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> Futurism/post-Futurism
Shawn P. Wilbur (c. 1994)
I
"A Thousand Points of Triscuit"(?)
October 18, 1992
"AMERICA REACTION TODAY," a showing of artwork by
"regional artists," opens at Grounds for Thought, Bowling
Green's center for
caffeine and culture. The show consists of about a dozen works
in a variety of
styles and media, although collage predominates. This is Matthew
A.
Donahue's most recent brainchild, the beginning of "THE ACCELERATED
GHETTO RENAISSANCE," and, like most M.A.D. productions, it
emphasizes the politic and the postmodern.
Donohue himself has included an installation of Ross Perot
memorabilia and photographs of Toledo's giant Uncle Sam statue.
(In one of
the latter, the statue seems to have its middle finger extended,
and we are
forced to wonder to whom our favorite uncle is "giving the
bird.") The dollar
sign dominates Phil Dickinson's symbol for a "New World Order,"
while
David Wall's "LBJ" seems to be pieced together primarily
from cut up body
parts. Nicol Kostic, Toledo mail-art organizer, has provided what
appear to be
xerographic collages, political dada. But the centerpiece of the
show is
assemblage called "A Thousand Points of Triscuit," by
"The Italian Futurists."
Consisting of a fluorescent light fixture, raised on cinderblocks
and
embellished with neat rows of Triscuit® (1000?), it dominates
the small
gallery space in the back of the coffeeshop. And on this opening
night, incense
burns on the cinderblocks.
When I arrive, "The Italian Futurists" are there and
Donohue makes
the introductions. Then he wants to know if I have anything to
add to the
show. "So, man, if you come up with anything in the next
couple of days, let
me know. And, hey, get in touch if you need help with anything."
This is an
accelerated renaissance indeed. With the final touches on the
installation
finished, Donohue and "The Italian Futurists" are out
the door. It's Miller
Time, or something like that. I decline an invitation to join
them and goodbyes
are said, but I can't let them go without asking one question.
"I just want to
know, which one of you is Marinetti and which is Boccioni. Let
me guess.
You're Carra." We all laugh and, just as they're getting
out of earshot, one of
them shouts back.
The reply is unintelligible. I take it as an omen.
On November 3, I am once again with Donahue in front of "A
Thousand Points of Triscuit." This is the official "opening,"
a reception while
we watch election results. There is a small group gathered as
President Bush
makes his concession speech, and naturally the conversation turns
to that other
famous presidential address with which the assemblage in front
of us has
some mysterious connection. Between us, we have the ingredients
of a very
interesting tale.
It goes something like this: Peggy Noonan claims that she made
up the
phrase "a thousand points of light," but that there
was a widespread and
immediate response to it, a disturbing sense that people had heard
it before.
Some of the attributions were embarrassing to the President, particularly
the
suggestion that the phrase was lifted from a Nazi oration. Noonan
concludes
that this confusion is with the phrase "the thousand year
Reich," which would
be a bit of a stretch, while acknowledging that Thomas Wolfe did
say
something similar - "a thousand points of friendly light."
And, in closing, she
mentions that William Safire had uncovered one other possible
"source" - in
the writings of an Italian "engineer" who was advocating
electric lights for the
streets of Venice.1 It is an afterthought, support for the innocence
of the
phrase. Little did she know (apparently) that the Italian "engineer"
in question
was F.T. Marinetti, "the caffiene of Europe," Futurist
and (eventually) Fascist.
from MARINETTI'S FUTURIST SPEECH TO THE VENETIANS
Venetians!
When we cried out, "Let's murder the moonshine!" we were
thinking of you, old Venice soiled with romanticism!
But now our voice grows louder, and we roar, "Let's free the
world from the tyranny of amore! We're sick of erotic adventures,
of lechery, sentimentality, and nostalgia!
