Abstracts
Walter Adamson (Emory
University, Atlanta): The End of an Avant-garde?
Marinetti and Futurism in World War I and its Aftermath
The paper will begin with a brief exploration of Marinetti’s
reception in Buenos Aires in 1926 which will show that, in
general, local intellectuals (especially the younger
generation such as Jorge Luis Borges) no longer considered
him or the Italian futurist movement as avant-garde.
Specifically, it will show that Borges and others denied its
continuing relevance for avant-garde aesthetics and accused
it of having sold out to fascism. This event will serve to
introduce the question of “what is an avant-garde?” Various
definitions and approaches will then be briefly explored.
The argument will then be advanced that (a) futurism began
as a movement energized by a Sorelian ‘myth’ that aimed to
impact the Italian and, indeed, international ‘public
sphere’ but that (b) by 1926 it had become a movement in
which its original ‘mythic’ (political, public) dimension
was no longer credible. The body of the paper will then
explore the question of how we are to understand this
transition and how it occurred. In this regard, I will argue
against the notion of an avant-garde ‘before’ and a
non-avant-garde ‘after’, and in favor of a more complex
transition from the original futurist myth to a utopian
period during and immediately after the war to a merger with
fascism in which fascism became the new futurist myth. This
exploration will focus primarily on the second phase in this
complex transition: what happened to Marinetti and futurism
during the war years. It will consider the futurist war
experience itself; the loss of key first-generation figures
such as Boccioni; Marinetti’s new involvement with a younger
generation around L’Italia Futurista; his decision to
develop a futurist party ‘program’ (arguably, a turn toward
Sorelian ‘utopia’ rather than ‘myth’); his romance,
marriage, and, ultimately, family life with Benedetta, an
artist likewise of the next generation; his spiritual crisis
of the 1919-23 period (as revealed in his manifestos of the
period and his Taccuini); and of course his break with the
fascist movement in 1920 followed by his reconciliation with
it in 1924. In conclusion, the question of different
understandings of ‘avant-garde’ and of the phases of the
futurist movement in this regard will be discussed with the
ultimate aim of deciding when it is appropriate to speak of
the ‘end of an avant-garde’. Essentially, my argument
regarding futurism as avant-garde will favor a
‘Marinetti-centric’ approach which conceives it as three
successive reshapings of a futurist project, each quite
different from the other, but all offering a certain
constellation of elements that can be considered
‘avant-garde’.
Pierpaolo Antonello
(University of Cambridge): The Beauty and the Beast: Art
and Technology in Enrico Prampolini and Leonardo
Sinisgalli’s Exhibition ‘Le arti plastiche e la civiltà
meccanica’
The paper is devoted to the historical account and analysis
of the exhibition that Enrico Prampolini organized for the
Art Club at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome in
1955, alongside the poet Leonardo Sinsigalli, and titled Le arti plastiche e la civiltà meccanica. It was a very
peculiar event in which for the first time actual pieces of
mechanical and electronic engineering were displayed
alongside works of major figures of Italian and
international abstractionism. Although in Prampolini’s
intention this was meant to revive the long-lasting Futurist
tradition of the aesthetization of technology and machines,
as a matter of fact, it could be seen both as the last token
of that legacy and its demise. Sinisgalli’s presence and
input, in particular, turned the understanding of machines,
as well as their aesthetic and epistemological function
vis-a-vis visual art, topsy-turvy. The futurist mythography
of the machine is replaced by a more prosaic and more
‘genetic’ understanding of the relationship between art and
technology, which recuperates the pre-modern concept of art
as techné.
Günter Berghaus (Bristol
University): Past, Present and Future of Futurism
My paper is offering a survey of research undertaken on
Futurism in the years 1945-68 and the activities in the
centenary of the Futurist Foundation Manifesto, and suggests
some lacunae that still need to be filled in the years to
come. The strongly anti-Fascist consensus in postwar Italy
conditioned an extremely hostile attitude towards any
individual, group or movement, who had publicly supported
the régime. Futurism’s tarnished reputation due to the
supposed friendship between Marinetti and Mussolini meant
that interest in Futurism became equated with crypto-Fascist
leanings. As a consequence, there were hardly any
exhibitions of Futurist art and very few publications on
Futurist literature. This, at least, is what the ‘official’
historiography of Futurism tells us. However, my research
for the forthcoming Bibliographic Handbook of Futurism
indicates that the prevailing view on this postwar
‘anathema’ may need to be reconsidered. The centenary of
Futurism in 2009 has resulted in dozens of conferences and
hundreds of publications. But how fruitful has the year
really been? Although Futurism is now recognized as one of
the first and most influential avant-garde movements in the
history of twentieth-century art and has been the topic of
more than 8,000 publications (according to my latest
census), it seems to me that some fundamental questions have
still not been fully addressed. A few of these will be
addressed in the final part of my presentation.
Monica Biasiolo (Sprachenzentrum
der FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg): Ritagli di guerra di Paolo
Buzzi: una ‘Conflagrazione’ di parole
Esperimento unico nel suo genere, per la sua caratteristica
di non essere semplicemente specchio e analisi della realtà,
ma per catturare della stessa fisicamente reperti e
frammenti attraverso l’uso del papier collé, Conflagrazione
di Paolo Buzzi risulta ancora oggi come esempio tra i più
moderni di cronaca della grande guerra nonché di scrittura
visuale. L’impiego della tecnica del collage, tecnica
applicata fino ad allora esclusivamente alle arti
figurative, è in Buzzi certamente particolare. Non basta
sfruttarne solo il potenziale estetico, ma occorre anche
utilizzarne le caratteristiche concettuali. Quali sono i
risultati? Quale la relazione tra parola e papier collé?
