(…) let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts. We want it! They will come against us from afar (…) They will find us at last one winter’s night in the depths of the country (…) crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures. They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo (1909)
The release a few months ago of the album Transfuturism Manifesto, by the Polish-French composer and self-proclaimed philosopher (by education a lawyer), Artur R. Sztukalski alias Ars Sonitus, whose ephemeral compositional activity dates back to the turn of the 70s and 80s, revives the discourse on the significance of Futurism in the history of avant-garde, as well as its potential influence on current phenomena in neo-avant-garde art. Particularly in the field of industrial music, as its creators, even if they do not officially confirm this connection or are not aware of it, remain the most effectively speaking (of course, in varying stylistic contexts and degrees of intellectual advancement) exponents of the artistic and worldview assumptions of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Luigi Russolo. The discussed album is in all respects a unique release. Setting aside its conceptual specifics, which involve, among other things, the coherent engagement of several narratives and planes of communication, i.e., music-poetry-philosophy-visual arts, it primarily expresses the constitution of a resurgence of Futurism, or rather its next incarnation referred to as Transfuturism, up to the challenges of the 21st century. This novum significantly exceeds the existing affiliation of contemporary artists, including Vivenza, SAT Stoicizmo, or Luciano Chessa, with the achievements of Italian avant-gardists, which, although in many respects indisputably valuable, for example, in the field of research or popularization, most often exhibited a reproductive initiative in the form of reconstructive ventures, as well as the demonstration of declarative and uncritical aesthetic-philosophical identity.
Although Sztukalski and Guillaume Toussaint (co-authors of the theoretical concept of Transfuturism, with Toussaint being a highly educated philosopher and a friend of Sztukalski who passed away in 2016) rely on the proven form of proclaiming new artistic trends, namely the manifesto, this time it seems to be about more than just a new anarchistic movement in art. It aims to shape an anticipatory model of self-awareness emerging from the integration of multiple disciplines describing the complex and often obscure interaction between human beings and the surrounding world. These disciplines range from natural and social sciences to philosophy and art. This idea profoundly aligns with the “Futurist tradition” of dismantling established orders, which paved the way for the creation of a modern individual who shapes an altered reality around them, not only in the realm of sensory perception but also in physical transformation, incorporating a lasting connection with the technological creations of their own imagination.
They also do not detach themselves from the philosophical foundation of Futurism, which involves the exploration of the material existence through confronting the transcendent. Instead, they seek to modify it with new socio-cultural phenomena, eliminating its internal contradictions and making it theoretically more coherent. For instance, they address the discrepancy between the patriotism and individualism celebrated by Italian Futurists and the underlying idea of an amorphous unity of the world, revealing its mystery in the dynamic and kinetic emanation of objectified matter in the urbanized environment, with minimized subjectivity or reduced anthropocentrism.
Above all, they go even further in negating the traditional pillars of culture based on respect for tradition, as well as the affirmation of life in line with the spirit of humanism. This is already announced by the minimalist graphic design of their publication, which, apart from the image of a black star and selected references to constructivist aesthetics in the artistic design of the flag containing a written manifesto, lacks any figurativeness. It is dominated by three intentional colours: white, black, and red, which closely correlate with the philosophical message of the album. Its anarchistic nature is visualized through the aforementioned black star, precisely the same one used by Action Directe, a French leftist terrorist organization, from 1979 to 1987. A certain intellectual connection is further emphasized by the obvious symbolism of red, derived from the French Revolution and the Paris Commune, the black flags of French and American anarchists in the 19th century, as well as the combination of both colours on the banners of numerous left-anarchist organizations worldwide in the 19th and 20th centuries. On the other hand, the white colour symbolizes innocence, spiritual renewal, and transcendence. What is particularly intriguing here is that the black star, symbolizing the end of existence, is surrounded by the geometric radiance of transcendent white… Does this mean that it is only through transcendent experiences that we can perceive unquestionable emancipatory values in death?
Moreover, they emphatically proclaim the overcoming of natural limitations and biological imperfections as a way to transcend the boundaries of human knowledge. They endorse and expand upon the attitude promoted by Italian Futurists of complete liberation from prevailing psycho-physical constraints, emphasizing the constant need to go beyond somaticity, to deny one’s animal lineage, particularly questioning biological gender identity, and even more so, the primary instinct of species preservation. The ultimate culmination of this should be the sublimation of the act of suicide, leading to its conscious culmination. In their belief, dying is not only associated with the forced and ultimate transcendence of material existence but is also attuned to the initiated transgression in the rhythm of everyday life. It ensures the perpetual destruction that conditions the dictate of creation, simultaneously erasing the boundaries between these processes, thereby enabling engagement in the transcendent momentum of life with an indefinite time vector.
