Rautavistik
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Rautavistics is a type of performance art in which actions without any recognizable sense or benefit for the person carrying out or third parties are elevated to an art form. A possible audience is mostly completely ignored or is often not wanted at all; the actions serve only to entertain the performers. If third parties are actively involved in a rautavistic act, this usually happens in a kind of extras or even victim role. These circumstances (among others) differentiate Rautavistik from art , although both are very closely related.
The executing people call themselves Rautavists . They mostly come from the university environment and, like in pataphysics, organize themselves in groups and often give themselves unusual names, titles and service titles.
idea
When executing, creating or using meaningless things, objects or simply conversations, fun is the focus for Rautavists. However, this must always be done consciously, that is, for the person performing it with knowledge of the freedom of meaning, so that it is rautavistic.
An additional stylistic device that is almost always used is to approach these senseless things with great seriousness, which is of course only secretly played. Therefore, great importance is attached to laughing as little as possible during the campaign. Any hint or even explanation to third parties that the act in question is actually just nonsense is avoided; because such an explanation would be comparable to explaining a joke, which usually destroys the punch line . On the contrary; through pronounced, but not exaggerated seriousness, an attempt is usually made to dissuade the audience from asking incredulous questions about seriousness.
A typical Rautavistic item would be e.g. B. a machine or box with a large button, the actuation of which does absolutely nothing. It would be a rautavistic act to press this button in the full awareness that nothing will happen. The person who consciously performs this act is the Rautavist.
Expressions
Rautavistik can take many forms.
- Rautavistic actions ("Rau-Actions") are the original form of Rautavistic as a kind of action art (for example several hours of guarding a high-voltage pylon in the middle of the forest by several people equipped with radio devices).
- Rautavistic conversations are deliberately completely meaningless conversations, which, however, have a coherent topic as their content (for example an hour-long conversation in a completely serious tone with mock emotions about the fact that an imaginary person, whom the discussion participants have pretended to have known for a long time, from freely invented and ostensibly important reasons should also transport an imaginary sack of coal, but not adequately fulfilling their duty).
- Another aspect of Rautavistik is the alleged scientific research on obviously meaningless topics such as B. a semantic-free language or inefficient algorithms . Here, too, parallels to pataphysics can be seen.
- Institutions, groups of people, etc. the like with rautavistic purposes; z. B. the establishment of a "bureaucratic association", the sole purpose of which is to employ its members with bureaucratic association activities such as constant cash audits. A vivid example is the Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of other Things, staged by Monty Python .
- In the rautavistic software development , topics such as B. Reduction of productivity and process quality, manipulation of the runtime environment for unpredictable consequences, minimization of usability and product quality as well as neglect of security and data protection.
motivation
Rautavistics can be understood as a countermovement to an environment that is increasingly rational and striving for efficiency , in which there is less and less space for things and activities that do not generate utility. Individual rautavistic actions can adopt a satirical- critical tone compared to existing conditions and thus indirectly criticize them; Normally, however, rautavistic objects and actions are purely an end in themselves and do not pursue any “real” goal, as this would run counter to all rautavistic principles.