Serata Futurista

Last Thursday I attended at UCLA's Fowler Museum called "Serata Futurista," an event celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of Futurism by F.T. Marinetti.  Featuring live readings, performances and original Futurist films, Serata Futurista was intended to be a lively evening of Futurist art and entertainment.  Although I enjoyed watching the original Futurist films that were presented at Serata Futurista, I found that the live performances and readings were pretty off the mark.  As much of Futurist art and writing emphasized intense sensory stimulation, furious dynamism and hyper-kinetic activity, a event celebrating Futurism would either have to emulate these characteristics with 21st century fervor and innovation, or simply present a retrospective of Futurism that is temporally encapsulated as movement "of the past."  Yet Serata Futurist was neither, as it straddled awkwardly between presentations of original Futurist work and contemporary "interpretations" of Futurist writings.  A performance I was especially dumbfounded by was a reading of "Who's On First" that was interjected with snippets from Marinetti's 1909 "Futurist Manifesto."  I am still very unclear as to why on earth "Who's On First," perhaps the most trite, stale, tired example of archaic American comedy was read aloud at an evening celebrating Futurism.

Here's a few moments from another Serata Futurista performance "Science and the Unknown Synthesis of Syntheses":

The highlight of the evening was the screening of several Futurist films, which was what brought me out to Serata Futurista in the first place.  I think that the event would have been much more successful had it ONLY been a screening of Futurist films in that, conceptually, the live theatrical performances of Serata Futurista were extremely unsuccessful in their attempt to emulate Futurist proclamations.   Had the evening been limited to the presentation of original Futurist work and writings, the audience would have been able to examine Futurism retrospectively, as a movement that was responding to not only the many technological innovations of modernity but also the emerging political crisis of Italy's recent unification and subsequent WWI intervention.   The fervent and zealous character of Marinetti's first Futurist manifesto reflects an excitement and eager anticipation for a new era, for what is to come.  This excitement was made clear in the films screened at Serata Futurista, most especially a 1930 film by Futurist Tina Cordero entitled "Vitesse," or "Speed" (see video above).  Here, Cordero employs stop motion techniques, unconventional angles, dramatic silhouettes and other experimental production methods to create a film that truly deserves the title of avant-garde.  Yet as "Vitesse" and the other Futurist films were screened at the end of Serata Futurista, I did not enjoy them as much as I would have had they been screened independent of their awkward, modern-day counterparts.