Chaos ex machina:

Abstract

[This chapter explores the relations between documentary forms and Jean Tinguely’s auto-destructive, kinetic and architectural sculptures. In particular, it discusses D.A. Pennebaker’s Breaking it Up at the Museum (1960) and Robert Breer’s Homage to Jean Tinguely’s “ Homage to New York ” (1960) in relation to their contrasting approaches to T inguely’s famed Homage to New York ; the formal strategies adopted in Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Sculpture Mouvante (1963); and the significance of Tinguely’s Le Cyclop to Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville’s The Old Place (2000). In their respective engagements with Tinguely’s work, these films expand the conventional notion of the documentary, rendering it as a modern art form in its own right, comprising associative montage strategies, and their own assortments of found, appropriated, ‘readymade’, and ephemeral images. ]