Nečloveški intervali: radijske sinteze Filippa Tommasa Marinettija1
Federico Luisetti
Univerza Severne Karoline v Chapel Hillu, Oddelek za romanske jezike in literature, ZDA luisetti@email.unc.edu
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti v radijskih sintezah (sintesi radiofoniche) iz leta 1933 z izmenjavo zvokov, šumov in pavz raziskuje pojmovno in senzorično gostoto brezžične komunikacije, pri čemer uvaja kompleksno rabo prekinitev in intervalov. V tem članku analiziramo teoretske implikacije Marinettijeve prelomne uvedbe teh vmesnosti v kontekstu razprav o infra-reprezentacijskih umetnostnih metodah z začetka 20. stoletja. Tehnizacijo estetske produkcije, za kakršno se zavzema Marinetti, nato umestimo v polje postbergsonovske vitalistične epistemologije in jo postavimo nasproti Deleuzovi transcendentalni interpretaciji avantgardističnih praks prekinitve.
Ključne besede: estetika / umetnost in tehnologija / Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso / Bergson, Henri / Deleuze, Gilles / radijska performativnost / umetnost intervalov / tehnološki vitalizem
UDK 111.852
V tem članku želimo s pomočjo analize Marinettijevih radijskih sintez (sintesi radiofoniche) iz leta 1933 osvetliti krhek in spremenljiv odnos med tehniko in literaturo.2 Upamo, da bo to enigmatično delo provokativno izpostavilo pojme življenjskega procesa, literarne transgresivnosti in per-formativnosti, ki jim je bil posvečen vileniški simpozij »Literatura, znanost in humanistika«.
Tovrstna obravnava Marinettija ima to prednost, da je njegovo delo imuno proti skušnjavam umetniške avtonomnosti in presega konvenci-onalni dualizem esteticizma in tehnicizma, saj zavrača tako razlikovanje med umetnostjo in tehnologijo kakor razlikovanje med ekspresijo in akcijo. Marinetti namreč preseganja zevi med umetnostjo in znanostjo ni formuliral v smislu zgolj še ene postsimbolistične, romantične estetske in-finitizacije in absolutizacije umetnosti. Nasprotno, avantgardam je naložil precej radikalnejšo nalogo, spremembo paradigme in epistemični prelom: iznajdbo umetnosti-dejanja, uglašene z »življenjem materije«.
Dober primer tovrstne drže so prav radijske sinteze, saj s privzema-njem nenavadne govorice »tehnološkega vitalizma« odpravljajo heteroge-
nost množične komunikacije in pojmovnega eksperimentiranja, s tem pa se umeščajo v še neraziskano umetniško prakso, kjer prekinitve in povečanje energetskih tokov zamenjajo umetniške žanre in pesniška načela. V primerjavi z drugimi Marinettijevimi radijskimi izvajanji z radijsko dramo Violetta e gli aeroplani (Teatro 638—656)3 vred pa imajo radijske sinteze to pomembno prednost, da so abstraktne in programske ter tako razkrivajo Marinettijev nekonvencionalen pristop k tehnologiji.4
Po Arndtu Niebischu pri futuristični rabi radia ne gre za estetsko iznajdbo, temveč za nov odnos z »živčevjem poslušalcev«: »radijske sinteze ne razvijejo razvejane pripovedi, ampak udejanjajo povsem minimalistično estetiko, utemeljeno na izmenjavi zvokov, šumov in tišin [...]. [M]arinetti z radijskimi sintezami ne poskuša delovati na kritični um poslušalstva, pač pa na živčevje poslušalcev« (343—344). S sklicevanjem na Wolfa Kittlerja Niebisch simbolno funkcijo tradicionalne umetnosti poveže s komunikacijskim hrupom, ki predpostavlja prejemnikovo hermenevtično dekodira-nje, Marinettijeve medialne prakse pa s signalno tehnologijo, ki je kakor v Artaudovem gledališču krutosti neposredno povezana s čutnim aparatom: »'Signal' kot nasprotje 'simbola' je semiotična kategorija, ki ne zahteva interpretacije, temveč sproža reflekse.« (344)
Kot je Marinetti razglasil v manifestu La radiaf je izrecni zastavek ukvarjanja z radijskim prenosom ustvarjanje povsem nove medialne topologije in recepcijske modalnosti:
Nova Umetnost, ki se začne, kjer se gledališče, film in pripoved končajo [...]. Neznansko razširjenje prostora [...] Cisti organizem radijskih senzacij [...]. Umetnost brez časa ali prostora, brez včeraj in jutri [...]. Odstranitev pojma ali spoštovanja občinstva, ki je vselej celo na knjigo vplivalo tako, da jo je popačilo in poslabšalo (Marinetti in Masnata 294—295).
Zamenjava standardnega samostalnika radio z igrivim novorekom »radia« namiguje na razkorak med običajno družbeno rabo tehnologije in umetniško sabotažo. Medtem ko je radio normalizirano komunikacijsko orodje, zahteva »la radia« popačenje estetskih kategorij in izkustvenih navad:
La radia odpravi 1. prostor ali prizorišče v gledališču, tudi v futurističnem sintetičnem gledališču (dejanje, ki se razvija na nepremični, stalni sceni) in filmu (dejanja, ki se razvijajo v izjemno hitrih in na moč spremenljivih hkratnih in vselej realističnih scenah) 2. čas 3. enotnost dejanja 4. dramski značaj 5. občinstvo, razumljeno kot množični samooklicani sodnik, sistematično sovražen in pohleven, vselej retrograden, vselej sovražno nastrojen do sleherne novosti.« (Marinetti in Masnata
293-294)
Timothy Campbell (x) je na sledi prelomnega proučevanja zgodovine medijske povezljivosti iztrgal pojem »brezžičnega« iz »sive cone med telegrafijo in skromnimi genealogijami zgodnjega radia« in poudaril vpliv Marinettijevega privzemanja logike komunikacijskih medijev na literarne strukture. Četudi se Campbellove analize osredotočajo zgolj na Marinettijeve literarne manifeste in na parole in liberta, pa njegov opis vznikajočih praks »brezžičnega pisanja« posredno zajema tudi medialni kontekst Marinettijevih radijskih eksperimentov. V poznih dvajsetih letih temeljne spremembe v medijski povezljivosti poleg same narave radijskega predvajanja na novo opredelijo tudi odnos med govorcem in poslušalcem, izmenjavo med tehnologijami zapisa in zvokom, hierarhijo arhivskih sledi in govorjenega jezika: »Brž ko so frekvence v glasovnih prenosih in tehnološke zmožnosti shranjevanja podatkov sovpadle, je bilo mogoče zvoke izrezati in jih pomešati v montažo, s tem pa dobiti pomembne časovne učinke, zlasti na področju časovne obdelave.« (Campbell xii) »Brezžično pisanje« je postalo odvisno od modulacije frekvenc, mašinskega spajanja in razporejanja, telesnih vmesnikov.6
Radijske sinteze in manifest La radia so nastali v času burnih razprav o vplivu radijskega predvajanja in novih komunikacijskih tehnologij na tradicionalne estetske prakse, kot so gledališče in literarne recitacije iz poznih dvajsetih in zgodnjih tridesetih let (gl. Brecht). Walter Benjamin je v komentarjih o Bertoltu Brechtu izpostavil tehnološke implikacije Brechtovega epskega gledališča — »Oblike epskega gledališča ustrezajo novima tehničnima oblikama, kinu in radiu. Na ravni sodobne tehnike je.« (Benjamin, »Poskusi« 223) — in poudaril temeljite spremembe v naravi estetske zaznave, ki jih je Brecht vpeljal z metodo prekinitve, loveč trenutek, »ko se masa diferencira v sklopu razprav, [...] ko se zlagana, zastrta totaliteta 'publike' začenja razgrajevati« (226—227).
