“MOVENS” OR THE AESTHETICS OF MOVEMENT AS A PROGRAMMATIC

PERSPECTIVE

FRIEDRICH W. BLOCK

Dedicated to Franz Mon on the occasion of his 80th birthday

Pejorative ascriptions

“Be always absent-stupid-minded”,1 this is the motto of all new avant-gardes. The poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s essay on “the aporias of the avant-garde”, written in 1961, culminates in this polemic, with which the angry young man initiates the critical discourse on the historical and the neo-avant-garde in Germany. He writes that the concept requires elucidation. But when Enzensberger attempts to shed light on the subject, he ends with a sweeping condemnation of the contemporary avant-garde, which he accuses of being doctrinal, uniform, arbitrary, a bluff and long since claimed by the consciousness industry. None the less, the essay includes two arguments particularly relevant to the continued discourse: these are the failure of the historical avant-garde and the regressive repetition of the present avant-garde. As we know, Peter Bürger went on to set out this double condemnation in his influential “Theory of the Avant-Garde” thirteen years later (Bürger 1974). Accepted or not, these arguments of failure and repetition still feature in the academic discussion to this day. In all its differentiation the discourse has thus persistently circled around condemnation of and apologia for what is seen to be avant-garde.

Another thing Bürger and Enzensberger have in common, to some extent at least, is to whom they ascribe the idea of the current or the neo-avant-garde. Along with certain trends in art and music, in the case of literature this primarily concerns experimental writing such as

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concrete poetry and related manifestations. While Bürger mentions concrete poetry only in passing, Enzensberger expresses himself a little more clearly concerning a project which I would like to focus on in this essay: namely the anthology “movens” published by fellow poet Franz Mon the previous year, in 1960 (Mon 1960). Particularly Enzensberger’s criticism of the poetic notion of experiment, as he sees it developed in the “movens” volume, has repeatedly been picked up by the academic discourse ever since. However, Enzensberger’s argument continues to be completely polemical when he claims, for example, that projects like “movens” follow a latent totalitarian violence addressed towards the artistic material: colours, tones, blunted words thrown like hand grenades, he writes.2 Later, “movens”, or the poetic opinions developed therein, play a role in the critical discourse of Bürger’s “Theory of the Avant-garde”. In Germany, this discourse has been developed strongly in the field of literary studies. Hans Christian Kosler (1976), for example, defends experimental literature along the lines of “movens” and its editor against Bürger’s negative idea of the neo-avant-garde. Importantly, Kosler finds no evidence of experimental literature concurring with a renewed intention of attacking the institution of art.

Thus, the connection between the aesthetic positions represented in “movens” and the so-called neo-avant-garde starts off as a question of ascription. These ascriptions occur in the system of art, on the one hand, and in that of science, on the other hand. Therefore, we need to differentiate. I shall say in advance that we are dealing with ascriptions which, in the case of “movens” at least, have no explicit equivalent in the object: there is no mention of being avant-garde or neo-avant-garde in this book or in the poetological program it represents.

Hence, for the moment, I shall attempt neither a poetological nor a scientific classification of the neo-avant-garde. Instead, I will try to filter out the programmatic aims formulated in the “movens” project. The artist Carlfriedrich Claus will then be introduced as an example to show how this program is carried out, and what prospects it offers. Only then shall we move on to discuss possible references to the avant-garde discourse. “movens” and the concept of movement The title of Franz Mon’s anthology “movens” already conveys the central idea of movement. The subtitle announces “documents and

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analyses on literature, art, music, architecture”, that is to say, a panorama of art in its entirety. The first part contains poetic texts by artists or writers such as John Cage, Dieter Rot, Jean Tardieu, Emmett Williams, Gertrude Stein and Kurt Schwitters. Throughout the book there are illustrations of visual, architectural and musical works. The second part consists of essays on contemporary manifestations of art. In the middle of the volume, the editor has inserted 16 red pages containing a basic essay – called “Perspective” – and a “Synopse”. The synopsis is particularly interesting because it systematically organises the aesthetic categories deployed in the different contributions of the book. We will focus on the following two remarks on context:

1. The “documents” announced in the subtitle remind us of the “documenta”, the so-called world art exhibition, which had just taken place for the second time the year before. The programme of “documenta II” celebrated abstract art as a world language of freedom. The “documenta” curators considered this artistic freedom as involving both a moral and a political dimension, not only aimed at the experiences of National Socialism but also at the political system of the Eastern bloc and its doctrine of socialist realism: the abstract art of the “documenta” was politicised against the background of the cold war. Of course, the documents of visual art in “movens” can be attributed to abstract art – most of the book’s visual artists also participated in the “documenta”. But the concept of abstraction plays no theoretical role in the aesthetics of the book; it is noticeably avoided.

