THE SUPERNOVA THAT WAS DADA

Hugo Ball 
100 years ago this month Dada was born in a cafe, The Cabaret Voltaire, in Zurich Switzerland,[1] - ‘a birdcage surrounded by roaring lions.’  Michael Ball, a German bohemian, mounted the stage dressed as a sort of human-bat and began flapping his ‘wings’ and shouting nonsense at the audience. The audience thought it truly terrible and consequently loved it. It was 1916 and Europe was destroying itself as young men slaughtered one another in a line of trenches that ran from the Swiss border to the channel coast. As a culture that looked upon itself as the pinnacle of civilisation descended into barbarism the only sane response was insanity.

‘The walls of the cabaret were decorated with primitivist masks and artworks by the likes of Picasso and Modigliani. Onstage, provocateurs mixed vaudeville acts and expressionist dance with performances that bordered on gibberish or lunacy, including a poem intoned in three languages at once, a Maori song belted out by the young [Tristan]Tzara wearing a monocle as he writhed in epileptic-like spasms and a threatening figure reciting what he called “Fantastic Prayers” while banging a drum and flailing a riding crop.’[2]
Cabaret Voltaire 

It is not possible to understand the development of 20th Century art without understanding Dada. The movement itself was fleeting, lasting, at maximum, 6years, though some might argue it began and ended on that first night at the Cabaret Voltaire, an exploding supernova its impact still felt from Punk to Lady Gaga, from performance art to Situationism.

Since 9/11 I have had, at first as a vague feeling of unease, a sort of background noise, a growing feeling that the Western world was/is unravelling. The triumph of the regressive left, the daily threat of terrorism from Islamism, and related Al Capone gangster intimidation experienced daily from the Islamists and their fellow travellers, - seeking to destroy free speech in the name of ‘Islamaphobia,’ - the resurgent right, in some senses a response, from Trump in the US to Farage in the UK and now the possibility of a Trump presidency and the UK leaving the EU, the noise has become a shrill siren.
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
For leaving the EU would be a catastrophe for this country of immense proportions, it will represent the strangulation of the last hopes of the 1960’s for Britain to embrace the modern world. As for a Trump Presidency, where do I begin?
Against this background, the wailing and shrieking of Dada and the Dadaists can once again be heard. Who but a madman can understand a world gone mad?

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