Kakor Marinettijeva »radia« je epsko gledališče »nova umetnost«, ki implicira nenavadne prostorsko-časovne odnose in spremenjen odnos do občinstva. Vendar so v nasprotju z Marinettijevo vitalistično govorico »radijskih občutkov« Brechtove prekinitve in Verfremdungseffekt utemeljeni v pedagoški in humanistični marksistični episteme, kar obenem pojasni Benjaminovo dobro znano obsodbo Marinettijeve futuristične senzibilno-sti (Benjamin, »Umetnina« 166 isl.).
Kakor v Brechtovem epskem gledališču je osrednja značilnost sintez medsebojna igra akustičnih fragmentov in prekinitev, intervalov in mej. To je logika Marinettijeve »radia«, ki ustreza futuristični nereprezentacij-ski rabi medijev: govorica sintesi ne predpostavlja simbolov in retoričnega podajanja pomena, pač pa potujitveno prakso povezljivosti, suspendiranih gibanj in spletanja odnosov med številnimi prvinami: pokrajino signalov in stimulai, proces spajanja in razporejanja ekspresivnega materiala.
Najpomembneje pa je, da menjavanje intervalov in prekinitev v sintezah meri na kontinuiteto polja intenzivnosti, vitalistično logiko zgoščanja in razširjanja. Kajti razlika med akustičnimi intervali in prekinitvami, ki istočasno ločujejo in povezujejo različne segmente sintez, ni razlika v naravi, temveč razlika v stopnji, ki jo je mogoče povečati ali zmanjšati, jo pospešiti do točke absolutne spremenljivosti ali jo oklestiti do umirjenosti ponavljanja. Onkraj videza nepremostljive heterogenosti osnovnih akustičnih substanc in iracionalnih prekinitev lahko opazimo nastajanje subtilne estetike vmesnosti, tehnološko produkcijo novih zaznavnih intervalov.
Stati intermomentali
Za razumevanje osrednje vloge, ki jo Marinetti pripiše intervalom in prekinitvam, se je treba ozreti k debati o časovnem izkustvu prisotnosti z začetka 20. stoletja. Po Henriju Bergsonu —ključni referenci pri Marinettiju in avantgardah nasploh — se za iluzorno hipnostjo sedanjosti skriva dejanskost trajanja, raztegljivih skladov časovnih odsekov. Te enote imajo časovni razpon; trajajo, ker so vrinjene med imanentne polarnosti virtu-alnega in aktualnega, med brezmočno preteklost in dejavno sedanjost. Ti skladi trajanja so tenki, vendar gosti, saj nenehoma najedajo samopriso-tnost hipne in nedimenzionalne sedanjosti.
Evklidske prostorske navade človeškega razuma in zaznavanja so privilegirale reprezentacijo — mimetično reprodukcijo prisotnosti, utemeljeno na iluziji o nečasovnem odnosu s predstavljeno rečjo —, Bergson (183) pa se, nasprotno, osredotoči na infra-reprezentacijske intervale in prevprašuje neprostorsko nedimenzionalnost: »Razum si prizadeva, da bi v živi gibljivosti reči oznamoval resnične ali mogoče postaje, zapisuje odhode in prihode; samo to je pomembno za človekovo misel, kadar naravno deluje.«
S privzemanjem Bergsonovega pojma intervala Anton Giulio Bragaglia utemeljifotodinamismo, pionirsko tehniko avantgardne fotografije, na pojmu medhipnih stanj (stati intermomentali). Po Bragagliju je namen fotografije v tem, da razkriva nereprezentacijsko naravo intervalov, ki sestavljajo vsakdanje kretnje, in sicer z razblinjanjem iluzije o hipnosti momentk (snap-shop potographj)? Tudi Duchampov pojem infra-mince (infra-tenek) je različica bergsonovske estetike intervalov. V posthumnih zapisih o Velikem steklu Duchamp (št. 135) Marcel Duchamp v bergsonovskem jeziku napade hipnost sedanjosti »=v vsakem hipu trajanja (?) so / reproducirani vsi prihodnji in predhodni trenutki — Vsi ti pretekli in prihodnji trenutki / torej soobstajajo v sedanjosti, ki / v resnici ni več tisto, kar običajno imenujemo / trenutna sedanjost, temveč / nekakšna sedanjost mnogoterih razširitev
-«. Vizualnost tradicionalne umetnosti je neločljivo povezana z mitom o »hipni sedanjosti« — o sedanjosti produkcije in recepcije podob, interpretacije in komunikacije pomenov, marketinga in okusa umetnin —, Duchamp pa, nasprotno, s privzemanjem bergsonovske logike infra-reprezentacij-skih intervalov transformira umetnine v neumetniške tekste »mnogoterih razširitev«: v »infra-tenke« predmete, v tekste, ki ne pripadajo reprezen-taciji in ki zavzemajo paradoksno prostorskost trajanja. Takšna je narava »readymadeov« — aporetičnih reči v zaznavni in pojmovni »tenkosti« nere-prezentacijskih intervalov.
Pri kontekstualizaciji Marinettijeve konstrukcije zvočnih intervalov pa moramo upoštevati tudi razvoj eksperimentalne fiziologije. Psihofiziološki eksperimenti so s pomočjo tehničnih naprav, kakršna je »kronoskop«, predstavljen v spisu Wilhelma Wundta Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (Načela fiziološke psihologije) iz leta 1874, želeli izmeriti »fiziološki čas« — psihofiziološki interval med dražljajem in odzivom nanj — in s tem proble-matizirati hipnost zaznave in misli. Na simbolistične pisce, slikarje in skladatelje, kot sta Debussy in Janaček, je izkustveno območje, ki ga je razprlo odkritje nehipnih zaznavnih mehanizmov, naredilo močan vtis (gl. Steege). Kaj se dogaja med temi kratkimi, a gostimi intervali? Marinettijeve sintesi radiofoniche so torej le eden od primerov te subtilne umetnosti vmesnosti.
Prekinitve
Marinettijevo prvo radijsko sintezo, Unpaesaggio udito (Akustična pokrajina), sestavljajo trije skladi zvokov: prasketanje ognja, pljuskanje vode in žvižganje kosa:
Akustična pokrajina
Žvižganje kosa, ki zavida prasketanju ognja, se je končalo s šepetajočim žlobu-dranjem vode
10 sekund pljuskanja.
1 sekunda prasketanja.
8 sekund pljuskanja.
1 sekunda prasketanja.
5	sekund pljuskanja.
1 sekunda prasketanja.
19 sekund pljuskanja.
1 sekunda prasketanja.
25 sekund pljuskanja.
1 sekunda prasketanja.
35 sekund pljuskanja.
6	sekund žvižganja kosa. (Marinetti, »Radio Syntheses« 416)
Prasketanje traja vselej eno sekundo, pljuskanje pa sledi dramatičnemu crescendu in decrescendu (10, 8, 5, 19, 25, 35 sekund), ki se konča z nenadnim žvižgom kosa. Ta sinteza predstavlja osnovne prvine Marinettijeve radijske govorice: četudi je mogoče te tri zvoke napačno interpretirati kot raznovrsten material, med katerim obstaja vrstna razlika, pa v resnici delujejo le kot razlike v stopnji čustvene intenzivnosti. Marinetti za doseganje tega učinka transformira pljuskanje v ponavljajoče se prekinjanje, v pet enosekundnih izsekov. Te prekinitve so hkrati časovni vezniki in modula-torji stopnje intenzivnosti pljuskanja. Namesto točkastega toka heteroge-nega materiala zdaj doživljamo spoj akustičnih ponovitev in variacij.