Attraverso un’analisi di tipo contrastivo, che metta in
rilievo le peculiarità formali e contenutistiche dell’opera
considerandone le divergenze e/o le somiglianze rispetto ad
altri esempi di registrazione – letteraria e non – di guerra,
come ad esempio alcune delle liriche di Ungaretti o alcuni
quadri di Carrà, l´intervento intende approfondire insieme
alla genesi del testo e alle vicende ad essa legate,
l´efficacia visiva e testuale della singola pagina. Le sue
linee di forza, oltre alle parole in libertà, teorizzate da
Marinetti, sono i ritagli di giornale, suggestivi e lapidari,
come li definirà lo scrittore stesso, “elementi precipui
della nuova Epopea antiretorica che vuole finalmente
emanciparsi da Omero”.
Francesca Bravi (Christian-Albrechts-Universität
zu Kiel): ‘Immensi scenari di garza’: Liriche radiofoniche by
Fortunato Depero
This contribution focuses on Liriche radiofoniche a book by
Fortunato Depero published in 1934 in Milan and its connection
to his figurative work of art. Fortunato Depero is one of the
main protagonists of the Italian Futurism, but his influence is
not to be restricted only to the fields of painting and design.
The literary quality of his writings (the most famous is
certainly the Libromacchina imbullonato) is undisputed and it is
created through the interaction of arts and senses. Liriche
radiofoniche, though very important, was always somewhat
underrated. This original literary genre is placed between
poetry and prose and has a peculiar characteristic which Depero
describes as “spaziale, volitivo, sonoro, inaspettato, magico”
Although he refers in many parts to Marinetti’s work –
particularly to La Radia – the quality of his texts has its
autonomy and originality. Those texts were performed at the
radio in their multifarious atmosphere “trasmessi per radio,
vibranti nello spazio”. Liriche radiofoniche is not an
homogeneous aggregate; but the analysis of the two texts
“Puledro innamorato” and “Il topo della fantasia” and their
remanding to his paintings will show their peculiarities, which
are not only linguistic ones, but they are generated from the
dialogue between words and images; mainly moving between
monochromatic, cold, lunar with themes such as galloping horses
and metropolitan machines (those he showed at the XVIII Biennale
in Venice 1932) and the colorful, solar and rustic world he
found again in Trentino.
Matteo Brera (University of
Edinburgh): ‘Tra i fili del telegrafo / col fischio del
vapore’. Anticipazioni linguistiche ‘futuriste’ nella poesia
italiana da Boito a D’Annunzio
L’esperienza futurista può essere considerata come un vasto e
complesso approccio alla (e, spesso, regolamento di conti con
la) realtà, specialmente quella della tradizione letteraria
italiana. La rottura rispetto al canone, che caratterizza in
particolar modo la poesia futurista, viene attuata anche
attraverso il rifiuto del linguaggio della tradizione, al quale
si sostituisce una lingua fortemente sperimentale e marcatamente
caratterizzata da una forte presenza di voci e lemmi
appartenenti al lessico della tecnologia. Seppure impiegati dai
futuristi in un contesto semantico e poetico completamente
differente, alcuni di questi elementi linguistici risultano,
tuttavia, essere ben vivi nella tradizione letteraria italiana
degli anni precedenti. Il presente intervento, partendo da uno
spoglio linguistico complessivo della poesia italiana da Arrigo
Boito a Gabriele D’Annunzio, darà conto della presenza delle
nuove tecnologie nella lingua della lirica dell’Otto-Novecento,
analizzandone le analogie e le differenze stilistiche con la
poesia futurista. Alcune delle immagini legate all’idea di
innovazione e dinamismo, tra cui quelle del treno, del
locomotore, del telegrafo, saranno studiate in contesti lirici
differenti, nel tentativo di definire, all’interno della
tradizione italiana, la presenza di un lessico poetico over-time
del quale l’avanguardia futurista si è appropriata, conferendo
ad esso caratteri del tutto peculiari.
Sascha Bru (University of Gent):
Futurism and the Politics of the Ugly, Then and Now
It has often been argued that with the advent of the modernist
avant-gardes in general and Italian Futurism in particular the
beautiful and the sublime made room for the ugly. Indeed, as
Marinetti himself proclaimed: “Facciamo coraggiosamente il
‘brutto’ in letteratura, e uccidiamo dovunque la sollennità” (TIF:
53). In the broadest of terms, the ugly can be defined as those
forms, topics and practices which, at a certain point in
history, challenge what counts as art and literature. The ugly
thus always broadens the domain of the aesthetic within a
specific historical constellation. As such, Futurist works and
practices can be related to the ugly in a variety of ways.
Through its radicalisation (casting outward) of Aestheticism’s
championing of violence and war, as well as its ‘art-action’
programme, for example, Futurism introduced various practices,
forms and topics that were arguably not considered part and
parcel of (Italian) art and literature at the time. However, one
particular form of ‘art-action’ begs attention to the end of
sketching out the legacies and lasting actuality of Futurism:
Futurism’s transgressive aestheticisation of politics,
culminating in the erection of the Futurist Political Party (FPP).
For, by erecting the FPP, Futurism was the first literary
movement in (modern) history to put forth a political party as a
work of art. Building on my The Invention of Politics in the
European Avant-Garde, 1906-1940 (co-edit. 2006), and Democracy,
Law and the Modernist Avant-Gardes: Writing in the State of
Exception (2009), this paper will first briefly chart the
historical process of Marinetti’s aestheticisation of politics.
It will then look at a variety of post-1945 literary and
artistic exploits that specifically engaged with party politics
within democratic constellations (the work of Canadian
performance artist Vincent Tsarov in the 1970s, of Joseph Beuys
in the 1980s, the ‘Yes Men’ group of the 1990s, and Irish
playwright Mannix Flynn more recently), to conclude that beyond
the narrow ideological left- and rightwing logic, Futurist
‘art-action’ went much farther than more recent artists did. The
FPP continues to be an event unmatched, and thereby still
challenges received views of art/literature’s relation to
politics.
