Futurism Transformed the Art World by Worshipping Technology (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Futurism Transformed the Art World by Worshipping Technology (2014)

theverge.com

33 pointslermontov6 comments

It's easy to discard the futurist movement on the basis of its relationship with fascism. Here in Italy it happens all the time. When such skewed filter is removed, futurism appears as the embodiment of a troubled and exciting phase, one of those moments in history in which huge changes were in the making and tradition was a burden to leave behind. One could also imagine Marinetti's disappointment about yesterday's heroic future turning into today's dull present, in which technology often works against humanity rather than empowering it. His faith in the technological future clashes badly with today's permanent fear and the consequent recrudescence of religion and stale tradition.

From reading the Futurist Manifesto, at least, I’m not sure how separable they really are. The vision of this break with tradition was, from inception, a vision of violence that would trample many underfoot, including those who wrote the manifesto, and this was pitched as a good and gratifying thing at the heart of the movement.

An excerpt, perhaps?

https://www.italianfuturism.org/manifestos/foundingmanifesto...

“The oldest of us is thirty: so we have at least a decade for finishing our work. When we are forty, other younger and stronger men will probably throw us in the wastebasket like useless manuscripts—we want it to happen!

...

They’ll storm around us, panting with scorn and anguish, and all of them, exasperated by our proud daring, will hurtle to kill us, driven by a hatred the more implacable the more their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us.

Injustice, strong and sane, will break out radiantly in their eyes.

Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice.”

It’s not a surprise the movement was friendly with fascism. I could point to other parts celebrating war as hygiene, perhaps, as well.

This is exactly right. The Futurist's love of technology is brought up a lot as a positive aspect, but it's important to contextualize their notion of technology.

From the manifesto: "We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice."

The internet is not a technology they would have cared about, and in fact, runs pretty counter to their values. When they say technology, they mean machinery.

As much as Futurists did want to shape reality rather than describe it, their best contribution was the description of such troubled yet somehow exciting times. The manifesto is from 1909, fascism yet to come. The tension in the form and language reflects the subterranean conflicts of the time. WW1 was around the corner. Even though many futurists were absorbed by fascism (not foreseeing how far the violent charlatans that ran it, were from their ideal), their art still is valuable as a testimony, a narration. For this it has a beauty of its own: it carries intact, a powerful message from a time long gone.

There are other much more interesting futurist-type movements, like:

Russian Cosmism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism

The Bauhaus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus (not sure if the Bauhaus is "futurism" but I sort of feel like it fits under that umbrella)

Timothy Leary's Futurism: https://www.futureconscience.com/smi2le-the-futurism-of-timo...

The Whole Earth Catalog: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Catalog

There was a whole lot of futurism in the 1960s psychedelic-era counterculture. It was not all "back to the land" luddite stuff. In fact I associate that stuff more with the 1970s and the New Age movement that came later. Of course then there's eco-futurism that actually blends back to the land tropes with high-tech futurist tropes, which can get really interesting too.

I don't like Italian futurism at all, though it did create a bit of interesting aesthetic work. It's a very nihilistic fascist sort of futurism. I've seen an echo of it in the nihilistic accelerationist fascism that's adjacent to the "alt-right" (or whatever it's called this week) movements of the past decade. I get the sense that some of these people advocate fascism because it is awful, because they're angry nihilists who want to burn the world down.

For more elaboration on this line of thinking (I'm fairly certain that the author of this piece has read it) I really love Stephen Kern's The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918. The prose still gives me goosebumps.

Here's a PDF of the first few chapters: https://monoskop.org/images/e/ea/Kern_Stephen_The_Culture_of...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com