V	drugi sintezi, Dramma di distance (Drama razdalj), so menjavajoče se pojavitve zvočnih krajin iz oddaljenih geografskih področij in okolij — iz vojaškega, razvedrilnega, vsakdanjega mestnega in podeželskega življenja, religije — spojene brez opaznih prekinitvenih intervalov in sledijo strogemu pravilu enajstsekundnih ponavljajočih se enot:
Drama razdalj
11 sekund vojaškega marša v Rimu.
11 sekund plesanja tanga v Santosu.
11 sekund igranja japonske verske glasbe v Tokiu.
11 sekund živahne kmečke glasbe na podeželju v okolici Vareseja.
11 sekund boksarskega dvoboja v New Yorku.
11 sekund uličnega hrupa v Milanu.
11 sekund neapeljske ljubezenske pesmi, odpete v hotelu Copacabana v Rio de Janeiru. (417)
V	tem primeru je skupna prvina radijski medij, tekoča nepretrganost radijskih valov. Radijsko predvajanje »razprostre prostor«, vendar na umeten način, s spajanjem in moduliranjem razlik. Gre za logiko intermedial-nosti, za moč povezljivosti radijskega prenosa.
V	tretji sintezi, I silen%iparlano fra di loro (Tišine se pogovarjajo med seboj), postane Marinettijev medialni konstruktivizem odkrito kompleksen, saj se razlikovanje med intervali in prekinitvami zamegli: je tišina tista, ki prekinja zvoke, ali obratno?
Tišine se pogovarjajo med seboj
15 sekund čiste tišine.
C, d, e na flavti.
8 sekund čiste tišine.
C, d, r na flavti.
29 sekund čiste tišine.
G na klavirju.
C na trobenti.
40 sekund čiste tišine.
Otrokov uau.
11 sekund čiste tišine.
Osupli oooooh enajstletne deklice. (418)
Ker se skladi tišine ter glasbenih in človeških zvokov spreminjajo v skladu s crescendom in desrescendom časovnih vzorcev — 15, 8, 29, 40, 11 sekund »čistih tišin« —, je vse težje razlikovati med ponovitvami in variacijami, med modulacijami in kvalitativno različnimi segmenti glasbil. Zaradi abstraktnosti tišin in singularne konkretnosti človeškega glasu prav tako ni mogoče določiti vrstnih razlik med oblikami in vsebinami, med strukturnimi in tematskimi prvinami. Jasno je le, da je treba dojeti razlike v stopnji čustvenega življenjskega prostora, ki ga konstruira »la radia«. Pride namreč do paradoksnega obrata: tišina ni več prazno ozadje, zapolnjeno s polnostjo medijske komunikacije — nasprotno: domnevna zmagoslavna učinkovitost med seboj povezanih globalnih mrež sloni na krhki podlagi virtualnih tišin, ki »se pogovarjajo med seboj« in podirajo meje človeške in tehnološke komunikacije.8
Battaglia di ritmi (Bitka ritmov) še okrepi menjavanje prekinitev in intervalov, tišin in zvokov:
Bitka ritmov
Previdna in potrpežljiva počasnost, izražena s kapljanjem vodnih kapelj, najprej odrezanih in nato ubitih z
letečo elastičnostjo, ustvarjeno z arpeggi klavirskih not, najprej odrezanih in nato ubitih z
glasnim zvonjenjem električnega hišnega zvonca, najprej odrezanega in nato ubitega s
tat rum ta trak ključa v ključavnici, ki mu sledi
enominutna tišina. (419)
Tu vsak akustični segment najprej »odreže« in nato »ubije« naslednjega. To pomeni, da vsak sklad sprva deluje kot prekinitev, nato pa kot gost interval. Poleg tega je lahko akustični segment »počasen« ali »elastičen«, »glasen« ali »tih — kapljanje vode, arpeggi klavirja, triminutna tišina9 —; vsi torej kažejo raznolične med seboj prepletene prostorske in časovne značilnosti. Med prekinitvami in intervali, tišinami in zvoki, ni nobene vrstne razlike, povrh pa so tudi kakovost in količina, čas in prostor, tehnološko združeni, spojeni z mašinskim izvajanjem »radie« ter kot skrivnostno polje pulziranja naslovljeni na poslušalce.
Peta sinteza, La constru%ione di un silen%io (Grajenje tišine), razgrinja temelje Marinettijevega topološkega konstruktivizma:
Grajenje tišine
1.	Zgradi zid na levi s tušem na bobnih (pol minute).
2.	Zgradi zid na desni s trobljenjem — kričanjem — tramvajskim cviljenjem prestolnice (pol minute).
3.	Zgradi tla s klokotanjem vode v ceveh (pol minute).
4.	Zgradi stropno teraso čiv čiv ščriv vrabcev in lastovic (dvajset sekund). (420)
Tu se Marinetti ogne vsakršnemu razlikovanju med intervali in prekinitvami. Ker je razlika med njimi razlika v stopnji, predstavljajo intervali in prekinitve zgibe, pripomočke za zgibanje in oblikovanje časovno-pro-storskih pojavov. Zato je vsak akustični material — tuš z bobnom, cviljenje avto-tramvaja, klokotanje vode, ptičji ščebet — uporabljen kot sklep, točka preobrata za gradnjo idealnega »infra-tenkega« umetnega okolja: tišine.10
Entre-deux
Sintesi so zvočni kolaži, konstruktivistične montaže, spoji tišin in akustičnih objects trouvés, prežeti z modernistično občutljivostjo na neposre-dovane pojmovne strukture in readymade material. Kot take se ravnajo po minimalistični kubistični estetiki in utirajo pot radijski glasbi Johna Cagea ter musique informelle. Vendar se zaradi svojega osrednjega prizadevanja za izražanje rež in rezov vpisujejo tudi v posebno vejo avantgardnega ekspe-rimentalizma, ki je od Bertolta Brechta do Jean-Luca Godarda poudarjala rabo zevi in prekinitev:
V	ospredju epskega gledališča je [...] prav prekinjanje nekega ravnanja. [...] [N] jegova poglavitna funkcija [je] v določenih primerih v tem, da prekinja dejanje — daleč od tega, da bi ga ilustriralo ali podpiralo. Pri tem ne gre le za dejanje soigralca, temveč tudi za lastno dejanje. Lastnost retardacije, ki jo imajo prekinitve, epski značaj okvira, to je torej tisto, kar iz gestičnega gledališča dela epsko gledališče. (Benjamin, »Poskusi« 220)11
V	Deleuzovi ontologiji »iracionalnih rezov« — utemeljeni na Godardovi filmski teoriji, ki neposredno črpa iz Brechtovega potujitvenega učinka — je Benjaminovo tolmačenje Brechtovih prekinitev radikalizirano, saj postane osrednje orodje za rekonstrukcijo logike modernega filma. Kakor Marinetti je tudi Gilles Deleuze imun proti Brechtovemu marksističnemu humanizmu in pedagoškim načelom; svoje pojmovanje »vmesnosti«, entre-deux, utemelji na povsem vitalističnem terenu. V njegovi dvodelni študiji o filmu argumenti kulminirajo v teoretizacijo »metode iracionalnih rezov«, ki porajajo »reže med podobami«. V Rohmerjevih, Dryerjevih, Bressonovih in Godardovih filmih »ne gre več za vprašanje povezovanja
in pritegovanja podob. Nasprotno, zdaj šteje reža med podobami, med dvema podobama« (Deleuze, Cinema 2 179—180).