Silvia Contarini (Université
Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense): Comment se transformer en
femme du futur: ‘Une femme avec trois âmes’ – ‘Un ventre de
femme’
Dans les années 1916-1918, alors que l’Italie est en guerre et
que de nombreuses femmes ont rejoint le mouvement d’avant-garde,
dans les colonnes de la revue L’Italia futurista se déchaîne un
débat passionné sur la question féminine qui voit s’opposer les
hommes et les femmes. Dans ce contexte conflictuel, la
publication du ‘manuel’ marinettien Come si seducono le donne
est ressentie comme une provocation. Deux écrivaines futuristes
réagissent par le biais de la fiction. Dans Una donna con tre
anime (1918), Rosa Rosà imagine la métamorphose d’une ménagère
poussiéreuse qui se transforme progressivement en femme du futur,
fusionnant des qualités féminines et masculines. Un an plus tard,
dans Un ventre di donna (1919), ‘roman chirurgical’ où
s’entrecroisent des textes d’Enif Robert et des lettres de
Marinetti, on suit les phases de la ‘guérison’ d’une femme enfin
libérée de ses faiblesses féminines. Une analyse attentive de
ces deux romans atypiques permettra de mettre en évidence d’une
part, la modernité de certaines réflexions sur les questions de
genre, d’autre part, les limites d’une vision futuriste de la
femme trop ancrée à l’idéalisation du modèle masculin et viril.
Eleonora Conti (Università di
Bologna): Marinetti in Francia fra Simbolismo e Futurismo.
‘Vers et Prose’ e ‘Les Guêpes’
La mia ricerca vorrebbe far luce sugli anni in cui Marinetti,
dinamico organizzatore culturale e instancabile mediatore tra
letteratura italiana e francese, cercava da una parte consenso
in Francia, negli anni immediatamente precedenti il lancio del
Futurismo (1906-1908), come traduttore in versi liberi delle
maggiori glorie poetiche nazionali (D’Annunzio, Pascoli,
Carducci), e poi con il Futurismo stesso, sulla rivista parigina
di Paul Fort Vers et Prose, e dall’altra intendeva svecchiare la
cultura italiana a contatto con la poesia francese sulle pagine
della sua rivista Poesia (1905-1909). Il passaggio dal
Simbolismo al Futurismo si gioca su una linea di continuità e
rottura allo stesso tempo: se la continuità del rapporto
italo-francese non viene mai messo in discussione, avviene però
una sorta di intreccio delle linee di forza: da una parte la
direzione è quella dalla Francia all’Italia, con lo scopo di
infondere modernità nell’obsoleto panorama letterario nostrano,
grazie alla diffusione della poesia simbolista in Italia;
d’altra parte, il movimento auspicato da Marinetti è anche
dall’Italia alla Francia (movimento che si intensifica grazie al
Futurismo), per lanciare sul panorama internazionale i nuovi
poeti italiani di valore, a partire da se stesso. L’indagine si
svolge attraverso documenti di prima mano: in particolare la
ricezione di Marinetti in Francia è indagata attraverso la già
citata Vers et Prose e attraverso l’esempio dell’energica
rivistina satirica Les Guêpes (1909-1912) che appunta il proprio
pungiglione velenoso contro le contraddizioni e le ambiguità
dell’operazione marinettiana (dalla sua duplice natura di poeta
al contempo italiano e francese, alla sua concezione
‘manageriale’ della promozione letteraria – dato che promuoveva
anche finanziariamente le proprie iniziative culturali).
Stefano Cracolici (Durham
University): Occult Futurism and the Horror Avant-garde
The link between Futurism and the occult is well charted.
Equally known are its poetic roots, from the Italian
scapigliatura to the French symbolism; its philosophical
implications, from positivism to pragmatism; its spiritualistic
matrices, from theosophy to satanism; and its historical
underpinnings, from Renaissance magic, alchemy and physiognomy
to Rosicrucian masonry. Marinetti’s interest for contemporary
occult theories allows him to integrate their prophetic and
magical elements into the futurist project and its aesthetic
conception of externalizing the will. By linking the project of
Futurism with the occult conception of imagination as a magical
power, Marinetti not only articulates the foundation of Futurism
on the grounding of a kaleidoscopic set of bygone symbols and
theories, not only defines the futurist project as a mystical
process of gaining control over the external world; he also
transforms the poetic and artistic engagement into a magical
aesthetic performance that intervenes in the course of history
at the level of the ontological dimension of the material world.
Less studied, beyond the spiritualistic aura of esoteric
Fascism, are the legacy of this cultural operation in later
inflections of the avant-garde movement, the influence of this
aesthetic apparatus for current forms of ‘art-horror’, and the
relevance of this occult dimension for the construction of
contemporary underground fandom.
Ilona Fried (University of Budapest):
Margit Gáspár, ‘Passione’ per Marinetti
Margit Gáspár (1905-1994) was not a real ‘futurist woman’, but a
journalist, dramatist, writer and translator (under the
pseudonym Miklós Gáspár, her name changed into masculine form).
