from Apollonio, Umbro ed. Documents of 20th Century Art: Futurist Manifestos. Brain, Robert; RW Flint, JC Higgitt, and Caroline Tisdall, trans. New York: Viking Press, 1973. 19-24
The Founding Manifesto of Futurism – F.T. Marinetti
“‘Let’s go!’ I said, ‘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 at the gates of life, test the bolts and hinges. Lets 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!”
“We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness”
“The poet must spend himself with ardor, splendor and generosity, to swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements”
“But I don’t admit that our sorrows, our fragile courage, our morbid restlessness should be given a daily conducted tour through the museums. Why poison ourselves? Why rot? Ans what is there to see in an old picture except the laborious contortions of an artist throwing himself against the barriers that thwart his desire to express his dream completely?… Admiring an old picture is the same as pouring our sensibility into a funerary urn instead of hurtling it far off, in violent spasms of action and creation”
“Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice”
“Erect on the summit of the world, once again we hurl defiance to the stars!”
I think the value of the Futurist Manifesto is its relationship to technology change. In the manifesto on the whole (written in 1909), you find an abiding faith in technology as the path to overcoming old prejudices, and as a force that totally re-orients the role of art in society. From this document, I get the sense that Futurism is concerned with developing authentic experience in technological society – a task undertaken with both optimism and fear regarding industrial technology. I think there are three potential lessons from the Futurist Manifesto for thinking about how to win:
Create with an eye to ‘base’ human emotions, understanding the position of technology in producing human desire.
Don’t venerate past strategies – even though the Futurists might be a little overzealous on this question, their recognition that industrial technology transforms social spaces must be taken to heart.
Technology/industry doesn’t always spell the decline of human emotion or authenticity. The futurists look for the new productive forces unleashed in industrial capital, rather than merely for the decline of old ones.
Futurism
from Apollonio, Umbro ed. Documents of 20th Century Art: Futurist Manifestos. Brain, Robert; RW Flint, JC Higgitt, and Caroline Tisdall, trans. New York: Viking Press, 1973. 19-24
The Founding Manifesto of Futurism – F.T. Marinetti
“‘Let’s go!’ I said, ‘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 at the gates of life, test the bolts and hinges. Lets 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!”
“We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness”
“The poet must spend himself with ardor, splendor and generosity, to swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements”
“But I don’t admit that our sorrows, our fragile courage, our morbid restlessness should be given a daily conducted tour through the museums. Why poison ourselves? Why rot? Ans what is there to see in an old picture except the laborious contortions of an artist throwing himself against the barriers that thwart his desire to express his dream completely?… Admiring an old picture is the same as pouring our sensibility into a funerary urn instead of hurtling it far off, in violent spasms of action and creation”
“Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice”
“Erect on the summit of the world, once again we hurl defiance to the stars!”
I think the value of the Futurist Manifesto is its relationship to technology change. In the manifesto on the whole (written in 1909), you find an abiding faith in technology as the path to overcoming old prejudices, and as a force that totally re-orients the role of art in society. From this document, I get the sense that Futurism is concerned with developing authentic experience in technological society – a task undertaken with both optimism and fear regarding industrial technology. I think there are three potential lessons from the Futurist Manifesto for thinking about how to win:
Create with an eye to ‘base’ human emotions, understanding the position of technology in producing human desire.
Don’t venerate past strategies – even though the Futurists might be a little overzealous on this question, their recognition that industrial technology transforms social spaces must be taken to heart.
Technology/industry doesn’t always spell the decline of human emotion or authenticity. The futurists look for the new productive forces unleashed in industrial capital, rather than merely for the decline of old ones.