Bruno Munari

Manifesto of Machinism

(1938)

 



Note

A Manifesto that invites us to use the machines as artists, in order to create with them works of art and other machines that were in themselves works of art.

 


 

Today’s world is a world of machines.

We live among machines, they help us with everything we do in our work and recreation. But what do we know about their moods, their natures, their animal defects, if not through arid and pedantic technical knowledge?

Machines reproduce themselves faster than mankind, almost as fast as the most prolific of insects; they already force us to busy ourselves with them, to spend a great deal of time taking care of them; they have spoiled us; we have to keep them clean, provide them with nourishment and rest, continually attend to them and meet their every need. In a few years’ time we will become their little slaves.

Artists are the only ones who can save mankind from this danger.

Artists have to be interested in machines, have to abandon their romantic paint-brushes, their dusty palettes, their canvases and easels.
They have to start understanding the anatomy of machines, the language of machines, their nature, and to re-route them into functioning in irregular ways to create works of art with the machines themselves, using their own means.

No more oil paints but blowtorches, chemical reagents, chroming, rust, coloring by anodes, thermal alterations.

No more canvases and stretchers, but metals, plastics, synthetic rubbers and resins.

The form, color, movement, noise of the world of machines no longer viewed from without and deliberately reproduced, but harmoniously composed.

Machines today are monsters!
Machines must become works of art!

We shall discover the art of machines!

 


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