TVTropes calls it a "Neo-Dada art form consisting of video remixes. . . to confuse, stun or entertain the viewer". A recent
top ten list (
more here) fills the gaps of that description with ample WTF, which is almost too appropriate for a video genre that first garnered attention as a misdirection troll.
[more inside]
posted by I've wasted my life
on Jan 26, 2012 -
32 comments
Berlin, circa 1921: The painter Hans Richter turns his talents to film and produces one of the earliest abstract films, Rhythmus 21. Clocking in at just over three minutes, it's a significant departure from the newsreels, romances, cliff-hangers, and penny-dreadfuls that made up the bulk of film production in the early ’20s—the first decade in which the film industry began to play a major economic and cultural role around the world. [more inside]
posted by scody
on Jun 14, 2011 -
9 comments
Artist
John Heartfield was one of those who recognized the threat of Nazism early on. Remarkably, he created his
anti-fascist art inside Germany, until 1933 when Hitler came to power. He continued to pointedly satirize the Reich (and those who made it possible, as his bitter image of the League of Nations illustrates) from exile in Czechoslovakia. The nature of his work makes it very clear that Hitler's goals and intentions were obvious well before the war. (
via)
posted by CheeseDigestsAll
on May 10, 2009 -
30 comments
In 1916,
Hugo Ball would fulfill his own
dadaist manifesto by reciting his own nonsense poetry at the
Cabaret Voltaire (not that
Cabaret Voltaire), while wearing a
Cubist costume or a
cylinder with the number 13 covering his face. Ball's poem,
Gadji Beri Bimba, inspired the Talking Heads song,
I Zimbra, but his most famous poem is
Karawane, a pioneering example of
sound poetry. Karawane has more conventional
avant-garde versions on YouTube, but none is more surreal than the
recitation from memory by Marie Osmond (yes, that
Marie Osmond) from a
1980s broadcast of
Ripley's Believe It Or Not!
posted by jonp72
on Mar 9, 2009 -
21 comments
After nearly 21 months of hiatus, whimsical politics blog
Fafblog is back! And it's redesigned, too!
Right now I would ordinarily include a link to best posts of the past, but I would have to include
all of them.
posted by JHarris
on Apr 3, 2008 -
49 comments
In less than a month the cabaret, which at first had welcomed all modern tendencies in the arts and hoped to entertain and educate the customer, had turned into a theater of the absurd. That was the intention. "What we are celebrating," Ball wrote in his diary, "is both buffoonery and a requiem mass."The scandal spread. Lenin, who played chess with Tzara, wanted to know
what Dada was all about. (Previously
1,
2,
3)
posted by anotherpanacea
on Aug 29, 2006 -
10 comments
Ramsey Kearney was a teenage country music prodigy
nicknamed the Dixie Farmboy, a rockabilly singer with
the Jimmie Martin Combo, a
songwriter for Brenda Lee, and a producer of the most cloying
Elvis tribute single ever recorded. Kearney would have almost no connection to alternative music whatsoever until John Trubee,
a notorious crank phone caller and sideman for
Zoogz Rift, found an ad in the back of the
Midnight Globe tabloid from Kearney's
Nashco Records label, a
song-poem company offering to
put his words to music for a small fee. Trubee sent his own
disturbing LSD-fueled lyrics to Nashco, but to his surprise, Nashco accepted the lyrics after taking a $79.95 fee from Trubee. Kearney tweaked the lyrics slightly in order to avoid a
lawsuit from Stevie Wonder, but the end product was the cult classic novelty song,
Blind Man's Penis. (more inside)
posted by jonp72
on Aug 3, 2006 -
12 comments
DADA Hits the MOMA. DaDaism was an art movement that arose prior to the rubble of WW1 where the
artists led a creative revolution that shaped the course of modern art by combining different mediums to create a message of protest and hope.
The MOMA exhibit tells one story
(scroll to data and select full program - req flash 7) and the New Yorker
reaffirms the influence on art today. However, the real story is with
Richard Huelsenbeck, the ring leader and founder of the DaDa movement An
interview with him from December 1960 (45 mins mp3) explains the start - as one of the few German artists in protest to the war. My favourite part is where he tells of picking out the name DaDa from an encyclopedia at a cabaret.
posted by Funmonkey1
on Jul 19, 2006 -
23 comments
The Monks Formed in the early '60s by American G.I.s stationed in Germany. After their discharge, the group settled in Germany to concentrate on finding a unique sound, and soon began to shave their hair into Monk's
tonsures and appear in
cassocks. One of the truely
original bands of the 60's, The Monks are now often refered to as '
proto-punk'. The Monks
experimented fervently, developing a unqiue sound, with heavy bass, repetitive but amelodic rhythms, nursery rhyme style, yet
powerful vocals and a
good helping of feedback. They recorded only one albumn,
Black Monk Time, until their
1999 reunion.
Hear some tracks from the albumn (in realmedia),
See and hear The Monks Live in Germany, Also, check out
Monks - The Transatlantic Feedback, a documentary (with
trailer, though there seems to be something wrong with it).
[Trivia: the song I Hate You can be heard in the background in one scene in the bowling alley in The Big Lebowski]
posted by MetaMonkey
on Apr 21, 2006 -
24 comments
Whereas: Dada is a virgin microbe which penetrates with the insistence of air into all those spaces that reason has failed to fill with words and conventions. .
The mayor of Lawrence, Kansas proclaims February 4, April 1, March 28, July 15, August 2, August 7, August 16, August 26, September 18, September 22, October 1, October 17, and October 26, 2006 as International Dadaism Month.
posted by billysumday
on Feb 28, 2006 -
58 comments
I was wandering around the internets looking for early twentieth century ephemera and look what I found.
Digital Dada Library
“This page provides links to some of the major Dada-era publications in the International Dada Archive. These books, pamphlets, and periodicals are housed in the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa Libraries. …Each document has been scanned in its entirety.”
EphemeraNow “is a family-friendly Web site dedicated to the commercial art of mid-century America.”
The Ephemera Society “is a non-profit body concerned with the collection, preservation, study and educational uses of printed and handwritten ephemera.”
and more!
For those of you who have complained that this place is getting too “US politics-filter” I give you
Glasgow Digital Library Collections which has all sorts of stuff including a great
history of the labour movement in Glasgow 1910-1932
posted by Grod
on Oct 26, 2004 -
10 comments
The University of Iowa, of all unlikely places, maintains the
International Dada Archive. I suppose someone had to try, since almost no one understands it. There you can not only view images, but download PDFs—page by page, unfortunately—of
many Dadaist publications. Most of them are in various non-English languages, but still worth looking at just for the visual design.
And yes, the urinal is there, but you'll have to find it yourself.
[via
Consumptive]
posted by Su
on Mar 17, 2002 -
8 comments
