Dada 100 at Cornelia Street Cafe
By Malcolm D. Anderson
© Nora Wilby
The centenary of the anti-art movement, Dada, was celebrated at the Cornelia Street Café on Monday June 20th. $9 bought you admission and a free drink when doors opened at 8:15 P.M. and costumes were encouraged. Three Rooms Press organized the disruptive festivities of the evening with its ninth annual Dada salon, featuring performances, writing and art by modern Dadaists.
The Dada Salon is the most recent installment of The Monthly at Cornelia Street Café, a series curated by Three Rooms Press dedicated to assembling poets, intellectuals, performers and aspiring rebels who gather to consider a new topic each month.
The event also marked the launch of MAINTENANT 10: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, which honors the 100th anniversary of the avant-garde movement borne out of Zurich and the horrors of World War I with quotes from the founders of MAINTENANT.
The annual publication established in 2008 has grown from a 12-page monochrome zine stapled together into 190 pages of provocative, full-color art and writing from Dada creators from around the world. The theme of MAINTENANT 10 is “WARM/HUNGER,” with contributors examining global warming, hunger and the factors which lead to these conditions.
The Dada movement, which experienced prestige from 1916-1922, incorporates a host of different mediums and concentrates on critiquing the futility of the modern world. Dadaists reject the prevailing standards of art through cultural pieces which object to war, the bourgeois and traditional government.
© Nora Wilby
Images © Nora Wilby
Article © Malcolm Anderson
