Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
About
Futurists without prospects, 2016
Futurists without prospects is a series of shows at P/////AKT loosely tying into a publication which was produced in conjunction to the shows (Crash) ‘Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.’ -K. Vonnegut One morning in 1907 F.T. Marinetti was driving his new Fiat 24-32 HP down Domodossola when by the sudden appearance of two bicyclists he had to turn the wheel, and drove his car into a ditch. This minor incident (no one got hurt) had great cultural significance. The crash not only served as an introduction to Futurism 2 years later, but arguably functions as a mythical big-bang for all of Modernism. By taking the role of a side character to this story, a car mechanic who happened to be in the passenger seat of Marinetti’s car when the accident occured, I give this story an alternative future. The crash supposedly had as much of an impact on the mechanic, Ettore Angelini, as it did on Marinetti himself, and being closely affiliated with the Futurists, he created a car workshop manual. This workshop manual, specifically designed for the car Marinetti was driving at the moment of the crash, applies Futurist theory to that which they loved most – the speeding racecar. Naturally the workshop manual is to be read as a tool for problem-solving rather than to be read cover to cover and provides a different view on history through the strange repetitive reparation processes which the mechanic has to follow. The mechanic, Ettore Angelini, finds in the act of maintenance a suitable alternative to the conservation of a historical movement which above all wanted to “... destroy four centuries of Italian tradition”. For every part in the show I invited a writer to reflect in his or her own way upon the subject, which has been published in a small journal about the project (P/////AKT POOL). These diverse reflections upon the reconsideration of Marinetti’s crash form a sort of collateral damage surrounding the subject, and encompass among other things a proposal for sociological research into the car crash and an essay on the historical evolution of carbuilding.