100 Jaar Dada

When the penniless poet and philosopher Hugo Ball opened Cabaret Voltaire with his companion Emmy Hennings in a café on 1, Spiegelgasse in Zürich, the First World War was at a tragic height. Together with Marcel Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber Arp, Ball and Hennings protested against the insanity of the war by presenting “alogic”, absurd imagination and magic on stage under the name of Dada.The performances left the audiences stunned as they were confronted with bruitist sound effects, modern dance, sound poetry, collages of word and image, negro masks or angular modernist improvisations on the piano. The shows provoked both indignation and rage among the audience and the air was often filled with hoots and catcalls.

The spirit of Cabaret Voltaire also spread to New York, Berlin and Paris, where men like Marcel Duchamp, John Heartfield, Francis Picabia and Man Ray changed the coordinates by introducing the art of the readymade, the fascination for machine aesthetics and film and photo editing through free association. Suddenly there was a new perspective: anything could be art, depending on the context and the spectator”s intelligence.

By screening six early films from its own collection, EYE on Art is reviving the spirit of Dada, presenting both Hans Richter”s well-known Vormittagsspuck and Man Ray”s rarely screened Emak-bakia. The evening will be introduced by EYE on Art programmer Anna Abrahams; the American cellist and free jazz composer Tristan Honsinger will accompany the films on cello. The evening is in English.

Programme: Vormittagsspuk (Hans Richter DE 1927 6”); Anémic cinéma (Marcel Duchamp FR 1925 7”); L'étoile de mer (Man Ray FR 1928 15”); Le retour à la raison (Man Ray FR 1923 3”); Emak-bakia (Man Ray FR 1926 18”); Charlot présente le ballet mécanique (Fernand Léger FR 1923 12”).