Hugo Ball
The first Dada manifesto was written by Hugo Ball in 1916.
This is a short but loose, prose-style manifesto which was read out on July 14, in Zurich
Tristan Tzara wrote a second in 1918 - this is a long and free flowing text with lots of ideas to ponder. To get a true feel, read the manifesto, but for a quick selection of 'interpretations' (by me), read on...
A few pointers....
1. The word DADA is not important and does not mean anything. Dada is a word that throws up ideas so that they can be shot down.
2. I am against manifestos as I am against rules and measuring. Approximate instead, like the impressionists
3. To launch a manifesto you have to want A, B and C and fight against 1, 2 and 3. Regrettably everyone does it in this way. I am neither for nor against anything. I hate common sense.
4. A word-based construction often aims for perfect descriptions – these produce boring products.
5. Criticism is useless, it only exists subjectively for every individual. We don’t accept any theories.
6. Novelty means fashionable. Novelty is out of date. Novelty is boring. (cubist, futurist…) I appreciate an old work for its novelty. It is only contrast that links us to the past. Novelty is life.
7. Work should be for the author’s need and benefit alone. Only there can ‘laws’ become significant.
8. Every page should explode because of its profound gravity or vortex, vertigo, newness, eternity, absurdity.
9. Be uncouth, gallop - ride astride hiccups
10. To explain is to allow your instincts to be manipulated. Explanations are ‘safe’. To explain is to try to ‘win’, and to box, categorise and control life.
11. Don’t believe in Utopianism, Idealism
12. Business and publicity are also poetic. Propel yourself into the mystery of daily bread (events, material, stuff)
13. Reinstate the circus in the powers of reality and the fantasy of every individual.
14. Don’t be real, rational. Logic doesn’t prove truth - it is illusory, false. We are against thinking, theories, systems. Logic and intelligence restrain your independence. Be foolish, senseless.
15. We aren’t interested in formal ideas generated in the laboratory (eg cubist/futurist). These theoretical ideas don’t make a painting good. The making of art exists in the very eyes of the viewer
16. Activate simplicity. Be innocent, enthusiastic, supple, malleable.
17. Well considered, well researched work is the product of a journalist. What we need are strong straightforward precise artworks that will be forever misunderstood.
18. Measured against the scale of eternity, every action is in vain. Be aware of your immutability, your incapacity, just make stuff.
19. Abolish memory, archaeology, morals, good manners, prudishness, harmony, sentimentalism.
20. Mix the offensive and the loving. Be contradictory, support the freaks, the irrelevancies.
21. Choosing which philosophy to follow is no more important than choosing which dessert to eat. Thought is a fine thing but ultimately always relative.
22. Morals give rise to charity and pity. This is wrong. Goodness is lucid, clear and resolute, and ruthless towards compromise and politics.
23. It is bored and quarrelling men who invented the calendar and ‘wisdom as remedy’.
24. Even if you look at something from many points of view, there are still millions more that exist.
25. Science tells us we act according to nature and that everything is in order – so removing our responsibilities.
26. Experience is the result of chance and individual abilities.
27. People are sheep and can’t think for themselves.
28. Art does nobody any harm. Open to it, and it will caress you.
29. We want to invent our own words, rhythm vowels consonants. I want to play with them, allow new ones to emerge.
30. Each thing has its word (noun), but this word has become a thing by itself (we forget the thing, and think too much about the word). Let’s use some words out side of your domain of knowledge, let’s bin the labels for everything.