2. Above all, “movens” is a poetic project, in spite of the fact that other areas of art are discussed. Conceptually, theoretically and in the examples it makes use of the project differs from the ethos of the German literary scene as represented by the “Gruppe 47” (“Group 47”): starting out from the same situation of 1945, the so called cultural Kahlschlag (“demolition”) resulting from the catastrophes of World War II, Holocaust and Third Reich, the “Gruppe 47” demanded an unvarnished relation to reality; experiment and its traditions were decidedly rejected. Against that, the view held in “movens” can also be found in concrete poetry, although the main emphases lie a little differently. Anything reminiscent of doctrine is avoided: labelling or the combative air of a manifesto, for example. And, “movens” goes much further than concrete poetry (as practiced by Eugen Gomringer), as the discussion on so-called labyrinthine architecture, dynamic theatre, electron painting and new or electronic music shows. It

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designs a programmatic perspective with concepts that have been developed in post-concrete forms of language art until today.

Let’s move on to the synopsis and to the poetics of the volume. In the preceding essay “Perspektive” (82-86), Franz Mon makes it clear that the project sees itself as pointing to a theory of modern arts. The starting point is the linguistic basis of all art according to its communicative semiosis. Language is conceived to be processual, an articulation between memory and expectation. The aesthetics of movement are then set up in five short sections of the “Synopse” (87-96). Basically, movement is not only understood in a kinetic manner, but as a semiotic process and as aesthetic self-observation.

In detail the individual theoretical sections each develop one central idea amongst specified concepts. The conceptual pair “Phase und Experiment” (“phase and experiment”, 87f.), for example, stands for methodically clear, precise and rational interventions into a string of events or actions. In works of this kind, the process matters more than the result. The “Material” (89f.) which is processed is conceived as inherently dynamic, as far as consciousness concerned with material can itself be considered material. The “Analyse” (“analysis”, 90f.) of the material tries to observe even the smallest elements of articulation and to position these in a larger context. “Gestik und die Organisation des Materials” (“gestures and organisation of the material”, 92-95) focuses on different performative qualities and levels of sign processes. Finally, with the keywords “Organismisches Maß und Spontaneität” (“organismic measure and spontaneity”, 95f.), the persons involved in the art process, artist and recipient alike, are conceived as an empirical condition of this process.

The form of the synopsis is – as is the whole book – both poetic and theoretical: theory poetry so to speak. Though the essayistic style is academic, its wording can be indifferent, affective and metaphorical nevertheless. This corresponds to the method of the keyword register attached to every commentary, formally contrasting with it. Furthermore, this offers one of many possibilities for reading the book. Finally, as a third element, every section includes quoted fragments from theoretical texts of modern aesthetics – from Adorno, Boulez and Cézanne, Kandinsky, Klee and Nietzsche to Schlemmer, Sutherland and Valéry. This specific structure also has a gestural, performative character: the development of modernism, including the so-called historic avant-gardes, a tradition which was wiped out completely in Central Europe, has been reconstructed and assimilated.

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Carlfriedrich Claus: life as experiment With these aesthetics of movement, “movens” supplies a programmatic perspective for what has been termed the “experimental poetics” of the next few decades. This is a perspective – over and above concrete poetry towards conceptual and inter-media poetry, or media-reflexive poetry – which is flourishing at present, particularly in the area of digital technology. We will concentrate on three important aspects here: firstly, movement as process and performance, secondly reflection upon media as reflection of self, and thirdly, experience as an experiment.

This will now be elucidated by using the example of Carlfriedrich Claus, who was represented in “movens” and who continued to develop its program in an unusually radical manner until his death in 1998.