. . . All this absurd, abominable and irritating nonsense nauseates
us! And now we want electric lamps brutally to cut and strip away
with their *thousand point of light* your mysterious, sickening,
alluring shadows! [emphasis mine]
Your Grand Canal, widened and dredged, must become a
great commercial port. Trains and trams, launched on wide roads
built over canals that have finally been filled in, will bring you
mountains of goods and a shrewd, wealthy, busy crowd of
industrialists and businessmen!
Don't howl against the so-called ugliness of locomotives,
trams, automobiles, and bicycles, in which we see the first
outlines of the great Futurist aesthetic. They can always serve to
upset some horrible grotesque Nordic professor in his Tyrolean
hat. [2]
And that's the end of that particular story, ending almost
simultaneously
with George Bush's hopes for promoting his particular "New
World Order." It
suggests connections, without necessarily asserting "influence."
The
commitment of the Reagan/Bush regime to "a shrewd, wealthy,
busy crowd of
industrialists and businessmen" takes on new meanings for
us, thanks to
Noonan's (inadvertent?) choice of phrase. Of course, "fascism"
is a frequent
enough charge leveled at the Right by the Left. And it is interesting
to see who
is really "influenced" by Marinetti and his movement
- "The Italian
Futurists," and yours truly.
So our story isn't really over - they never really are. But from
here on we
will delve deeper into the past - on the track of the (first)
Italian Futurists -
and then back toward the present - through various Futurisms and
post-
futurisms to N.W. Ohio's own (second) "Italian Futurists."
The path will be
anything but straight. Time and direction become tricky at times.
There is
something that we might call the "postmodern divide"
which we will have to
cross - a (not quite fully present) boundary which might also
mark the "end of
history." From the Italy of Marinetti and Mussolini, to the
industrial/postpunk
San Francisco scene and the (now liberated) Slovenia of Neue Slovenische
Kunst - this is our route. Our subjects are art, industry and,
naturally, the
future.
November 23, 1992
"AMERICA REACTION TODAY" ended five days ago, but a
few of the
pieces remain in place. "A Thousand Points of Triscuit"
is still there. And I've
finally got my contribution together, or at least well-begun.
Hey, Matt! I think
I've got something for you. I'll have it to you in a couple of
days, man!
II
On To The Future
ENERGY+FEARLESSNESS
We stand on the last promontory of the centuries! .
. . Why should we look back, when what we want is to
break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible?
Time and space died yesterday. We already live in
the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent
speed.
F. T. Marinetti, "Manifesto of Futurism" [3]
If we are to take F. T. Marinetti at his word, Futurism began
with a car
crash. It ended, by most accounts, with its absorption into Italian
Fascism. In
between - roughly from 1909 through 1915 - was the "Futurist
moment," a
dynamic period in which Marinetti and his compatriots created
a new kind of
explicitly modern, industrial art, and generally caused a stir
across the European
art world.[4]
There is not room here for an exhaustive history of Futurism.
Such
histories exist, and they are fascinating, but we have other fish
to fry.[5] In
particular, we are looking for the threads that bind together
a Republican
President, a Toledo, Ohio art collective and a young leftist cultural
critic -
yours truly. So we will have to satisfy ourselves a brief look
at the "Futurist
moment," primarily as it appears in Marinetti's manifestoes,
a quick survey
from the "last promontory of the centuries."
It starts with a car crash. Marinetti's "The Founding and
Manifesto of
Futurism" begins amid opulence - "under hanging mosque
lamps with domes
of filigreed brass, domes starred like our spirits, shining like
them with the
prisoned light of electric hearts." Marinetti and his friends
have stayed up late
into the night, "arguing up to the last confines of logic
and blackening many
reams of paper with our frenzied scribbling," when it occurs
to them that they
are nearly alone in this night world. Nearly everyone else is
asleep, except for
those workers required to keep industrial machinery - specifically
the steam-
powered engines of trains and ships - running through the night.
