Appropriation, aura, and powerful new tools
Appropriation, chance and the destruction of aura frame an old argument now being applied to powerful new artistic tools.
Lynn Cole / Writing
Writing
Essays, thoughts, and technical notes.
But Dadaists created things
Randomness, appropriation and Duchamp’s urinal challenge the claim that Dada’s legitimacy depended on making things conventionally.
New tools, the same artistic instincts
I've now been on the current generation of tools for about a year.
Dada honors no aesthetic
Dada honors no aesthetic. Its criticism reaches commercialism, authorship, morality and the assumption that intent must look one particular way.
A meditation on artists and their epoch
Artists are creatures of their epoch, environments and backgrounds. Each perspective changes the world in some small way.
Surrealism and Dada: two ways of looking
Surrealism looks for the marvelous within. Dada can pull something out of reality and call it art because it bothers someone worth bothering.
Absurdity as a tool for changing the world
Absurdity is a method of social commentary and a tool for changing the world. Dada does not need to stay safely locked in art history.
Dada in another crisis of painting
Another crisis of painting brings the same questions of chance, morality, capitalism and artistic legitimacy back into view.
Replace the art economy
Dada wants to replace the art economy: its product logic, gatekeeping and comfortable relationship with power.
We will change the world with nothing
We will change the world with nothing: a statement of Dada’s rebellion against the art world, consumerism, reason and gatekeeping.
My politics, your dignity, and the limits of agreement
My politics are anarchist, anti-fascist and uncompromising about human dignity. We do not need identical politics to treat each other as people.
Welcome to the cause
Artists who explore, experiment and challenge the boundaries of art are welcome here. Dada is life.