Deleuzu gre za specifično gibanje: ne za premikanje, ampak za proces postajanja, za moč transformacije, katere gonilna sila je v »transcendentalnem polju«:
Kaj je transcendentalno polje? Razlikuje se od izkustva pa tudi na noben objekt ne napotuje in prav tako ne pripada kakemu subjektu (empirični reprezentaciji). Zato se kaže kot čisti nesubjektivni tok zavesti, neosebna predrefleksivna zavest, kvalitativno trajanje zavesti brez sebe [...]. Transcendentalno polje določa ravnina imanence, ravnino imanence pa določa neko življenje. (Deleuze, »Immanence« 4)
V transcendentalnem polju je življenje »neko življenje«, dogodki se zgodijo pri absolutni hitrosti v praznem času, v nereprezentacijskem trajanju nečloveškega intervala: »To nedoločno življenje samo nima trenutkov, pa naj ti še tako tičijo drug ob drugega, temveč ima le medčase [des entre-temps], medtrenutke.« (5)
Deleuze se pri razvijanju kompleksne logike vmesnosti, pojmova-nih kot organum vitalističnih umetniških praks, vsaj na videz ravna po Marinettiju. A Deleuze ostro razloči prekinitve od intervalov, saj rezom in prelomom pripiše nalogo povezovanja končnosti in transcendentalnega polja, tj. povezovanja aktualnega in virtualnega. Zaradi te arhitekturne funkcije pa po Deleuzu prekinitve niso intervali, pa tudi med seboj niso izmenljivi. Z rezanjem in prodiranjem v empirično ravnino spajajo in razdvajajo segmente. Toda njihova moč izhaja iz intenzivnega polja, ki ga ne smemo zamenjevati z vsakdanjim zaznavnim izkustvom. Po Deleuzu so prekinitve vmesnosti, pojmovane kot čista moč diferenciacije transcendentalnega polja.
Zato Deleuzovi opisi vmesnosti predpostavljajo topologijo prekinitev, ki ni združljiva z Marinettijevimi menjavami rezov in intervalov. Deleuzova logika »iracionalnih rezov« je metoda prečenja imanence in transcendence, absolutnega življenja in relativnih trenutkov: čistega, votlega, intenzivne Zunanjosti in nečistega teritorija svetnih pojavov. Bežiščnica in ne interval. (Deleuze in Parnet 37, 39)
Deleuzovska vmesnost je avtonomen in nekomensurabilen rez, ki ni koordiniran z začetki in konci drugih skladov življenja; ni izmenljiv z intervali. In v tem je po Deleuzu logika avantgardne umetnosti in filma:
Moderna podoba ustvari kraljestvo »nekomensurabilnosti« ali iracionalnih rezov: to pomeni, da rez ni več del prve ali druge podobe, prve ali druge sekvence, ki ločuje in razdvaja [...]. Interval je osvobojen, reža pa postane neodpravljiva in samostojna. (Deleuze, Cinema 2 277)
Transcendentalna nedimenzionalnost deleuzovskih vmesnosti zahteva teologijo Zunanjosti, ontološke Praznine, na kateri slonijo vse operacije iracionalnega rezanja:
Zaradi metode VMESNOSTI: »vmes med dvema dejanjema, med dvema afekci-jama, med dvema percepcijama, med dvema vizualnima podobama, med dvema zvočnima podobama, med zvočnim in vizualnim« [...], je čisto vse podvrženo spremembi [...]. Celota se torej zliva s tistim, kar Blanchot imenuje »sila razpršitve Zunanjosti« ali »vrtoglavica razmikanja«: s tisto praznino, ki ni več gonilni del podobe in ki bi ga podoba prečila za svoje nadaljevanje, temveč je radikalno postavljanje podobe pod vprašaj. (180)
Lahko bi si poskusili predstavljati, kako bi Deleuze pristopal k Marinettijevim sintesi radiofoniche: njihove »prvinske« prekinitve, njihovo rabo neobdelanih zvokov in nepredvidljivih rezov bi s tega vidika utegnili razumeti kot dokaz iracionalne režne moči, kot sled absolutne svobode postajanja, kot znak za bežiščnico, ki pelje k višjemu življenju mašinskih intervalov, k življenju »duhovnega automatona«.
Pa vendar gostota Marinettijevih tišin — ki nikoli niso praznina in ki nikdar ne proizvedejo »vrtoglavice razmikanja« — in gosta dimenzionalnost rezov v sintezah — z nenehno menjavo intervalov in prekinitev — nakazujeta, da v nasprotju z deleuzovskimi vmesnostmi Marinettijevi intervali so »del ene ali druge sekvence, ki ju ločujejo in razdvajajo«. Zato obravnava narave sintez zahteva vitalistično, a podeleuzovsko pojmovanje vmesnosti, in sicer na temelju take topologije intervalov, ki nam bo omogočila zajeti in izraziti Marinettijevo netranscendentalno geometrijo prekinitev. To pomeni, da moramo razviti resnično vitalistično kritiko, ki bo mogla razvozlati govorico »radia«.12 Žal je naš cilj še precej oddaljen. Imamo pa Marinettijeve sintesi in nekaj drugih hermetičnih predmetov, ki spodbujajo k utemeljevanju prihodnje teorije o njihovem osupljivem umetniškem življenju.
Prevedla Varja Balžalorsky
OPOMBE
1	Ta članek je predelana različica članka Luisetti, »A Vitalist Art«.
2	Sintesi radiofoniche iz leta 1933 je pet kratkih eksperimentalnih radijskih kompozicij iz Marinettijevega poznega futurističnega obdobja, ki časovno sovpadajo z njegovim manifestom Manifesto futurista della radio, znanim tudi kot La radia. Partitura sintesi radiofoniche je bila prvič objavljena avgusta 1941 v časopisu Autori e scrittori in nato v Marinetti, Teatro 629—637, nedavno pa jih je v angleščino prevedel Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Marinetti, »Radio Syntheses«). Sam Marinetti radijskih sintez ni nikdar izvedel, leta 1978 pa jih je posnel skladatelj Daniele Lombardi; posnetek je dostopen tudi na zgoščenki Musica Futurista: The Art
of Noises 1909—1935 (LTM Recordings, 2006) in na spletni strani http://www.futurismo. altervista.org/audio.htm (7. maj 2012). Za podatke o drugih izvedbah sintesi radiofoniche gl. Fisher, »Futurism« 245.
3	O zgodovini italijanske radijske estetike gl. De Benedictis.
4	Marinettijevo eksperimentiranje s posnetim zvokom se začne leta 1914 z nizom pesniških recitacij, posnetih v nekem londonskem studiu. Njegovo zanimanje za radijski medij sicer sega že v začetke futurizma, v prakso pa preide v drugi polovici dvajsetih let. Leta 1926 med turnejo po Južni Ameriki Marinetti večkrat zaporedoma nastopi na brazilskih in argentinskih radijskih postajah. Tem nastopom je nato sledilo šestnajst let zelo živahnega sodelovanja z leta 1928 ustanovljenim Italijanskim nacionalnim radiem (EIAR), ki je obsegalo vse od deklamiranja aeropesmi, komentiranja osrednjih dogodkov, na primer vrnitve letalske eskadrilje Itala Balba iz ZDA avgusta 1932, do rednega predvajanja radijskega glasila o dejavnostih futurističnega gibanja (Marinetti, »Radio Syntheses« 415). O Mari-nettijevem in futurističnem ukvarjanju z radiem nasploh gl. Fisher, »Futurism« 229—262.
5	Manifesto futurista della radio, ki ga je Marinetti napisal skupaj s Pinom Masnato, je bil objavljen 22. septembra 1933 v italijanskem časopisu Ga^^etta del popolo. V Futurismo (1. oktobra 1933) se pojavlja kot Manifesto della radio, v Autori e scrittori (avgusta 1941) kot La radia, Manifesto futurista dell'ottobre 1933. Danes je dostopen tudi v Marinetti, Teatro 769—774, in v Marinetti in Masnata 292—295. Manifestu je leta 1935 sledila štiriinštirideset strani dolga razlaga Pina Masnate, odlomki katere bodo v angleškem prevodu objavljeni v reviji Modernism / Modernity 19.1 (2012). O tej Masnatovi razlagi gl. Fisher, »New Information«.
