New Times. Tempo, Acceleration, and the Pluralisation of Temporal Dimensions in Humorous Picture Stories, Cartoons, and Comics between 1900 and 1930

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One of the most important contributions made by picture stories and comics to cultural and aesthetic engagements with temporal experience and structures is their depiction of temporality, tempo, and temporal dimensions. In the period under consideration (1900–1930), interest in these areas grew in the sciences and the arts, as well as in public discourse; likewise, fictional works testified to a fascination with temporality and its structures. In phase two, the project therefore will analyse how humorous picture stories and comics (distinguished in degree rather than in kind with respect to their stylistic techniques and their publication contexts) contribute to reflection on time. This analysis will take place with reference to intellectual discourses, popular and aesthetic/literary presentation forms, the publication formats of the works in question, and their positioning within these.The thematic emphasis of the project is on time, the temporal, and temporality, as well as their various modes of presentation at the structural and material levels. The publication of picture stories in periodicals raises the following considerations: journals are published periodically, they refer to current affairs, they have the everyday time of their recipients in mind, and, in many respects, they are constituted by an ephemeral materiality. In addition, there is a form of rivalry between journals and transitory media formats such as film and shows. In integrating caricatures and picture stories, journals are able to play with temporal structures by means of dating practices, time jumps, and temporal compression.Research within the project will focus on four areas in particular. The first is concerned with historically new modes of depicting time, movement, speed, and acceleration as impulses for graphic artists. The second concerns the reaction to graphic images in the periodicals of the period, insofar as this is conceived as an era of upheavals, records, and intense competition. The third addresses the forms of reception stimulated by image series and other such image arrangements – particularly those which allow for quick reading. A fourth thematic dimension concerns graphic works such as caricatures, picture stories, and comics that are devoted to the (prophetic or parodic) depiction of "the future", i.e. futuristic worlds, technologies, and ways of life. From the beginning of the twentieth century, and particularly from the 1920s on, comics began to imagine futuristic worlds, which took place in parallel and often in exchange with literature and film, but remained tied to a distinctive publication format. In particular, the humorous and satirical comics published around 1900 anticipated the futuristic scenarios of early science fiction comics. The image programmes of these comics were developed alongside attempts in the other arts to elaborate distinctively modern codes.