Aesthetic tricks as a means of political emancipation

The project investigates a central phenomenon of modernity, which also extends into postmodernity but here acquires several new assessments. This phenomenon is present in the practices of various avant-garde movements in the 20th century which use certain aesthetic tactics - such as montage, alienation or parody - in order to refresh a perception that has become neutralised by force of habit, to free oneself of "false" ideologies and to gain a "truer" or "more emancipated" view of things. Such diverse movements such as the Dadaists, the surrealists, the situationists, the expanded cinema or the "punks" are proponents of this practice. Within this larger framework, the present project as such comprises two specific goals. The first is to write a genealogy of the claim that the aesthetic trick of montage, alienation and parody has a political effect and to complete a history of the application of this "thesis" in the 20th century, with three social groups being selected for a detailed analysis: the Dadaist film and exhibition practices of the 1910s and 1920s; the Expanded-Cinema-Movement of the 1960s and 1970s in Vienna; art-collectives such as FIA, ŠKART, OTPOR, LedArt and Magnet in the territories of former Yugoslavia during the wars (1989-2000). In each of these case studies the focus is not on isolated aesthetic procedures but on the examination of a close network between these groups and wider social movements and their social milieus - for example the relation of the Dadaist groups with the anarchist movement or the connections between expanded cinema and the cineaste and student movements of the 60s and 70s. The second objective is to explain the permanence of the appearance of these politically oriented avant-garde practices in the context of a history of the transformations of perception since the 19th century. The project thus explains the massive presence of avant-garde practices in the 20th century out of transformations of perception that accompanied new forms of commodity mis en scene, as well as new media technologies such as photography and film and new forms of communications, transport and production. It is shown, that these transformations are leading to a revalorisation of the eye, of seeing and the visible sign in general. In pursuing these two goals, the project is also seeking to achieve new results at the methodological level. The question concerning the social and political valuation of aesthetic interventions within cultural-historical examinations is to be formulated in a new way.

Following the "deconstructive turn" of the 1970s and 1980s, with which arguments and in which ways do artists and political activists pick up the avant-garde tradition today? What changes and innovations take place in the process and how are politics, the arts and the public sphere transformed by such practices? In answering these questions the project outlines the "invention" of an avant-garde tradition right through different milieus of modernity and postmodernity. The focus is on examples in the 20th century: here for example, Dadaism in Berlin around the 1920s is also investigated as well as the European Expanded Cinema movement and the Brazilian New Objectivity in the 1960s or current appropriations in the countries of the former eastern block since 1989. Besides this, connecting lines are also drawn to concepts of romanticism as well as to a new form of being in the world accompanying the French Revolution. The project presents a genealogy of the aesthetic tricks of parody, irony, montage and alienation, which shows connotative lines and similarities between the different narrations as well as delimitation and breaks. In this way it demonstrates that there is on the one hand a perseverance of avant-garde practices. It becomes evident that since the 18th century aesthetic tricks have repeatedly been seen as especially suitable to refresh a perception which has become neutralised by force of habit, to free oneself of "false" ideologies and to gain a "truer", more just" , more "authentic" or "more emancipated" view of things. At the same time via particular, "enlarged" case studies it is shown, that, on the other hand, avant-garde practices also develop themselves in a different, milieu-specific way and that they thereby alter and re-signify the overall avant-garde narrative in which they participate. In the approach to the public and in the dealing with the contingent effects of their own actions one can notice, in particular, changes in the actions of artistic and political groups in the second half of the 20th century. Special attention is given to the history of the political judgment of irony, parody, montage or alienation. Contrary to popular views in cultural studies or film theory, according to which such practices so to say "embody" a certain political "subversive" or "transgressive" effect, a discourse-analytical perspective is presented which shows how aesthetic tricks are involved in an always incalculable and double-edged way in a struggle over the reconstruction of society. Special case studies thus investigate how avant-garde practices contribute to the emergence of an always actual image hegemony. The issues raised in this respect range from "Dadaism and democracy" through "pornography and the avant-garde" to "neo-avant-garde and marketing."