Pataphysics and Futurist Performance Art

1
Pataphysics and Futurist Performance Art
2
Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry
3
Jarry Centenary
4
1873-1907
5
Ubu Roi 1896
6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8
Belgrade 1964
9
Ubu Rock 1996
10
Big Screen Action Theatre 2003
11
Buchingers Boot Marionettes
12
Armature of the Absolute 2007
13
Pataphysics

• 'Pataphysics deals with "the laws which govern
  exceptions and will explain the universe
  supplementary to this one
• In 'pataphysics, every event in the universe is
  accepted as an extraordinary event.
• "If you let a coin fall and it falls, the next
  time it is just by an infinite coincidence that
  it will fall again the same way hundreds of
  other coins on other hands will follow this
  pattern in an infinitely unimaginable fashion".

14

• After his death, Pablo Picasso, fascinated with
  Jarry, acquired his pistol and wore it on his
  nocturnal expeditions in Paris, and later bought
  many of his manuscripts as well as executing a
  fine drawing of him
• "the science of imaginary solutions, which
  symbolically attributes the properties of
  objects, described by their virtuality, to their
  lineaments" (Gestes et opinions du Docteur
  Faustroll, II, viii). Raymond Queneau has
  described 'pataphysics as resting "on the truth
  of contradictions and exceptions."

15

• works within the 'pataphysical tradition tend to
  focus on the processes of their creation, and
  elements of chance or arbitrary choices are
  frequently key in those processes. Select pieces
  from Marcel Duchamp and John Cage characterize
  this
• Perhaps the most famous mention of 'pataphysics
  remains the Beatles' 1969 song "Maxwell's Silver
  Hammer," from Abbey Road, which mentions Joan, a
  student who "was quizzical/studied 'pataphysical
  science in the home.
• Pataphysics Research Library

16
Futurism

• Futurism emphasized manifesto as a starting
  point.
• The first futurist manifesto (Futrism Manifestors
  and Other Resources Click Here) is by Fillippo
  Tommaso Marinetti, a wealthy poet with a
  flamboyant personal style . It appears in Le
  Figaro, February 1909
• Marinetti lives in Paris from 1893 to 1896 and is
  associated with circles that include Jarry. This
  is when he is introduced to the principles of
  free verse.
• Upon return to Italy, Marinetti produces a play
  with a manifesto introduction starts to create a
  reputation for Marinetti.

17
(No Transcript)
18
Political, Idealist and Nationalist

• Italy politically unstable. Marinetti recognized
  the possibilities of utilizing the public unrest
  and of marrying Futurist ideas for reform in the
  arts with the current stirrings of nationalism
  and colonialism. (Goldberg 13)
• First Futurist evening in Trieste January 12,
  1910. Future Futurist evenings watched by large
  battalions of Austrian police.

19
Futrist Manifesto 1913
20
Painters become Performers

• Marinetti organizes painters, especially from
  around Milan, to join the cause of Futurism. The
  major figures include Umberto Boccioni, Carlo
  Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, and Giacomo
  Balla.
• Performances center on their evenings which are
  wild and provocative variety shows in which
  distinctions between actors and audience were
  sometimes obliterated. (Leslie Satin, Valentine
  de Saint-Point

21

• Michael Kirby says that futurist performances
  were a general call to arms against all
  existing institutions including art.
• Futurists tended to glorify war and violence.
• Many of the futurists became eventually, and some
  permanently, facists.
• Futurism tended toward antimaterialism and
  anti-bourgeois but responding with a heightened
  irrationality instead of economic/class analysis.

22
Gino Serini Elasticity 1912
23
Gino Severini Unique Forms of Continuity in
Space 1913
24
Balla in Futurist Suit
25
Futurist Walking Sticks
26
Burlyk in Futurist Costume
27
Carlo Carrà
28
Umberto Boccioni Self Portrait 1906
29
Boccioni at Work
30
Giacomo Balla
31
Streetlight 1910
32
Luigi Russolo 1885-1947
33
Intonation Instruments 1913The Art of Noise
34
Futurist suit worn by free-word poet Francesco
Cangiullo during demonstrations 1914
35
Futurist Ballet
36
Anna Banana recreates Futurist Performance
37
Valentine de Saint Point

• A liberated figure of feminist emancipation
  during the early Avant-Garde.
• A model for Rodin in 1904, through a liason with
  the art critic Canudo becomes involved in
  Futurism. She writes poems, novels, paints and
  creates original dance. She conceives of a
  feminist theater and writes her Manifesto for the
  Futurist Woman as an answer to what she sees as
  Marinettis misogyny. She also writes the
  Futurist Manifesto of Lust.

38
Dynamism of a Dancerby Gino Serivini 1912
39
Borrowing from Symbolism

• According to Leslie Satin, Valentine de
  Saint-Points performances were an amalgam of
  various styles and approaches including a number
  of borrowings from symbolism including
  depersonalization of the performer,
  interrelationship of the senses, emphasis on
  mystery and atmosphere, interest in geometric
  symbols, light and shadow, and emptying out of
  the performance space.

40

• Nancy Locke feels that Saint-Pointe revolve
  around the assumption that the paths of womens
  power are made, almost exclusively through the
  channels of sexuality.
• Individuals must dissolve themselves into the
  expression of the crowd.
• The crowd (multitude-one) possesses an admirable
  energy that needed to be harnessed by the artist.
• Males confuse admiration with desire.
• Society divides into femininity and masculinity,
  not into women and men.

41
Her Beautiful Theory

• Her beautiful theory that part of action that
  is gesture, that part of music that is song, that
  part of line that is pictorial, and that part of
  movement that is dance. ..that which is beyond
  dancing. she told Djuna Barnes

42
Symposium in New York 2009
43
Loie Fuller
44
(No Transcript)
45
Isadora Duncan
46
(No Transcript)