DADA 2016

www.rweiler.ch
www.nestputzer.ch


Dada Paper April 2016 Highlanders Club Uster
Switzerland


Dada100 in Zürich and elsewhere


Content

1. welcome, handout at the end
2. short intro me
3. Dada intro
4. 1916 Cabaret Voltaire, Lenin, Tszara >> Zara
5. 2016
6. Dada: namedropping and myth-building (definitions, names, reading out definitions)
7. Dada is the universal soul."
8. >>short film The Dada Alphabet (10')
9. Dada revolt, revolution, provocation/Dada peace messages
10. Tristan Tzara—perhaps the mastermind of Dadaism
11. Dada influential >> surrealism >> futurism Martini>>existentialism, Camus >> Absurd theatre >> Happening"/Fluxus >> Beuys >> Monty Python >> modern music video art etc.
12. Dada philosophy, quotes, reading from a manifesto by Tristan Tzara.
13. short film(s) Dada 1928 (8')
14. Literature


1.2.

3. Dada was and is many different things to different people. It was a movement that perhaps happened too early in the history of modern art, therefore it was only moderately successful at the time. We could say it lasted about four years, in 1920
there were outcries of Dada is dead". But this was by no means true, it had prolonged after-effects and a lot of modern art has taken up its ideas and techniques.

4. The origins of Dada can be seen to go back to Nietzsche and others. The dadaists adopted his nihilism and his criticism of society, politics, art and cuture. The dadaists themselves referred to Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi". A French critic called Lenin's revolutionary ideas dadaistic. He glorified the killing of bourgeois Russians even by his successor Stalin. I think we might say that Lenin was not a major inventor of
dadaism.

5. 1916 – 2016 A hundred years ago some German expats started the Voltaire cabinet" in Zürich. The French philosopher of the Enlightenment was a forerunner of the French revolution and therefore the patron revolutionist. The name or should we say the brand Dada is claimed by many different people, some of whom only staked their claim ten years after the Dada events or later.
Those days were marked by the First World War, refugees came to Zurich and created an oasis or should we say a hotspot or melting pot with new ideas for the arts, politics and philosophy.
Last year the dubious effort was made to plan the commemoration of the Dada revolution. The question remains open whether this is possbile or not. With so many events planned there is perhaps an evaporation of the essence of Dada, a betrayal of what the Dada artists really wanted or even annihilation of their original ideas.
Starting from 5 February 2016 in Zurich there are countless events. The question
remains: Isn't it too much of a good thing?


6. Definitions of Dada
(which can be everything and nothing according to one founder member)
Dada is a white horse. (Arp)
Dada is a word in the Larousse dictionary meaning hobbyhorse (Ball/ Huelsenbeck)
Dada is the sign of stupid naiveté and a baby-happy relationship with the pushchair/ baby-carriage. (H. Ball)
Dada is the heart of words (H. Ball)
Dada is for nature, against art. (H. Ball)
Dada is the root of all art. (Tzara/Arp)
Dada is serious fun. (me)
Death is very much a Dada affair. (Huelsenbeck)
Dada is the police's police.
Dada is communism.
Dada is a revolution.
Dada is serendipity, is random art. (me again)
The Dada movement in art and literature is based on deliberate irrationality and negation of traditional artistic values. (Merriam Webster)

The term anti-art, a precursor to Dada, was coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 when he created his first readymades (objet trouvé).[2] Dada, in addition to being anti-war, had political affinities with the radical left and was also anti-bourgeois.
Tristan Tzara's 7 Manifestos (>>handout) are typical samples of Dadaistic fuzzy
thinking and dead seriousness behind it.

Perhaps Hans Arp's thoughts about Dadaism nails it best:

Revolted by the slaughtering of the First World War, we applied ourselves to the beaux arts in Zürich. While in the distance there was thundering cannon-fire, we
sang, painted, collaged and wrote poetry as hard as we could. We were looking for an elementary art which should heal man from the madness of the times and create a new order which should outbalance the realms of heaven and hell."

In Zurich Dada is a myth, in Berlin it had a political socialist/communist dimension, in New York it revolutionizes art through the readymade, in Paris they drive Dada provocation to excess using it as a stylistic tool to create art.

There are as many Dadaisms or definitions of it as there are Dadaists. The Zürich Dada Memorial has a list of 165 dadaists.

As in most art movements, there are more men than women. There was Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Emmy Hennings, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Hannah Höch and others.

The dadaists produced countless manifestos to transport their protest, concepts and ideas. They were highly influential in the realm of modern art, of which later on.


