Merz Merz Merz Merz: Performing the Remains of Mr. Kurt Schwitters

TY - JOUR

T1 - Merz Merz Merz Merz

T2 - Performing the Remains of Mr. Kurt Schwitters

AU - Newell, Penny

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - This paper opens up questions about the methodological practice of critical writing about collage art. As Elza Adamowicz astutely suggests, to respond to the alterity of collage is to negotiate a route through wordless jouissance, inarticulate pointing, and stammering emotion, toward speaking sense. The twofold object of this study is to problematise the act of making sense of the collage works of the artist Kurt Schwitters, and through that to enact a methodological experiment in performative writing. Initially, I stage an analysis of the artist's late collage works, seeking to define Schwitters's neologism Merz. Yet, I do so only in order to pass through that definition to a crisis of clarity, critiquing lucidity and deploring the implied possibility of describing the formal synthetic identity of works the nature of which is to remain fragmentary in form, nonsensical in meaning and beyond critical comprehension. The paper thus proceeds into self-effacement, becoming the remains of an alternative methodological research journey, made in response to Merz.

AB - This paper opens up questions about the methodological practice of critical writing about collage art. As Elza Adamowicz astutely suggests, to respond to the alterity of collage is to negotiate a route through wordless jouissance, inarticulate pointing, and stammering emotion, toward speaking sense. The twofold object of this study is to problematise the act of making sense of the collage works of the artist Kurt Schwitters, and through that to enact a methodological experiment in performative writing. Initially, I stage an analysis of the artist's late collage works, seeking to define Schwitters's neologism Merz. Yet, I do so only in order to pass through that definition to a crisis of clarity, critiquing lucidity and deploring the implied possibility of describing the formal synthetic identity of works the nature of which is to remain fragmentary in form, nonsensical in meaning and beyond critical comprehension. The paper thus proceeds into self-effacement, becoming the remains of an alternative methodological research journey, made in response to Merz.

KW - Performance Studies

KW - documents

KW - museum

KW - collage

KW - cut-up

KW - Schwitters

KW - methodology

KW - research methods

KW - performative writing

M3 - Article

SN - 123456789

VL - 8

SP - 44

JO - Platform

JF - Platform

IS - 1

ER -