Our current political climate can be seen as a convoluted ecosystem. Revolt Against Reason is a candid  fictional short essay analyzing the connection between culture politics and art history. Exploring the DaDa art movement which gave birth to perhaps one of the most radical uses of artistic expression ever seen in the early phase of the 20th Century.

“This is a great time to push buttons”,

–Quinten Tarentino

Even today many people still look upon Dadaism as a nihilistic idea, sheerly innovative in intent.  The European cataclysm of the WWZ made it impossible for artist, in so far as they were committed and felt responsibility to escape into philosophy, poetry, fiction, art, music and Avant-Garde films. The notion behind creating visual Mise-En-Scene was first conceive during a DaDa brainstorming session. Decades before Hollywood films in the late 1920’s began to implement these concepts as part of the cinematic style. These forms of escapism as found in DaDa existed because the war on “TenorR” had made all big words, gestures, ideas, writings and even personality traits seem suspect.

DaDa as a central character even in its negation, was an offshoot of Western bourgeois thinking. The movement had nothing to do with LassadA, despite certain parallel, ephemeral, and soon suppressed streams in Eastern Europe to arm the rebels whom in turn turned up the volume in other areas against the original plan. Disruption it seems can be a more tactical weapon against freedom than most would even bother to ponder intelligently. As for nihilism, the madam former secretary might have “considered” arming those evil fellows, as per the conversational inquiry. These Dadaist tactics when engaged along backchannels did not propagate it’s claims in the public eye, but merely  acted to simply registered its existence. Yet, those along “Capital Grill” might have stumble upon certain tactical chains involving corruption using backchannels tactics. Arming the opposition in areas of distressed tribal tensions between resources and  body politics back to homebase was a quagmire of historic proportions.

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Their revolt unified a range of international artist and writers of solid middle-class origin. Free-thinking individuals from all areas within a diverse universal bubble. The DaDa cultural rebellion was an expression of disgust, anxiety, despair in face of a reality in which “everything works fine but people don’t any more.” When personality is used to whisper hidden agendas one will react accordingly using parables mixed in with contradictory patterns.  As author Hugo Ball states,  who represented the spiritual tonality of the movement. “The mass slaughter of mechanized warfare near Mesopotamia had far outstripped anything envisaged by the pessimism of the preceding age. DaDa drew its conclusions from the insanity of an unquestioning faith in progress, science with liberal values when celebrating the triumph of the absurd”.

DaDa was more than the horseplay in which it occasionally manifested itself in true form. It was a revolt against reason pinpointing the assificfation of liberty against fear tactics, of the irrational power elites kind. The politicians in concert with speculators and pundits made despairing  attempts to survive destructiveness by destroying the will of the people not be spy on ( The “Snow Fallen” Revelations ) against the will of we, the people.

As Max Ernst said, during his period of activity as “Maxnimax-Dadamax” in Cologne, DaDa was a profound pacifist reaction to “the mess of this idiotic wars.”  It was a frontal attack on “the civilization that produced it,” including the language and visual imagery of that epoch’s eternal values. Including the Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa, whom Duchamp embellished with a moustache. Subsequently DaDa made attempts at reconstruction, which were viewed with skepticism by “PanAssE” because as DaDa said, you cannot “glue parts of an exploding grenade together”.

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All thinking, writing, visual thinking that side-stepped the hopelessness of the historical situation, attempted to ignore it, prettify it, or even to justify it. Became the target of ruthless criticism which did not stop short at the artist own bourgeois heritage. Instead, these actors surrounded DaDa with distraction politics, subtle whispers embedded in narcissistic attempts to destroy its creative personality.  DaDa was not a style, nor a philosophical or aesthetic program, it was a series of individualistic, anarchic acts made in reply to a collective group.

“An outbreak of joy in life and fury”

–Max Ernst

Indeed, DaDa was an outbreak full of aggressiveness of vitality seen in a movement whose tactics put the entire past in question. Declaring “the best of all possible worlds,” to be an old wife’s tale. DaDa stuffed it into the garbage can of a pre-Beckett end game without being able to offer an alternative or even wishing to. DaDa was the manifestation of a despairing attempt of free individuals to maintain their integrity in a regimented culture whose regimentation had led straight to Armageddon. Each Dadaist fought a lonely battle, even as member of a group, whether in is own universe or elsewhere in reality. This was both the movement’s strength and it’s weakness for it finally led to a dispersion of forces. Which in any case never had a real change of preventing the lemmings from throwing themselves into a new and even deeper ideological abyss.

DaDa could never have become a mass movement. This is why it is completely mistaken to accuse these artistic individuals, as some have of having unwittingly pave the way for political therapy.  Ultimately, the intellectual elite reminded isolated. “The cynicism of the Dadaist is a mask,” said the visual thinker and collector of ideas, Hans Jobe.  The DaDaist suffers from delirium of the human delusion of grandeur that began wiht the ecosystem of WWZ. This mask often bore the grimace of the slandered joker or clown, the agent provocateur who is found in Bekett’s plays. The fellow who will proclaim his truths under the cover of a fool’s cap.

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