SEASON 30 | MARCH 2018

Cinema DaDa

Presented by Electronic Planet Ensemble

Dada is an artistic and literary movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland as a reaction to World War I and the nationalism that had led to the war. Influenced by avant-garde movements like Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism, its wildly diverse output ranged from performance art to poetry, music, photography, sculpture, painting, and collage. DaDa's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, dissipated somewhat with the establishment of Surrealism, but DaDa has become a cornerstone of inspiration in many categories of modern and contemporary art.

Freedom from cents freedom from nonsense freedom from money splatter freedom from intellectual mentation freedom from facts freedom from tactile proof of existence or anti-existence freedom from science embracing science like a cousin or twin misunderstood groaning uphill somersault Rolling downhill on roller skates upside down head flies like dada insisted on being whispered to Tristan Zara on December 1918 100 years ago others felt the vibration two syllables random letters hit their hearts in the middle in the middle of their soul they had to say dada my heart belongs to dada had to insist on freedom to be forever, IS.

The Electronic Planet Ensemble presents the premiere of a new short film, Cinema DaDa: a video collection of improvised pieces of music and sound juxtaposed against collages of submitted pieces of mail-art from a year-long International mail-art call. The International Mail Art Exhibit will be on display in The Butterfly Bar @ The VORTEX for the month of February through the screening of Cinema DaDa on March 2. Austin artists David Jewell, Melissa Vogt, Sandie Donzica, Justin LaVergne, Chad Salvata, Rachel Fuhrer, and Sergio R. Samayoa contribute video art, theatrical staging, dance choreography, improvised poetry, spoken word, sound collage, and electronic music to the film.

dada is a free ticket to nowhere
dada is a free ticket to anywhere
dada is a ticket to nonsense
that makes more sense than sense
since sense has abandoned
any hope of being believable or polite

Funded and supported in part by VORTEX Repertory Company, a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, and by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.