept serves as a hinge between fields of knowledge and that its interdisciplinary adaptability is rooted in its claim for transitional forms and states. This applies to aesthetic models of transgressive painting, architecture, and design, as well as to socialist modernism's designs of urban nomadism or literary models of an energetic human being.

Internationally and nationally recognized scholars in the history of art and philosophy of the Soviet avant-gardes participated in the workshop. The list of speakers included Dmitry Biriukov (Bochum), Tatyana Petzer (Graz), Maja Soboleva (Marburg), Maria Kokkori (Chicago), Isabel Wünsche (Bremen), Werner Boschmann (Berlin), Devin Fore (Princeton), Darya Manova (WIen), Christina Lodder (London), Elena Vogman (Weimar), Susanne Strätling (Berlin, and Georg Witte (Berlin).