Art of movement and movement of art. Politics, aesthetics, action

Abstract

The lecture is about movement in contemporary art as well as the political effects and senses of art of action and performance. The text develops from the analysis of different cases, and mainly from two posters made by the Stenberg brothers for the film The Man with the Movie Camera and from a sequence from this film by Dziga Vertov. It is concluded that these works propose equivalence between the functional movement of machines and the automatism of acrobats or comedians. This equivalence is linked to Schiller’s game theory. Finally the author will establish the differences between the critical and active treatment of movement in arts and the way the European dictatorships from the twentieth century proposed the passive contemplation of a show in which the mass movement is presented as live performance of a becoming community.