DOSSIER H, DADA TOTAL CIRCUIT

Review par Nadia Ghanem

Dada total circuit, published at the same time as the Dada exhibition began at the Centre Georges Pompidou, testifies to a renewed interest in a movement long held on the margins of history. This work, directed by Henri Béhar and Catherine Dufour, brings together a large number of critical texts, testimonies, manifestos, graphic works, extracts from correspondence (unpublished letters from Arp to Tzara), journals, etc., all completed with a directory of dadaists from all countries and a dada chronology established by Catherine Dufour, as well as a bibliography produced by Timothy Shipe.

The first two chapters are devoted to the general problem of naming ("The name, the chaos") and to the precursors of Dada ("Before Dada") in France, in Barcelona and in Romania. The following six, which revolve around some major geographical poles, are entitled "Zurich, Central Station" (from the origins to the 2000s), "Centers in Germany" (Berlin, Hanover, Cologne), "Bursts-Expansions" (Italy, France, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Finland), "Russian Dada" (yesterday and today), "Dada in New York" (20s, 50s), "Japan Rising" (Dada and Neo-Dada). The chapter "Modalities of chaos" studies the means of expression of Dada in poetry, music, theater, cinema, humor, use of the press, etc. The last chapter ("After Dada") considers the tribulations and metamorphoses of the movement during and after the Second World War: Schwitters' creation at Hutchinson camp in 1940-41, the postist movement in Spain, the future of Raoul Hausmann in Limousin, the birth of lettrism, Ben's inventions (60s-70s), the eccentricities of A. Labelle-Rojoux, post-dada artist of the 2000s. This last chapter proposes unpublished creations, poetic and visual, by current artists (P. Beurard-Valdoye, J.-F. Bory).

The articles are accompanied by documents from the period, some translated for the first time (Baargeld's poems). We can here pay tribute to the work accomplished by the translators which has made it possible to bring together the writings of international artists, writers and researchers. Dada total circuit participates in a historical reading of the movement while questioning its dimension of "ethernity" (p. 31) according to the Jarryesque formula taken up by Daniel Accursi. The question is posed: how to write the history of Dada without betraying the "dada spirit"?

All the presuppositions, all the received ideas concerning Dada are here dismantled. The myths generated by Dada are scrutinized. Thus, the myth of its spontaneous generation takes a serious blow. The multiple influences at the origin of Dada – sometimes concealed by the artists themselves – are highlighted. The avant-garde movements, among which expressionism and futurism, played a determining role in the initial formation of the group, which seemed at first to belong to this modernist tradition. But, the "schizophrenic" identity of Dada also makes it appear alongside Arthur Cravan and Jacques Vaché with whom it shares, according to Henri Béhar, the same humor and the same taste for provocation. The latter recalls the positive role of Jacques Vaché in the contribution of "new ideas" and adds: "the refusal of literature has returned to literature, whatever one does. The arrival is inscribed in the departure" (p. 65).

On the cover of Dada total circuit, a box reproduces the cover of the magazine Dada 3, published in December 1918. Dada 3 opened with the Dada manifesto 1918 by Tristan Tzara ending with this affirmation: "Freedom: DADA DADA DADA, howling of clenched colors, intertwining of contraries and all contradictions, grotesques, inconsequences: LIFE." Dada nihilism is a source of creation, it refers to the "destruction-construction" couple. We can then represent Dada total circuit as a circuit on which rolls a child's car, synonym of the word "dada" – following the definition of the term by Hugo Ball (1). Like any circuit, it forms a loop, offering the possibility for the "north pole" to join "the other pole" (2). Time and space are deformed to accommodate the "supreme radiations of an absolute art" where "Order = disorder, me = non-me, affirmation = negation" (3). But contrary to Jarry's Pataphysics – which Daniel Accursi ("Dada or creative chaos") designates as the common cradle of Dada, surrealism, lettrism, situationism and May 1968 – this complementarity of contradictory forces, in sometimes unstable balance between the desire to create and that to annihilate everything, does not give rise to a resolution of contraries, but to a creative, total chaos, which integrates all the arts. The received idea according to which Dada is a self-destructive movement is swept away in turn.

