9th biennial conference of the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies
The term avant-garde – ‘advance guard’ or ‘vanguard’ – suggests military language and contexts related to violence, destruction, demolition, rebellion, and revolution. Descriptions of the historical avant-gardes as artistic and ideological formations accordingly often emphasize the turn against tradition, the rebellion against stagnant categories, the destructive potential of certain ideas, and the constant attempts to violently transgress boundaries in art. The substrate of the avant-gardes, also in the later 20th century and in our own, is conflict and destruction, one of the guiding principles of avant-garde and modernist thought and practice being to build and create on the ruins of the past. War indeed is rarely absent from the avant-garde community of experience – whether as world wars, civil wars, terror, revolutions, totalitarianism, occupation, liberation struggles – so much so that some scholars see these events, especially the destructive power of the war machine, as the ‘tragic defeat of modernity’. However, our models of avant-garde and modernist practices across all of the arts up until the present day should not be limited to the self-image of the avant-gardes as revolutionaries, rebels and demolitionists. Wars have also ushered in new beginnings, offering opportunities for avant-gardes to further their missions, or causing them to re-appraise and adapt to changed circumstances. How, then, do the avant-gardes inhabit war – and how does war inhabit the avant- gardes?