Their
imaginations literally fired by these images, they respond to
the rumble of
passing trams and "the famished roar of automobiles,"
racing in their cars to
meet the dawn.[6]
Marinetti leaves no doubt that a moment of great importance is
approaching. His prose grows increasingly frenzied.
"Friends away! Let's go! Mythology and the Mystic Ideal are
defeated at last. We're about to see the Centaur's birth and, soon
after, the first flight of Angels! . . . We must shake the gates of life,
test the bolts and hinges. Let's go! Look there, on the earth, the
very first dawn! There's nothing to match the splendor of the sun's
red sword, slashing for the first time through our millennial gloom! [7]
The drive is a race with danger and death, an explicitly auto-erotic
orgy
of speed and mad abandon. Cars are "beasts" with "torrid
breasts." Dogs are
run down and tires burn. A steering wheel is described as "a
guillotine blade
that threatened my stomach." But, Marinetti insists, the
goal is not to die, or
even to court Death. "[W]e had no ideal Mistress. . . nor
any cruel Queen to
whom to offer our bodies, twisted like Byzantine rings."
This is a hunt, and
Death - a least the "domesticated" death of the Byzantine,
amorous, feminine,
past-loving world - is the quarry.[8]
Suddenly, Marinetti's narrative takes a turn toward the slapstick.
"Let's give ourselves utterly to the unknown," he cries,
"not in desperation but
only to replenish the deep wells of the Absurd!" And he spins
his car around:
with the frenzy of a dog trying to bite its tail, and there, suddenly,
were two cyclists coming towards me, shaking their fists, wobbling
like two equally convincing but nevertheless contradictory
arguments. Their stupid dilemma was blocking my way - damn!
Ouch! . . . I stopped short and to my disgust rolled over into a ditch
with my wheels in the air. . . .
It is there, in the ditch, that Marinetti is reborn as a Futurist.
Oh! Maternal ditch, almost full of muddy water! Fair factory drain!
I gulped down your nourishing sludge; and I remembered the
blessed black breast of my Sudanese nurse. . . When I came up -
torn, filthy, and stinking - from under the capsized car, I felt the
white-hot iron of joy deliciously pass through my heart! [9]
Not only is he unscathed, but his car still runs. "They
though it was dead,
my beautiful shark, but a caress from me was enough to revive
it; and there it
was, alive again, running on its powerful fins!" And so he
is on his way, to
preach Futurism to "all the living of the earth." [10]
This story is followed by the "Manifesto of Futurism,"
an 11-point
statement of aesthetic intent. A few of those points include:
1. We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and
fearlessness.
. . .
2. Up to now literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and
sleep. We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the
racer's stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap.
. . .
7. Except in struggle, there is no more beauty. no work without an
aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived
as a violent attack on unknown forces, to reduce and prostrate them
before man.
. . .
9. We will glorify war - the world's only hygiene - militarism,
patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas
worth dying for, and scorn for women.[11]
You might hesitate to invite this crowd for tea. Even the manifestos,
perhaps
especially the manifestos, were "conceived as a violent attack."
Nothing short
of including the whole manifesto can really do justice to Marinetti's
work, but
the flavor should be clear enough. At once engaging and disturbing,
his words
continue to exert an influence on contemporary art.
Marinetti and others elaborated on these basic concepts, creating
Futurist
theater, music, literature, painting, cinema, sculpture, dance,
and "the new
religion-morality of speed."12 However, the basic values
of the Futurist
aesthetic remained fairly constant. It valued "speed"
and "progress" above all,
and rejected any "softness" and "sentimentality"
that might stand in the way of those goals. What changes in Marinetti's
writing is the degree to which he is the degree to which he connects
his aesthetic with fascism, and finds his ideal in Mussolini.
Finally, he is entirely swallowed up by those affiliations, and
his later writings, while still interesting, bear all the marks
of propaganda.
Or take Mussolini.
You listen to his speeches.
And he's singing grand opera.
Doing all the parts. And he's
hitting all those hard-to-reach
high notes. frontiere! frontiere!
