Futurism

Comrades, we tell you now that the triumphant progress of science makes profound changes in humanity inevitable, changes which are hacking an abyss between those docile slaves of past tradition and us free moderns, who are confident in the radiant splendour of our future
(Boccioni, et. al., 1973:24-5)

Luigi Russolo (1913). Dynamism of an automobile.


Futurism, first proclaimed by Marinetti in the Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, 1909 (2008) on the front page of La Figaro, was a wild and poetic acclamation of the new world of science and technology, which chimed with other aspects of modernism’s faith in progress and the construction of technological utopia. In Italy the Futurist revolution became incorporated into fascism, whilst in Russia a similar movement of Futurists and Constructivists was communist.


But, it was not simply that science and technology would make the world better. Marinetti had had a key insight (see his 1913 manifesto, Destruction of Syntax - Imagination without Strings - Words-in-Freedom) (1973:95-106) that this new world of speed would transform people's very psyche (an insight later taken up by Marshall McLuhan (2001):

Futurism is grounded in the complete renewal of human sensibility brought about by the great discoveries of science. Those people who today make use of the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the train, the bicycle, the motorcycle, the automobile, the ocean liner, the dirigible, the aeroplane, the cinema, the great newspaper (synthesis of a day in the world’s life) do not realize that these various means of communication, transportation and information have a decisive influence on their psyches. (Marinetti, 1913, cited in Apollonio, 1973, 96)

Tuesday's seminar will include an exploration of Italian Futurism in the context of modernism and the avant-garde and its relation to McLuhan's notion of 'media'.



Bibliography
Boccioni, U., Carra, C., Russolo, L., Balla, G., & Severini, G., (1973) Manifesto of the Futurist painters 1910. In: Apollonio, U.(ed.) Futurist manifestos. London: Thames and Hudson
Marinetti, F.T. (1973) Destruction of Syntax - Imagination without Strings - Words-in-Freedom. In: Apollonio, U.(ed.) Futurist manifestos. London: Thames and Hudson, Pp. 95-106
Marinetti FT. (2008) The Futurist manifesto. (First published 1909). http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html (Accessed Jan 13, 2011)McLuhan, M. (2001). Understanding media: the extensions of man. London: Routledge Classics