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| dada - art and anti-art | |
| where did dada begin? | |
| Possibly with Picabia in 1913. But the precise movement of the great war caused this change. | |
| In unmythologized history, the sume of the achievements of these individual particles of energy, sparked. | |
| The unifications of opposites, which became an artistic reality, in the shape of dada. |
liminial smile - laughter and sex are two things in which the human becomes automatic, mechanical. But what about a fading smile, watching that moment when a smile becomes unconscious fades back into a face. To hold the smile, would require conscious act, and lose the authenticity of the smile (it would cease to be a smile). Similarly the thought that the most authentic film is a good bad film, and the second awareness of the goodness in that bad film is made aware by the directors all magic is lost. It can never be good bad again.
dada named - ‘yes, yes’ → french rocking-horse or hobby horse → german naitivity or preoccuptation with procreation, or a baby carriage.
dada is an art bomb. it has no programme, it was against programmes - this gave it power to explode and unfold in all directions free of aesthetic or social constraints.
“Dada is the ground from which all art springs. Dada stands for art without sense. This does not mean nonsense. Dada is without meaning, as Nature is”
Picabia “Every page must explode, whether through seriousness, profundity, turbulence, nausea, the new, the eternal, annihilation, nonsense, enthusiasm for principles, or the way it is printed. Art must be unaesthetic in the extreme, useless and impossible to justify”
cravan “his thesis was that art is useless and dead, the self-expression of a dead society, and that personal action must take its place. Life itself as an adventure.”
duchamp on ready mades - the choice was made of the visual indifference or total absesnce of good or bad taste… in face a complete anaesthesia. It was never dicated by aesthetic delectation. “since the tubes of paint used by an artist are manufactured and ready made products, we must conclude all paintings in the world are /ready-made-aided/.”
We all share the feeling that our scientific faith lacks something - that reality is nowhere to be found, even in ourselves.
Udo Rukser - “Dadaism is a strategem by which the artist can impart to the citizen something of the inner unrest which prevents the artist himself from being lulled into sleep by custom and routine. By means of external stimuli, he can compensate for the citizen’s lack of inner urgency and vitality, and shake into him new life.”
Huelsenbeck - “we hated nothing so much as romantic silence and the search for a soul; we were convinced that the soul could only show itself in our own actions”
The word surrealism invited by apollinaire was first of all used weapons to destroy Dada. When Breton states that he was a surrealist even when he was a dadaist, this is perfectly true as far as he is concerned.
Dali “surrealism is the systemization of confusion. Surrealism appears to create an Order, but the purpose is to render the idea of system suspect by association. Surrealism is destructive, but it only destroys what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”
Surrealism gave Dada significance and sense, Dada gave Surrealism life
After 1924 there was no Dada but the Dadaists remained.
tzara “dada denotes a particular rebellious playful state of mind that dissolves fixities, truths and mytgs - not a literary school or certain artistic style
dada manifesto 1918 - things ignited, it proclaims art’s rupture with logic, hte need of accomplishing a great negative work. Arp “modern times, with their science and technology turned man towarads megalomania. The confusion of our epoch results from this overestimation of reason.” Arp saw in the deconstruction of the cultural construct of reason, the principle function of his aand dada art and poetry
“New york was already too dada - chaotic and nonsensical”
dada asserts and negates all - takahashi shinkichi - dada bites at the misery of creatures from the inside, aiming at liberating them inwardly from their falsehood, their own traps, megalomania and silly vanity.
One thing that comes up with Dada a lot is that unbridled force of Dada (which was kind of structured when moving towards Surrealist movement). I’m pretty sure that book you picked up has a famous quote by Tristan Tzara “Dada was a bomb” - and you hear such things a lot.
can’t be sure of my first encounter with Dada, but definitely when I was younger I remember watching that British show Trigger Happy TV (a bit obnoxious public prank show) and how Dom Jolly was influenced by Dada. It’s an easy one to circle around to occasionally because even though technically it’s an isolated artistic period it basically influenced so much after it. (even Merzbow’s name is based on Merzbau kurt schwitters, plenty of other connections).
It’s still super relevant as well. Recently I’ve been playing around with reframing it with AI art (you can even make a kind of playful linguistic connection, Data = Dada). Aspects of Dada show up in that kind of stuff like automatic poetry (large language models and probabilistic writing), asemic writing, the role of the artistic in the construction of art and visual production (AI artistics and prompt engineers). There’s also proto cybernetics with Raoul Hausmann, Spirit of the Age. Just a little idea I’m exploring with recent stuff (it seems really obvious, but I’ve not encountered any good articles exploring this connection), especially watching my niece explore a childish way of mixing symbols and objects in playful ways.
