Manufacturing discontent: John Heartfield's mass medium

Source: Kriebel, S. (2009) Manufacturing discontent: John Heartfield's mass medium. New German critique 107, 36 (2), pp.53-88 [online] Available through OCA Student links. (accessed 05/02/2017)

Kriebel critiques 9 of Heartfield's works. Heartfield was born with a German name which he changed in 1916 and was already involved with the KPD and Dada, designing book covers and election posters for the communists.

May Day marches by communists and socialists had been symbolic of the working class demonstrating pride and solidarity. In 1928, Zorgiebel banned all outdoor demonstrations to avoid violence between the three main parties; communists, socialists and National Socialists. What started out as a peaceful demonstration by the communists ended in violence over several days by the riot police. Clashes of police and crowds led to innocent bystanders being killed resulting in the labelling of May as Bloody May by the radical left party.

Heartfield's response to this was to create a photomontage (Self Portrait 1929) which appeared in the AIZ magazine in September 1929, a communist magazine, answerable to Moscow Communist International rather than the KPD. In this self portrait, Heartfield holds a pair of shears representing the beheading of Zorgiebel, chief of police a victim. This appealed to the public by offering them justice for the past events.

Self Portrait, (1929)

The image is fantasy, the cut lines of the photomontage demonstrates actual separation of the head from the body and the gaze of Heartfield is important because it is directed at the viewer,so he is not watching the violent act.The gaze is meant as a pause between summoning the viewer and making the cut.

"Walter Benjamin wrote in 1935 that the Dada montage "hit the spectator like a missile,"forcefully intervening in the beholder's consciousness." (Kriebel, 2009:61) Doherty describes the photomontage as the "alienating experience of modern industrial life and war trauma using the phrase " montage as violent vivisection". (Kriebel, 2009:61) The photomontage is based on what was happening at the time in the country - technological warfare, destabilized gender roles and capitalist phantasmagoria.

Rosalind Krauss "It is spacing that makes it clear - as it was to Heartfield [...]- that we are not looking at reality, but at the world infested by interpretation or signification, which is to say reality distended by the gaps or blanks which are the formal preconditions of the sign" (Krauss as cited by Kriebel, 2009:62) denying the image the illusion of presence. Burger describes the photomontage as "subjective, partial, heterogenous" Kriebel, 2009:62) with the ability to disassemble the world the way it was and put it together so that people saw it differently, understanding the relations of politics, commodity and social relations.

By 1930, Heartfelt's next image "Whoever reads Bourgeois papers becomes blind and deaf", the emphasis is on the discomfort felt by the man who is wrapped in newspapers. The illusion becomes a hallucination of reality. The man is dressed in uniform and the image includes text as a visual continuity between the photograph and the text. The context of this photograph was to encourage communists to join the party who would question rather than be a passive member. The image represents a doppelganger, or a resemblance of ourselves, encouraging party members to act.

Wer Burgerblatter liest wird blind und taub! (1930)

 Kriebel disagrees with Benjamin's missile, explaining that Heartfield's photomontage is more seductive, absorbing and captivating than this, as its aim is to stimulate and re-educate its viewers. Heartfield developed his work to minimise seams between the cutouts to make it look like a complete "real"image. He photographed real subjects such as frogs to make the composite look as lifelike as possible. This, Kriebel argues, is not how Left critique should be, supporting the dream worlds, bourgeois representation and fascist aesthetics, which accounts for his critics thinking that he was a retrograde, following painting techniques rather than a revolutionary.

Kriebel theorises that the making of the photomontage is a rupture or trauma to the viewer and the suture (in film terms) is how the image is assembled to activate the viewer to see the image as a psychological and ideological subject. By looking at Heartfield's work, one can identify the what was culturally important at the time and the actions taken by readers of the AIZ would demonstrate whether Heartfield engaged and turned the readers from passive to active members.

1920's - photography becoming more accessible and more popular. Photographs more visible as a medium. Language changing e.g "New Vision" regarding photography. Concerns around lack of critical depth. Linked to capitalism.Needed a contextual frame. Text or another photograph can falsify the photograph and make people believe whatever the editor wants them to believe. Therefore photography was seen and used as political propaganda.

Heartfield 's photomontages "stage our illusionary, unstable apprehension of the world by exploiting the discourses of our illusion, by engaging in and reproducing its very terms. In manipulating the discursivity of photography as an imprint or transfer of the real - as a "photochemically processed trace causally connected to that thing in the world to which it refers," to use Krauss's phase, Heartfield provides an illusionary, seemingly transparent, relation to that world." (Kriebel, 2009:72) Although Kriebel argues that Heartfield undermines the transparency because he challenges the place of photography by constructing consciousness, letting the viewer experience both illusion and disillusion, myth and demystifying the situation.

Zum Krisen Parteitag der SDP (1931)

As the crisis party conference in Leipzig met to deal with the world economic crisis, Heartfield produced this image in response to a comment on adaptation of the capitalist society rather than reform. The text is outside the frame so that the viewer concentrates on the illusion of the photograph. The viewer is asked to decode the symbols such as the tiger's head, the swastika symbols on the tie and be connected psychologically with the work thinking about how they should act. Ideological truths are shown to the viewers. Destabilisation of signified and signifier. 

Der Sinn des Hitlergrusses (1932)

Kriebel uses Althusser's theory of ideology suggesting that "ideological [...]relationships are conditioned by and through culture, and they are continually reproduced within that culture." (Kriebel, 2009:73) He defines ideology as the "imaginary relation of those individuals to the relations in which they live." Kriebel, 2009:73) This includes educational systems, legal systems, arts, the media, communication. So Heartfield's use of  Hitler's words"Millions stand behind me" was illustrated by Hitler receiving a handout from the capitalist society - the play being on money rather than supporters. Heartfield's montages could be seen as an allusion (reference) to the illusion.

Heartfield's photomontages draw on traumatic memory, they look backwards and forwards whilst being anchored in time by the date in the magazine.The images came at a time when people needed something to help them look at their situation and make sense of it.

References

Kriebel, S. (2009) Manufacturing discontent: John Heartfield's mass medium. New German critique 107, 36 (2), pp.53-88 [online] Available through OCA Student links. (accessed 05/02/2017)