Description
The first three decades of the 20th century in Italy saw the rise of artistic practices dominated by the will to advance beyond their immediate present. Consistent with the emergence of bellicose technologies concerned with firepower and speed, Futurism was a practice in which, as predicted by Umberto Boccioni and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti -Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture, 1910-, firepower and speed not only dominated space, but modern man?s bodily and psychic experiences. This focus on pyrotechnics and velocity?whether technicist or literary, as with Marinetti?s and Aldo Palazzeschi?s texts, or performative and affective, as with Emillio Settimelli?s and Bruno Corra?s sintasi theater?made Italian Futurism a powerful instrument of Italian ideologues and for a time the darling of the Fascist regime. But it simultaneously transformed modern art, giving expression to a full range of affective potentials. Having instigated against and, in most cases, broken free of stale 19th ce