Decidedly For and Against the Future: Dada and Other Arts for Life

Abstract

There is an obvious premier degré contradiction in commemorating Dada centenaries. The movement was famously against permanence and yet Dada has become enshrined in popular culture, exhibitions, catalogues, and indeed academic research. To paraphrase a Dada slogan, perhaps the true Dada researcher should be against research into Dada. But let us not be too fetishistic or precious about Dada. To borrow from Delia Ungureanu’s magisterial comparative study of surrealism, where is Dada in the 21st-century, and what does it mean to understand that question not so much in terms of conscious practice (such as contemporary performance art) but in relation to the pan-human, pan-historical phenomena cherished by Dadaists and which can be forgotten in the rush to eulogise Dada nihilism, such as ethics and peace, radical humanism, socio-political engagement, and the question of how to live well with oneself and with others? The world is on fire, and Dada is both dead and all around us.