Between Autonomy and Actuality

This paper revisits Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory for its response to artistic strategies associated with surrealism—montage, automatic writing and related techniques of scoring, diagrammatic drawings, improvisation, and performance. Works by Cornelius Cardew, Anna Halprin, and Maria Eichhorn exhibited in documenta 14 are used as examples that bridge the 1920s and ‘30s with the present. Foremost, this paper analyzes the relationship between Adorno’s aesthetic autonomy and Walter Benjamin’s surrealist-inspired notion of integral actuality. While Benjamin drew his notions of integral actuality, image-space and the dialectical image from surrealism and montage, a more concrete and impenetrable figure of thought would have to replace these to appease the stony Adorno. Using the recently translated correspondence between Adorno and Elisabeth Lenk (1962-1969), my analysis highlights aspects of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory derived from his ambivalent assessment of surrealism. Adorno’s parataxis and autonomy are argued for here as a philosophical and aesthetic counterpart to montage and integral actuality that may be suited to our current political climate. While Benjamin theorized a method of criticism located in image space, Adorno’s aesthetic theory prizes works whose truth content is harder to unlock through interpretative work. The strengths and limitations of this distinction for the present are tested through the framework of documenta 14 and an assessment of the diagrams, scores, and instructions of Halprin and Cardew in particular.