The "departure" of the movement takes place in Zurich. The Cabaret Voltaire is the place of hatching of Dada as well as of a large number of myths. The most persistent is undoubtedly due to Lenin's presence in Zurich at the same period. It is to this subject that Catherine Dufour devotes herself in a text entitled "Dada Zurich, myths and hoaxes". She takes the examples of fictions that came to light in favor of the social and political context of the 1970s, such as Trotsky in Exile by Peter Weiss and Parodies by Stoppard. These fictions stage imaginary dialogues between certain politicians (Lenin, Trotsky, Rakovski..) and the founding members of the Cabaret Voltaire. These two authors question the links that can be woven between art, literature and politics, and more particularly the relationships that existed between dada activities and the ideas developed by Lenin. Catherine Dufour also returns to Lenin Dada, a study conducted by Dominique Noguez who intended to demonstrate that Dada was the artistic side of Lenin's politics. This work, based on fanciful comparisons, would allow us to conclude through humor and the absurd to a "structural proximity" (p. 162) between Dada and the Russian Revolution, from which we must exclude however the dogmatism, unknown to dada thought. The question of the political dimension of Dada and its links with the Russian Revolution also arises regarding the Club Dada of Berlin, founded by Richard Huelsenbeck, upon his return from Zurich in 1917. In "Berlin Dada and Russia. Johannes Baader, President of the Terrestrial Globe", Marina Izioumskaïa highlights the influence of the anarchist and communist ideas of Franz Jung and the work of Vladimir Tatlin on the members of Club Dada. She evokes the collaboration that is established between them and the Russian artists Stépanova, El Lissitzky, Remizov, Kroutchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov. However, the portrait of Johannes Baader, proposed by Marina Izioumskaïa, allows us to recall the above all artistic character of the political activities of certain dada members.

If the political engagement of Club Dada of Berlin is no longer to be demonstrated, on the other hand the blur still persists on the subject of Schwitters, representative of the dada tendency of Hanover. Isabel Schulz, in a text entitled "Art is far too precious to me for it to be used as a tool. Kurt Schwitters and politics", questions the received idea according to which Schwitters' work would be "apolitical". She shows how the everyday materials used by the artist, without wanting to be propaganda tools, nevertheless have a revolutionary impact on man and culture. Isabel Schulz evokes a "subtle presence" (p. 254) of the political which will become more insistent with the rise of fascism in the 1930s. Schwitters' work is characterized by the "idea of transcendence" (p. 207) also contained in dada magazines. These magazines, studied by Valérie Colucci, have in common being both "anchored in their time" by their "systematic critical attitude of contemporary society and mentalities" and seeing further than their time because they place "the artistic question at another level than political and social, they attempt an art that would exist in itself" (p. 206). Far from being the "sign of dissolution" of the movement, this polymorphism participates in the three dada temporalities stated by Henri Béhar: "a Dada spirit, timeless, knowing no limits in time nor in space", "an international movement with several centers, whose fires spread from 1916 to 1923", "a Parisian dadaism, born with Tzara's arrival in Paris in January 1920, disappeared with the sabotage of the Bearded Heart evening in July 1923" (p. 312). This last temporality, which extends in a variable way according to the protagonists, will be seen in turn as a proto-surrealism or a "parenthesis" (p. 287) of surrealism. This last qualifier will moreover be attributed to Parisian activities by the artists themselves. In a text devoted to "Aragon: the dada parenthesis", Henri Béhar speaks on the contrary of a "productive tension" and a "permanent transcendence" (p. 293) between the two movements. This fertile pulling between two tendencies – or sometimes even three, as in the magazine Proverb directed by Paul Eluard – is very far from the rivalry that gradually established itself between Dada and Italian futurism. Tania Collani analyzes, in a text entitled "Dada in Italy or the mutilated child of futurism", the events that are at the origin of the rupture between Dada and futurism. She returns particularly to the contributions of futurism to the dada movement, then to the conflict of interest that engaged between the two parties, notably following Tristan Tzara's positions against the avant-garde movements. As a result, Dada, which is moreover reproached for an absence of constructive project, will not have the possibility of really imposing itself in Italy, despite the activities of a small group of former futurists who founded the magazine Enciclopedia, "of dadaist inspiration" (p. 283).

Far from being limited to Europe, Dada takes on an international scope and sees other tendencies born simultaneously or afterwards in Japan and across the Atlantic. In New York, it is a marginal figure who is honored by Rudolf E. Kuenzli, who devotes a text to "Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven: 'the only one who, wherever she goes, dresses Dada, loves Dada, lives Dada'". The author here draws attention to one of the rare female artists claiming Dada, like Sophie Taeuber, Hannah Höch and Emmy Hennings, co-founder of the Cabaret Voltaire. Prey to the machismo of the time, Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven asserts herself through extravagant outfits and a poetic work that wants to be without concession towards American language and consumer culture. Extravagance that conceals a deep malaise partly due to her sidelining by the artists. Extravagance that is somehow the counterpart of Emmy Hennings' very great discretion, who also seems to have had difficulties finding her place as an artist within the dada group of Zurich. Bärbel Reetz returns to this malaise through a text judiciously entitled "'I am here. Sorry', Emmy Hennings (1885-1948)".