6	Timothy Campbell (91) opozarja na Marinettijevo literarno »stimuliranost brezžičnih funkcij« in na pomanjkljivosti njegovega »prenosa čutnih podatkov v pisni ustreznik«. Sam pri obravnavi Marinettijeve medialne logike ne dajem prednosti literarnemu polju.
7	O bergsonovskih intervalih v Bragaglijevem Fotodinamismo futurista gl. Luisetti, Una Vita 119—138. Bragaglia (34) omenjeni odlomek o intervalih navaja iz Bergsonovega »Uvoda v metafiziko«.
8	Marinettijeve radijske sinteze se zgledujejo pri manifestu Enza Ferrierija o radiu kot ustvarjalni sili iz leta 1931. Ferrieri, ki je leta 1929 postal umetniški vodja Italijanskega radia, je »avtor prodorne misli, da paradoksna moč radia pravzaprav izvira iz tišin« (Fisher, »New Information«).
9	O tej triminutni tišini gl. De Benedictis (66).
10	Za vlogo tišine kot minimalne »vključene enote razporejanja«, »potrebne za pridružitev enega zvoka drugemu«, gl. Campbellov komentar Sergijevega merjenja vrzeli med enotami vznemirjenja (70—72).
11	O strukturnih sorodnostih med Brechtovim epskim gledališčem in Marinettijevimi gledališkimi tehnikami gl. Coda.
12	Zaradi hegemonije transcendentalnih paradigem v zahodni misli in estetiki bi vitali-stični kritiki nemara koristilo, če bi se ozrla k Vzhodu, denimo h kitajski misli in umetnosti, kjer »subtilna«, suspendirana kompleksnost virtualnih, pa vendar realnih izkustev ter ima-nentnih zevi med prisotnim in odsotnim že dolga stoletja predstavlja težišče filozofskih in umetniških praks: »Obstajajo številna gledišča, s katerih subtilno postane dostopno izkustvu. V estetiki je to na primer izvrsten okus komaj zaznavnega, bodisi v zvoku bodisi v podobi, v prehodnem stanju med tišino in zvočnostjo v glasbi ali med praznino in polnostjo v slikarstvu, ko sta zvočna in slikovna realizacija komajda zaznavni ali tik pred tem, da se razblinita [...]. Od tod izvirajo prav vse kitajske prakse.« (Jullien 25)
LITERATURA
Benjamin, Walter. »Poskusi o Brechtu«. Brecht, Zgodbe gospoda Keunerja; Me-ti; Benjamin, Poskusi o Brechtu. Prev. Amalija Maček. Ljubljana: Studia humanitatis, 2009. 211—354.
---. »Umetnina v času, ko jo je mogoče tehnično reproducirati«. Prev. Janez Vrečko.
Benjamin, Izbrani spisi. Ur. Bratko Bibič. Ljubljana: Studia humanitatis, 1998. 145—176. Bergson, Henri. »Uvod v metafiziko«. Bergson, Esej o smehu; Filozofska intuicija; Uvod v metafiziko. Prev. Janez Gradišnik. Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1977. 147—190. Bragaglia, Anton Giulio. Fotodinamismo futurista. Torino: Einaudi, 1970. Brecht, Bertolt. »Radio kot komunikacijski aparat«. Prev. Igor Kramberger. Problemi 21.6—8 (1983): 124-125.
Campbell, Timothy. Wireless Writing in the Age of Marconi. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2005. Coda, Elena. »Teatro di straniamento in Marinetti e Brecht«. Carte Italiane: A Journal of
Italian Studies 13 (1993-1994): 1-15. De Benedictis, Angela Ida. Radiodramma e arte radiofonica. Storia e funzioni della musicaper radio
in Italia. Torino: EDT, 2005. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2. The Time-Image. Prev. Hugh Tomlinson in Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
---. »Immanence: A Life...« Prev. Nick Millett. Theory, Culture & Society 14.2 (1997): 3-7.
Deleuze, Gilles, in Claire Parnet. Dialogues. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Duchamp, Marcel. Notes. Ur. in prev. Paul Matisse. Boston: G. K Hall, 1983. Fisher, Margaret. »Futurism and Radio« Futurism and Technological Imagination. Ur. Günter Berghaus: Amsterdam in New: York Rodopi, 2009.
---. »New Information Regarding the Futurist Radio Manifesto«. Italogramma 2011.
Dostopno na: http://italogramma.elte.hu/sites/default/files/cikkek/letoltheto/pdf/ Fisher_radio.pdf (7. maj 2012). Jullien, François. Vital Nourishment. Departingfrom Happiness. New York: Zone Books, 2007. Kittler, Friedrich A. Discourse Networks, 1800/1900. Prev. Michael Metteer. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press, 1990.
---. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Prev. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young in Michael Wutz.
Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press, 1999. Luisetti, Federico. »A Vitalist Art: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's sintesi radiofoniche«. Futurisms. Precursors, Protagonists, Legacies. Ed. Geert Buelens, Harald Hendrix in Monica Jansen. Idaho Falls: Lexington Books, 2012 [v tisku].
---. Una vita. Pensiero selvaggio e filosofia dell'intensità. Milano: Mimesis, 2011.
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. »Radio Syntheses. Introduction and Translation by Jeffrey T.
Schnapp«. Modernism / Modernity 16.2 (2009): 415-420. ---. Teatro 2. Ur. J. T. Schnapp. Milano: Mondadori, 2004.
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, in Pino Masnata. The Radia. Futurist Manifesto. Futurism. An Anthology. Ur. Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi in Laura Wittman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Niebisch, Arndt. »Cruel Media. On F. T. Marinetti's Media Aesthetics«. Annali d'Italianistica 27 (2009): 333-348.
Steege, Benjamin. »Musical Modernism and the Culture of Experiment«. [Neobjavljen referat s konference 100 Years of Futurism: Sounds, Science, and Literature: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium, Univerza Severne Karoline, Greensboro, 20.-21. februar 2009.]
Nonhuman Intervals: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Radio Syntheses1
Federico Luisetti
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, USA luisetti@email.unc.edu
In his 1933 'sintesi radiofoniche'(radio syntheses)Filippo TommasoMarinetti explores the conceptual and sensorial density ofwireless communication, alternating sounds, noises and silences through a complex use of interruptions and intervals. This essay analyses the theoretical implications of these unprecedented in-betweens in the context of the debates on infra-representational artistic methods taking place at the beginning of the twentieth century. The technologisation of aesthetic production advocated by Marinetti is then framed within the landscape of a post-Bergsonian vitalist epistemology, in opposition to Gilles Deleuze's transcendental interpretation of the avant-garde practices of interruption.
Keywords: aesthetics / art and technology / Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso / Bergson, Henri / Deleuze, Gilles / radio performativity / the art of intervals / technological vitalism
UDK 111.852
In this essay, I will try to provide a glimpse on the unstable and variable relation between technicity and literature by a minor case study of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's 1933 sintesi radiofoniche (radio syntheses).2 It is my hope that this enigmatic work will serve as a provocative articulation of some of the key terms addressed by the Vilenica Colloquium on 'Literature, Science and Humanities', namely, life processes, literary trans-gressivity and performativity.
The advantage of referring to Marinetti is that his work is immune to the temptations of artistic autonomy and untouched by the conventional dualism of aestheticism and technicism, having abandoned altogether any distinction between art and technology, between expression and action. Marinetti did not formulate his overcoming of the fracture between art and science as yet another post-symbolist, romantic aesthetic infinitisation and absolutisation of art. On the contrary, he envisioned for the avant-
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gardes a more radical task, a shift of paradigm, an epistemic discontinuity: the invention of an art-action tuned to the 'life of matter'.