In 1985 she published her memories under the title Láthatatlan
királyság (Invisibile Reign). In her memoirs she claims to have
had a relationship with Marinetti between 1931 and 1935, who
called her ‘Passione’ and she also provides the reader with some
acute observations on Marinetti, 29 years older than her, with
the contemporary cultural life in the background. At that time,
she was a young journalist just trying her hand as a dramatist
and he was a well known figure of the Italian cultural life, and
the two of them met only occasionally, remaining unobserved for
others. Gáspár, who had just left her Italian husband and not
yet remarried (she could do so only after the war, and as a
matter of fact in the same memoir she also reveals her love for
her future husband whom she came to know right after her episode
had finished with Marinetti and with whom she continued to live
until his death), reveals her attraction towards Marinetti no
matter how different their ways were regarding politics,
literature and arts. After the Second World War Gáspár became a
theatre director (until 1956) and a dramatist (quite well known
in the 60-ies and the 70-ies) as well as a noted writer. The
memories of this interesting woman, a strong presence in the
Hungarian cultural life of her time has something to contribute
to the image we have of Marinetti as well.
Patricia Gaborik (Roma): How the
Futurist Network Worked
Focusing on live performance events and literally mapping (with
visual aids including chronologies and maps) Futurism’s movement
across Italy, this presentation alters the image of Futurism as
a phenomenon that radiated slowly from Via Senato 2, Milan, to
the rest of Italy and beyond. The talk pays detailed attention
to the very first years in Rome, Naples, and other cities, and
later activity in such regions as Liguria and Calabria, to
provide a better understanding of how futurist events in Italy’s
so-called provincial and passatista locales were in fact
fundamental to constructing the movement’s identity and ensuring
its ongoing flourishing at home and abroad.
Laura Greco (Università degli Studi
di Palermo): Federico De Maria: le radici palermitane del
Futurismo
Lo scrittore Federico De Maria nacque nella Palermo di fine ‘800
e percorse l’intero primo cinquantennio del ‘900. Il suo esordio
fu legato alla Fronda, settimanale letterario da lui stesso
ideato e diretto dal maggio al settembre 1905. Delle tre
stagioni vissute dal Futurismo siciliano, la prima,
esclusivamente letteraria, si svolse proprio attorno al
periodico demariano. L’esortazione ad un rinnovamento artistico
anticlassicista, leitmotiv degli articoli frondisti, induce a
scorgere nel Siciliano un precursore del pensiero marinettiano.
Il fervido ambiente isolano di inizio ‘900 favorì l’elaborazione
di quei temi che Marinetti avrebbe presto fatto suoi.
Nell’esigenza di rintracciare soggetti e luoghi coinvolgibili
nel processo di rinnovamento culturale, Marinetti fu indotto a
saldare legami d’amicizia e di cultura con i letterati isolani,
attraverso una fitta corrispondenza epistolare proprio con De
Maria. A lui, ancor prima che a Lucini, come si evince da una
missiva collocabile tra la fine del 1908 e l’inizio del 1909,
l’intellettuale milanese anticipò la notizia della nascita del
movimento futurista. Lo scrittore palermitano fu, insieme a
Marinetti, Buzzi e Cavacchioli, uno dei primi quattro firmatari
del Manifesto Futurista. La ‘corrispondenza’ tra i due, tuttavia,
fu limitata ad una breve fase e venne rotta dalle divergenze
sorte in seguito alla pubblicazione del Manifesto tecnico della
letteratura futurista (1912) e di Distruzione della sintassi
(1913). De Maria fu un innovatore, non un trasgressore. La sua
modernità non perse mai di vista la misura, proiettandolo,
piuttosto, verso posizioni equilibrate.
Kyle M. Hall (Harvard University):
Poetics, Politics and ‘La fine del mondo’: Volt’s Futurofascist
Apocalypse
Vincenzo Fani Ciotti, known to history under his Futurist
pseudonym ‘Volt’, strode into Futurism relatively late,
publishing his parole-in-libertà collection Archi voltaici in
1916 after meeting Marinetti earlier in that same year. After
several manifestos published in various Futurist vehicles,
including La teoria sociologica della guerra, he was moving
beyond a strictly Futurist stance when he published what would
later be described as a “romanzo di fantascienza futurista”, La
fine del mondo, in 1921. Dedicated to Mussolini, this book
utilized little of the poetics typically associated with the
Futurists in favor of a fantastic development of Futurist
political thought. Looking to the year 2247, Volt applied
Futurist ideas on war to what he saw as the logical conclusions
that would arise from the Treaty of Versailles. This is no
utopia, as Volt sees the positive capacities for human
development being stifled by a secular world government that
would prevent intergalactic space colonization rather than
eradicating the native inhabitants of Jupiter. Our sickly hero,
imitating the tuberculosis that would take Volt’s own life at
the age of thirty-nine, takes it upon himself to clear the way
for the conquering and colonizing of Jupiter, blowing up the
world parliament and himself in an apocalyptic explosion that
leaves no doubt as to the necessity of conflict in the human
experience. This paper examines the way in which Volt mixes
Futurist ideology with a more traditional poetics that looked
beyond the avant-garde towards a popularized Fascist politics
that would soon bear itself out in the coming decades.
Tobias Kämpf (Università della
Svizzera italiana): Accommodating Futurists in France:
Marinetti’s Group Seen by Gustave Kahn
At first sight, it seems surprising that the Symbolist Gustave
Kahn (1859-1936), one of the leading, but still not sufficiently
known, intellectuals in Early Twentieth Century France and one
of the spiritual heirs to Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), should
have greeted Italy’s Futurists with anything other than
dismission. Yet, it has been established that his seminal text
of 1901, L’Esthétique de la rue, was of fundamental importance
for the conception of Marinetti’s first Futurist manifesto of
February 1909 and that the two poets were in quite close
contact, although further research on the topic is missing.
Recognizing these links in a somewhat neglected, but extremely
acute review of the first and highly influential Futurist
exhibition at the Parisian gallery Bernheim Jeune in February
1912, Kahn attempted a pioneering historical discussion of
Futurism and its precursors and underlined its affinities with
and differences from the art of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), on
whom he had published a fundamental monograph in 1906, Medardo
Rosso (1858-1928), and the French cubists. The paper proposed
aims at a re-assessment of Kahn’s art criticism and his contacts
with the art world in order to show how he became a precursor
for the understanding of Futurism and its importance, expressing
his appreciation much earlier than almost all of his European
contemporaries.