Therefore, within the aura of a certain affirmation, they decide to focus their intellectual centre of gravity on death in understanding Futurism and defining its philosophical significance. Perhaps for this very reason, they meaningfully conclude their manifesto with the modified programmatic doctrine of Art – Life – Action by the renowned continuator of Futurism, Enzo Benedetto. While the Futurists were enthralled by vitalism manifested in movement and energy, the Transfuturists are now supposed to be excited about its logical complement, namely death – both authentic and metaphorical – as a gateway to the experience of metaphysical transformation.
The announced Transfuturism reveals the most comprehensive and extreme face of anticulture that has ever been present in the public sphere. In addition to the methodical and fully rationalized self-destruction of the human species in its biological form, which stems from the successive stages of uncompromising emancipation taking place both in the ideological sphere and within the framework of standard rituals within a specific social group, they also call for the questioning of the leading ethical value that determines the prevailing state of order in the sensory-material space: truth. They seek to unify truth with mystification, a subjective attribute of the imagination and a condition for the existence of an alternative reality and boundless freedom. In doing so, they refine the value system of Futurist art, as suggested by Enzo Benedetto in the following words: Fantasy and synthesis: […] are the most important elements of our mind, of a better human nature and a more beautiful reality (E. Benedetto, Futurismo Cento x 100, Roma, Arte Viva, 1975). The priority is to blur the boundaries between what is real and material and what has its roots in the lineage of transcendent perception of reality.
Art is supposed to promote this, but according to the manifesto’s authors, it should undergo radical reformulation by almost completely eliminating its existence within the commonly accepted paradigm. Furthermore, the mission of art, reduced to a minimum and weakened by its existence within the flawed senses of human beings, should be in service to the philosophical imperative, as it is not art itself that is the real source of transgression, but a specific state of self-awareness. Therefore, art should at most be a tool supporting the negation of dialectical materialism, the goal of which should be to question the unity of matter with motion, time, and the objectivity of existence. Hence, the manifesto calls for the preservation of only two forms of artistic activity: body art, as the sole artistic formula that develops the concept of annihilation or significant modification of the existing, natural design of the human body; and futurist bruitism, which most fully embodies the idea of energeticism – an empirical emanation of spirituality.
The desired format of avant-garde art should surpass its previous goals, go beyond itself, and impose upon itself a decisive mission: to create a new human, new interhuman relations, and a new architectural environment. What role does the receiver/creator play in this mission and what is the purpose of this art leading them towards? Certainly not towards itself, as it has just been degraded. The new art should direct the attention of the receiver/creator towards themselves and towards transcendence that fills them while simultaneously erasing the previous division between the real world and the realm of cultural symbols, i.e., imagination.
While futurist bruitism is indeed admired in the manifesto, its transfuturist interpretation differs significantly from its original image. Primarily, it breaks away from its mimetic residue, which aimed to consider the acoustic state of modern life or even worshipfully imitate it. Noise, as a means of sonic expression, should surpass its sensory or aesthetic narrative and achieve the ability to transfer a specific idea, initiate intellectual contemplation, or induce a state of heightened philosophical activity. The transfuturists question the “objective materiality of noise,” advocated by Jean-Marc Vivenza, one of the most important contemporary researchers and popularisers of Luigi Russolo’s philosophical-aesthetic concepts. As long as any (naturally, randomly, or intentionally) created noise only asserts its presence through the sensory apparatus of humans, the perception of the “objective materiality of noise” is definitively doomed to failure according to the prevailing principle that the realm of the senses distances us from understanding the fundamental laws governing the world, thereby contributing to the distortion of grasping what the mind is unable to comprehend. The “objective materiality of noise” becomes even more unreal when that noise is generated by humans in the process of creation. In their conviction, the role and significance of noise, and thus futurist bruitism, boil down to initiating specific conditions of mental stimulation, a metaphysical transposition that activates Hegelian dialectical thinking, and philosophical speculation aimed at the degradation of the so-called empirical ego.
