2. DADA
✤ Before Surrealism was Dada, an art
movement that began in 1916.
✤ Dada was centered in Zurich,
Switzerland: Dada participants from
around Europe congregated there for
the country’s political neutrality in
World War I.
✤ Primary figures: Tristan Tzara
(spokesperson and author of
manifestos), Hugo Ball (poet and
owner of main Dada performance
space, the Cabaret Voltaire).
3. What is Dada?
✤ Dada wasn’t well-defined, and as a
group it wasn’t well-organized
✤ Rejection of a culture capable of
self-destruction and world war
✤ Anti-art, anti-logic, anti-reason
✤ At the end of WWI (1918), Dada
participants began returning to
their home countries, spreading
their ideas throughout Europe
4. Dada goes to Paris
✤ Tristan Tzara moved to Paris in
1919, joining the staff of Litterature
magazine
✤ Andre Breton, eventual leader of
Surrealists, and Tzara had public
and private disagreements in 1920
and 1921, leading to the “death of
Dada” being declared in 1922.
✤ Personal struggles for dominance
within artistic circles, as well as
political disagreements.
5. Surrealism is born
✤ In 1924, Andre Breton
published the first
Surrealist Manifesto, and
opened the Bureau of
Surrealist Research
✤ Breton and his collaborators
combined the tools and
techniques of Dada,
including collage and
“found art,” with elements
of Freudian psychoanalysis
6. Automatic processes
✤ Breton defined Surrealism as
“pure psychic automatism”
✤ Automatic drawing and writing -
moving the pen with as little
conscious influence as possible,
bringing out the subconscious
mind
✤ Emphasis on dream states and
analyzing dreams
7. Surrealist Games
✤ Mostly centered around automatic
methods mixed with
random/chance operations
✤ For recreation (idea generation)
and investigation (into the early
science of psychoanalysis)
✤ Results are anti-tradition like
Dada, but incorporate the
subconscious, collective
consciousness, dream analysis
8. Influence on contemporary culture
✤ Dada/Surrealist techniques continue to influence modern art,
literature, music, and web culture
9. Sampling
✤ Early electronic music
✤ hip-hop
✤ dance/electronica
✤ pop
10. Mashups
✤ Video, audio, textual
recombinations of pre-
existing materials
✤ Created and shared by a
diverse and sometimes
anonymous audience
11. Memes
✤ Shared social/cultural bits
of information
✤ Often transformed through
mashup techniques
✤ “going viral”
12. Let’s play!
✤ Book of Surrealist Games
✤ More games online
13. Automatic Writing
✤ Sit at a table with pen and paper; put yourself in a “receptive” frame
of mind, and start writing. Continue writing without thinking of
what is appearing beneath your pen. Write as fast as you can. If, for
Some reason, the flow stops, leave a space and immediately begin
again by writing down the first letter of the next sentence. Choose
this letter at random before you begin, for instance, a “T,” and always
begin this new sentence with a “T.” Although in the purest version of
automatism nothing is “corrected” or re-written, the unexpected
material produced by this method can be used as the basis for further
composition. What is crucial is the unpremeditated free association
that creates the basic text.
14. Questions and Answers
✤ Divide paper into three
columns. Write a question in
each column.
✤ Below each question, write
the context of the question
(who/what/when/where/w
hy) in parentheses. These will
be context clues for the next
player.
15. ✤ Fold the paper so
that only the context
words are exposed,
and pass to the next
player.
16. ✤ The next player answers
each question, writes
another three questions,
and so on.
17. Exquisite Corpse (drawing)
✤ Draw on a section of paper
✤ Fold it so that only a few
small lines show, and pass to
the next player
✤ The next player continues the
drawing, folding, and so on
19. Exquisite Corpse (writing)
✤ This game creates composite sentences by having each collaborator
add one column of sentence parts at a time. Divide a lined piece of
paper into five columns:
✤ 1. Article/adjective
✤ 2. Noun
✤ 3. Verb
✤ 4. Article/adjective
✤ 5. noun
20. ✤ The first player takes the first
article/adjective column,
writing an article and adjective
on each line of the paper. After
reaching the bottom, the player
folds the paper so that his or
her writing is invisible and
passes it to the next player.
Each player in turns fills out a
column without being able to
see any of the finished columns.
21. Questions? Comments?
✤ My email is
Scott.Scholz@gmail.com
✤ You may find me online at
WordsOnSounds.blogspot.com
