MODERN REVOLUTION
Menu
Play Video
Muybridge
A film by Jill Nicholls
The Weird World of Eadweard Muybridge
2010 BBC TELEVISION (57:53)
Béton brut
This brutal life
Resources on Brutalism
There are more and more resources on Brutalist architecture showing up on the web, including many videos of the modern ruin that is St. Peter’s Seminary at Cardross. I have featured Murray Grigor’s rare and beautiful short film, Space and Light (1972), on the right, which shows the original condition of the building before it fell into ruin. The background image is of the Keller Fountain in Portland, OR, a Brutalist fountain which I grew up swimming in. Below are some additional resources on Brutalism on the web.
A good source for images of Brutalism is the Fuck Yeah Brutalism site on Tumblr.
A short (2:55) BBC report on St. Peter’s Seminary. Note: If you click on the video links below, they will open a new pop-up light box so you don’t have to leave the site.
A short 10 minute film about St. Peter’s Seminary by NVA, the group that is repurposing it as an art venue that incorporates the ruin into its use.
A sad update on St. Peter’s Seminary: In June of 2018 the charity NVA announced that they were ceasing operations, including the plans to save and repurpose St. Peter’s due to budget cuts in the U.K. The fate of the ultimate building is now unknown.
Play Video
space and light (1972)
A Film By Murray Grigor
Women of dada
In addition to Paula K. Kamenish’s excellent Mamas of Dada: Women of the European Avant-Garde, below are some links on Francis Picaba and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
DADA IN GERMANY
A film by Helmut Herbst
GERMANY—DADA
An Alphabet of German Dadaism
Play Video
1968 | West Germany (56:19)
Benjamin, Kafka, Walser
Modernism as Failure
The Fall 2014 version of my Modern Revolution course came out of the work of my dissertation, Broken: Thought-Images of Life in the State of Exception.
The third chapter of that work, “Failure,” sketched out the outlines of a theory of modern failure. What can it mean to think modernism as failure?
While it certainly informed all my versions of the course, I think my teaching has a much broader focus.
I’m apprehensive about posting this chapter here. It was the least developed part of the book, and needed to be more fully fleshed out.
I am posting the chapter because, as we go through the semester together, students might find it of interest.
This course has also been informed by subsequent research on San Francisco modernism, as well as research on pornography and modernism/modernity in relation to some of my other courses at SFSU. This (basically unfinished) chapter presents a rough sketch of my thinking in 2005
Lumiere Brothers, Edison, Méliès
Early Cinema
Surrealism
Fernand Légar
Ballet Mécanique
Play Video