Describing Dada is a paradox, like a proverbial wet fish in the palm of your hand certain only to be lost in an attempted securing grasp. As Greil Marcus details in Lipstick Traces, subsequent efforts in art and music contain echoes from Zürich, Berlin and elsewhere; not least the urge (first and foremost) to destroy, or as Orange Juice sang: to rip it up and start again.
This collection features early sound poetry by (Hans) Jean Arp, recorded in 1961, the mind-bending "Anna Blume" and "Ursonate;" the only merzpoems Kurt Schwitters recorded (from 1932); and several stunning efforts by Raoul Hausmann, recorded by Henri Chopin in 1956-59. Dada rejected a nonsensical war and a seemingly complicit society, so sadly these sound poems make topical sense. They can't sever the head of the faulty puppet President of the United States or obliterate the pervading moronic bastard culture which he so ably represents, but they articulate the impetus.
When listening to non-English words in song, I often feel happily ignorant, lest they be a thinly disguised travel commercial, some government-approved triteness or an ode to domestic submission. Stories of Arp spark an urge to learn German. While the law insisted he be called Jean in 1915 France, Hans Arp's response to being drafted into the German army is a work of art in itself. He wrote the date in all spaces on the forms before adding them like a sum. Then, naked, he handed in his paperwork and was sent home. A friend of Tristran Tzara, Arp was a founding member of Dada in Zürich, and in 1920 he set up the Cologne Dada group. His work was featured in the first exhibition of the Surrealist group in Paris before he founded the Abstraction-Création movement and the periodical, Transition, and created reliefs and murals in the US and sculpture in Italy. Musically, his flat voice sometimes fails to ignite the text, and so the mischievous spirit of bemusement is absent. After a disappointing opener, his second effort, "Die Wolkenpumpe" is a measured rant; like a demented husband listing imagined slights to his wife in an unsettling monotone ("and on Thursday 23rd you did bring me herring in cream rather than in the white wine sauce as per my written request.") Next, "Dada Sprüche" seems to be some list of what Dada is or isn't: a blank prescription eaten then regurgitated as a map with instructions not to follow. Arp's moments of gnawing intensity may please in short exposure rather than when heard all in one sitting. Eventually my interest resembled someone stuck in a lecture comparing the reliability of traffic density forecasts to those of pension plans, a scantily-clad darling reclining in a room tantalizingly close by with fresh fruit, favorite vinyl, bread and wine.
Kurt Schwitters transcended medium and genre: Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, collage, sculpture, and typography. It can be argued that he invented what would later be termed installations. One legacy is his Merz works—art pieces built up of found objects; the largest of which are constructions called Merzbau. According to Schwitters, merz is derived from the name of the Commerzbank; though the word is also notably similar to the French word merde. In 1937 Schwitters fled to Norway, and in the same year, his Merz pictures were included in the Nazi exhibition of degenerate art. He created Merzbau in Oslo, on the Norwegian island of Hjertoya, and after his internment on the Isle of Man, he moved to the Lake District of England, where, in 1947, he began work on the last Merzbau, the Merzbarn. One wall of this final structure is now in the Hatton Gallery and the shell of the barn remains in Elterwater. Since forgeries of his collages turn up regularly on Ebay, bidders might seek advice from the Kurt Schwitters Archive at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. The inclusion of his two recordings on this disc is a treat for the imagination. Schwitters' speech patterns exude a playfulness and awareness of actual sound less evident in Arp's tracks. One man's cannibalism is another's homage: Brian Eno sampled Ursonate for his track "Kurt's Rejoinder;" Japanese musician Merzbow took his name from Schwitters; Colin Morton has written poetry and drama inspired by Schwitters; and Michael Nyman's opera Man and Boy: Dada fictionalized Schwitters' time in London. The German hip-hop band Freundeskreis quoted from his poem in their hit single "ANNA."
Raoul Hausmann, an Austrian sculptor and writer, was the cofounder of the Berlin Dada movement in 1917, and the creator of photomontage: though other sources cite The English photographer Henry Peach Robinson. Hausmann painted "Tatlin at Home" in 1920 then gave up painting in 1923 and became more interested in various experimental photographic procedures.
His wild contributions to this disc are very enjoyable. "BBB" sounds equal parts curse and the calling in of the cat for his tea. His stuttered busted machine gun intonations foretell frustrated pop-rebellion ("why don't you all f-f-f-f-ade away..."), his eerie shrieks, unhinged mumbling and gurgling, never sound merely nonsensical even when resembling the water spiraling down a flushed toilet. I have no real idea what is going on, whether it was spontaneous, scripted or rehearsed and his spirited efforts make such a question unimportant. Hausmann seems to be reading backwards on "K Perioum," to be involved in a study of his own breath during "Offeah" and elsewhere lurches from trilling insanity, call-and-response guttural phrasing, vaguely Arabic intonations, warm melodic twitters, metallic hiss, stunned yodels, heartbroken wailing, quacking, and—on "Cauchemar"—the shocking contrast of mere singing. Hausmann makes translation redundant yet invests real power in the oddest of deliciously nihilistic (un)exhortations. His are words spat in the face of stagnation.
While there are ample websites devoted to the images, polemic, locations, history and influence of Dada; my favorite may be the beautiful: www.mital-u.ch/Dada from where I get the idea that Dada was less an art movement than an anti-everything, less an anti-everything than an answer to the ever topical question: What shall we do tonight?
samples:
- Hans Arp - In Automobilen Reich
- Raoul Hausmann - BBB
- Kurt Schwitters - Ursonate
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