Futurism and the Technological Imagination

398 Pages·2009·32.31 MB·English

by  Günter Berghaus (ed.)

Futurism and the
technological
imagination
aVant-garde
critical studies
24
editor
Klaus Beekman
associate editors
sophie Berrebi, Ben rebel,
Jan de Vries, Willem g. Weststeijn
international advisory Board
henri Béhar, hubert van den Berg,
Peter Bürger, ralf grüttemeier,
hilde heinen, leigh landy
Founding editor
Fernand drijkoningen†
Futurism and the
technological
imagination
edited by
günter Berghaus
amsterdam - new York, nY 2009
Cover illustration: Enrico Prampolini, “Il pilota dell’infinito”, 1932, olio
su tavola, 116 x 90 cm. Courtesy of Massimo Prampolini and Collezione
massimo carpi.
cover design: aart Jan Bergshoeff
All titles in the Avant-Garde Critical Studies series (from 1999 onwards)
are available to download from the ingenta website http://www.ingenta.com
the paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “iso
9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2747-3
e-Book isBn: 978-90-420-2748-0
editions rodopi B.V., amsterdam - new York, nY 2009
Printed in the netherlands
Contents

Editor’s Foreword vii

Günter Berghaus
Futurism and the Technological Imagination Poised between
Machine Cult and Machine Angst 1

Domenico Pietropaolo
Science and the Aesthetics of Geometric Splendour
in Italian Futurism 41

Serge Milan
The ‘Futurist Sensibility’: An Anti-philosophy for the
Age of Technology 63

Roger Griffin
The Multiplication of Man: Futurism’s Technolatry
Viewed Through the Lens of Modernism 77

Vera Castiglione
A Futurist before Futurism: Émile Verhaeren and the
Technological Epic 101

Patrizia Veroli
Loie Fuller’s Serpentine Dance and Futurism:
Electricity, Technological Imagination and the Myth
of the Machine 125

Maria Elena Versari
Futurist Machine Art, Constructivism and the Moder-
nity of Mechanization 149
vi Contents
Gerardo Regnani
Futurism and Photography: Between Scientific Inquiry
and Aesthetic Imagination
177
Wanda Strauven
Futurist Poetics and the Cinematic Imagination:
Marinetti’s Cinema without Films 201

Margaret Fisher
Futurism and Radio 229

Matteo D'Ambrosio
From Words-in-Freedom to Electronic Literature:
Futurism and the Neo-Avantgarde 263

Michelangelo Sabatino
Tabula rasa or Hybridity? Primitivism and the Vernac-
ular in Futurist and Rationalist Architecture 287

Pierpaolo Antonello
Beyond Futurism: Bruno Munari’s Useless Machines 315

Marja Härmänmaa
Futurism and Nature: The Death of the Great Pan? 337

Illustrations 361
Abstracts 367
Notes on Contributors 373
Index 379
Editor’s Foreword

This collection of essays results from a workshop held on 29 July
2008 in Helsinki under the auspices of the International Society for
the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI). It contains a number of re-
written conference contributions as well as several specially
commissioned essays to round off the volume. Together, they address
a variety of aspects of the Futurists’ relationship to technology both on
an ideological level and with regard to their artistic endeavours.

The rapid unfolding of science and technology in the wake of the
Industrial Revolution rang in the Age of Modernity, characterized not
only by an awe-inspiring transformation of our physical environment
but also by a whole range of apparatuses that allowed reality to be
perceived and experienced in a novel manner. This, in turn, led to the
birth of several artistic schools and movements that sought to interpret
and convey the essence of this new and rapidly changing world.

Some of the most remarkable examples of the technological
imagination in arts and literature were offered by the Futurist
movement. It was founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a
man who ever since his first visit to Paris, in 1894, had been
fascinated by the dizzying pace of modern life. He therefore aspired to
renovate the form and content of arts and literature and turn them into
suitable vehicles of expression in the Era of the Machine. The
glorification of technology became a salient feature of many of his
manifestos and thus of Futurism as a cultural phenomenon. The artists
who joined the movement made use of the changed forms of
communication, incorporated the break-up of the conventional time-
space nexus in their works, and sought to express the spirit of
modernity by way of entirely new and experimental works of art.

However, during the First World War, the negative and threatening
features of technology became more and more apparent. In the 1920s,
this gave rise to a Futurist “machine angst” (angoscia delle macchine),
and a variety of attempts to merge organic and mechanical
technologies, culminating, in the 1930s, in a Futurist Naturist
movement and the proclamation of a specifically Futurist spirituality.
viii Editor’s Foreword
As many scholars in the past had focussed their attention on
Futurist’ technophilia and modernolatry, our Helsinki meeting sought
to broaden the picture by also examining the flipside of the coin. In
fact it was largely due to Marja Härmänmaa, who had analysed the
neglected features of secondo futurismo in her pioneering study, Un
patriota che sfidò la decadenza: F. T. Marinetti e l'idea dell'uomo
nuovo fascista, 1929-1944 (2000), that this workshop came about. I
had suggested to her in 2005 to organize a symposium on the later
phase of the Futurist movement. When, in 2007, she persuaded ISSEI
to hold their 2008 congress in Helsinki on the topic of “Language and
the Scientific Imagination”, an ideal framework had been set in place
for our workshop.