Carlfriedrich Claus’ work moves between visual and sound poetry. The “Lautprozesse” (“sound processes”) are vocal articulations which are recorded on tape and are complexly composed material. The “Sprachblätter” (“speech-sheets”), drawings and etchings, consist of handwritten wordings in transition to graphic formulations, which are often carried out on both sides of transparent paper, and are frequently linked to cycles. The sheets always arise in the context of some special, intensive theoretical occupation such as the study of various different languages, mysticism and Tibetology, contemporary philosophy, particularly Ernst Bloch, or cybernetics, and, of course, modern art. Claus has set down his personal poetics in an important essay written in 1964: “Notizen zwischen der experimentellen Arbeit – zu ihr”.3

The fact that Claus lived in the GDR is highly significant. Since 1956, at the latest, he was officially isolated as an artist, following his public defence of Picasso against the doctrine of socialist realism. His work was produced in complete seclusion and was acclaimed only in the West, following his participation in “movens”. It was not until the end of the seventies that he received any attention in the GDR. Nonetheless, Claus was a convinced Communist and saw his artistic work as a contribution to a communist utopia. Since German reunification he has been honoured frequently. So far, the highlight of this delayed recognition is the extensive exhibition held in Chemnitz in 2005, which placed Claus in the context of modern art, along with more than 120 artists.4

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Fig. 1: Carlfriedrich Claus, Vibrationstext, 1960

1. Movement as process and performance: Claus contributed a handwritten “Vibrationstext” (“vibration text”, 77) and a poetological statement (76) to “movens”.5 According to the statement, he was concerned with the meticulous observation of organic and perceptual-psychological processes during experimental articulation. His is an artistic analysis, which concerns the connections of body, mind, natural and social environment, as well as the ways in which they are symbolically conveyed. This refers to the activity of both the artist and the recipient. During the production of speech sheets, Claus explored the interrelation of cognitive, motor, and media techniques. He worked with both hands simultaneously, from right to left and the other way round, forwards and backwards, with normal and mirrored writing, revolving surfaces for writing and projection, grades of

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transparency, transition from legibility to illegibility, from verbal to iconic codes etc. An equivalent could also be formulated for the sound processes.

Fig. 2: Carlfriedrich Claus, Emotionale Bewegungen im Formulierungs-prozess, 19886

2. Media reflection as reflection of self: Claus’ second appearance on the international stage was in 1963, in Amsterdam, with the exhibition “Schrift und Bild / Art and Writing” where he was represented by 10 handwritten speech-sheets.7 This large exhibition was a direct result of “movens”, concentrating on the convergence of visual and scriptural art. Contemporary developments such as Art Informel, Tachism and Visual Poetry were contrasted with material going back to the 8th century. The intermedial connections between word and image can be interpreted as an aspect of the proceeding “lingualisation” of art,8 which, in turn, must be seen in the context of the development of information technology. There has been a noticeable increase in the

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artistic attention placed on different forms of media and the way they are implemented. In the age of electronic information processing, Claus’ complementary observation of handwritten and vocal processes is important inasmuch as these are technologies of self. They refer to the human medium and thus, dialectically, produce a kind of anti-grammatology.

Fig. 3: Detail of Fig. 2. 3. Experience as experiment: as Claus (1964) makes clear in his poetological outline, the “notes between the experimental work”, he is interested in a “Erprobung: im Selbstversuch” (“test: in self-experiment”, or “exploration by way of experiment on oneself”, 6), dealing with the “rückwärtige Landschaft des informierenden Ichs” (“back feeding” or “reverse” “landscape of the informing I”, 13). Claus refers to the concentration on the thresholds of the formulation

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process: the boundaries between inside and outside, materiality and immateriality, as well as between determination and freedom. He explores the transformation of psychosomatic experience into language or writing, the transition of theoretical reflection into spontaneous expression and vice versa, and the sublimating observation and transformation of sexually motivated forces, and of states of ecstasy or experiences on the verge of consciousness etc.

