What is the relevance of Dada and its artistic strategies in our current moment, one marked by post-truth politics, information floods and big data? How can contemporary art highlight the neglected nuances of cultural representation in the present day? While it may feel like we are living in a period of anomaly with the rise of the alt-right, this book shows how the Dada movement's artistic response to the aggressive nationalism and fascism of its time offers a fruitful analogy to our contemporary era.
Dada's counter-cultural strategies, such as the distortion of reality and attacks on elites and rationality, have long been endorsed by artistic avantgardes and subcultures. Dada Data details how modern-day movements have appropriated such tactics in their ways of addressing the public both on- and offline. Bringing together contributions from interdisciplinary scholars, curators and artists working in global contexts that explore an array of artistic modes of persuasion and resistance, the book demonstrates how contemporary art can bring out neglected nuances of our post-truth moment. In linking the Dada movement's counter-cultural activities to modern phenomena such as post-internet art, information floods and big data mining, the book collates original propaganda with diverse artwork from such figures as Hannah Höch, Paula Rego, Tschabalala Self, Sheida Soleimani and South African artists donna Kukama and Kemang Wa Lehulere. In doing so, Dada Data brings together a rich scrapbook of Dada resources and perspectives that are highly relevant to present-day political concerns.
With artistic contributions by IOCOSE, donna Kukama, Kemang Wa Lehulere and Montage Mädels.
Author(s): Sarah Hegenbart, Mara-Johanna Kölmel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 359
City: London
Cover
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
NOTE ON COVER DESIGN – MONTAGE MÄDELS
ILLUSTRATIONS
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Introduction: From Dada Tricks to Post-Truth Politics
Dada
Dada and conceptions of (post-)truth
From Dada tricks to data-driven politics
Dada and the alt-right
The structure of this book
The chapters
PART ONE From Dada to Data
CHAPTER ONE Dadadatadada: From Dada to Data and Back Again
Data poems
Dada data hacks
Big Dada data politics
Mean memes
Dada data tactics
Conclusion
CHAPTER TWO Clouds, Critique & Contradiction: Programming Dissent in Dada and Data Art
Dada: The sound of words; or, mind the gap!
Big data and the Angelus Novus ; or, the end of history, again?
The datalogical turn: Recipes, instructions, procedures; or, tips and tricks for a dynamite(d) data soufflé. (Aka the end. But also the beginning)
CHAPTER THREE The Legacy of the Berlin Dada Media Hoaxes in Contemporary Parafictive Acts
Political context and social turns
Johannes Baader and the Berlin Dada media hoaxes
Contemporary acts
Conclusion
montage mädels Our Collective Practice: A Visual Essay
PART TWO Global Dada
CHAPTER FOUR Sheida Soleimani, Cyborg: Photomontage in an Expanding Network
CHAPTER FIVE Black Dada Data: Collage as a Tool of Resistance against White Supremacy Thinking in the Digital Age
‘Post-truth’ as sign for the unwillingness to abandon white privilege
Collage strategies and political resistance
Black collage
Black Dada
Black Dada Data
Conclusion
CHAPTER SIX Dada’s African South
Dada’s revolt
Dada South?
Complacency and resistance
The Body in performance
From the street to online activism
Post- truth – Dada irrationality in the age of data
Conclusion
CHAPTER SEVEN Paula Rego: A Dada Attitude against Authority in the Post-War Period
Vomiting Salazar
In a black and white city of great inertia
A geography of fear
Conclusion
PART THREE Big Dada Data
CHAPTER EIGHT Big Dada, Big Data: Schwitters’s Merzbau, the Private and the Trash
Thriving on trash
Private grottos
Exposure and the inner life
Networked grottos
Obsessive archival, collective trash: Data and trash
Temporally flat, materially deep
Conclusion
CHAPTER NINE Identity, Ecology and the Arts in the Age of Big Data Mining
Data love
Data mining business
Social engineers without a cause
Cunning of reason
CHAPTER TEN The Digital Revolution as Counter-Revolution
Is technology anything other than a weapon?
The machine as means to counter the powers of the social
The social as obsolete under the digital
Counter-revolution: The early modern period as antecedent
Kemang Wa Lehulere Dog of Orion
PART FOUR Dada x Alt-Right. Faking the Truth
CHAPTER ELEVEN Down the Rabbit Hole of the Alt-Right Complex: Artists Exploring Far-Right Online Culture
CHAPTER TWELVE Fashwave: The Alt-Right’s Aestheticization of Politics and Violence
Alt-right fascism
Analysing Fashwave’s ‘Retro-Futurism’
Visual analysis 1: ‘Embrace tradition’
Visual analysis 2: The Christchurch mosque shooter and ‘The Great Replacement’
Conclusion: Replicate to accelerate
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Post-Internet Art and the Alt-Right Visual Culture
IOCOSE Dadasourcing
PART FIVE Dada Data Tactics
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Pixel Pirates: Theft as Strategy in the Art of Joan Ross and Soda Jerk
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Precarious Data Aesthetics: An Exploration of Tactics, Tricksters and Idiocy in Data
Dadaist tactics
Digital Dada
Precarious aesthetics in data
CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Multiple Narratives of Post-Truth Politics, Told Through Pictures
Context – a sea of images compete for our attention
Images prioritizing impact over veracity
Images, digital data breach and (in)justice
New era of the collective coherence of the far-right
The response of artists and activists
Diversity, equality and digital (in)justice
Visually led – alternative models of online communities
New models, supported by appropriate funding mechanisms
INDEX