The sintesi radiofoniche are a good example of this attitude, since they dismiss any heterogeneity of mass communication and conceptual experimentation, embracing the odd language of 'technological vitalism'. In doing so, they place themselves within an unexplored practice of art, where interruptions and intensifications of energetic flows replace artistic genres and poetic principles. Compared to other radio performances by Marinetti, including his 1932 radio drama Violetta e gli aeroplani (Teatro 638—656),3 the sintesi radiofoniche have the significant advantage of being abstract and programmatic, thus revealing Marinetti's unconventional approach to technology.4
According to Arndt Niebisch, what is at stake with the futurist use of the radio is not an aesthetic innovation but a new relation with the 'nervous system of the listeners': 'the radio sintesi do not unfold a complicated narrative, but adopt an absolutely minimalistic aesthetic based on alternating sounds, noises, and silence [...]. [W]hat Marinetti tries to affect with his radio sintesi is not the critical mind of the audience but the nervous system of the listeners' (343—344). Taking up an idea by Wolf Kittler, Niebisch relates the symbolic function of traditional art to communication noise, which presupposes a hermeneutical decoding by the receivers, and Marinetti's medial practices to a signal technology channeled directly, as in Artaud's theatre of cruelty, to the sensorial apparatus: '"Signal" in opposition to "symbol" is a semiotic category that requires no interpretation, but provokes reflexes.' (344)
As declared in his manifesto La radia,5 Marinetti's engagement with radio transmission aims explicitly at creating unprecedented medial topologies and modalities of reception:
A new Art that begins where theatre cinema and narration leave off [...]. Immense enlargement of space [...]. A pure organism of radiophonic sensations [...]. An art without time or space without yesterday or tomorrow [...]. The elimination of the concept or the esteem of the audience which has always had a deforming and worsening influence even on the book. (Marinetti and Masnata 294—295)
The replacement of the standard substantive 'radio' with the playful neologism 'radia' suggests a disjunction between the ordinary social use of technology and artistic sabotage. While the radio is a normalised communication device, 'la radia' requires a distortion of aesthetic categories and experiential habits:
La radia abolishes 1. space or any required scenery in the theater including the Futurist synthetic theater (action unfolding against a fixed or constant scene) and
film (actions unfolding against extremely rapid and highly variable simultaneous and always realistic scenes) 2. time 3. unity of action 4. The dramatic character 5. the audience understood as a mass self-appointed judge systematically hostile and servile always misoneist always retrograde. (Marinetti and Masnata 293—294)
Following Friedrich Kittler's ground-breaking inquiries into the history of media connectivity, Timothy Campbell (x) has rescued the notion of the 'wireless' from the 'gray zone between telegraphy and humble genealogies of early radio', outlining the impact on literary structures of Marinetti's appropriation of the logic of communication media. Although Campbell's analyses concentrate exclusively on Marinetti's literary manifestos and parole in libertà, his description of the emerging practices of 'wireless writing' grasps indirectly the medial context of Marinetti's radio experimentations. Beginning in the late twenties, a fundamental mutation in medial interconnectivity reframes, together with the nature of radio broadcasting, the relation of speaker and listener, the exchange of inscription technologies and sound, the hierarchy of archival traces and spoken language: 'Once the frequencies in voice transmissions and technological storage converged, sounds could be cut and mixed in montage, resulting in important temporal effects, especially in the field of time manipulation.' (Campbell xii) At this moment 'wireless writing' becomes a matter of frequency modulation, of machinic couplings and spacing, of bodily interfacing.6
The sintesi radiofoniche and the manifesto La radia followed in the footsteps of a heated debate, taking place in the late twenties and early thirties, on the impact of radio broadcasting and new communication technologies on traditional aesthetic practices such as theatre and literary recitations (see, say, Brecht). In his commentaries on Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin has highlighted the technological implications of Brecht's epic theatre — 'The forms of epic theatre correspond to the new technical forms — cinema and radio. Epic theatre corresponds to the modern level of technology' (Benjamin, What 6) — and underlined the fundamental changes in the nature of aesthetic perception introduced by Brecht's method of interruption, capturing the 'moment when the mass begins to differentiate itself in discussion and responsible decisions [...], the moment the false and deceptive totality called 'audience' begins to disintegrate' (10).
Like Marinetti's 'radia', epic theatre is 'a new art' that implies unusual space-time relations and a transformed attitude by the audience. Yet, unlike Marinetti's vitalist language of 'radio sensations', Brecht's interruptions and Verfremdungseffekt are predicated in the context of a pedagogical and humanist Marxist episteme, which also explains Benjamin's well known condemnation of Marinetti's futurist sensibility (Benjamin, 'Work' 241—242).
As in Brecht's epic theatre, the central feature of the sintesi is the interplay of acoustical fragments and interruptions, intervals and boundaries. This is the logic of Marinetti's 'radia', which corresponds to the non-representational futurist use of the media: the language of the sintesi does not presuppose symbols and rhetorical articulations of meaning but a defa-miliarising practice of connectivity, deferred movements and setting-in-relation of multiple elements; a landscape of signals and stimulai, processes of fusion and spacing of expressive materials.
Most importantly, the sintesis alternation of intervals and interruptions points to a continuous field of intensity, a vitalist logic of condensation and expansion. Between the acoustical intervals and the interruptions that both separate and connect the multiple segments of the sintesi there is not a difference of nature but a difference in degree which can be intensified or weakened, accelerated to the point of absolute variation or suspended in the stillness of repetition. Beyond the appearance of an unsurpassable heterogeneity of elemental acoustic substances and irrational interruptions, we can observe the emergence of a subtle aesthetics of the interstitial, a technological production of new perceptual intervals.
Stati intermomentali
In order to understand the centrality assigned by Marinetti to intervals and interruptions, we need to return to the debate surrounding the temporal experience of presence that was unfolding at the beginning of the twentieth century. According to Henri Bergson — a key influence on Marinetti and the avant-gardes at large — behind the illusory instantaneousness of the present lays the reality of duration, of elastic blocks of temporal segments. These unities comprise a temporal span; they last, because they are tensed up between the immanent polarities of the virtual and the actual, between the powerless past and the active present. These blocks of duration are thin yet dense, since they continuously frustrate the presence-to-itself of the instantaneous and non-dimensional present.
Whereas the Euclidean spatial habits of human reason and perception have privileged representation — a mimetic reproduction of presence, based on the illusion of an a-temporal relationship with the thing represented — Bergson (77) concentrates on the infra-representational intervals, questioning the spaceless non-dimensionality of interruptions: 'In the living mobility of things, the understanding is bent on marking real and virtual stations. It notes departures and arrivals. It is more than human to grasp what is happening in the interval.'
Following this Bergsonian notion of interval, Anton Giulio Bragaglia bases his Fotodinamismo, a pioneering technique of avant-garde photography, on the concept of stati intermomentali (inter-momental states). According to Bragaglia, the aim of photography is to reveal the non-representational nature of the intervals that constitute everyday gestures, dispelling the illusion of the instantaneity of snap-shot photography.7 Marcel Duchamp's notion of infra-mince (infra-thin) is another modulation of the Bergsonian aesthetics of intervals. In his posthumous notes to the Large Glass, Duchamp (n. 135) attacks in a Bergsonian language the instantaneity of present: '= in each fraction of duration (?) all / future and antecedent fractions are reproduced — All these past and future fractions / thus coexist in a present which is / really no longer what one usually calls / the instant present, but a sort of / present of multiple extensions —'. While the visuality of traditional art is inextricably linked to the myth of an 'instant present' — the present of production and reception of images, of interpretation and communication of meanings, of the marketing and taste of artworks — Duchamp's absorption of the Bergsonian logics of infra-representational intervals transforms artworks into non-artistic works of 'multiple extensions': 'infra-thin' objects, works that do not belong to representation and that occupy the paradoxical spatiality of duration. This is the nature of the 'readymades': they are aporetic things that dwell in the perceptual and conceptual 'thinness' of non-representational intervals.