(7. Dada ist die Weltseele": Hugo Ball, Eröffnungsmanifest 1. Dada Abend, 14.7.1916
 
Dada als kunsthistorischen Ismus zu denken, würde zu kurz greifen: Dada war da, bevor Dada da war!" lautet einer der Slogans der Dadaisten. Dada ist das Chaos, aus dem sich tausend Ordnungen erheben, die sich wieder zum Chaos Dada verschlingen. Dada ist der Verlauf und der Inhalt des gesamten Weltgeschehens gleichzeitig" (Erklärung des Club Dada, in: Richard Huelsenbeck, Der Dada Almanach, Berlin 1920). Der Begriff DADA hat sich von seinem historischen Moment emanzipiert. 
Dada universal" ist der eigentliche neue Zugang zu Dada, den das Jubiläumskonzept von bisherigen historischen Ausstellungen und Dada–Revivals unterscheidet. Denn Dada ist kein Ismus. Dada ist die wahre Grundlage und Hoffnung auf Erkenntnis", sagt der Kunsthistoriker Werner Oechslin. Mit Dada hat eine grundsätzliche Position absoluter individueller und kreativer Freiheit lediglich einen Namen bekommen. 
Auf dieser Grundlage, die Dada als etwas Universelles skizziert, soll konsequent weitergedacht werden. Dada war da, bevor Dada da war". Dada universal will den umfassenden Charakter Dadas deutlich machen und dessen räumliche wie zeitliche Unabhängigkeit offen legen. Denn um etwas Allumfassendes, Allgemeingültiges, um kulturelle Überzeugungen, um absolute Autonomie und Freiheit ging es den dadaistischen Rastaquères in ihrem Vabanquespiel mit dem grossen NEIN.)


7. Dada is the universal soul" Hugo Ball, opening manifesto of one of the first Dada evenings in 1916.
Dada is not just another –ism: Dada was here before it was here!" was a slogan of the dadaists. (Maybe they were referring to Nietzsche.)
Dada is the chaos from which thousands of new systems/orders can arise, which will then be devoured by chaotic Dadaism again. Dada is the process and the content of
everything that happens in the world simultaneously." (Declaration of the Club Dada", Richard Huelsenbeck, Dada Almanach, Berlin 1920). Dada has been freed from a local context and converted into a global movement.
Universal Dada" is the new concept when trying to understand the phenomenon.
Dada is the basis and hope for understanding the world," said a modern art critic.
Dada is about a fundamental position of absolute individual and creative freedom."
We should continue to think along these lines, based on this universal concept.
Dada was/is a global movement, independent from place or time.
Dadaists refused to play the cultural and social games of their times, they shouted:
NO! meaning they were against the War, against intolerance, against bourgeois thinking, politics, economy and art. Absolute autonomy and freedom was their goal.


8. youtube: Dada in Germany, Dada Alphabet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHBw6VwY3Io minutes 1 – 8 and 16:00 – 16:30.

9. Dada provocation, revolt, revolution/Dada peace messages

Tristan Tzara (a poetic revolutionary) was a participating member in the Zurich dada productions. He was a poet who knew his Marx and Engels and tried to apply some of their revolutionary ideas to his life and work. He was a strict nihilist and was probably in contact with Lenin when he was in Zürich.

Paul Scheerbart wrote a visionary book about the danger of air raids in the future (1909). He died in 1915 of a stroke or as a consequence of a hunger strike which he is supposed to have started as a militant pacifist.

Hannah Hoch epitomizes the Dada attitude towards war: That it is chaos. That the world has gone mad. That war itself is craziness incarnate destroying humanity.








10. Tristan Tzara (1896 – 1963)

Tzara's name has the Dada vowels and the same number of syllables. It was a pseudonym, his real name was Samuel Rosenstock. First he was a symbolist in his native Rumania, then he joined the dada movements first in Zürich, then in Paris.
There he disagreed with the French dadaists and left the group, then was a founding
member of surrealism. His life was devoted to poetry and politics. He was the inventor of the simultaneous poem", several people reciting, singing or making noises at the same time. He fought in the Spanish Civil War and was a member of the French Résistance. His seven manifestos for dadaism reflect perhaps best dadaist fuzzy thinking, controversial philosophy and political ideas. Dadaist humor had a dead earnest side to it and most people found this ambiguous eclecticism impossible to understand.

11. Dada influential

Dada has not only spread to many different parts of the world, it has influenced a great number of modern artists and trends. Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Janko, Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber Arp, Hugo Ball, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Kurt Schwitters,
Ernst Jandl and many others.
It became surrealism with Tzara present in both hotspots, Zurich for dadaism and Paris for surrealism. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory. Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, René Magritte, Salvador Dali, even Pablo Picasso and many others owe a lot to the surrealist school.
The Futurist and Existentialist movements, the Absurd Theatre, Fluxus/Happenings, Joseph Beuys, Monty Python, and even modern music videos use techniques invented in the early decades of the 20th century. Today everybody can produce graphic collages with Photoshop on-line.

12. Reading Dada manifestos 1 and 2 by Tristan Tzara (>> handout)

13. Dada 1928 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeosT_6vG7g

14. Literature/Media

Dada Almanach Manesse Verlag 2016
Dada Handbook/Dada Handbuch, Cabaret Voltaire Zürich 2015
Dada zum Vergnügen Reclam 2015
Dada Zürich Reclam 2015
Dada Berlin Reclam 1977
Hugo Ball Leben und Werk 1987
Paul Scheerbart Die Entwicklung des Luftmilitarismus... Flugschrift Verlag
K.G. Renner München 1982
Kurt Schwitters Eile ist des Witzes Weile Reclam 1987
Tristan Tzara, 7 Dada manifestos, Grains et issues Garnier Flammarion, 1981
Dada Stadt Zürich, Cabaret Voltaire, 2016
http://www.srf.ch/sendungen/sternstunde-kunst/das-prinzip-dada (Swiss telecast)
https://www..youtube.com/watch?v=CGeBUjPdH71 (Dada and Surrealism, academic, but really
going into the history of ideas)






1