In this context, ‘experimental’ means the artistic manipulation of personal experience, literally making experience out of specific deliberately chosen conditions. This then is experience as experimental subjectivity or, as Claus would have it: “life as experiment”.9 Neo-avant-garde? With these insights, we can now address the neo-avant-garde issue. Inasmuch as this is a programmatic question, the aesthetics of movement, as illustrated with the example of “movens” and Claus, can be interpreted as an expression of the experimental poetics program. The term program is used here as a concept – in analogy to cultural ‘software’ – to observe poetological condensations in the art system. Programs consist of certain strategies, principles, values, work attitudes, questions and objectives which shape single artistic events and manifestations and help to organise their systemic factors (like actants and their perceptions and communications, media, works, institutions) towards a certain poetics.10 Programs occur in various planes of complexity which may cross each other. They develop intrinsic values and the specificities of these may be indicated – usually with type or genre titles or, if required, with group or movement names. Some examples of programs and partial programs, in order of abstraction, are: Futurism, Zaum, star language / digital poetry, New Media Poetry, L.A.I.R.E., poème à lecture unique. Of course it is not necessarily the norm to interlock more comprehensive programs with partial programs or concretions – since the sixties post-concrete language art has, if at all, favoured smaller programs: mainly strategies of individual artists (like “Lautprozesse” or “Sprachblätter”) without a clear ‘superstructure’.

Experimental poetics as a program has intended not so much to aid the classification of certain texts or works, but rather to establish the

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parameters of a setting repeatedly said to have the following common criteria:

the interest in working with rather than in the language, i.e. the concentration on its semantic and material aspects as well as its use in connection with other sign systems

the experimentation with new media of perception and communication and their technologies

making the processes of producing, perceiving, and under-standing aesthetic forms a central theme

linkage and integration and therefore also extension of media and procedures used in more traditional forms of art

the connection of poetry / language art with other genres of art – particularly with contemporary developments in the fine arts and music – and also with science and politics, the reflection on the limits of art

the very rational and cognitively oriented attitude of the producers

their cooperation in groups and their international integration. As we have seen, the aesthetics of movement interfere with and specify these criteria. However, the concept of neo-avant-garde plays no role in this poetological orientation. And for the most part, the same goes for the notion of avant-garde if we discount polemic ascriptions à la Enzensberger. At the most, conceptions, like the one Richard Kostelanetz formulated in 1982 for the historical and contemporary poetic avant-garde, could be viable if interpreted as a purely poetological statement:

[Avant-garde] transcends current artistic conventions in crucial aspects, establishing a discernible distance between itself and the mass of current practices; second, avant-garde work will necessarily take considerable time to find its maximum audience; and, third, it will probably inspire future, comparably advanced endeavours. (Kostelanetz 1982: 3)

Franz Mon is even more cautious with the concept of “new” (Mon 1997: 14). On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the “Bielefelder Colloquium Neue Poesie”, where about 45 international experimental poets met annually, he writes that the term new poetry (“Neue Poesie”) was accepted by the participants as neutral and could thus be agreed upon – the rejection of any labels would become an extra point

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on the program agenda. The choice of the term new poetry emphasised the fact that there was an interest in unknown or not yet existing poetic procedures, which react to changed conditions.11

Theoretically, observing the art system, we should question if the term ‘neo-avant-garde’ is in fact suitable for the historical or structural classification of experimental poetry in the 50s and 60s and thereafter. To go even further: the notion of neo-avant-garde seems to be theoretically inadequate for the analysis and explanation of any phenomena of art. This is the case even if the notion was considered in the positive light of the neo-avant-garde adapting the avant-garde “project” to changed conditions (Asholt & Fähnders 2000: 16) or extending and radicalising it in preoccupation with developments in art, history, media, and theory (Schaffner 2006: 18-19). Neo-avant-garde can hardly be conceived as a (more general) aesthetic program in the sense developed above. If, as told by the trivial consensus in the critical readings of Bürger’s reductive avant-garde concept, developments of art since the fifties cannot be judged to be repetitive or epigonic, if avant-garde should be thought not to be completed but dynamic, the notion of neo-avant-garde is both distorting and unnecessary.

Indeed, already the term avant-garde is too general to distinguish the specialised facets of contemporary art: thus it would be difficult to define which art of the 50s and 60s would not be (neo-)avant-garde or, rather, to define how avant-garde would specifically differ from any art actually presented to and discussed in public in the last decades. This is also shown by the colourful bunch of phenomena discussed in this book. Thus ‘avant-garde’ seems to indicate an interpretative and historical perspective on various art forms rather than a program of the art system itself.