If one wants to contextualise Marinetti's construction of sound intervals one should take into account also the developments taking place in the field of experimental physiology. By relying on technical devices such as the 'chronoscope' illustrated in Wilhelm Wundt's Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874), psychophysiological experiments aimed at measuring 'physiological time' — the physiological interval between stimulus and reaction — which questioned the instantaneity of perception and thought. Symbolist writers, painters and composers such as Debussy and Janácek were fascinated by the experiential territory revealed by the discovery of the non-instantaneousness of perceptual mechanisms (see Steege). What was happening during these short, and yet dense, intervals? Marinetti's sin-tesi radiofoniche are yet another example of this subtle art on the in-between.
Interruptions
Marinetti's first sintesi radiofonica, An Acoustical Landscape, is made of three blocks of sounds: a fire's crackling, a water's lapping and the whistle of a blackbird:
An Acoustical Landscape
The whistle of a blackbird envious of the fire's crackle ended up putting out the
water's whispery gossip
10	seconds of lapping.
1 second of crackling.
8 seconds of lapping.
1 second of crackling.
5	seconds of lapping.
1 second of crackling.
19 seconds of lapping.
1 second of crackling.
25 seconds of lapping.
I	second of crackling.
35 seconds of lapping.
6	seconds of blackbird whistling (Marinetti, 'Radio Syntheses' 416).
The crackling lasts constantly for 1 second while the lapping follows a dramatic crescendo and decrescendo (10, 8, 5, 19, 25, 35 seconds) ended by the abrupt whistle of the blackboard. This sintesi presents the basic elements of Marinetti's radio language: although the three sounds can be erroneously interpreted as heterogeneous materials separated by differences of kind, they function as differences in degree of emotional intensity. In order to achieve this effect, Marinetti transforms the lapping into a repetitive interruption, the five 1 second segments. These interruptions are at the same time connectors and modulators of the degree of intensity of the lapping. Instead of a flow of punctiform heterogeneous materials, we are now experiencing an assemblage of acoustical repetitions and variations.
In the second sintesi, Drama of distances, the alternating occurrences of soundscapes from distant geographical regions and environments — the military, entertainment, everyday urban or rural life, religion — are assembled without distinct interrupting intervals, following a strict rule of repetitive unities of 11 seconds:
Drama of distances
11	seconds a military march in Rome.
II	seconds a tango being danced in Santos.
11 seconds of Japanese religious music being played in Tokyo.
11 seconds of a lively rustic dance in the Varese countryside.
11 seconds of a boxing match in New York.
11 seconds of street noise in Milan.
11 seconds of a Neapolitan love song sung in the Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro (417).
In this instance, the communal element is the medium of radio itself, the flowing continuum of radio waves. Radio broadcasting 'immensifies
space', but it does so artificially, by coupling and modulating differences. What is at stake is the logics of intermediality, the power of connectivity of radio transmission.
In the third sintesi, Silences speak among themselves, Marinetti's medial constructivism becomes overtly complex and the distinction between intervals and interruptions becomes blurred: is silence interrupting sounds of vice versa?
Silences speak among themselves
15 seconds of pure silence.
A flute's do re mi.
8 seconds of pure silence.
A flute's do re mi.
29 seconds of pure silence.
A piano's sol.
A trumpet's do.
40 seconds of pure silence.
A trumpet's do.
An infant's wah wah.
11 seconds of pure silence.
An eleven year old girl's stupefied ooooh (418).
As the blocks of silence and the musical and human sounds vary according to a crescendo and decrescendo of time patterns — 15, 8, 29, 40, 11 seconds of 'pure silences' — it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between repetitions and variations, modulations and qualitatively different segments of musical instruments. Given the abstraction of silences and the singular concreteness of human voices, it is also impossible to establish differences of kind between forms and contents, structural and thematic elements. What is clear is that we need to grasp the differences in degree of the emotional life-space constructed by the 'radia'. A paradoxical reversal takes place: silence is not the empty background filled in by the fullness of media communication; quite the opposite is true: the apparently triumphal efficacy of interconnected global networks rests on the fragile foundation of virtual silences that 'speak among themselves', penetrating and overcoming the barriers of human and technological communication.8
The Battle of Rhythms intensifies the exchanges between interruptions and intervals, between silences and sounds:
Battle of Rhythms
A prudent and patient slowness expressed by means of the tap tap tap of water drops first cut off then killed off by
A flying elasticity composed of arpeggios of piano notes first cut off then killed off by
A loud ringing of an electric doorbell first cut off and then killed off by
A three minute long silence first cut off and then killed off by
A toiling key in lock tat rum ta trac followed by
A one minute long silence (419).
Here, each acoustical segment is first 'cut off and then 'killed off by the following segment. What this means is that each block functions initially as an interruption, and then as a dense interval. Furthermore, an acoustical segment can be 'slow' or 'elastic', 'loud' or 'silent' — the tap of water, the arpeggios of piano, the three minutes of silence9 — thus showing a variety of intertwined spatial and temporal characteristics. Not only is there no difference of kind between interruptions and intervals, silences and sounds, but also quality and quantity, time and space, are technologically coupled, assembled by the machinic performance of the 'radia' and addressed to the listeners as a mysterious field of pulsations.
The fifth sintesi, Building a Silence, reveals the foundations of Marinetti's topological constructivism:
Building a Silence
1)	Build a wall on the left with a drum roll (one half minute)
2)	Build a wall on the right with trumpeting — shouting — auto tram a squealing of capital (one half minute)
3)	Build a floor with the gurgling of water in pipes (one half minute)
4)	Build a ceiling terrace with the chip chip srschip of sparrows and swallows (20 seconds) (420).
Here, Marinetti avoids any distinction between intervals and interruptions. Since their difference is in degree, intervals and interruptions are hinges, devices for folding and shaping space-time phenomena. Consequently, each acoustical material — drum rolls, auto tram squealing, gurgling water, bird's chip chips — is used as a joint, a turning point for building the ideal 'infra-thin' artificial environment: silence.10
Entre-deux
The sintesi are sound collages, constructivist montages, assemblages of silences and acoustical objects trouvés infused with a modernist sensibility for unmediated conceptual structures and readymade materials. As such, they follow a minimalist cubist aesthetics and pave the way for John Cage's radio music and musique informelle. Yet, because of their primary concern with the articulation of interstices and cuts, they also belong to a more specific lineage of avant-garde experimentalism that has from
Bertolt Brecht to Jean Luc Godard emphasised the use of gaps and interruptions:
The interrupting of action is one of the principal concerns of epic theatre [...] often its main function is not to illustrate or advance the action but, on the contrary, to interrupt it: not only the action of others, but also the action of one's own. It is the retarding quality of these interruptions and the episodic quality of this framing of action which allows gestural theatre to become epic theatre. (Benjamin,
What 3-4)11
In Gilles Deleuze's ontology of 'irrational cuts' — grounded in Godard's cinema theory, which is in turn directly influenced by Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt — Benjamin's uncovering of Brecht's interruptions is radicalised, becoming the central device for reconstructing the logic of modern cinema. Like Marinetti, Deleuze is immune to Brecht's Marxist humanism and pedagogical tenets, and develops his conception of the 'in-between', the entre-deux, on a purely vitalist terrain. In his two-volume study on cinema, the arguments culminate in the theorisation of a 'method of irrational cuts' that generates an 'interstice between images'. In the cinema of Rohmer, Dryer, Bresson and Godard, 'the question is no longer that of the association or attraction of images. What counts is on the contrary the interstice between images, between two images' (Deleuze, Cinema 2 179—180).