- Laurie Anderson,
- Politics and Music
However, the temptation to dismiss Italian Futurism as "that
fascist art
movement" is one we need to resist. It is a suspect move,
given the lasting
influence of Marinetti. And even if that initial "moment"
ended with the
around 1915, there have certainly been other moments which we
might want
to label "Futurist," where the aesthetic, the industrial
and the totalitarian
collided in familiar ways. Marinetti himself said, "War is
Futurism
intensified." He predicted "lightning warfare, "
and spoke of a "new sun." The
blitzkrieg is a Futurist moment, even before it becomes the stuff
of war films.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are Futurist moments. And the footage from
the
nose-camera of a "smart" missile on a (self-)destructive
mission into Baghdad
was a recurring Futurist moment during the Gulf War (a conflict
so perfectly
aestheticized that Baudrillard could claim it "did not happen.")
But we would be wrong to associate Futurism only with those
expressions, just as we would be wrong to associate Marxism only
with the
Russian experience or technology and industry only .with their
most brutal
and oppressive forms. Futurism's influence continues for the most
part despite
these expressions. We need to consider those other aspects of
the Futurist
legacy.
For example, the origins of performance art are frequently traced
back
through the Italian Futurists. Certainly, their marches, tours
(and fistfights)
blurred the art/life line in ways which we now associate with
performance art,
just as Futurist theory assailed the boundary between art and
industrial
production. This genealogy is disturbing, given the "activist"
(feminist, etc...)
nature of much contemporary performance. We might recall that
Marinetti
advocated performance for its own sake.
Another contemporary form with Futurist roots is industrial music.
Russolo's "Art of Noises" has inspired several generations
of anti-musicians.
Even the predominantly anti-totalitarian early punk scene drew
inspiration
from him. The first album by Adam and the Antz - featuring the
band that Ant
later lost to Sex pistols promoter and sometimes Situationist
Malcolm
McLaren - featured two cuts, "Family of Noise" and "Animals
and Men,"
which referred to Russolo and the Italian Futurists, alongside
one song,
"Digital Tenderness," with a strongly anti-technology
message. And, clearly,
the New Wave band Art of Noise borrowed freely from them. Industrial
music
was the "next big thing" on the fringes of the music
scene, coming close on
the heels of the rapid birth and decline of the first generation
of punks and
rebel rockers like the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Noise was central
to its sound
from the very beginning. Later, bands like Germany's Einsturzende
Neubauten and Britain's Test Department took the industrial label
literally and
began producing sophisticated music with "instruments"
like power tools and
found industrial debris, with the result that they very closely
approximate the
catalog of noises that Russolo had intended for his "Art
of noises." Currently,
the industrial scene has become mainstream, with the result that
there are now
dozens of types of industrial music, from techno to the science
fiction
performance art of Gwar and the crass (post-Fordist?) products
of KMFDM.
And none of these is very far removed from contemporary "heavy
metal."
It is worth noting that I have been talking primarily about youth
cultures.
We might consider the similarities between the Futurists and the
Yippies. If
Marinetti had been born in another decade, mightn't he have written
a
manifesto called "Fuck the System"? Marinetti pointed
out in the first
manifesto that "The oldest of us is thirty." And he
valued youth, imagining
that "when we are forty, other younger and stronger men will
probably throw
us in the wastebasket like useless manuscripts - we want it to
happen!"[13]
Futurism has to be understood as something like what we call
"counterculture." Or perhaps we should just understand
the Futurists as the
first rock & roll band. They were wrecking hotel rooms, or
its moral
equivalent, long before Jerry Lee Lewis or Pete Townsend. Perhaps
this is too
much, but a series of benefit concerts have helped recently to
show the
connections between the concert and the political rally, and MTV
has made
inescapable to the connection between music, industry, and technology.
It is
disturbing, but not, I think unthinkable, that there is something
like futurism at
the beginning of that story.
