Gustav Metzger (1996) 'Auto-Destructive Art' in Damaged Nature, Auto-Destructive Art, London: Coracle, pp. 25-63.
 
It is hard to dispute that:
'The extension of concepts and language, the subtlety of the philosophical structure of science demands an extension of concepts and language in the field of art theory, history and criticism.' (Metzger, 1996: 53) 
Drawing upon the Dada movement and revolutionary politics of the early twentieth century, auto-destructive art was a response to changes in science and technology in the 1960s, for instance in the context of recent scientific theories such as quantum physics. 

The inherent violence in Dada, use of explosive and destructive tactics were directly applied to the work of art as a metaphor for change in the social realm brought about by radical actions. Dada was guided by the will to change social conditions and transform everyday reality. The manifestos (of which there are many) are full of longing for a changed world - to turn the impossible into the possible perhaps. Tristan Tzara said that 'Dada means nothing' - the absurd name itself referring to everything and nothing against established meaning in an upside-down world - full of nihilism (a belief in nothingness). It exists '...without aim or design without organisation' and that 'there is a great destructive, negative work to be done' in a political commitment to change (ref?).

Auto-destructive art was similarly conceived as a way of transforming people's thoughts and feelings about art and, through art, society in general, through an 'aesthetics of revulsion,' using acid, ballistics, corrosion, radiation, and so on as artistic material (Metzger, 1996: 27). Like Dada, the artistic response is one that appears irrational but is intended to be a rational response to the irrationality of society - particularly evident in the emerging potential for destruction of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Metzger calls this 'potential-probable destruction' and extends the threat to environmental concerns in general (1996: 28). In his view, artists should develop techniques that respond to the complex machinery and ideas, extending the forms of kinetic art at that time to new dynamic and adaptive systems. He quotes Moholy-Nagy's prophetic text of 1922 to stress his point:

'Stated practically: instead of static material construction (material and form relations) dynamic construction (vital construction and force relations) must be evolved in which the material is employed only as the carrier of forces' [and] 'Carrying further the unit of construction, a dynamic constructive system of force is attained whereby man [sic], heretofore merely receptive in his observation of works of art, experiences a heightening of his own faculties, and becomes himself an active partner to the forces unfolding themselves.' (1996: 37-8; Metzger is quoting from Vision in Motion)
 
There's nothing particularly new about stressing these issues, except that Metzger is suggesting that these techniques be used for auto-destruction drawing upon ideas of entropy. But growth is a further possibility in 'auto-creative art' (a term introduced in 1960), whereby works reproduce and transform in limitless iterations, drawing upon discoveries in biological sciences and bio-engineering at that time (1996: 55). However, the ideology is rather different in auto-destructive art that has a social agenda and thus needs to highlight the destructive tendencies of the social world and upend them. In which case, should I be arguing for a de-generative art (much of the work is of course)?
 
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Cut-up:
For example, they attacked the mass media through the subversive rearrangement of words and images; cf. the newspaper had assumed a great importance (during the war).
Tristan Tzara advised aspiring poets to cut a newspaper article into words and make a poem by shaking them out of a bag at random, revealing the hidden possibilities of language, and clearly undermining notions of creativity and genius by providing a way that anyone to work with words - echoing Benjamin's call for the is ready to become a writer.

With scissors and glue, words could be made to appear as arbitrary patterns, rhythmical noise, mere chance arrangements of words and sounds - in brutist poetry and simultaneous poems - where texts in different languages were read at the same time to visual and aural effect introducing irrationality into literature, art and performance for a purpose - reflecting the confusion and emptiness of the world. Put another way, words are newly invented: 'in these phonetic poems we totally renounce the language that journalism has abused and corrupted'. 

In this, there is a consistent concern with everyday objects challenging the judgment of originality. Duchamp declared that these readymades became works of art as soon as he said they were. He proposed that nothing is owned or original - since tubes of paint are manufactured, even paintings are readymades according to this logic. Similar to cut-up poetry were other collage practices of photomontage, caricature and Duchamp's notion of the readymade - all disputing political and aesthetic realities.

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automatism:

Experiments with automatic writing, painting, and everyday life were based on the premise that release from conscious control would open up new and previously forbidden zones of creativity - as the union of the imagined and the real. The automatic text reduced the significance of the poet making the text a transcription or discovery rather than a production or invention - making 'poem-objects' or 'found-objects' like the Dadaist 'ready-made'. Automatic techniques used to stimulate creative activity, to encourage spontaneity of utterance and image-making.


Andre Breton (as key figure) defines surrealism as follows (from the First manifesto):
"Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought... Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of the dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life..."  

Sadie Plant sees the surrealists as 'bluffing an anger which Dada had really felt'. However there were links to Trotsky, Spanish Civil war and Algerian and Moroccan independence. Breton declared: 'I believe it is impossible for us to avoid most urgently posing the question of the social regime under which we live, I mean of the acceptance and non-acceptance of this regime'.

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