Erin Larkin (Southern Connecticut
State University): Benedetta: La ‘volontà eroica’ and the
futurist woman
Despite the recent vogue in studies on Futurism, writer and
artist Benedetta Cappa Marinetti has received relatively little
critical attention. Wife of the movement’s founder,
F.T.Marinetti, Benedetta’s work has been seen largely as an
extension of that of her husband, and thus of dubious merit to
scholars of gender studies. The few critical appraisals of
Benedetta have focused on her speeches and articles regarding
woman and the Fascist state, and in particular the importance of
her role as mother. It has been argued that these texts support
not only the position that women futurists — in adhering to a
movement best remembered for its disprezzo della donna — were
victims of their own self-accepting inferiority, but also the
view that Futurist attitudes towards women were precursor to
Fascist-era gender-politics. Indeed, Benedetta’s treatment of
maternity has been understood in the light of both the Fascist
regime’s birth plan and its exaltation of motherhood. This view
of Benedetta is based on the perpetuation of critical paradigms
dominating Futurist studies of the past decade, much more than a
thorough examination of primary sources. In my paper, I will
challenge this position, and discuss crucial new archival
research, which includes unpublished speeches and essays by
Benedetta held at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Consideration of these documents, together with a reevaluation
of her lesser-known novels, calls for a new reading of the theme
of motherhood in Benedetta’s body of work, one that acknowledges
its full complexity. What emerges from these unpublished pieces
is how Benedetta’s emphasis on maternity is actually linked to a
radical new reformulation of Futurism: one that privileges not
the destructive potential of early Futurist rhetoric, but the
creative forces of the universe. In overturning the founding
‘values’ of the movement, Benedetta marks her futurist world as
distinctively feminine. Far from merely seconding woman’s
inferior position within the Futurist movement, or indeed within
the Fascist state, Benedetta uses the issue of maternity to
subtly subvert her status — in both the movement and society —
from within.
Federico Luisetti (University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill): Marinetti’s Radiophonic
Intervals
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti began to experiment with the medium of
radio in 1926. The development of more programmatic work that
involved the radio, most notably his “Manifesto della radio
futurista” – written with Pino Masnata – and his sintesi
radiofoniche, was undertaken in the early Thirties. The topic of
my paper will be Marinetti’s 1931 sintesi radiofoniche: Un paesaggio udito, Dramma di distanze, I silenzi parlano fra di
loro, Battaglia di ritmi, La costruzione di un silenzio. In
these sintesi, Marinetti exploits the aural capacity of wireless
communication, alternating sounds, noises, and silence through a
complex and yet to be fully explored use of intervals. My
presentation – which will include excerpts from the audio
recordings of the sintesi – will analyze the theoretical
implications of these unprecedented intervals, which I will
interpret as a disruptive “in-between”, an opening up of gaps in
the temporal fabric of perception. By concentrating on this key
aspect of the machinic (anti)-aesthetics of Marinetti, I will
frame Marinetti’s technologization of artistic practices within
the landscape of a post-Bergsonian and post-Nietzschean “vital
mechanics”. In the conclusion of my presentation I will show how
– together with Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s stati intermovimentali
and Marcel Duchamp’s inframince – Marinetti’s techno-performative
intervals aim at deconstructing everyday modes of perception and
thus introducing a far-reaching distortion of the sensorial
field of artistic communication.
Bharain Mac An Bhreithiún
(University of the Arts, London): Neon Futurista: the poetry
of the electric avertising sign in urban space
This paper examines the legacy of the Futurist belief in the
poetry of advertising and in particular the lyrical power of
illuminated lettering in the urban built environment. The
Futurist celebration of advertising in urban space as the
antithesis of the museum culture they lambasted found expression
in Marinetti’s declaration that the illuminated signs in Milan’s
Piazza Duomo could ‘express the splendour of a poetic
imagination radiating to eternity’. I am particularly interested
in the ways in which neon in the city space has taken on a range
of poetic meanings, some of which are consistent with the
Futurist celebration of dynamic modernity and others that now
belong to the nostalgia of the despised museum culture itself.
Twentieth century urban neon was once consistent with the
Futurist celebration of dynamic modernity, the expression of a
sleek, transnational cosmopolitanism. As signage ages, however,
it comes to represent a strong element in a city’s genius loci
or sense of place. This process of genteel deterioration,
evident in cities such as Torino, Reykjavik and Budapest, is at
odds with Futurist doctrine, and gives urban illumination a role
in placemaking and in the creation of a poetics of place. This
paper examines the connection between Futurism, neon and the
genius loci of the cities in which the Futurists operated and
considers the legacies of the celebration of urban advertising
in terms of the politics of a public space now dominated by
commercial meassages. Finally it investigates contemporary
practices that use illuminated signage and neon in interventions
that remain consistent with Marinetti’s celebration of the
advertising culture of the 1920s as an avant-garde expression of
the poetic imagination. It asks us to consider the effect of
Futurist ideas about advertising and illuminated type on the
urban environment and questions the movement’s contribution to
the creation of liveable city spaces.
Stefano Magni (Université de
Provence): Luciano Folgore: ridere di sé stessi e del
futurismo. Fine o rinnovamento dell’avanguardia?
