Walter Ruttmann and Multiplicity

Introduction. Avant-Garde, Advertising and the Managing of Multiplicity

Chapter 1. Absolute Advertising: Abstraction and Figuration in Ruttmann’s Animated Product Advertisements (1922-1927)

•           Introduction

•           Absolute Film and the Psychophysical Image: Ruttmann’s Opus Films

•           Advertising Psychology and the Uses of Abstraction

•           From Abstraction to Figuration: Ruttmann’s Animated Advertisements in Context

•           Riding the Curve of Modernity’s Information Flows

•           Conclusion: Avant-Garde and the Governance of Perception

Chapter 2. The Cross Section: Images of the World and Contingency Management in Ruttmann’s Montage Films of the late 1920s (1927-1929)

•           Introduction

•           Montage and the Ordering of the Archive

•           From Science to Statistics: The Cross Section and Mass Society

•           The Cross Section and the Photographic Archive in Weimar Visual Culture

•           Ruttmann and the Filmic Cross-Section: Berlin. Die Sinfonie der Großstadt

•           Melodie der Welt and the Ordering of the World

•           Conclusion: Avant-Garde Between Statistical Order and the Spark of Chance

Chapter 3. Statistics and Biopolitics: Conceiving the National Body in Ruttmann’s Hygiene Films (1930-1933)

•           Introduction

•           Applied Statistics and the Hygiene Film

•           Managing the Masses: Feind im Blut

•           Picturing the “Volkskörper”: Blut und Boden

•           Conclusion: The Malleability of the Avant-Garde

Chapter 4. “Überall Stahl”: Forming the New Nation in Ruttmann’s Steel and Armament Films (1935-1940)

•           Introduction

•           The Continuity of Germanic Production: Metall des Himmels (1934)

•           The Surface of Nazi Design: Mannesmann (1937)

•           Mobilizing the Steel Body in Wartime: Deutsche Panzer (1941)

•           Conclusion: Molding the Masses

Conclusion. Of Good and Bad Objects