Pataphysics and Futurist Performance Art

Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry

Jarry Centenary

1873-1907

Ubu Roi 1896

Belgrade 1964

Ubu Rock 1996

Big Screen Action Theatre 2003

Buchinger’s Boot Marionettes

Armature of the Absolute 2007

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".

• 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."

• 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

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.

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.

Futrist Manifesto 1913

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

• 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.

Gino Serini Elasticity 1912

Gino Severini Unique Forms of Continuity in Space

1913

Balla in Futurist Suit

Futurist Walking Sticks

Burlyk in Futurist Costume

Carlo Carrà

Umberto Boccioni Self Portrait 1906

Boccioni at Work

Giacomo Balla

Streetlight 1910

Luigi Russolo 1885-1947

Intonation Instruments 1913The Art of Noise

Futurist suit worn by free-word poet Francesco Cangiullo during

demonstrations 1914

Futurist Ballet

Anna Banana recreates Futurist Performance

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 Marinetti’s misogyny. She also writes the Futurist Manifesto of Lust.

Dynamism of a Dancerby Gino Serivini 1912

Borrowing from Symbolism

• According to Leslie Satin, Valentine de Saint-Point’s 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.

• Nancy Locke feels that Saint-Pointe revolve around the assumption that the paths of women’s 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.

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

Symposium in New York 2009

Loie Fuller

Isadora Duncan