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'Zygosis' is a biological term meaning the union of cells in sexual
reproduction to create a new organism, borrowed here to describe photomontage,
the combination of disparate images to create a new work of art. Gavin Hodge and Tim Morrison's
film is dedicated to the master of photomontage, John Heartfield. Born Helmut
Herzfeld, Heartfield changed his name in protest at Nazi xenophobia. With his
brother Wieland Herzfeld and painter George Grosz, he founded the Berlin
division of Dada, the most political of all Dada circles. In an interview,
Heartfield's friend Barbara Cartlidge speaks of 'Johnnie' as a
politically-engaged artist and a member of a strong anti-Nazi underground
movement.
The film mixes documentary footage, newsreel materials, chroma-key
techniques, computer animation and contemporary interviews - all narrated by
Hodge. The director compares the construction of photomontage to the process of
editing in film: both use cutting, pasting and mounting of different types of
images to produce a desired effect. Zygosis illuminates this idea by referring
to Sergei Eisenstein's principle of 'intellectual montage', as shown in a famous
sequence from his Battleship Potemkin (Soviet Union, 1924).
Zygosis notes that Dada emerged in a quantum leap period of the modern era,
shadowed by the consequences of World War I. The development of photomontage
coincided with the advent of new media technologies, including photo-illustrated
press, radio and broadcasting. Heartfield opposed use of the machinery of media
culture for propaganda reasons. The Nazis were the first political party to make
active use of the mass media for political ends, and Heartfield's reaction was
immediate: every public appearance of Hitler was followed by Heartfield's own
version of the event. The best way to alter reality, he felt, is to create an
alternative world in which oppression is fought with satire. Hodge presents
animated versions of Heartfield's photomontages to underline the power of
ridicule. But this animating of the inanimate reminds us that the moving image
has today all but consigned the art of photomontage to history.
In its content and form, Zygosis is a homage to one of the 20th Century's
most influential artists, whose impact can be felt in advertising and in the
work of artists like Andy Warhol, Peter Kennard and Barbara Kruger and the graffiti artist Banksy.
Kamila Kuc
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Complete film (26:06)