Self-referentiality, that is to say the more or less critical reflection on structures, processes and boundaries of art, may be an important criterion for avant-garde, but self-referentiality in art usually relates to certain aspects of artistic events and does not cover their complexity and their specific character. At least this holds true for the examples discussed in this essay.

In literature the avant-garde issue seems to be less diffuse than in fine art or contemporary music: the dynamic program of experimental poetics could be interpreted as a development of avant-garde as outlined by Anna Katharina Schaffner in her differentiated thesis on “language dissection” since Futurism (Schaffner 2006) in order to qualify “a discernible distance between itself and the mass of current

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practices” (see the quotation of Richard Kostelanetz). But the aesthetics of movement and experiment find themselves in such a distance to official literature and its dominant model of narrative fiction that one could really speak of a poetic language art in its own right and apart from literature. In other words: for (experimental) language art the ascription ‘avant-garde’ is as redundant as for contemporary fine art – unless we want to focus on its relation to the radical developments of art in the early 20th century.

With this sceptical view, I would nevertheless like to conclude by picking out several aspects of the diverse avant-garde discourses and relating these to the described phenomena of the experimental poetics of movement. Conclusion

1. Let us first look at the relations to the historical avant-garde movements. In accordance with Benjamin Buchloh and Hal Foster, we should closely examine how contemporary art views the avant-garde tradition. As already mentioned, the poetics of “movens” assimilate approaches of the avant-garde which are deemed interesting. And, no doubt, the poets or artists accommodate themselves to this appropriation. But this isn’t just the repetition of the achievements of the avant-garde tradition, it is a retro-perspective in dialectical proportion to anticipation and reconstruction (cf. Foster 1996: 14). Or, as Schaffner (2006: 281-82) puts it, they “enhance them, develop them further and adapt them to their own sensibilities and distinctive background situations, drawing upon new theories and concepts”. Claus’ intensive treatment of Russian Futurism illustrates this. He wasn’t interested in the futuristic attack on the art institution or the “slap in the face of public taste”, as a manifesto by Velimir Xlebnikov and Alexej Krutchonych from 1913 was called. Instead, in line with his experimental poetics, he was interested in the radical manipulations of language processes, methods of handwriting and sound poetry developed by artists such as Xlebnikov and Krutchonych, in the sphere of Sa-um:

Erfindung einer neuen Sprach-Realität aus dem Material selbst, den bewußtwerdenden phonetischen und graphischen Elementen der Sprache: Laut (Vokal, Konsonant), Schriftzeichen, Silbe, Wort und deren Beziehung zu Linie, Fläche, Raum, Zeit, Farbe, Zahl. Erzeugung knirschender

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Verbindungen. Aus-Spaltungen: Explosionen. Implosion”. (Claus 1990: 146)12

Claus interprets the revolutionary gestures combined with these procedures according to his utopia of consciousness change as world change. If we read his corresponding essays in relation to his concrete artistic practice, then, like Foster (2005: 15), we can’t fail to notice that here, at last, an adequate understanding of the historical avant-garde is revealed.

2. The question of attacking the art institution: seen system-theoretically, the historical avant-garde movements were concerned for the first time with questioning the boundaries of art in due clarity, that is to say dealing with the distinction between system and environment. With that, the aestheticist autonomy postulate is both surpassed and deconstructed: differentiating its self-organisation, art itself explicitly sets its own boundaries. The constant reflection ‘what is art?’ or ‘under what circumstances and possibilities, for which reasons and in what ways can art happen?’ has been with us ever since. The ways in which this question is concretely realised are very diverse. A dynamic treatment of the system-environment-difference reacts flexibly to the cultural, technological, political, and social challenges of modernisation.

For the program of the poetic experiment, the flirtation with science is particularly important, here: as a development of “poetics in the age of scientific knowledge theories” (Wiener 1987). (Critical) theories of language and culture, analytic philosophy, semiotics, media and information theory, mathematics, cybernetics, cognitive and genetic research etc. are intensively studied, used or extended by artists and mediators in the experimental program. The issues at stake are epistemological questions under artistic conditions, which have, compared to science, quite different procedures. They are, above all, not orientated objectively or academically but subjectively towards the individual self: life or experience as an experiment.