Luciano Folgore (pseudonimo di Omero Vecchi) ha pubblicato, ad
inizio carriera, nel primo decennio del XX secolo, alcune
raccolte di poesie nel più puro spirito futurista. Già i titoli
rivelano la vocazione innovativa di questi componimenti: Il
canto dei motori (1912); Ponti sull’Oceano. Versi liberi e
parole in libertà (1914); Città veloce (1919). In questi testi
compaiono i miti futuristi della velocità, dei motori, della
forza delle parole. Vi compare anche il riferimento alle ‘parole
in libertà’, la nuova tecnica di scrittura futurista. Dopo
questa prima fase, Folgore si è dedicato per molti anni alle
riscritture e alle parodie. In opere quali Poeti controluce.
Parodie (1922); Poeti allo specchio. Parodie (1926);
Novellieri
allo specchio (1935), l’autore ha riscritto con molta ironia, e
con fine ludico, non solo molti autori contemporanei, ma anche
gli stessi autori futuristi. In Novellieri allo specchio e in
Poeti allo specchio egli esegue la parodia, tra gli altri, di
Marinetti, Papini, Soffici, Govoni, Palazzeschi e anche di sé
stesso Contro me stesso (Parodia di Luciano Folgore). Folgore ha
d’altronde affermato che “Ogni grande artista dovrebbe saper
caricaturare, nella seconda metà della sua vita, ciò che ha
fatto nella prima metà”. Come interpretare questo sguardo
ironico e sbeffeggiante sul futurismo e su sé stesso? Come
considerare il riso e l’auto-ironia? Come uno strumento della
modernità che può rinnovare l’avanguardia futurista,
sull’influsso dei saggi di Freud, Bergson, Pirandello, e delle
teorie di Apollinaire o di Palazzeschi, oppure come il segno
tangibile della fine dell’avanguardia?
Stephen Marth (Brown University):
When ‘il nulla’ was ‘tutto’: Palazzeschi’s ‘Man of Smoke’ and
the Ethereal Aesthetics of Futurism
Interpretations of Palazzeschi’s character Perelà from his
futurist novel, Il Codice di Perelà, have been numerous and
varied. In large part they have focused on Perelà’s attribute of
leggerezza by counterposing him to the pesantezza of the
material world. Perelà thus becomes emblematic for Palazzeschi
the poet’s ability to overcome the heaviness of reality by
creating a type of utopia of lightness. All of these
interpretations, many of them valid and stimulating, share the
common approach of reading the protagonist in symbolic,
metaphorical or allegorical terms, but fail to see the
protagonist in aesthetic, visual terms. This paper, part of a
larger dissertation on Palazzeschi, combines a close textual
analysis of Il Codice di Perelà with an examination of varied
forms of visual media from the period in which the novel was
written, not restricted to Italian futurism --- such as, Marey’s
ethereal chronophotographs and air current studies, the
ectoplasms of spiritualist’s photographs, Bragalia’s fotodinamismo, Carrà’s and Boccioni’s dematerialized figures,
the smoke of Meliès magic cinema, the gray officine of the
futurist landscape, the smoking serpentine tubes of F.T.
Marinetti’s race car, the evanescent folds of Loïe Fuller’s
dress -- in order to show the ways in which Palazzeschi’s
extremely visual aeriform man of smoke may be related to the
aesthetics of futurism and the visual media of modernity in
general. I will also try to show how Perelà is symptomatic of a
fin-de-siècle preoccupation with notions of ethereality,
intangibility, imperceptibility, and immateriality. My
discussion of Palazzeschi’s Codice di Perelà will be pertinent
to this conference’s subcategories of both “legacies”, in so far
as it will discuss the intermediary nature of the relationship
between the visual and the written arts and “protagonists” in
that it examines futurism vis-à-vis one of its most overlooked
early protagonists.
Florian Mussgnug (University
College London): Covert Gestures: Marinetti’s ‘Manifesto del
Futurismo’ in the 1960s
This contribution examines the reception of Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti’s Manifesto del Futurismo in Italian avant-garde
literature of the 1960s. According to many neoavanguardisti,
Gruppo 63 never conceived of itself as a unified artistic
movement inspired by a single, foundational manifesto. Instead,
key figures such as Nanni Balestrini, Edoardo Sanguineti and
Umberto Eco emphasised the group’s essential openness, insisting
that diversity of opinion was always indispensable to the
group’s self-image and artistic practice. In many retrospective
accounts, this emphasis on openness has been associated with the
historical difference between avanguardia storica e
neovanagurdia, ‘generazione di vulcano’ and ‘generazione di
nettuno’ (Eco), ‘avanguardia calda’ and ‘avanguardia fredda’ (Fausto
Curi) etc. According to Renato Barilli, it also explains the
increasing divergence within Gruppo 63 and the emergence of the
so-called ‘tre anime del gruppo’. As my paper will show,
programmatic ‘openness’ often coincided with a deliberate
suspicion of the manifesto, which was viewed by most members of
Gruppo 63 as an obsolete or politically suspicious genre.
Nevertheless, many neoavanguardisti engaged more or less
directly with Marinetti’s important text. In my contribution, I
would like to discuss some well-known and representative works
of Gruppo 63, from Alfredo Giuliani’s introduction to I Novissimi to Edoardo Sanguineti’s “Il trattamento del materiale
verbale nei testi della nuova avanguardia”, and from Giorgio
Manganelli’s “La letteratura come menzogna” to Umberto Eco’s
“L’avanguardia in vagone letto”. As I hope to show, each of
these texts may be read as a more or less ironic homage to
Futurism and to Marinetti’s manifesto, a self-conscious ‘covert
gesture’ drawing attention to the more overt theatricality of
Futurism.