To get back to your question the best ones are probably books and a really good one is kind of expensive but worth it “Dada and Surrealist Art” by by William S. Rubin. It’s really accessible but Dada published by Phaidon is pretty good. probably the best stuff would be books “dada: art and anti art” is good sense of the history but is maybe a bit dry.
As far as docs If you search Dada documentary on YT a few ones to watch have been uploaded there “europe after the rain” and “dada the original art rebels” (not the best but still watchable).
If you have a kanopy subscription (free through my library with a card) there are many good art documentaries on there. One that isn’t Dada but I watched last year “The Book Makers” about people who create artist books. It’s really short. If I had a tremendous amount of money I’d definitely be curious to have an artist book collection. They can be fascinating objects, I do recommend the documentary, it’s not the most insane documentary but the subject is very interesting.
You’ll walk around a gallery and see these older Dada works, and it still is a moment where you stop and aren’t really sure what to think of it (wtf is this inscrutable thing) and I appreciate that (regardless of how successful or how much I like it). I was recently at the Bruce Gallery in CT and I saw this neo-dada readymade thing (greyhound nightmare, I think I remember reading that ND designation was a pejorative to him) but some people were standing around trying to piece it together. Under the chair there was a mirror and an empty jar. I took a photo.
To an extent something pretty is easy, say which is your favorite and 90% of people will pick the traditionally beautiful work, but it definitely is interesting to check out other ones after a while. Of course it’s wildly different what works or what is worthwhile.
I am always curious about anti-memetic thinking or acts. Like recently I stumbled on this extreme pogo stick video, these guys traversing in completely novel ways. Love how unhinged this is. Deeper level of abnormality, and violation of territory. Every move seems like an artist statement “I am the only one who has walked this space in this way” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrWjxWYgPx8
I probably could have composed that better but trying to fit this messagei n before work.
I have to think about your list. That’s a worthwhile project. There are lots of good ones you’ve already selected! I haven’t seen that LvT documentary but I’ve heard of it (your description has drawn me more than my own solitary encounters with it). I’ll get to it this week and report back.
In my exploration of anti-things and holes and shadows I’ve explored this concept that keeps on coming up in my mind (anti-dates). I might have mentioned this before. But I also in reading also encountered an anti-date kind of experiment that never happened. I was trying to read information exploring virtual spaces and architecture that is virtual (or composed of words/information etc - not constrained by reality (besides digital constraints of reality)).
It was in this anthology “disappearing architecture” (probably not worth picking up personally, but there were a few good ones within. One seems to toy around with an anti-date concept. It was this building/art project called Blur, and blur was this building that was amorphous (shrouded in this mist, sourced from the lake it resided over). When you enter the idea was it was this acoustic space (far as I can tell) where the general reality references are erased. There was water available (so visitors could “drink the building”) This is all fairly interesting (and ridiculous) but the reason I brought it up is this anti-date (I might have to further elaborate on this, or finally give you a list of all of the ones I have came up with when I compiled them) they had planned (but was not implemented).
A sister project within the Blur project was called Babble. I’m trying to recall this from memory. With feature babble, a proximity based network with hookups to clothes, a raincoat that provides 6th sense and a social radar of anonymous intimacy. Everyone would don these “braincoats” which would have different tactile and networked functions. Visitors were prompted with certain binary choices (like on a dating profile) and responded. These were networked in a database. When close, the raincoats color, simulating a blush. there is also a personalized acoustic sound, that increases with proximity to a match, they can choose to either appraoch or track or hide from this match. In the case of a 100% affinity, a small vibrating pad is embedded in the pockets of the braincoat. The motors send vibrations to the coat, mimicking the tingle of excitement that comes with human contact.
I really like that last idea (like the idea of walking, an like butterflies in the stomach, you encounter someone and there is a connection and it is like a butterfly under your shirt, thrumming and attempting to get out and connect). I kind of want to do something with that.
This was in Switzerland and that last part wasn’t implemented but I find an experiment like this such a fun way of interacting on a social way. The creators also referenced this work I had not heard of but need to do further research on. They said it was a bit of a craze in japan in the 90s, called the Lovegety “Lovegety was a proximity matchmaking device introduced in Feb. 1998 in Japan by Erfolg Co.,ltd., which allowed users to find potential dates that match their personal preferences in the vicinity” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovegety
Just something I am thinking about playfully