dada was a largely european art movement that took place after wwi. this time and place is not a coincidence. let me explain.Â
dada art made no sense. the artists who made dada lived in a world in which nothing made sense - in which conventional logic led to the senselessness of a world war. so, making art that made no sense, making - well, you canât really call it art, so making ANTI-art that rejected the conventions that brought about that atrocity in the first place - it made total sense. (if that makes any sense.)
so the artists did weird things. new things! putting things that were already made together and calling it sculpture, cutting up bits of pictures and putting them together and calling that something to frame - this site has some nice examples.
but from my perspective - thereâs serious intellectual continuity between the absurdity of attaching a bunch of tacks to the bottom of an iron, rendering it useless, and sayâŠ. bath bomb posts. Put a fucking macbook in a bath. itâs useless now. Nobody fucking cares anymore. you want something funny? you want a punchline? gun. thatâs your punchline. Take it. I am laughing
in a way it could be a method of venting some of the frustration and hopelessness and dissatisfaction that tumblrâs userbase (largely, disenfranchised millennials) feels in the modern day. I canât really speak for anyone else, but⊠at least from a US perspective, thereâs plenty to be disillusioned about. growing up in a constant state of questionably justified war, income inequality, an economic recession caused by the actions of a handful of wealthy fucks who didnât even get properly punished, growing awareness of police brutality, being called lazy and self-absorbed by the generations that gave us these problems in the first place⊠I canât help but think that these factors (and more) could produce a similar mindset to the one that precipitated the first dada movement.Â
so of COURSE we make nonsense jokes. itâs a coping mechanism for a world which doesnât make any sense.
related: this isnât by tumblr but I have to plug UCLAâs atrocity of a virtual gallery once more. it really needs to be experienced, but⊠itâs definitely also millennial neo dada. from the presentation (like an unplayable video game) to the content (THE DOGS HAVE ARRIVED), it is exactly what I am talking about. it is a fucking shitpost. and itâs high art, too! I love this
tl;dr: my generation is fed up with this bullshit, and the best way that we can express that is by shitposting. alternatively, dada was an early precursor to modern shitposting and we should all thank duchamp for signing a fucking urinal
Iâd also say that while Dadaism was obsessed with the technological aspects of Modernity, of newspapers, of industrial mechanics and factory made clocks, neo-dadaism (of which shitposting but also the increasingly broad reach of the New Aesthetic and net aesthetics) is obsessed with the technological aspects of our time, or at the beginning of our time.
As just a comparison, the Clock in Absurdist and Dadaist art is both a symbol of the uplifting beginning of industrial relations (as one of the first complicated machines made by manufacturers, as the symbol of mankindâs ability to triumph and analyze nature and better ourselves) and as the deified symbol of horrific modernity (of demarcated time, labor hours, the oppression of the working class via managerial time), Neo-Dadaism/Absurdism has a similar relationship with early computers, which both symbolizes the utopian attitudes which we entered the digital age with, and the horrifying period we live in now, where the Digital is ever present and semi-deified.
My favorite dada satire is probably from Georges Grosz who takes the kind of robotic modernist tube people of folks like Leger:
and turns them into these mindlessly patriotic broken automatons chanting rote phrases:
And itâs so so funny to me that thereâs all kinds of Gen X artists out there creating art about the millennials on their damn cellumar phones who think theyâre the inheritors of this aesthetic but really itâs people who use the Madden gif generator to shitpost because theyâre taking the technology meant for a coherent purpose for a particular narrative and theyâre breaking it and turning it back on itself.
Perhaps Scandinavians are better able to appreciate the small, hygge things in life because they already have all the big ones nailed down: free university education, social security, universal health care, efficient infrastructure, paid family leave, and at least a month of vacation a year.
The Year of Hygge, the Danish Obsession with Getting Cozy - The New Yorker
I really like this photographer, and have loved visiting his Flickr page on occasion to get an idea of who he is. Iâm copy pasting the interview linked here below in case it gets deleted. Heâs intriguing.Â
Anywhere ! Since my childhood, I was fascinated by the Far East. The only news reaching us, in those years, were the Vietnam war, The Yellow Peril, Maoists dancing soldiers in strange operas with a red flag and Soviet leaders saluting with one hand, half hidden behind a wall during the parade on the first of May. But everything started when I left at the age of 17, hitchhiking to Morocco (with a camera Retina IIa Kodak) to improve my relationship relative to hashish. Then shortly thereafter, I traveled mostly Asia for years from Mongolia to New Caledonia, with a few rambles in Africa⊠I did not take always photographs⊠I have been twice in Japan and never made an image ! I still have to discover AmericaâŠ
When?
Iâm always carrying a camera, which most of the time is gathering more lint from the bag than light. I shoot sparsely⊠A long habit when I was younger and poor (I am no longer young). Photography has always been an expensive hobby. In those analog times, I shot less than fifty rolls in my whole life. But today, with digital, I become lazy and less careful which leads me to take some crappy images just to see how it looks !
What?
Well, it is difficult to speak about the kind of image I want to get. I do not know exactly what kind of pictures I take. I have no clue what is a good photograph. Most of the time, itâs a matter of tension and release. It is deeply rooted in sexuality. It is a kind of frenzy. For perhaps thirty minutes I can be in the flow, then itâs gone. I have a good knowledge of the paintings from the seventeenth century, and I know it affects my own vision. Snapshots which looks like staged have my preference. Sometimes, I organize cultural events in a garden and I shoot snapshots which are widely «prepared». Iâm not a street photographer or whatever name you give it. The only thing I know is that I like climbing a ladder and sing about myself. In my view, photography can not be a project or job. Photography is a state of being! Of course, in public, I can speak with great intellectual references, and show how smart I am, but the truth is I do not know what happens when I pull the trigger. At best, I see myself as a diarist.
Why?
Photography is less a way to remember the past than to reorganize the memory. After the murder of my younger brother, I felt the need to look after what was left of my archives. It was not anymore possible to look after some family stuff, and I bought a digital compact to recreate what was missing in my life. I mean, I had to re-write my past as a lone born individual. And to fill up the missing images with a fake silly happiness. Fifteen years whitout almost touching a camera, and I started again to take photographs. That was my therapy ( Iâm not very fond of âshrinksâ)! I can say that my work is mostly a âlife-time projectâ (although I hate this word) based on truncated archives.
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
The Circle - Dave Eggers
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
Ants on a Shrimp - Noma Documentary about a pop up restaurant in Japan
x Spark - John Twelve Hawks
I Wear the Black Hat - Chuck Klosterman
Death and Life of American Cities - Jane Jacobs
Making Places Special, Stories of Real Places Made Special by Planning - Jane Jacobs
x A Year in Provence - Peter Mayle
x Every Frenchman Has One - Olivia de Havilland
But What if We're Wrong - Chuck Klosterman
Provence 1970 - Luke Barr
x So Youâve Been Publicly Shamed - Jon Ronson
x Waste Free Kitchen Handbook by Dana Gunders
2017
x Whatever Happened to Interracial Love - Kathleen Collins
x A Framework for Understanding Poverty, 4th Ed. - Ruby K. Payne
The Live Changing Magic of Tidying Up - Marie Kondo
Hotel Pastis - Peter Mayle
x Midnight in Paris (film) - Director, Woody Allen
A Good Year - Peter Mayle
Toujours Provence - Peter Mayle
Encore Provence - Peter Mayle
A Dogâs Life - Peter Mayle
How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood - Peter Moskowitz
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pixelskylines
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theartofmadeline
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