Futurismovie. Abstruse language (zaum) and cinema gestes

Abstract

Alexei Kruchenykh compared the abstruse language (zaum) to the international pantomime of silent cinema. But that contradicted his original idea of abstruse language as endowed with national and local coloring and expressing the core of national poetry. But abstruse language and cinema appear to be united by the rejection of theatrical improvisation, by the presence of the script or film shot as a constraint that allows improvising only as a technical failure. Such an idea was continued in Vygotsky and Luria’s collaboration in the field of neurophysiology. According to Vygotsky, the ape’s mimesis is not theatrical but cinematic: it is not an improvisation but the predictable motility of pantomime. From that viewpoint, mimesis is impossible in cinema, unlike theater, and abstruse language remains in cultural memory not as a mimesis of national poetry, but as an eccentric construction.