Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde
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Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch Avant-Gardes in Performance Series Editors Sarah Bay-Cheng, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York Martin Harries, University of California, Irvine Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde: On the Abuse of Technology and Communication By Arndt Niebisch Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde On the Abuse of Technology and Communication Arndt Niebisch Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch media parasites in the early avant-garde Copyright © Arndt Niebisch, 2012. All rights reserved. First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the World, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–1–137–27685–8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Niebisch, Arndt. Media parasites in the early avant-garde : on the abuse of technology and communication / Arndt Niebisch. pages cm ISBN 978–1–137–27685–8 (hardback) 1. Communication and the arts. 2. Technology and the arts. 3. Arts—Experimental methods—History—20th century. I. Title. NX180.C65N54 2012 700.411—dc23 2012024716 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Integra Software Services First edition: December 2012 Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10987654321 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch For Leo Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch This page intentionally left blank Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch Contents List of Illustrations ix Foreword xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction: An Avant-Garde Parasitology 1 1 The Press and the Parasites 17 2 Poetic Media Effects 45 3 Parasitic Media 81 4 Parasitic Noise 109 5 Ether Parasites 143 Conclusion: Odradek and the Future of the Parasite 175 Notes 181 Bibliography 215 Index 225 Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch This page intentionally left blank Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch Illustrations 2.1 The poem “Karawane” from Richard Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanach (1920) 67 2.2 Front page of Der Dada 1 (1919) 71 2.3 “OFFEA” by Raoul Hausmann (1918), Berlinische Galerie 75 2.4 “K’perioum” by Raoul Hausmann (1920), Berlinische Galerie 77 3.1 “Jump” Chronophotograph (1888), College de France 84 3.2 “Suonatore di violoncello” (1913–14) by A. and A. G. Bragaglia 90 3.3 “Dada-Rundschau” (1919) by Hannah Höch, Berlinische Galerie 100 3.4 “Der Dadaist Wieland Herzfelde” by John Heartfield from Der Dada 3 (1920) 104 4.1 Photograph of Russolo and intonarumori from l’arte dei rumori (1916) 113 4.2 “Sveglio di una città” score from l’arte dei rumori (1916) 118 Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch This page intentionally left blank Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch Foreword Despite the many acts of denial and resistance embodied in the phrase “death of the avant-garde,” interest in experimental, innovative, and politically radical performances continues to animate theatre and perfor- mance studies. For all the attacks upon tradition and critical institutions (or perhaps because of them), the historical and subsequent avant-gardes remain critical touchstones for continued research across media and disciplines. We are, it seems, perpetually invested in the new. Avant-Gardes in Performance enables scholarship at the forefront of critical analysis: scholarship that not only illuminates radical performance practices, but also transforms existing critical approaches to those perfor- mances. By engaging with the charged phrase “avant-garde,” the series considers performance practices and events that are formally avant-garde, as defined by experimentation and breaks with traditional structures, practices, and content; historically avant-garde, defined within the global aesthetic movements of the early twentieth century, including mod- ernism and its many global aftermaths; and politically radical, defined by identification with extreme political movements on the right and left alike. Arndt Niebisch’s Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde argues for a renewed understanding of the politics of two of the formative movements in the early historical avant-garde, Futurism and Dada. Niebisch unsettles expectations about form, history, and politics alike by insisting on the importance of media to both of these foundational movements. In this - 2013-09-11 - licensed to npg PalgraveConnect www.palgraveconnect.com material from Copyright context, Futurism and Dada were irritants in media systems that, by refus- ing the straightforward circuit of communication, made the underlying mode of those systems visible: the “noise” of the avant-garde revealed the code underlying all standard communication. As the avant-garde har- nessed available media to its own ends, the medium of media, so to speak, became more readily accessible. The importance of Niebisch’s argument becomes clear in comparison with what remains one of the foundational texts in the study of the 10.1057/9781137276865 - Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde, Arndt Niebisch xii F OREWORD avant-garde, Peter Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde. Bürger argues that the avant-garde’s aim “is to reintegrate art into the praxis of life ...”1 Fur- ther, Bürger claims, the avant-garde attempts “to organize a new life praxis from a basis in art” (49). Niebisch’s emphasis on the avant-garde’s engage- ment with media troubles the divide essential to Bürger’s formulation. Bürger’s Marxist phrase, “praxis of life,” might promise a new order of living undamaged by modern alienation. Niebisch’s focus on media is, however, also at a fundamental level a focus on mediation. If life is lived through newspapers and gramophones, then the renewal of the “praxis of life” cannot happen independent of these media. And what life comes before or after them? In Niebisch’s account, the avant-garde makes the peculiar nature of the mediated nature of modern life distinctly visible. In his introduction Niebisch stresses the avant-garde’s role in what he calls, on the book’s first page, “a synesthetic reeducation of humankind.” Rather than an additional stream in the flows of communication, the force of the avant-garde, here, lies largely in the way it makes the stuff of these codes apparent. The newspaper’s need for news, for example, becomes apparent when the avant-garde uses the newspaper as a forum for nonsense that cannot pass as news. Media Parasites presents the avant- garde in a resolutely social light: far from the formations of self-enclosed coteries, Futurism and Dada here are constantly at work on, and at work with, the growingly dominant mass cultural codes of a common cul- ture. His title announces his central figure to describe this relationship between media and the avant-garde: the parasite. Drawing on the work of Michel Serres, Niebisch rethinks the parasite as a way to theorize the avant-garde’s combination of dependence upon and “irritation” of mass