Fragmentation


 * Fragmentation** is a technique used by many artists of the Modernist era to produce a disorienting effect, often paired with indeterminacy and metonymy. It is quite common in collage, as well as in the artistic movement of Cubism. The philosophy of fragmentation is that what is commonly seen as tradition must be broken apart and fragmented. In essence, the technique of fragmentation is at the center of the Modernist movement. It is the first step towards creating a work that embodies the Modernist aesthetic. One must first take apart pictures and newsprint to produce a collage. To produce indeterminacy, one must first break up ideas of traditional understanding. Fragmentation is essential to Modernist work.

=Definition=

Fragmentation is a fairly straightforward term. It is a postmodern literary technique that involves taking text apart. It became popular as a part of the Dadaist movement, whose goal was to take the reader by surprise by breaking from the normal structure of literature. The purpose of this movement was to shake the average person's understanding of what art and literature was, to show the absolute insanity of the times. Many speculate that fragmentation came about as a way to critique the harshness of World War I, which is likely the case considering when it first surfaced in literature.

Although not specifically referring to this particular avant garde movement, author Camelia Elias, an Associate Professor of American Studies at Roskilde University, suggests that a fragment represents the manner in which people think about thought. As broken pieces, fragments point towards something more than what is presented on the page, thus both creating and rejecting the idea of an entire entity in one fell swoop. "As Pound's poem suggests, even modern poets who use various techniques of sentence fragmentation to challenge poetic tradition as well as conventions of ordinary language-use presuppose that the reader knows sentence rules well enough to appreciate meanings created when expectations are not fulfilled. Such poets dramatize the notion mentioned above: of syntax as a kind of contract between poet and reader. Their shared knowledge of rules, like soccer players' knowledge of the moves of their game, is often barely conscious until it is analyzed (as in a slow-speed replay). And for readers as for athletes, new knowledge often comes when we feel that rules have been bent or broken, and we stop to ask what's wrong."

=Uses=

Fragmentation can be used to illustrate an idea that is not literally present (see Rene Magritte under 'Surrealism" as an example) See Rene Magritte. Fragmentation is when a clause, according to modern grammar, is left open or incomplete. Take for example this excerpt from T.S. Elliot's "The Wasteland:"

//Death by Water// Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passes the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Fragmentation can also be used with other poetic techniques such as collage, which takes the broken pieces created by fragmentation, and brings them together in one composition.

=Visual Fragmentation=

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Fragmentation is demonstrated visually in F.T. Marinetti's poem "Apres La Marne", which was a part of Marinetti's larger work called //Zang Tumb Tuum//. The book is a commentary on a siege in a city called Adrianopolis during World War II, and is comprised of several works which are all similarly structured to the one presented below. Marinetti's technique involved using onomatopoetic words and different fonts broken up and scattered over the page to give a sense of the chaos that comes of the wars on which he was commenting.

=Auditory Fragmentation=

=media type="youtube" key="z5AVhPFyMlI" height="356" width="454" align="right"= This high quality video demonstrates how fragmentation can manifest itself in a non-visual form. The student is demonstrating a rejection of societal norms by breaking up the music he plays, that is to say, fragmenting it, to create a non-traditional piece of music representative of the modernist movement. Specifically, the fragmentation is audible in two major forms; the notes and the temp. Compared to more classical music where notes follow each other based on scales, or more directly, harmony, this piece juxtaposes conflicting notes that sound dissonant and ama ss tension without relief. Where say an A played with or before a C would create a third harmony, here seconds and other conflicting notes are played. This, as well as the consistent tension in the piece, create fragmentation. Looking at a movement in music as a sentence in literature (as denoted above), both need certain compositions to be 'complete'. A basic sentence needs at least a subject and a verb or an action. The sentence starts with introducing an idea (clause) which is then completed. In music, this is analogous to tension and release. This piece lacks that release, and thus it is fragmented.

=Fragmentation Writers=

F. T. Marinetti
F. T. Marinetti, was a noteworthy avant garde poet, famous for his book //Zang Tumb Tuum,// and his //Futurist Manifesto.// His goal was to challenge current ideas about politics, society, and art, and much of this was accomplished through the technique of fragmentation. If you scroll up, you will see an example from //Zang Tumb Tuum.//

Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was among other things, an avant garde poet and a founder of the Dadaist movement, which, on the whole, was a form of war protest, and a means of rebelling against societal norms through seeming irrationality. Fragmentation was just one facet of this movement. "I destroy the drawers of the brain and of social organization: spread demoralization wherever I go and cast my hand from heaven to hell, my eyes from hell to heaven, restore the fecund wheel of a universal circus to objective forces and the imagination of every individual." This excerpt from Tristan Tzara's essay called "Dadaism" demonstrates how fragmentation, along with other Dadaist ideas, went to work as a rejection of the traditions of society.

William Carlos Williams
@William Carlos Williams was an American poet, and a member of the Imagism movement, which was yet another method of rejecting the norms of society through art.

=Fragmentation Visual Artists=



Pablo Picasso
Picasso's work very visibly demonstrates fragmentation, as his cubist style is a method of fragmentation. The breaking up of images is clearly present in his work. The image below demonstrates how Picasso breaks up the traditional structure of the human body, piecing together shapes that come together to suggest a human figure, rather than a realistic portrayal of a human.

Gino Severini
Similar to Picasso, Gino Severini's works also demonstrate fragmentation in the breaking up of images. His use of fragmented images leads to an @indeterminacy of meaning.

Carlo Carrà
@Carlo Carrà was yet another avant garde painter whose work demonstrated fragmentation through the breaking up of whole images. The image below seems to be a mass of different newspapers, pamphlets, and other written paraphernalia, all broken apart, and then pieced together in one image.

Marcel Duchamp
Fragmentation is also seen in Duchamp's //Nude Descending a Staircase// (bottom right). In this piece, fragmentation is seen where a would be continuous line used to illustrate a form and/or movement is intersected or interrupted by another. Duchamp uses fragmentation in this piece to overlap the figure at different points in its movement. By doing so, Duchamp creates not only a compositional movement but a conceptual movement; in other words, there is the idea that the figure is actually descending rather than it being just a single captured moment in its movement or pose.

=References=

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