Media Parasites in the Early Avant-Garde On the Abuse of Technology and Communication

by Niebisch, Arndt

• ISBN13: 9781137276858
• ISBN10: 1137276851
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-12-11
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century inhabited the media discourses of their time like parasites, constantly irritating and taking from them. Dadaists ripped images out of newspapers and magazines and reassembled them in their collages. Futurists borrowed the brevity of telegraph messages for their free word poetics. Artists such as F.T. Marinetti, Raoul Hausmann, and Luigi Russolo abused existing media technologies and hijacked public communication. This study traces these subversive tactics and examines how the early avant-garde created a media ecology based on and inspired by technologies.

Author Biography

Arndt Niebisch is Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and holds a post-doctorate position at the University of Vienna. His research focuses on the intersection of science, technology, and literary production. He edited the scientific and technical writings of the Dadaist Raoul Hausmann and has published on authors such as Franz Kafka, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Table of Contents

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