Movement and Time in the Nexus between Technological Modes with Jean Tinguely’s Kineticism

Christina Chau

doi:10.3390/arts3040394

Abstract

This paper addresses auto-destructive artworks by Jean Tinguely, Homage to New York (1960) and Study for an End of the World No. 2 (1962), to explore a changing consciousness of time in a period of technological transition from modern industrial machines towards the domestication of televisual devices. One effect of these is works is a contribution to a turbulent consciousness of time by orchestrating new perceptions of temporality with mechanical and tele-communicational media. Tinguely’s kineticism is useful for articulating how different technologies can be used to rationalize time in different ways and highlight an incompatibility between the expression of time as an unfolding duration with mechanical media, and the temporal demands of televisual broadcast media.

Highlights

The 1960s is marked as a key decade that grappled with technological, social, and political transition and has been described as a “turbulent era” [1], which experienced a “peculiar form of acceleration” [2] (p. 99)
The shift towards expressing temporality through kinetic dynamism is another indication of the technological change and new means for conceiving and experiencing time in the everyday, in a manner that differs from modern industrial conceptions and practices of time
The spectacle that Tinguely orchestrates in A Study for an End of the World II differs from Homage to New York because of the conflicting time schedules that the later performance was subjected to

Summary

Introduction

The 1960s is marked as a key decade that grappled with technological, social, and political transition and has been described as a “turbulent era” [1] (pp. x), which experienced a “peculiar form of acceleration” [2] (p. 99). While Tinguely’s early kinetic performances Homage to New York (1960) and A Study for an End of the World (1961/1962) are often addressed as critiques of capitalist production and consumption [8], in this paper I will highlight these auto-destructive works as performances that orchestrate specific experiences that draw out and make viewers sensitive to the unfolding of duration In both works, Tinguely brings an awareness of the passing present to the fore, and problematizes. Tinguely’s use and manipulation of movement in these works indicates a desire to explore the changing conceptions of time that emerged through the experimentation of the new technological media that emerged after World War II These destructive mechanical performances present the potentiality for exploring the incompatible rationalizations of time between modern industrial and telecommunication technologies. Tinguely’s work explored the capacity for kinetic art to present nuances between different technological rationalizations of temporality, as well as a means of bringing awareness to, expanding, and complicating the perceptions of duration

Against Duration

Orchestrating Time

Conclusions