3. In his critique of Bürger’s simplifying art concept, Dietrich Scheunemann (2000) has pointed out a further challenge: the rapid development of the information technologies faced by the avant-gardes. This certainly also applies to experimental poetry. Concen-tration on sign processes, on the materiality of language, the development of intermedial processes, the poetic trail of any medial dispositive – from voice and handwriting, via typography, photo-graphy, film, video, holography, radio, electronic sound-processing to multimedia, Internet, programming code – all of this shows how

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sensitive one is to media reflection within the program of experimental poetry. Most important here is the precarious connection between subjectivity and media – precarious in the sense of subjectivity being constantly under question as a consequence of modernisation (Block 1999: 13ff., 283ff.). The work of Carlfriedrich Claus, his attentiveness to what could be called human media in the context of the technological build-up, particularly expresses this. However, it can just as well be observed in current manifestations of digital poetry.13

4. Finally, we come to a last aspect: the connection of art and life. With life practice Peter Bürger means social practice, and his formula relates to the intention of producing societal change through art. Ignoring the fact that this distinction isn’t unproblematic in itself (isn’t art always life or social practice?) I would interpret it as the previously mentioned processing of the system-environment-difference and the self-reflection of art.

However, in view of the aesthetics of movement within the program of experimental poetry, the distinction of art and life does actually gain a completely different and important meaning. “Life as an experiment” does not mean that life worth living has to be judged, in an elitist fashion, as an art work, for instance as in the astheticist concept of the dandy or as a hermetic form game. Nor does it mean the exposition of social life or public and communicative processes as in actions, happenings, Living Theatre etc. First and foremost, life in poetic experiment, as Carlfriedrich Claus radically carried it out, means the individual space of experience, and begins artistically with the cognitive domain of man: embodied feelings, perceptions, imagination, thoughts and expressions in their dependence on symbolic systems and communication. The methods are self-observation, self-reflection, self-description. One function of contemporary art becomes quite clear in relation to this: the concentration on the poiesis of individual consciousness in the context of its medial or communicative or total occupation.

Notes 1 “Sei immer blödsinnig geistesabwesend” (Enzensberger 1962: 305). 2 “blindlings geschleudert werden Farben, Töne und Wortstümpfe, nicht Molotow-Cocktails oder Handgranaten” (Enzensberger 1962: 308). 3 “Notes between the experimental work – on it” (Claus 1964).

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4 “Schrift. Zeichen. Geste. Carlfriedrich Claus im Kontext von Klee bis Pollock”, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, 24.7.-9.10.2005, cf. Mössinger & Milde (2005). 5 The third part of his contribution consists of a page of typewritten letter constellations. 6 “Emotional movements in the process of formulation”. 7 The “Schrift und Bild” exhibition was curated by Dietrich Mahlow, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 3.5.-10.6. 1963, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden 15.6.-4.8. 1963. The catalogue (Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden 1963) is introduced with an essay by Franz Mon and was published in Mon’s edition “Typos”. 8 ‘Lingualisation’ means here that language and text are incorporated as material or perceptual media into artistic production – from the fine arts all the way to a “literature” outside of literature. This poetic treatment of language has developed its own dynamic alongside the traditional arts in the course of the twentieth century – to such an extent that one can say it constitutes its own genre, for which I use the term “language art”. Second, this concept is meant to convey that language and text also function in this context as paradigms and as a medium for artistic self-reflection. 9 Quoted from an interview with Carlfriedrich Claus (Hanika 1999). 10 This concept is related to a general systems theory of art as developed by Siegfried J. Schmidt (1989), Niklas Luhmann (1995) and – concerning experimental poetics – Friedrich W. Block (1999). 11 Although not every protagonist in this field would identify him- or herself with the label experimental, and even though there are perhaps more appropriate terms, this concept seems to this day to be the one most capable of acquiring international currency. 12 “Invention of a new reality of language out of its own material, the phonetic and graphic elements of language coming to consciousness: sound (vowel, consonant), grapheme, syllable, word, and their relation to line, square, space, time, colour, number. Creation of crunching connections. Ex-splittings: Explosions. Implosion”. 13 Aesthetic concepts of the man/machine distinction and of so called interactivity are especially crucial here (cf. Block 2000).

