Servicenavigation

Project Details

Back

Projekt Print View

Artifacts of the Avant-Gardes 1885–2015

Subject Area General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Term from 2018 to 2024
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 406120086
 
Final Report Year 2023

Final Report Abstract

The research project, jointly conducted at the FU Berlin and the FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, collected, mapped and researched previously unpublished, largely unnoticed, marginalized or unknown works of the 'avant-gardes of the avant-gardes', thus inscribing them in literary history and making them accessible for further research. Among the objects of investigation were historical art and text artifacts made of paper as well as their latest digital transformations: books, collages, poster poems, lettered and painted cards, envelopes, albums and fans, automatic writing machines, text machines, animated writing-image composites, digital-analog media hybrids, poorly made books, all of which historically originate from the margins of the classical avant-gardes, i.e., precede or follow them. The broadly defined period of investigation from 1885 to 2015 made it possible to create a new kind of literary historiography of objects across historical, geographical, and linguistic boundaries, which describes the objects as precursors or conceptual continuations of the historical avant-garde – whereby the notion of avant-garde also took into account the transgressive character of these objects, i.e., their transcending of media and genres. Another guiding idea was the consideration that, apart from manifestos and other programmatic texts, avant-garde procedures and poetics can be traced in the particular objects themselves, which can accordingly also be grasped historically and systematically as 'artifacts of the avant-gardes'. Accordingly, in all three subprojects – dedictated to 1) the early paper objects since the 1880s (Stéphane Mallarmé, Stefan George, Josef Albers), 2) the text machines of a first computer age of art and literature in the 1960s (Nanni Balestrini, Raymond Queneau, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Oskar Pastior) as well as 3) the print-on-demand publishing practices of the immediate present (Hannes Bajohr, Kathrin Passig, James Bridle, Joachim Schmid, David Horvitz, Danny Snelson, Vanessa Place, paula roush, Silvio Lorusso et al. ) – a novel use of objects and materials could be observed, the status of which was also redefined and reflected upon in the artifacts themselves and in accompanying writings. The archival, descriptive, contextualizing, and interpretive work on the concrete objects resulted in 1) a first translation of Mallarmé's Vers de circonstance that will be published in time for the 125th anniversary of the poet’s death, 2) a completed and already published doctoral thesis and 3) a collection of artistic print-on-demand publications, the first in Germany, which is accessible as a web archive, a special collection in the Bavarian State Library, a printed catalog, and an exhibition in the German National Library.

Publications

 
 

Additional Information

© 2025 DFG Disclaimer / Copyright / Privacy Policy

Textvergrößerung und Kontrastanpassung