As we turn to look at a few more contemporary example of Futurism,
we
should keep these alternative understandings of the Italian brand
to the fore.
But we should also keep in mind that catalog of "intensified"
Futurist
moments. There, perhaps, but for grace, go we.
Future World: Science Fiction & "Survival Research"
Even before the beginning of the atomic age other futurisms are
surfacing. In America in the thirties, a group of youthful science
fiction fans
and writers, including Isaac Asimov, claimed the name. These Futurists
were
the spiritual fathers of "hard," or "Old Wave,"
science fiction, but also of a
range of scientific projects which gained inspiration from their
fantasies of
technology. The L5 space station project could not have remained
as high-
profile as it still is today without the support of the science
fiction community.
For more instances of how science fiction and science interconnect,
you need
only grab a copy of The Futurist or Analog Science Fiction. And
to see how
the "hard" science fiction community has supported conservative,
"hawkish"
politics, you need only scan the shelves of your local bookstore
to see all of
the "war in space" series. Interestingly, this type
of military science fiction has
become the primary site for collaborative or shared-world writing
within the
genre.
"Hard" science fiction is frequently quite optimistic
about the future. In
it, art is downplayed so that science and industry can shine.
This should be no
surprise, given the number of "hard" sf writers who
are also scientists. (For
one very recent example, artificial intelligence guru Marvin Minsky
recently
wrote a novel, The Turing Option, with Frederick Pohl. The editors
cut several
chapters from the manuscript, and the authors responded by releasing
them
onto the internet.)
The "Old Wave" was defined as such in opposition to
the more
consciously "artistic" and more technologically pessimistic
writings of the
New Wave. Writers like J. G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick in particular
wrote
about futures where contemporary trends had led to disastrous
ends. These
future worlds were full of environmental degradation, corporate
control,
information technologies run amuck, drugs, crime, poverty in the
sprawling
cities. The New Wave has been criticize, perhaps justly, for its
rather extreme
technophobia and Luddite tendencies. But we can certainly make
sense of
these responses to technological change in an era of moon shots
and Southeast
Asian "actions." And some of the stories speak powerfully
to the equally
extreme technophilia of the various futurisms. Ballard's Crash
might be read
as a lengthy deconstruction of the auto-erotica (á la Marinetti)
of
contemporary culture.
In the eighties, however, a movement appeared which confused any
easy
separation of technophobia and technophilia, or of artistic presentation
and
hard science. Cyberpunk combined a fascination with technology,
or at least
an acknowledgment that it isn't going away, with an interest in
the kind of
dark, writerly stories that Dick and Ballard had written. The
cyberpunks were
not particularly tied to either the computer industry or the hacker
underground, but they staked out their territory in the future
of the human-
machine interface. There are some wonderful ironies here. William
Gibson
wrote Neuromancer, the ur-text of cyberpunk, on typewriter(!)
and was
basically computer-illiterate at the time, but his notion of "cyberspace"
has
been one of the primary inspirations of the virtual reality industry.
Cyberpunk infused hard science fiction with youth and attitude,
as well as
a strong dose of avant garde posturing. Bruce Sterling's early
in-your-face
work in the `zine Cheap Truth was very much in the tradition of
Marinetti. in
fact, if we had to find a word to describe what Sterling (writing
as Vincent
Omniveritus) objected to in the status quo of science fiction,
passeism (the
great enemy of Futurism) might serve as well as any.
Cyberpunk has been a very hot topic among academics recently,
but there
has yet to be much real critical analysis performed. Part of the
reason is
undoubtedly the difficulty of isolating a meaningful genre within
the rapidly
shifting field of commercial science fiction. A tremendous amount
of
bandwidth is expected daily on the Internet, endlessly debating
precisely this
topic, and there is nothing like a consensus on what "cyberpunk"
means. But
the larger problem is that, even if you succeed in isolating something
like a
meaningful sample, you're likely to find that cyberpunk is almost
hopelessly
conflicted. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. may have come fairly close
to hitting
the nail on the head, though, when he called Gibson "The
Sentimental
Futurist." As Csicsery-Ronay points out, the cyberpunks seem
to deal equally
with estrangement and engagement.[14]
The ambiguity becomes even more pronounced when we leave the realm
of written texts and enter that of performance. Survival Research
Laboratories
may be the ultimate contemporary expression of industrial art.