I should like to express my sincerest gratitude to Marja
Härmänmaa, Ezra Talmor and Rachel Ben-David for having made our
symposium possible. The Helsinki event will be remembered by all
participants for its intellectual stimulation, convivial gatherings and
culinary indulgences.

Unfortunately, not every presentation given at our conference
could be included in this volume. I extend my warmest thanks to all
delegates who participated in our debates with papers and improvised
interventions, and to all other colleagues who subsequently submitted
essays for this volume.

I hope that what has been selected here amounts to a balanced and
multifaceted account of the Futurist technological imagination, and
will be considered a useful contribution to the 2009 centenary of
Futurism.

Günter Berghaus
28 July 2009
Futurism and the Technological Imagination
Poised between Machine Cult and Machine Angst

Günter Berghaus

Abstract: This chapter deals with some of the great changes that affected Italy during
the ‘second Industrial revolution’, especially in the fields of transportation and
communication. It shows how Marinetti experienced the first stages of
industrialization in Italy, discusses some of his proto-Futurist visions of life and art in
the machine age, and surveys his theoretical writings on technology and on a Futurist
art and literature of the machine age. Marinetti repeatedly defined Futurism as a
movement that was committed to ‘the enthusiastic glorification of scientific
discoveries and modern machines’ (Marinetti 2005: 105). However, it would be
unwise to take it for granted that Marinetti’s attitude was identical with that of other
Futurists, as many of them possessed viewpoints that were different from those of the
movement’s leader. Similarly, it would be imprudent to assume that in the course of
thirty years Futurism remained a stable and unchanging entity. For this reason, I shall
outline in this chapter not only those trends that occupied a dominant position in
Futurism’s long history, but also some of the dissenting voices that came from within
the movement. I shall point out some contradictions in Marinetti’s own ideology of
the machine and discuss developments in the second and third phase of Futurism that
demonstrate that some of the sceptical views on modernity that were a mere
undercurrent in the years 1909-1915 became a major and significant aspect of
Futurism in its later years of its existence. Thus, this chapter will investigate to what
degree the Futurist machine cult was tempered by an underlying machine angst and
suggest that Futurist attitudes towards an industrialized society were more complex
and contradictory than appears at first sight.

‘The essence of technology is not itself something technological’
(Heidegger 1985: 13)

The advent of the Age of Mobility in Italy

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti had been brought up in Egypt in
accordance with religious and philosophical principles that belonged
to a pre-industrial age. When, as an adolescent, he came to Europe, he
discovered a new world. He marvelled at the wonders of technology
displayed in Paris and in the capitals of other industrialized countries.
However, when he visited the land of his forefathers he could not fail
2 Günter Berghaus
to notice that, in comparison, Italy lagged far behind the most
advanced nations and was still an under-developed, backward country.
It is ironic that the peninsula, which in the early modern period had
been economically at the forefront of European developments, had
fallen far behind in the era of the Industrial Revolution. It was only
after Unification (1861) that the industrialization of Italy began to take
off, especially in Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and the Veneto, i.e.
those regions which had long been integrated into central Europe’s
economy and were therefore more able to adapt to the new realities of
the Industrial Age (Gerschenkron 1962; Caracciolo 1963; Clough
1964; Toniolo 1973; Federico 1994; Giannetti 1998). The years 1896-
1908 were a period of unprecedented economic growth and
development, especially in the new chemical, electrical, petrochemical
and steel industries, as well as in the production of mass consumer
goods and the new means of communication and transportation. It also
provided the population with hitherto unknown comforts and
amenities, such as spacious and well-heated dwellings provided with
gas and water supply, sewage systems, electrical power and telephone
connections. Expanding educational facilities improved literacy and
changed people’s perceptions of themselves and of the world around
them.
Italy, like the rest of Europe, entered into the Age of Mobility.
Railway networks, which had begun rather modestly in the late
1830s,1 grew by the time of Unification to 1,632 km (transporting over
1.2 mill. passengers), expanded to 16,053 km by 1896 and transported
more than 2.8 mill. passengers in 1903 (Crispo 1940; Clough 1964:
26-28, 66-71; Briano 1977). There were years, when half of the
State’s infrastructure budget was allocated to railway construction and
75 per cent of public-works funds were invested in vast transportation
schemes (Schram 1997:3).2 Magnificent railway stations were erected
in every city – described, again and again, as ‘modern cathedrals of

1 The first Italian railway line, between Naples and Portici, was inaugurated on 3
October 1839, nine years after the world's first inter-city railway between Liverpool
and Manchester.
2 However, recent research has suggested that the economic benefit of Italy’s railway
system was much less than generally assumed. Given the length of Italian coastlines,
shipping always remained a significant means of transportation. Even in the regions
with the most dynamic economies, the length of railways and the density of traffic
on them always remained way below those of the economically more advanced
nations in Europe. See Schram 1997: 70 and 152-164.