Beyond these multiple centers, the dada spirit sees its fulfillment in a creative chaos that calls upon plastic arts, literature, theater, cinema as well as music. Sébastien Arfouilloux and Oliver Fahle respectively question the definition of a dada musical and cinematographic aesthetic. In a text entitled "Music at the time of Dada", Sébastien Arfouilloux chooses to focus his attention on the musical creation of an era in order to extract elements likely to participate in the dada spirit. The accent is here placed on the experimental character of musical works that the author situates in rupture with the idea of a "renewal of musical language" (p. 529). In their experimental quest, dada artists create hybrid works, going as far as a complete abolition of borders between artistic genres. The phenomenon initiated at the Cabaret Voltaire thus finds its fulfillment in a synthesis of arts that rests on the montage of materials according to the "law of chance". Montage, nodal point of dada cinematographic experimentations, allows a "liberation of movement" (p. 546), synonym of disorder. Also, Oliver Fahle denies any dada dimension to the first films of Hans Richter, Vikking Eggeling and Walter Ruttman which are more akin according to him to a constructivist aesthetic. He perceives no disorder there, but rather a "visual symphony" (p. 545) not conforming with the dada spirit.

One of the main objectives of the dada total work of art is to integrate the spectator into the creative act or, according to Walter Benjamin's formula, to allow him a "tactile reception" (4) of the work. It is also in this perspective that John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg will place themselves, when they animate the theater workshop of Black Mountain College. The artists become acquainted with Dada's work in The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, published in 1951 by Robert Motherwell. Thus, despite its refusal to make school and give birth to a new aesthetic, Dada will have a strong influence on 20th century art. Judith Delfiner describes the atmosphere of creative freedom at Black Mountain College which does not fail to evoke that of the Cabaret Voltaire. The artists refer particularly to Kurt Schwitters' writings on Merz theater. Their reflection also takes its source in the writings of Antonin Artaud (The Theater and its Double). It is thus that the first happening Untitled Event took place during the summer of 1952. Judith Delfiner notes divergences in the participants' accounts and she somewhat demythifies the event by replacing it in the continuity of the workshop's daily activities. The non-concordance of accounts also seems to indicate that each spectator became "the creator of a unique event" (p. 439). Where dada artists attempted a collective reception of the work by the public, American artists for their part privileged the individual experience of the work of art. Dada aesthetic or "aesthetic of indifference" (5), according to Moira Roth, favored by a context of cold war which leads to "dissolving art in the flow of life by an act of suspension of personal will" (p. 442). Appropriation of reality, decompartmentalization of genres, improvisation, questioning of the status of artist, public participation,.... such are the contributions of Dada in the field of creation. In a text from the 1960s-1970s recently republished, Ben draws up a table of movements and artists who are indebted to Dada and Marcel Duchamp, among whom figure Allan Kaprow, La Monte-Young, Yves Klein, New Realism, Pop Art, the Zero group, Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaître and lettrism, Fluxus and Georges Maciunas, Henry Flynt, Ray Johnson, Georges Brecht and himself. He emphasizes this idea of totality developed by Dada which has opened in a vertiginous way the field of possibilities.

In order to close our circuit – which cannot unfortunately be total despite the number of contributions, – let us return to the Cabaret Voltaire 90 years after its foundation. In a text entitled "Museum or tomb of dadaism? A house dedicated to the Dada movement opens its doors in Zurich", Claude Haenggli describes the quarrels of which the Cabaret was the object following the buyout of the building by an insurance company which wished to arrange "upscale" apartments there. The space of the Cabaret Voltaire will become after multiple negotiations an alternative space for exhibitions and events, to the great displeasure of the squatters who had tried to restore the dada spirit to the place by organizing weekly midnight masses. The author questions the transformation of the Cabaret into an "artistic enterprise", jointly directed by the City of Zurich and Swatch. Transformation that would mark, according to him, the death of "dadaism". Question to which we could answer: dadaism, as a historical movement, is certainly dead, but the dada spirit continues to survive it.

    1 — "For the Germans, this means a silly naivety and an attachment, joyfully procreative, to the child's stroller". Hugo Ball (1927), Flight from Time: journal 1913-1921 / trans. by Sabine Wolf, Monaco, Éditions du Rocher, 1993. p. 131. ↩

    2 — Tristan Tzara, "Total circuit by the moon and by color to Marcel Janco", Dada 3 in Dada Zurich Paris: 1916-1922, reprint of the collection of Dada magazines published in Zurich and Paris from 1916 to 1922 / presented by Michel Giroud, Paris, Jean Michel Place, 1981, (Collection of reprints of 20th century avant-garde magazines), p. 152. ↩

    3 — Tristan Tzara, "Dada manifesto 1918", Dada 3 in Dada Zurich Paris: 1916-1922, op. cit., p. 143. ↩

    4 — Formula taken up by Oliver Fahle, p. 542. ↩

    5 — Formula taken up by Judith Delfiner, p. 442 ↩