Page 41 - Studio International - April 1971

that the human dilemma was to be seen in the varying sizes and thicknesses which thus took Raoul Hausmann
conflict of 'self' and 'others', a programme of on the character of musical notation', 2 Raoul Hausmann
action was developed whereby all personal mirroring the raw sound (optophonetic). 'The Simplified scheme of the Optophone
ambitions were subjected to intense group optophonetic and phonetic poem', Hausmann
scrutiny and if felt to be important were wrote, 'are the first step towards totally
encouraged, regardless of their relationship to non-representational, abstract poetry'. Two of
contemporary morality. Objective judgment the earliest such works were thefmsbw, which
thus came to encourage direct action. The formed the basis for Schwitters's Ursonata, and
foundations of human experience were seen as kp' eri um, of which the following is one
revolving around chance, an `acausal printed version:
orderedness', `synchronicity', the simultaneous KP' ERI UM LP' ERIOUM
impingement of external realities on the N M' PERIII pernoumum
individual, and change, a wish to create bpretiberrerrebee onn00000000h gplanpouk
contradictions in reality, to provide shocks which komnpout perikoul
would verify one's individual existence. The rreeeeeEEErreeeee A
Freie Strasse 'discipline' emerged in the period oapderree mglepadonou mtnou
of Germany's greatest hardship, in the so-called tnoumt
`Turnip Winter' of 1916-17, the extreme limit of
food scarcity, administrative mismanagement
and war-weariness when (unlike the situation in
Zurich) `men's minds were concentrating more
and more on questions of naked existence'. It is
against this background that the Freie Strasse
insistence on personal rebellion in the form of
social shock-injection should be understood.
As Hausmann has written: 'My psychological
analysis was as follows : as each human being is
a compromise between his own will and external
authority, it was necessary to subordinate
external authority to the individual will.'

III PHONETIC AND OPTOPHONETIC POETRY
The interest in linguistics within the Freie
Strasse group was motivated by the desire to
found a kind of renovated contemporary
language from 'sound-images' capable of
supporting multiple and complex meanings.
Hausmann's move into phonetic poetry was
made without knowledge of the earlier That such seemingly anti-rational sonorous not surprising that when the first great war of
experiments of Khlebnikov and Kroutchenykh syncopation also had the capacity to enrage the machines was ending and when tanks were to
in Russia or of Hugo Ball's Zurich work, but audiences to which they were performed was, occupy the streets of Berlin machinist
developed in the traditions of Freie Strasse of course, not without significance; and the imagery played an important part in the
members' previous publications, most notably combination of phonetic poetry and provocative representation of this new reality. Hausmann's
Franz Jung's Trottelbuch (Booby-book) of 1912 manifestos became the standard form for the famous Tatlin at Home of 1920 (as well as his
and Carl Einstein's Bebuquin, a work of 1913 Dadaists' soirees in Berlin. sculpture of the previous year, Mechanical
concerned with what he called 'neurotic Head) is an outstanding example of this genre;
semantics'. To Hausmann, the domination of IV PHOTOMONTAGE AND CONTEMPORANEITY and reminds us that photomontage was named
new verse by poetry of the rival Sturm faction In his Definition der Foto-Montage, Hausmann after the Berlin Dadaist's preference for
was held to be as unhealthy in its visceral wrote: 'The Dadaists, who had "invented" static, thinking of himself as mechanic (Monteur)
expression as was Walden's antipathy to social simultaneous and phonetic poetry, applied the rather than artist. But his themes were not
involvement; and in his first sound poems, of same principles to visual representation. They limited to the machine-orientated; his savage
April 1918, he rejected any immediate semantic were the first to use photography to create, Art Critic of 1919 (whose head reminds one of
content for an investigation of basic from often totally disparate spatial and material the Golem created by Paul Wegener), the
Lautphysiologie, for 'a new conception of what elements, a new unity in which was revealed a commemorative Victorious Dada of 1920 and
may be called the will to creative sound form ... visually and conceptually new image of the his self-celebrating ABCD of 1923 all indicate
Instead of sequences of meaningful words and chaos of an age of war and revolution.... The the versatility of (in Hannah Hoech's words)
pleasant vowel sounds ... a deliberate field of photomontage has as many possibilities `the artist who, among the early Berlin Dadaists,
decomposition, which took as its basis the as there are changes in the milieu, its social was gifted with the greatest fantasy and
characters of the alphabet, the ultimate visual structure and the resulting psychological inventiveness'. It was, indeed, his wish to be
expression of mankind's sound form'. This superstructure—and the milieu alters every day.' inventive and to be an artist (albeit of a new
differed from the work of the Russian Zaoum For Hausmann, photomontage was the kind) which eventually alienated him from the
poets or of Ball in that it was not a philological simultaneous juxtaposition of varied 'real' more specifically political wing of Berlin Dada.
poetic strategy of regenerating language from physical elements to form a 'kind of Although a prime mover in the Dadaists' social
its roots, but a kind of linguistic equivalent of motionless moving picture' of contemporary militancy he refuted political solutions as such.
non-figurative art—which could exist either as events and mythologies, not a 'new aesthetic' Hence his use of photomontage derived not
purely aural experience (phonetic) or be as such but a tool for the creation of a 'new from the wish to render visible the class
translated into typographic signs, into 'letters of reality' appropriate to its time. And it is structure of social relationships (as Hans Hess