Kurt Schwitters's Intermedia Networks of the Avant-garde - The Merz Series (1923-1932) and Merz Printed Papers

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The proposed research project is dedicated to a multimedia avant-garde magazine series edited by Kurt Schwitters between 1923 and 1932 and named after his own comprehensive art concept Merz. The essential principles of Merz are the transgression of medial and structural boundaries and the use of foreign materials of all sorts for the purpose of artistic processing. The Merz series forms a focal point of the artist`s interests and practices on both a structural and content level. An accurate scientific analysis of the series can therefore provide crucial insights into the development and the artistic strategies of the oeuvre on the one hand and into the positioning of Merz within the international avant-garde on the other hand. For the first time ever, the project Kurt Schwitters`s Intermedia Networks of the Avant-garde - The Merz Series (1923-1932) and Merz Printed Papers seeks to fully research this unique document of the interwar period in all its structural and design-related characteristics from an interdisciplinary point of view and to present it in a comprehensive and scientifically grounded way as both a digital edition and a print edition. Additionally, the manifold relations to Schwitters`s advertising printed matter are meant to broaden the perspective in terms of the practical application of his typographical concepts and also to visualise his transgressive approach with respect to the boundaries between art and applied art. Because of the series` occasionally structure-breaking diversity in both form and topics, the Merz magazines have so far neither been studied in view of their journalistic management nor have their transgressive contents been explored with full consideration of the state of source material and contextualised within the framework of the entire series. The proposed project seeks to enable a new approach to the Merz series: Taking into account previously unexplored materials, the Merz magazines will be examined in the context of Schwitters`s comprehensive artistic principles of content and design and presented as an integral part of his total art concept. The formal and design-related characteristics of the material require a highly visualised form of editorial representation plus the linking-up of various media. The challenges presented on an editorial level additionally demand an innovative concept with regard to the digital infrastructure, thus enabling decisive advancements in the field of Digital Humanities. This is why the Trier Center for Digital Humanities is intimately involved in the project. Only by means of interdisciplinary collaboration is it possible to develop valid terms and structures of presentation suited to capture the complexity of the issue. Thus, the project will not only make an interdisciplinary contribution to Schwitters research, but also contribute to the expansion of the instruments of literary analysis and of the technical facilities in electronic publishing.