What matters for Deleuze is a peculiar movement: not a locomotion but a process of becoming, a power of transformation whose driving force is localised in the 'transcendental field':
What is a transcendental field? It is distinct from experience in that it neither refers to an object nor belongs to a subject (empirical representation). It therefore appears as a pure a-subjective current of consciousness, an impersonal pre-re-flexive consciousness, a qualitative duration of consciousness without self. [...] The transcendental field is defined by a plane of immanence, and the plane of immanence by a life. (Deleuze, 'Immanence' 4)
In the transcendental field, life is 'a life', events take place at absolute speed in an empty time, in the non-representational duration of a non-human interval: 'This indefinite life does not itself have moments, however close together they might be, but only meantime (des entre-temps), between-moments.' (5)
At least apparently, Deleuze follows Marinetti in developing a refined logic of the in-between, conceived as an organum for vitalist art practices. And yet, Deleuze separates sharply interruptions from intervals, attributing to cuts and ruptures the task of relating the finite and the transcenden-
tal fields, the actual and the virtual. Because of this architectural function, interruptions for Deleuze are not intervals, and they are not mutually exchangeable. They join and disconnect segments by cutting and penetrating the empirical plane. However, their power originates from an intensive field that we must not confuse with everyday perceptual experience. Interruptions for Deleuze are in-betweens understood as a pure power of differentiation of the transcendental field.
As a result, Deleuze's descriptions of the in-between presuppose a topology of interruptions that is incompatible with Marinetti's exchanges of cuts and intervals. Deleuze's logics of 'irrational cuts' is a method for intersecting immanence and transcendence, absolute life and relative movements: the pure, void intensive Outside and the impure territory of worldly phenomena. A line of escape, not an interval (Deleuze and Parnet 37, 39).
The Deleuzian in-between is an autonomous and incommensurable cut not coordinated with the beginnings and ends of other blocs of life; not exchangeable with intervals. This is, according to Deleuze, the logics of avant-garde art and cinema:
The modern image initiates the reign of 'incommensurables' or irrational cuts: this is to say that the cut no longer forms part of one or the other image, of one or the other sequence that it separates and divides. [...] The interval is set free, the interstice becomes irreducible and stands on its own. (Deleuze, Cinema 2 277)
The transcendental non-dimensionality of the Deleuzian in-between requires a theology of the Outside, an ontological Void that sustains all the operations of irrational cutting:
Because of the method of the BETWEEN: 'between two actions, between two affections, between two perceptions, between two visual images, between two sound images, between the sound and the visual' [...] the whole undergoes a mutation. [...] The whole thus merges with that Blanchot calls the 'force of dispersal of the Outside', or 'the vertigo of spacing': that void which is no longer a motorpart of the image, and which the image would cross in order to continue, but is the radical calling into question of the image. (180)
We may try to imagine how Deleuze would have approached Marinetti's sintesi radiofoniche: their 'primitive' interruptions, their use of raw sounds and unpredictable cuts, would have been understood as the evidence of an irrational interstitial power, the trace of an absolute freedom of becoming, the signal of a line of flight leading to the superior life of the machinic intervals, the life of a 'spiritual automaton'.
And yet, the density of Marinetti's silences — which are never a void and never produce a 'vertigo of spacing' — and the thick dimensionality of
the síntesis cuts — with their constant exchange of intervals and interruptions — suggest that, contrary to the Deleuzian in-betweens, Marinetti's intervals do 'form part of one, or the other, sequence that they separate and divide'. For this reason, in order to approach the síntesis nature, we must reach a vitalist and yet post-Deleuzian conception of the in-between, envisioning a topology of intervals able to grasp and articulate Marinetti's non-transcendental geometry of interruptions. That is, we need to elaborate a truly vitalist critique able to decipher the language spoken by the 'radia'.12 Unfortunately, we are still quite far from this objective. What we have instead are a few hermetic objects, such as Marinetti's síntesí, which encourage a yet to be articulated theory of their puzzling artistic life.
NOTES
1	The essay is a modified version of Luisetti, 'A Vitalist Alt'.
2	Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's 1933 sintesi radiofoniche are five short experimental radio compositions which date back to Marinetti's late futurist period and coincide with his Manifesto futurista della radio, also known as La radia. The scores for the sintesi radiofoniche have been originally published in August 1941 in the journal Autori e scrittori and later in Marinetti, Teatro 629—637; recently, they have been translated into English by Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Marinetti, 'Radio Syntheses'). The sintesi radiofoniche have never been broadcasted by Marinetti; a 1978 recording by composer Daniele Lombardi is included in the CD Musica Futurista: The Art of Noises 1909—1935 (LTM Recordings, 2006). The audio files of this recording are also available online: http://www.futurismo.altervista.org/audio.htm (7 May 2012). For information on other performances of the sintesi radiofoniche, see Fisher, 'Futurism' 245.
3	For a history of Italian radio aesthetics, see De Benedictis.
4	Marinetti's experiments with recorded sound begin in 1914 with a series of recordings of poetic recitations carried out in a London recording studio. His interest in the medium of radio dates back to futurism's beginnings but starts carrying over into the realm of practice in the mid-to-late 1920s. During his 1926 tour of South America, Marinetti makes repeated appearances on Brazilian and Argentine radio stations. These are followed by sixteen years of active collaboration with the Italian national radio (the EIAR), founded in 1928, which involve everything from declaiming aeropoems, to serving as a live action commentator of major events like the August 1932 return from the United States of Italo Balbo's flying squadron, to hosting a regularly broadcast radio bulletin on the activities of the futurist movement (Marinetti, 'Radio Syntheses' 415). On Marinetti's and the futurists' engagement with radio, see Fisher, 'Futurism' 229—262.
5	The Manifesto futurista della radio, co-authored with Pino Masnata, has been published on 22 September 1933 in the Italian newspaper Gazzetta delpopolo. The manifesto appeared as Manifesto della radio in Futurismo (1 October 1933) and as La radia, Manifesto futurista dell'ot-tobre 1933 in Autori e scrittori (August 1941). It is now available in Marinetti, Teatro 769—774, and in Marinetti and Masnata 292—295. The manifesto was followed in 1935 by a 44-pages unpublished exegesis by Pino Masnata. Translated excerpts from this exegesis will appear in Modernism / Modernity 19.1 (2012). On this gloss, see Fisher, 'New Information'.
6	Timothy Campbell (91) addresses Marinetti's literary 'simulation of wireless functions' and the deficiencies of his 'translation of sense data into their written analogue'. In my essay, I approach Marinetti's medial logic without privileging the literary field.
7	On Bergsonian intervals in Bragaglia's Fotodinamismo futurista, see Luisetti, Una Vita 119—138. Bragaglia (34) quotes the previous passage on intervals from Bergson's Introduction to Metaphysics.
8	The role played by silences in Marinetti's radio sintesi trails from Enzo Ferrieri's 1931 manifesto, 'Radio as a creative force'. Ferrieri, Artistic Director for Italian radio from 1929, 'introduced the seminal idea that the source of radio's true, paradoxical power derives from silences' (Fisher, 'New Information').
9	On this three minute silence, see De Benedictis (66).
10	For the role of silence as the minimal, 'keyed-in unit of spacing', 'necessary for one sound to be joined to another', see Campbell's pages on Sergi's measuring of the gap between unities of excitation (70—72).
11	On the structural affinities between Brechfs epic theatre and Marinetti's theatrical techniques, see Coda.
12	Given the hegemony of transcendental paradigms in Western thought and aesthetics, a vitalist critique may benefit more by looking eastward, for instance at Chinese thought and art, where the 'subtle', the suspended complexity of virtual and yet real experiences, of immanent gaps between the present and the absent, has been for centuries at the center of philosophical and artistic practices: 'There are various angles from which the subtle becomes accessible to experience. In aesthetics, for example, there is the exquisite flavor of the barely perceptible, whether in sound or image, in the transitional stage between silence and sonority in music or between emptiness and fullness in painting, when the sonic or pictorial realisation is barely evident or on the verge of vanishing [...]. All Chinese practices derive from this.' (Jullien 25)
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