The musical content of the album confirms the outlined perspective of bruitism, as it is based on a quite distinct leitmotif, namely the portrayal of the effective blurring of differences between life and death, as well as the secondary and notably “futuristic” interdependence between destruction and construction. Sztukalski achieves this by utilizing more or less processed sounds of various technological creations, often evoking associations with early steam engines or the sounds of 19th-century factories. This raises the question: if the goal was to strip noise of its previously known, almost figurative poetic significance, why his sensitivity is still deeply rooted in traditionally understood futurist bruitism and the aesthetics of the machine?
It seems that the answer lies in the concept of transforming intensified dynamics of noise into a specific energetic vibration. In other words, it involves a quasi-alchemical process of transforming one state, in this case, an extremely antimusical acoustic quality, into an abstract realm of radical speculative thought based on a unique experience associated with the non-sensory realm of the logos belonging to the world of transcendence.
Depending on the narrative needs and maintaining a certain pace, it complements the dominant bruitist motifs with a well-known cacophony of pneumatic hammers, electric saws, the roar of mechanical vehicles, radio waves, car sirens, and even sophisticated medical devices and human voices in various phases of life’s activity. This adds depth to the trance-like immersion in obsessive electroacoustic turmoil, ranging from confrontations of philosophical ideas, revolutionary artistic, religious, or political tensions, literal organic-metallic collisions of diverse matter, to the expansive fusion of the human spirit with the technicised essence of materiality. In pursuit of this, a wide range of compositional techniques is employed, which probably brings it closer to the tradition of academic electronic music avant-garde than to the homogeneous sonic order of Vivenza’s bruitism or the formal-aesthetic simplification predominant in the poetics of all industrial music variations. However, similarities can be observed in the presented recordings to the arrangement solutions that reveal the ambition to control musical dramaturgy, which were present in the works of SAT Stoicizmo. The use of different speeds and reverse playback directions of sound recordings, abrupt or elongated accelerations, psychedelic inter-channel transfers, as well as dissonant loops cyclically overlapping polyrhythmic textures of reverberation, feedback, and multiplied noises and electrical malfunctions, are brought to the forefront.
Blurring ontological boundaries is not the sole point of reference on this album. Furthermore, the Polish-French composer attempts to challenge anthropocentrism by designating the machine as an optimized version of the human alter ego – a perfect synthesis of attributes that enable the overcoming of natural limitations and biological imperfections, while exerting pressure to eliminate all imperfections of human existence and knowledge. The prominent transgression emphasized in the manifesto reveals its presence not only in the sonic references to emancipatory social events in the history of our civilization’s development but also in the transcendent experience of surpassing successive stages of self-awareness at the individual level of existence. In this context, rebellion, escapism, the imperative of negating one’s own existence, and the quest for primacy of death over life constitute the culmination of cognitive activity for Homo sapiens in the material realm of this world.
In the overall assessment, one interpretation of the comprehensive content of this release could be seen as an artistic explication of Gnostic illumination expressed through uncompromising contestation of the anonymous individual at the twilight of life or at its pivotal turning point. The manifesto accompanying the album should be regarded as its prophetic testament or as a self-declarative resolution in the subsequent stage of being. A hint that suggests such an interpretive direction is the utilization of a fragment from the Electric Light Orchestra song Yours Truly 2095 in the final section titled Action Directe de la Conscience de Soi Transcendantale (“Direct Action of Transcendental Self-Awareness”):
I sent a message to another time
But as the days unwind, this I just can’t believe
I sent a note across another plane
Maybe it’s all a game, but this I just can’t conceive.
Regardless of the existence of multiple interpretive possibilities, the primary significance of the music on this album lies in its symptomatic inner evolution, and consequently, in the process of transgression, through which it loses its own autonomy and becomes the substrate for heterotelic values that exist beyond itself, beyond art as such. Similarly, the artist-composer undergoes a specific journey, from the “self” to the material of the artistic event, becoming a symbolic expression not of the conviction that humans are already pieces of art, but that they can become and should become one. However, this will be a different art: the art of life, the art of transforming oneself.
Mediterranean joy of life
in the light of the sun
unrestrained youthful madness
discovering revealing creating
always new + modern + fast
Futurists:
Kings billions of fantasies
heroes doomed to die before birth
against everything and everyone
still alive
prolific and alive + all alive
alienated and lonely – like Horace –
against all “tuscany”
The Vanguard of all avant-gardes
the loud bells of their battle trumpets
roaring and eulogizing
also death
of all old and new cemeteries
on which it sits comfortably and fattens
Italian “art”
Enzo Mainardi Futurism („Futurismo-Oggi” 1981, nr 9-10)
Rafał Kochan
The Catcher in the Noise 