Abstract
The present article seeks to show that, for the Dadaists, film was an unsatisfying medium because as a technically reproduced artifact it counteracted Dada’s sense of immediacy. The focus of my text revolves around the notion of “facticity” inspired by Wieland Herzfelde, for whom Dada represented a reaction to all attempts at disavowing the “factual.” Manifestations of Dada, such as the readymade, live performance, collage, photomontage and not least the photogram, attest to a radically new understanding of realism in art, adhering to an “anti-mimetic concept of realism” (Elsaesser). As I will argue, Dada did not capitulate to film, but made a ‘compromise,’ by exploring different strategies to reinsert the “factual“ into this medium of reproduction. This could be done by (1) turning a screening into a live performance, (2) eliciting a bodily reaction in the spectator, (3) experimenting with hand-made, camera-less devices of film making, and (4) calling to mind the material existence of the cinematic apparatus. What these strategies have in common is to minimalize (although not necessarily to abolish) the distance between “reality” and its representation in order to maintain film’s initial tactility, as described by Walter Benjamin in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Man Ray’s Le Retour à la raison (1923) and Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic cinéma (1924–26) are prototypes of the Dadaist ‘compromise.’ A similar impetus can be found in a more recent example, Dream Work (2001), the third part of Peter Tscherkassky’s CinemaScope-Trilogy, which explicitly refers to the early days of French experimental film. What these three films, despite their differences, have in common, is to privilege a certain immediacy (be it during the moment of production or during the moment of reception) and to include an element of tactility, usually absent from cinematic works.
Highlights
In his seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin drew an analogy between the Dadaist artwork and the film medium
To maintain the physicality of the first cinema audiences, the Dadaist film projection had to take on the character of a happening, which leads Elsaesser (1996, 19) to conclude that “[n]ot the [f]ilm, [b]ut the [p]erformance is Dada”
It is precisely here that Dada makes its point by proving that the principle of realism can be retained within an anti-mimetic approach (Elsaesser’s “anti-mimetic concept of realism”)
Summary
In his seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin drew an analogy between the Dadaist artwork and the film medium. Eine alternative Genealogie der Filmavantgarde (2010), entitled “Gegen die ‘Verleugnungsversuche des Tatsächlichen.’ Man Rays Le Retour à la raison (1923), Marcel Duchamps Anémic cinéma (1926), Peter Tscherkasskys Dream Work (2001)”.
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