Dada comes home to Zurich

The Dada House is due to reopen in April Keystone

A controversial art movement looks set to return to its original Zurich home.

The city council says it plans to finance the renovation of the former Cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of Dadaism.

Following a year-long debate over the future of the building in Zurich’s old town, the council has agreed to pay the rent for the next five years at a cost of SFr1.19 million ($870,000).

Further funding will come from the private sector, with the Swatch Group providing an annual contribution of SFr300,000

The council decision still has to be rubber-stamped by the local parliament, but renovation work is already underway on the Dada House which is due to open, initially on a trial basis, on April 1.

Subversive

Followers of Dadaism will no doubt find it appropriate that the centre is due to open on April Fool’s Day.

Often seen as a direct response to the First World War raging around neutral Switzerland at the time of its birth in 1916, Dadaism is a subversive art form which seeks to ridicule concepts of normality, sense and meaning.

Extremely radical at the time of its conception, Dadaism seemed to strike a chord, or perhaps discord, with artists around the world.

Spreading quickly to New York, Berlin and Paris, the movement appears to have been directly responsible for the subsequent birth of surrealism.

But until now, Dadaism has had no permanent home in the city where it started its life.

Heritage

“Dadaism is an important part of Zurich’s cultural heritage,” insists city mayor Elmar Ledergerber.

“But you can’t feel its presence at all when you come here. That’s something we want to change, not only for the tourists but also for the people of Zurich who will be able to see an active, living and developing arts centre.”

As well as housing a permanent exhibition chronicling the birth and early growth of Dadaism, the renovated Cabaret Voltaire will present modern Dadaist artworks.

For although the movement was reported officially dead in 1921, 1922, 1923 and just about every year since then, the Zurich project intends to prove that it is in fact still very much alive.

Dynamic

“We want to recognise the spirit of the movement’s founders and show what they achieved,” explains project leader Thomas Kramer.

“But we also want to build a new dynamic centre for Swiss and international artists.”

Since Dadaists tend to shy away from definitions of their movement or of any value system by which the “Dada-ness” of any individual piece can be judged, the task of selecting works for the new centre would appear to be an impossible one.

But Kramer reckons he’s up to the job, with a little help from his Dadaist friends.

“The Swiss author Jörg Steiner will also be working on the project, and he’s a real specialist in Dadaism,” says Kramer.

“It’s true that you can’t really categorise Dadaism, so you can only really say if you think something has the spirit of Dada in it, or says something interesting about Dada.”

Useless?

Like everything in life, Dada is useless. That at least was one of the interesting things said about Dadaism in Tristan Tzara’s 1922 Lecture on Dada.

More grandly, in the words of movement founder Hugo Ball, “Dada is a new tendency in art that seeks to change conventional attitudes and practices in aesthetics, society, and morality.”

But can Dadaism still hope to change conventional attitudes now that it is far from new?

“Definitely,” says Kramer. “In fact Zurich, Switzerland and the world as a whole desperately need to become more Dada.

“Zurich used to be an artist’s capital, both in the early days of Dada and in the sixties and seventies. But now it’s much more closed to the outside world.

“One of our aims must be to open up more to the world and to do so in a peaceful, international style.”

swissinfo, Mark Ledsom in Zurich

Dada House

The Dada movement was born in 1916, apparently as a direct response to the atrocities of the First World War.
Early Dadaists sought to subvert traditional ideas and preconceptions, mainly by the use of nonsensical phrases and imagery.
In partnership with the Swatch Group, Zurich city council now intends to reopen the original home of Dadaism.
The Dada House in the city’s old town is due to be finished on April 1.