Background information
40 years of Terminator – creating an icon
by Luca Fontana
Jean Tinguely: the pioneer of useless technology
30.8.2021
Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson
30 years ago to the day, we lost Jean Tinguely. The Swiss artist built useless but fun machines. Is that art or fit for the bin? Tinguely would say: both!
When I was a kid, Tinguely was a household name. His huge machines made a big impression on me when I was small. Those countless small to very large wheels moving in a complicated system. That clanking and rattling every now and again. A piano tucked away in the belly of the machine – a cartoon rubber duck giving it the occasional blow.
When does a machine become art? Is it enough for an artist to build one, put it in a museum and say: this is art? No. A machine becomes art when it wasn’t built to do a job, but when it was made to make you think, laugh, or even purely as an end in itself.
Tinguely’s machines do precisely that. They display the mechanics of a machine – an expression of the industrial age. Tinguely built machines that didn’t do anything useful. They didn’t produce anything that could’ve been used. The artist also saw this as a reflection of modern life. The proverbial rat race or hamster wheel in German.
Some of his machines not only produced nothing, but also destroyed themselves. For example, «Homage to New York», which burnt itself down when it was premiered in 1960.
Movement is life
«Everything moves. There is no standstill,» reads Tinguely’s manifesto for static from 1959. Don’t even attempt to fight it, is the message. «Give up on establishing values that will collapse time and time again.» And: «Don’t bother building cathedrals and pyramids that will only crumble like sugar cubes.»
Tinguely created moving art because all living things move. And he didn’t want to make dead art.
But everything living dies at some point.
Ironically, today huge effort is put into saving Tinguely’s machines from decay. On the one hand, I'm grateful for it. The video below shows the machine I marvelled at as a child being revised. This keeps the memory alive. On the other hand, this time freeze is the exact opposite of Tinguely’s intention: «Resist the fearful spells of fossilising moments!» It’s quite possible that Tinguely would’ve found it more appropriate to douse the whole thing with gasoline and burn it down as an art performance. In the same line of thought at: yes, it’s art, and yes, you can bin it.
The idea keeps on living
Unlike the 20th century, when workers earned their money in factories, we’re rarely confronted with these kinds of mechanical monsters in our daily lives. However, the idea behind Tinguely’s artwork is far from outdated. It keeps on going.
The first thing that comes to mind is the artist duo Fischli & Weiss. Their 30-minute film «The Way Things Go» shows a crazy-complex yet completely senseless chain reaction of wheels, pendulums, tilts, liquids and explosions. Personally, I’m very grateful that it was «fossilised» for eternity.
And then there’s another Swiss artist whose works of art exist only for a moment and often self-destruct: the unforgettable Roman Signer.
Or Youtuber Simone Giertz, who made a name for herself with her «shitty robots»
If Tinguely had been born instead of passing away on 30 August 1991, he might also have been a Youtuber. These useless machines from more recent times are sometimes very reminiscent of his works. Whether this is art or satire or just a joke doesn’t matter. As long as it brings a smile to someone’s face, it’s far from meaningless.
Cover image: Tinguely’s Heureka machine at Zurichhorn. Source: Roland zh, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
David Lee
Senior Editor
David.Lee@digitecgalaxus.chMy interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.
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