The materials included below were included in an exhibit at the Baltimore Theater Project Gallery in the Fall of 2017. It compliments Happenstance Theater’s performance of MANIFESTO! A DaDA CLoWn MANiFESTatiON.
The materials were exhibited a second time (with minor changes) at Black Swan Books and Records, November 16, 2018-January 30, 2019. The Black Swan exhibit did not included “The Spirit of Our Times, II,” but instead an assemblage/sculpture titled “Dada Typewriter”
The “Typewriter” includes a mannequin head representing the French critic Andre Breton (the author the 1924 Surrealist Manifesto). It sits on top of a vintage typewriter whose letters are either D or A –the letters necessary to spell DADA. Sitting on Breton’s head is a model of the Eiffel Tower. On the back of the piece is a cast bronze rocking horse–recalling the German word for a rocking horse–“dada.” A video player at the base of the piece streams DADAist images, symbols, words and poems.
The Spirit of Our Times, II, is a sculpture/audio installation based on Raul Hausmann’s 1919 assemblage/sculpture, “The Spirit of Ours Times.” It is a scathing piece of social criticism. According to Hausmann, the average German “has no more capabilities than those which chance has glued on the outside of his skull; his brain remains empty”. Hausmann’s perspective seems eerily relevant to our times. “The Spirit of Our Times, II,” consists of contemporary items such as a mannequin head, a cellphone, an IPad and a Starbuck’s Coffee Cup. A motion activated recorder plays selections from DaDaist poems and musical pieces—works which in their mechanical repetitiveness anticipate the atonal and experimental music of figures such as Arnold Schonberg and John Cage, as well as experimental poets from the 1960s.
