Dysfunctionalism: machines of love and hate

This paper explores the role of the machine and its representation as an extension of avant-garde practices of the Dada and Surrealism. Challenging the contemporaneous modernist histories that privileged functionalism and technological futures, the paper explores a counter current of dysfunctionalism within the early avant-garde that linked drawing and the machine to futile, ironic or melancholic lived experience. Mechanical drawing was a fixation of early practices of the avant-garde, and notably in the work of Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. In each case they explored the anthropomorphic and empathetic capacity of the machine and its representation.

Focussing on two architectural projects cited in Paris and derived from these representational practices, the paper looks at proposals for dysfunctional machines where seperate emotional and spatial states are connected to mechanical processes. The Crying Room and Five Large Glasses are theorized within the context of these avant-garde foundations and as an extension of the contemporary legacy of surrealism in both architecture and representation.