Carl Einstein, “Revolution Smashes Through History and Tradition” (1921), trans. Charles W. Haxthausen, October, no. 107 (Winter 2004), 140, 142, 145.
“Wem das Dinghafte als radikal Böses gilt; wer alles, was ist, zur reinen Aktualität dynamisieren möchte, tendiert zur Feindschaft gegen das Andere, Fremde, dessen Name nicht umsonst in Entfremdung anklingt.” Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik (1966), (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975), 191. The English is my adaptation of the dismal English translation by E. B. Ashton, Negative Dialectics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1990), 191.
Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1923), trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: Merlin Press, 1971), 86.
Ibid., 89.
Ibid., 111.
Ibid., 123.
Georg Lukács, “Preface to the New Edition” (1967), in Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, xxii–xxiii.
Lukács, “Preface to the New Edition,” xxiv–xxv. The original German for “objectification” is “Vergegenständlichung”; “reification” is of course “Verdinglichung.” See Georg Lukács, “Vorwort” (1967), in Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (Darmstadt/Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1978), 26–27.
“Aufgabe der Revolution: Entdinglichung, Zerstörung des Gegenstandes zur Rettung des Menschen.” Carl Einstein, “Revolution durchbricht Geschichte und Überlieferung,” in Werke, vol. 4, ed. Germann Haarmann and Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1992), 146. Although Haxthausen’s English translation is excellent, he was forced to translate “Entdinglichung” with the rather stilted “de-reification” (140).
Quoted in Christina Kiaer, “Rodchenko in Paris,” October no. 75 (Winter 1996): 3. See also in general Kiaer’s excellent discussion of Rodchenko’s Paris stay and the Workers’ Club, 198–240.
“Meister Hegel sagte: Dinge sind Vorkommnisse. Zustände sind Prozesse. Vorgänge sind Übergänge.” Bertolt Brecht, Me-ti: Buch der Wendungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969), 115.
“In Marx bereits spricht die Differenz zwischen dem Vorrang des Objeks als einem kritisch herzustellendem und seiner Fratze im bestehenden, seiner Verzerrung durch den Warencharakter sich aus.” Adorno, Negative Dialektik , 191. Translation adapted from Negative Dialectics, 190.
“Trotz des Vorrangs des Objekts ist die Dinghaftigkeit der Welt auch schein. Sie verleitet die Subjekte dazu, das gesellschaftliche Verhältnis ihrer Produktion den Dingen an sich zuzuschreiben. Das wird im Marxischen Fetischkapitel entfaltet …” Adorno, Negative Dialektik, 190. Ashton translates this as: “Despite the preponderance of the object, the thingness of the world is also phenomenal. It tempts the subjects to ascribe their own social circumstances of production to the noumena. This is elaborated in Marx’s chapter on fetishes …” (189). While Adorno’s phrase “den Dingen an sich” does evoke the Kantian Ding an sich, clearly Adorno is not actually using the phrase in this precise way; in the context of a discussion of commodity fetishism, it would make no sense to ascribe the productive relations to “the noumena,” as Ashton has it.
“… zähe Opposition gegen das Bestehende: gegen seine Dinghaftigkeit.” Adorno, Negative Dialektik, 190.
“Im Dinghaften ist beides ineinander, das Unidentische des Objekts und die Unterwerfung des Menschen unter herrschende Produktionsverhältnisse, ihren eigenen, ihnen unkenntlichen Funktionszusammenhang.” Adorno, Negative Dialektik , 192. Translation adapted from Negative Dialectics, 191.
Adorno, Negative Dialektik, 193.
Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions, 217.
As is perhaps needless to say, Benjamin Buchloh is the art historian who has most consistently and cogently related elements from the practices of artists such as Haacke back to Constructivism and Productivism, often querying the artists in conversations about their knowledge of this and other aspects of the historical avant-garde during their formative years. As with the shifting reception of Duchamp in the later 1960s, the rapidly developing historiography of Constructivism during this period in relation to contemporaneous artistic production would merit a more detailed historiographical study.
See, however, the cogent discussions on Productivism in issue 01-25 of the Chto delat magazine (March 2009), →.
“Art Work: A National Conversation on Art, Labor, and Economics” exists as a printed newspaper as well as in various online versions that can be downloaded from →.
See “not about oil” at →, which contains the billboard schematics and graphics, as well as an essay.
For an example of the latter, see also Hito Steyerl’s essay in this issue.
→ Continued in “ Art and Thingness, Part Three: The Heart of the Thing is the Thing We Don’t Know” in issue 16.