Marjorie Perloff (Stanford
University): The Audacity of Hope: Futurist Aura and National
Difference in the First Manifestos
A hundred years after its inception, Futurism remains a
curiously misunderstood movement. The reviews of the recent Tate
Gallery exhibition dismiss Futurism as inferior to Cubism and
tainted by its Fascist connections. My paper makes the case for
a more accurate understanding of Futurism as being (1) a double
movement — Italian AND Russian, and (2) essentially a movement
that ends with WWI and the Russian Revolution: in Italy,
Marinetti is the only major Futurist who tried to carry on
‘Futurism’ into the Fascist 1920s and 30s. A close reading of
the First Manifesto and ancillary documents, against the Russian
Futurist A SLAP IN THE FACE OF PUBLIC TASTE (1910), Malevich’s
1915 Manifesto, and Khlebnikov’s prescriptions for the New City
show interesting and largely overlooked links — and also key
differences — between the two Futurisms.
Nancy Perloff (Getty Museum):
Russian Zaum: The Futurist Incarnation of Sound Poetry
Sound poetry as a hybrid poetic form began with the Russian
Futurists. Their poetic language of zaum, or ‘beyonsense’ (za
[beyond]; um [the mind]), isolated the concrete, phonic aspect
of language and discarded referentiality and the rules of
grammar for alogism and the transrational. Historians of the
avant-garde have yet to fully appreciate the startling
experiments of the Russian sound poets. This paper will analyze
the many usages and implications of zaum, with particular
attention to its role in the early avant-garde books of Velimir
Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenykh. In their 1912 manifesto, The
Word as Such, Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh declare, “Language
should first of all be language, and if it is to remind us of
anything, let it remind us of a saw or the poisoned arrow of a
savage.” The neologisms in Khlebnikov’s zaum develop the root of
a Russian word to produce sounds previously unknown, but
semantically linked to their referents, while Kruchenykh’s new
word combinations achieve a language “without definite meaning”,
but abundant in reference plays. Orthodox incantations, nursery
rhymes, urban cacophony are evoked through abstract sound. This
paper will argue that zaum as sound poetry is best interpreted
in the context in which it appeared: pocket-sized, handmade
artists’ books that juxtaposed and integrated the lithographed
and rubber-stamped poetry with drawings by the great Russian
avant-garde artists Goncharova, Larionov, and Malevich. The
paper will close by speculating on the relationship between zaum
poetry and F.T. Marinetti’s aesthetic of sound.
Davide Podavini (Università degli
Studi di Pavia): Marinetti critico del proto-futurismo in
‘Poeti futuristi’
Nel 1912 Marinetti pubblica, presso le edizioni futuriste di Poesia, una voluminosa antologia, dal titolo
Poeti futuristi,
che raccoglie novantatré liriche di tredici autori, fra i quali
figurano, oltre allo stesso Marinetti, nomi importanti come
quelli di Buzzi, Govoni e Palazzeschi. La cifra stilistica della
raccolta si pone in una zona di trapasso fra tradizione e
avanguardia: riunisce suggestioni crepuscolari, e persino
dannunziane, accanto agli innovativi stilemi futuristi.
Attraverso l’analisi puntuale di alcuni dei testi antologizzati,
prendendo come punto di riferimento le regole contenute nel Manifesto tecnico della letteratura futurista (diffuso
significativamente da Marinetti nello stesso 1912, poche
settimane prima dell’uscita dell’antologia), si prova come la
fantasia ‘proto-futurista’ trovi spunto e radici in scelte
tecniche tipiche della poesia di primo Novecento, dai
crepuscolari, a d’Annunzio, al simbolismo franco-belga.
L’antologia mette in luce la genesi e il trapasso di un modo di
fare poesia che, nei testi analizzati, si sta compiendo ma non è
ancora avanguardia matura. E proprio per questo suo carattere di
ibrido e incompiuto, l’antologia Poeti futuristi rappresenta uno
dei momenti più felici, sebbene sia fra i meno studiati, di
tutta la poesia futurista.
Jeffrey Schnapp (Stanford
University): The Statistical Sublime: Futurism and Numbers
Numbers have always been integral to poetry, from the
quantitative metrics of ancient verse to Dante’s definition of
poetry as numeri regolati and beyond. Likewise, they have
forever undergirded compositional principles in the visual arts
with their golden sections and metaphysical ratios. Yet it is
only in the 20th century that they move from the backstage out
onto the catwalk of cultural communication. Futurism plays a
decisive role in this shift, insisting from the outset that it
will sing a world of human multitudes navigating a sea of that
newest fruit of the contemporary physical and social sciences:
statistics—statistics regarding productivity, mobility, opinion,
speed. But number and mathematical modes of notation are staged
within an overall revolt against conventional forms of literary
and visual communication wherein, even when integral to
Futurism’s own advertising-inspired hype, the purely
quantitative is always under pressure, whether from the magic
numbers of Balla’s numeri innamorati or from the enduring dream
of a qualitative mathematics that provides the title of
Marinetti’s final manifesto: La matematica futurista
immaginativa qualitativa (1941). The Statistical Sublime
sketches an overall portrait of number and mathematical notation
in Futurist theory and practice, Italian and Russian. It tells
the tale of how, extending Kant’s mathematical sublime, Futurism
enacts a détournement of the tools of the new positivist
rationality.
Beatrice Sica (New York University):
‘In the name, always, of the great, unique, true Idea-Force’:
Paolo Buzzi, Italian Futurism, and French Surrealism
The paper explores Paolo Buzzi’s relationship with French
Surrealism, specifically through a reading of his almost unknown
preface to the anthology for Maurice Nadeau’s Histoire du surréalisme and his pamphlet
Novecento letterario (both
published in 1948), as well as the most ‘surrealist’ verses of
his entire vast poetic production. Buzzi’s relationship with the
French avant-garde movement represents a double and very
significant anomaly: while after WWII critics generally tended
to consider Futurism and Surrealism separately, when not
oppositely, pointing out their differences more than their
similarities, Buzzi saw a convergence between the two movements.