Works Cited Asholt, Wolfgang and Walter Fähnders

2000 ‘Einleitung’ in Asholt, Wolfgang and Walter Fähnders (eds) DerBlick vom Wolkenkratzer. Avantgarde – Avantgardekritik – Avantgardeforschung. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi: 9-27.

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Block, Friedrich W. 1999 Beobachtung des ‘ICH’. Zum Zusammenhang vom Subjektivität

und Medien am Beispiel experimenteller Poesie. Bielefeld: Aisthesis.

2000 ‘Diabolische Vermittlung. Zur Konzeption von Bewußtsein und

Körperlichkeit in interaktiver Medienpoesie’ in Jahraus, Oliver and Nina Ort (eds.) Beobachtung des Unbeobachtbaren. Konzepte radikaler Theoriebildung in den Geisteswissenschaften. Weilerswist: Velbrück: 148-168.

Bürger, Peter

1974 Theorie der Avantgarde. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Claus, Carlfriedrich

1990 ‘Notizen zu Chlebnikov’ (orig. 1985) in Städtische Museen Karl-Marx-Stadt and Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte (eds) Carlfriedrich Claus: Erwachen am Augenblick. Sprachblätter. Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz), Münster: 146f.

Claus, Carlfriedrich

1964 Notizen zwischen der experimentellen Arbeit – zu ihr. Frankfurt am Main: Typos Verlag.

Enzensberger, Hans Maguns

1962 ‘Die Aporien der Avantgarde’ in Enzensberger, Hans Magnus Einzelheiten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 290-315.

Foster, Hal

1996 The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hanika, Regina

1999 ‘Das Leben als Experiment. Gespräch mit dem Annaberger Künstler Carlfriedrich Claus’ in Wolf, Gerhard (ed.) Augen Blicke Wort Erinnern. Begegnungen mit Carlfriedrich Claus. Berlin: Gerhard Wolf Janus press: 175.

Kosler, Hans Christian

1976 ‘Neoavantgarde? Anmerkungen zur experimentellen Literatur’ in Lüdke, Martin W. (ed.) ‘Theorie der Avantgarde’. Antworten auf Peter Bürgers Bestimmung von Kunst und bürgerlicher Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 252-267.

Kostelanetz, Richard

1982 ‘Introduction. What is Avant-Garde?’ in Kostelanetz, Richard (ed.) The Avant-Garde Tradition in Literature. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books: 3-6.

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Luhmann, Niklas 1995 Die Kunst der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Mon, Franz (ed.)

1960 movens. Dokumente und Analysen zur Dichtung, bildenden Kunst, Musik, Architektur. Wiesbaden: Limes.

Mon, Franz

1997 ‘Durchblick und Draufblick. Über das Bielefelder Colloquium Neue Poesie 1978-1997’ in Kunsthalle Bielefeld (ed.) 20 Jahre Bielefelder Colloquium Neue Poesie, Bielefeld. Kunsthalle Bielefeld and Edition Hansjörg Mayer.

Mössinger, Ingrid and Brigitta Milde (eds)

2005 Schrift. Zeichen. Geste. Carlfriedrich Claus im Kontext von Klee bis Pollock. Cologne: Wienand.

Schaffner, Anna Katharina

2006 Language Dissection in Avant-Garde Poetry. Textual Politics from Cubist and Futurist to Concrete and Digital Poetics. PhD Thesis. University of Edinburgh.

Scheunemann, Dietrich

2000 ‘Preface’ in Scheunemann, Dietrich (ed.) European Avant-Garde: New Perspectives. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi: 7-11.

Schmidt, Siegfried J.

1989 Die Selbstorganisation des Sozialsystems Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (ed.)

1963 Schrift und Bild. Frankfurt am Main: Typos Verlag. Wiener, Oswald

1987 ‘Persönlichkeit und Verantwortung. Materialien zu und aus meinem Versuch über “Poetik im Zeitalter naturwissen-schaftlicher Erkenntnistheorien” bei Matthes und Seitz, 1988’ in manuskripte 1987 (97): 92-101.