RE: [microsound] art of noise

["Klaus Oldanburg [tm]" <diskono@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think all the Frans was originally implying was that the politics of the
futurists leaned a _little_ too far to the right for comfort. You could say
at the time (1910-1930) right wing or proto-fascist ideas had a certain
"intellectual value" which made them attractive to "thinkers", artists and
poets of the time. It is stupid to tar them as fascists, though the
futurists could be seen in retrospect to be contributing to a general right
wing undercurrent of thought in those times.

For me, the only real aspect of the work of futurists that possibly links
them to fascism was their interest in war & militarism, the nazis based
their ideology upon a distorted version of Darwin's "survival of the
fittest" the Futurists talked about "war as hygiene". As any student of
politics will know militarism, along with expansionism, suppression of
competition, idol worship, authoritarianism and linguistic / cultural /
legal or political nationalism (sounds like a modern corporation) are *all*
elements that got into defining a system as "fascist". Talking about fascism
as being about "superior beings" is simply reductionism. There are many
forces at play here.

Also I don't really see the connection between futurists and anarchism, not
in a political sense anyway, dada was much closer to anarchism, Tzara
publicly denounced the futurists for their "stupid interest in war". Also
another important thing I think is that this whole discourse takes place in
time when democracy (in the modern sense) itself was a new idea in most of
Europe.

I think what this makes clear is no work of art is ever "innocent". Maybe
something to think about next time you see a futurist painting in an art
exhibition.

Frances Lengel
http://www.onoksid.freeserve.co.uk