The San
Francisco-based performance group presents shows where groups
of machines
of various types battle, and frequently destroy, one another and
batter
elaborate scenery into twisted , smoking rubble. The machines
are a diverse
lot, constructed primarily from stolen industrial supplies and
equipment
("obtainium") and bits of roadkilled or butchered animal
flesh, and the
performances vary as well - but the emphasis is always on conflict.
On stage,
big machines smash (hammer, shoot with exploding darts, squeeze,
grind,
spray with flame, run over, etc...) smaller, weaker machines.
"Wounded"
machines limp, spin, crawl, or are dragged across the scene. Machines
menace
the audience, spraying flames toward the crowd, who are also frequently
the
target of the "sonic cannon," which can break glass
with concussive force. The
air is filled with smoke, noise, flame, projectiles, and broken
glass.
Occasionally, a spectator is injured or property is damaged.
Founder Mark Pauline is vague about the meanings and purposes
of
SRL's shows. It is clear that part of his purpose is just to "freak
people out."
But he also talks frequently about the warnings in his shows.
These spectacles
of "controlled" destruction point toward the greater
destructions that
constantly menace us, in the forms of nuclear and chemical weapons.
SRL's
art terrorist actions suggest the possibilities of DIY destruction.
In fact, some
of SRL's equipment was used in defense of squatters in Amsterdam.
When
police came to evict them, the squatters "borrowed"
a smoke machine from
the group, which they used to confuse the government assault.[15]
Actions like this, along with SRL's admitted theft of materials,
push the
art/life boundary in significant ways and raise the stakes in
the appropriation
debate. But SRL's organization as a "research laboratory"
also helps to
deconstruct the workings of the military-industrial complex. As
an
organization devoted to "pure development," they point
to the perils and
follies of Marinetti's emphasis on action, regardless of the consequences.
The
most disturbing thing about watching an SRL performance is that
it is all so
clearly choreographed. The machines are all more-or-less under
control. But
the result looks like chaos, and a dangerous chaos at that - a
prolonged
carcrash, beyond the dreams of Marinetti or even Ballard.
"Back to the Future:" Slovenia's Retro Garde
Finally, no study of contemporary futurisms would be complete
without
at least a glance at Slovenia's Neue Slovenische Kunst.[16] Best
known for the
music of Laibach, the New Slovenian Art Movement is a collection
of artists
working in painting, music, dance, sculpture, architecture, theater
and design.
They were originally devoted to the cause of Slovene independence,
but have
recently focused their attention on the West, particularly America.
They have
been extremely controversial, both at home and abroad, because
they have
appropriated the symbols of totalitarianism, particularly of the
Nazis, for their
performances. Laibach was the German name for Ljubjana, the Slovene
capitol, during the German occupation, and the band has been known
to sport
silver face paint and Nazi SS uniforms in concert. Their first
major tour was
called the "Occupied Europe Tour."
The degree to which the members of NSK actually subscribe to fascist
ideas has become a topic debated nearly as hotly as the definition
of
"cyberpunk." The artists themselves are little help.
They tend to respond to
questions with evasions or provocations. They say they are Nazis
"like Hitler
was a painter." And what little information is made available
in this country
comes through the popular media, where maintaining controversy
is a plus.
However, their work shows a fairly consistent irony that would
suggest
that they are not entirely serious, and they are frequently brilliantly
successful
in their attempts to point out the totalitarianism that exists
within Western
"democracies." They have rerecorded songs by the Beatles,
the Rolling
Stones, and Queen, "liberating" the fascist overtones
of songs like "One
Vision" and "Sympathy for the Devil." "I've
Got a Feeling" is transformed
into something that sounds like the Nuremberg rallies.