However, in his view, this confluence was not based on the first
Futurist assumptions that actually anticipated Surrealism, but
rather on a paradoxical form of classicism. Although often
confused in his literary criticism and wavering in his verses
between classicism and Futurism, Buzzi, with his very personal
and sincere – (sometimes to the point of being naïve) – love for
and faith in Poetry, is also more generally representative of
the wider Italian reaction to Surrealism and of the Italian
difficulties in accepting Breton’s movement.
Teresa Spignoli (Università di
Firenze): La ‘terra di nessuno’ tra immagine e parola: dalle
tavole parolibere alla poesia verbo-visiva
La presente comunicazione intende riflettere sull’eredità
lasciata dalla sperimentazione futurista relativamente
all’interazione tra parola, immagine e suono nelle avanguardie
del secondo Novecento e in particolar modo nell’ambito della
poesia verbo-visiva, che si delinea in Italia all’inizio degli
anni Sessanta, e che centra la propria ricerca su forme di
ibridazione tra poesia, pittura, teatro e cinema. Partendo
dall’analisi dei risultati raggiunti dalla sperimentazione
futurista, sia relativamente all’interazione tra parola e
immagine, così come risulta dalle tavole parolibere, che
all’impiego di nuove tecnologie, come la fotografia e la radio,
si intende indicarne la persistenza e gli sviluppi
nell’avanguardia secondo-novecentesca, centrando soprattutto
l’attenzione sulle performance e sull’utilizzo dei nuovi mezzi
di comunicazione. A tale fine sarà analizzata in particolar modo
la produzione artistica dei protagonisti del Gruppo 70 (Pignotti,
Miccini, Ori, La Rocca e Marcucci), nonché di altri artisti
appartenenti all’area genovese (Corrado D’Ottavi) e napoletana (Stelio
Maria Martini), nei quali è particolarmente evidente il ricorso
al linguaggio futurista, declinato nei termini di una operazione
che mira a mettere in crisi i linguaggi delle comunicazioni di
massa avvalendosi, in modo straniante, di tecniche e sottocodici
appartenenti alla pubblicità, ai rotocalchi, alla stampa
quotidiana, ai linguaggi settoriali.
Dirk Vanden Berghe (Vrije
Universiteit Brussel): La funzione dell’autocommento nella
parabola di ‘BÏF§ZF+18’ di Soffici
L’autocommento di Ardengo Soffici alla raccolta poetica
BÏf§Zf+18. Simultaneità e chimismi lirici, pubblicato solo nel
1999, si rivela un documento importante insieme per
l’interpretazione dei 20 testi postillati dall’autore e per la
storia della raccolta, le cui forme eversive iniziali (parole in
libertà, calligrammi e componimenti in verso libero) sarebbero
andate incontro a una progressiva ‘normalizzazione’ poetica
nelle riedizioni del 1937 e del 1961. Delle ‘Simultaneità’, si
può dire che le varianti testuali attraverso le successive
edizioni non ne hanno alterato la fisionomia originaria, mentre
tutt’altra sorte toccò alla maggior parte dei ‘Chimismi lirici’;
tuttavia, per entrambe le sezioni emergono anche tendenze
correttorie ben marcate: tra queste, l’incremento degli inserti
in lingua straniera è senza dubbio una delle più importanti.
Ideato da Soffici nel 1921 per soddisfare le sorprendenti (anche
se tardive) curiosità di Benedetto Croce in materia di poesia
futurista, l’autocommento anticipa chiaramente alcuni aspetti
del successivo ‘ritorno all’ordine’ poetico dello scrittore
toscano; ma nel contempo presenta evidenti consonanze con le
dichiarazioni di poetica da lui raccolte nei Primi principi di
un’estetica futurista (1916-1920). Croce, destinatario
dell’autocommento, era in quegli anni in ottimi rapporti con
Soffici, nonostante le frecciate anticrociane consegnate da
quest’ultimo alle pagine di Lacerba. In realtà, Soffici non era
mai stato veramente ostile all’estetica crociana, come
dimostrano sia i suoi saggi sull’arte e sulla letteratura, sia
il carteggio intercorso tra lui e il filosofo napoletano; mentre
Croce nutriva un’autentica stima dell’artista, a cui si volle
rivolgere per ottenere informazioni di prima mano sul futurismo
poetico.
John P. Welle (University of Notre
Dame): Reading ‘Divismo’: Bruno Corra’s Forgotten Film Novel,
‘Io ti amo’, Commercial Literature, and Celebrity Culture
Together with Settimelli, Bruno Corra wrote what can be
considered, in part, a Futurist theoretical treatise on
commercial literature, Pesi, Misure e Prezzi del Genio Artistico
in 1914 in which they state “There is no essential difference
between a human brain and a machine.” They also proclaim “The
producer of creative artistic forces must join the commercial
structure which is the muscle of modern life. Money is one of
the most formidably and brutally solid points of the reality in
which we live.” In light of these statements, this paper
proposes a reading of Bruno Corra’s long forgotten film novel,
Io ti amo: il romanzo dell’amore moderno. Initially published in
1918, with a print run of 4.000 copies, Io ti amo saw some five
editions by 1921, was translated into French and Spanish in 1919
and 1926 respectively, and sold some 50.000 copies by 1943. On
one level, the novel can be associated with the ‘erotico/sociale’
genre that Marinetti and other Futurists such as Corra and
Settimelli developed in the years surrounding WWI. Moreover, the
novel is set in the world of filmmaking and describes various
aspects of divismo, including the technology of print media and
advertising in developing a culture of celebrity promoted by the
film industry. The novel contains numerous points of
intersection with Pirandello’s Si gira! (1915) and also
circulates paradigmatic Futurist tropes such as the modern city,
transnational cosmopolitanism, aspects of ‘sex and character’ (Weininger),
the desire for celebrity, and the celebration of war.
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