We might understand NSK's work as a sort of anti-Futurism that
achieves
its object by an amazingly faithful adherence to the form of the
earlier
movement. The question that we should ask ourselves is not "Are
Laibach
Nazis?" Rather, it is "How are we any different from
that?" This may be the
right sort of question to ask ourselves about Futurism, too. Rather
than simply
dismissing the movement as fascist, we might ask ourselves to
what extent we
are, however unconsciously, in sympathy with its project. That
is the question
that I have been trying to approach in this rather sketchy survey.
And the
answers that I come up with are not terribly reassuring. Perhaps,
however,
reassurance is not what we need most. Perhaps a degree of conscious
discomfort is the best medicine we could prescribe for what ails
us.
III
"Speed and Politics"
May 30, 1993
I'm trying to pull it all together. Throw all the switches at
once. Laibach's
"Opus Dei" is playing on the stereo while SRL's "Will
to Provoke" occupies
my television screen. In the background, my printer slowly delivers
an NSK
interview, found in the remote archive that my computer was connected
to
until a moment or so ago. (And I'm making coffee.)
It's a (post-)Futurist moment, or perhaps a hyper-Futurist one.
Through
speed to simultaneity, with the result that one hardly needs to
move to go fast.
In a multi-channel society, in an information economy, the "speed
of
information" far exceeds that of sound or light. But - and
here is the perfect
Baudrillardian irony - our passion for keeping up tends to lead
to a kind of
dazzled immobility, or to manic channel-changing. We are immersed
in the
datastream and we glean what we can. Bits of data, pixels (thousands
of points
of light) pour from screens, flicker over us until we are (Baudrillardian)
screens, until we flicker in nearly-epileptic state of "rapid
waking" (Virilio).
This is, in some sense, the ideal state for living in contemporary
culture. Even
when we are traveling fast, as in the cockpit of a fighter jet,
our environment
has to be structured to simulate this "flickering,"
reduced to a series of stills.
Otherwise, we are in precisely the state that Baudrillard speculates
upon in
Fatal Strategies. We are hit by the oncoming train before we even
see the light
at the end of the tunnel.
Speed, as such, may be rapidly becoming obsolete in the face of
hyperized forms of velocity, and our fascination with sports cars
and fighter
jets is perhaps only nostalgia for the merely fast. For NSK, Italian
Futurism
provides both a model and material for their own retrogardism.
It has been
repeatedly surpassed, as Marinetti hoped, by younger, stronger,
faster forms.
But we may now be reaching a point at which even the dream of
Futurism, a
dream of acceleration, may be slipping away from us. If that is
so, then what
ecstatic forms of speed - or art, or totalitarianism - are we
rushing toward?
And will we see them before they strike us?
1 Peggy Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution ( ).
2 F. T. Marinetti, Selected Writings (New York: Farrar, Strauss
and Giroux, 1972)
56.
3 Marinetti, 41.
4 Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Moment (Chicago: University of
Chicago, 1986)
xvii-xxiii
5 For example, see Marinetti, Perloff, and Christiana J. Taylor,
Futurism:
Politics, Painting and Performance (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,
1979).
6 Marinetti, 39-40.
7 Marinetti, 39-40.
8 Marinetti, 40.
9 Marinetti, 40-41.
10 Marinetti, 41.
11 Marinetti, 41-42.
12 Marinetti, 94-96
13 Marinetti 43
14 Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, "The Sentimental Futurist,"
Critique 33 (Spring
1992), 221-240.
15 Survival Research Laboratories, The Will to Provoke (New York:
Def
America, 1993) [videotape].
16 See Neue Slovenische Kunst, (Los Angeles: Amok, 1991) for a
collection of
documents and art works by the various branches of NSK.