Opening Hours Exhibition: 6 pm – 10 pm
Welcome and Introduction: 7 pm
Performance by Katalin Ladik: 7.30 pm
The exhibition «DadaZwischenSprachen» is dedicated to the language experiments of the Dada movement, which originated in 1916 at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Since no audio or film recordings of the original performances exist, prints, reports, sketches, and scores provide insight into the events of that time. Sound poems and simultaneous poems were performed, animal voices imitated, and the propaganda language of the First World War was turned upside down. Experiences of migration, violence, and precarity were artistically processed through physical and vocal forms of expression. Alongside historical documents, works from the post-war period to the present connect with those impulses.
Contributors (Selection): Katalin Ladik, Babi Badalov, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, Marietta di Monaco, Richard Huelsenbeck, Hans Arp, Hans Richter, Maria d'Arezzo, Friedrich Glauser, Blaise Cendrars, Lina Lapelytė, Thomas Hirschhorn, Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, Ladislav Novák, Ewa Partum, Yello, Talking Heads.
To kick things off, we look forward to a performance by the pioneer Katalin Ladik – poet, artist, and performer. In addition to her legendary work Oooooopus, she will present The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a piece developed specifically for this exhibition. It marks her first-ever performance in Zurich. The exhibition also marks the opening of a new installation in the Artists’ Bar featuring contributions by Babi Badalov and Katalin Ladik.
The exhibition and accompanying programme are the result of a collaboration between the University of Zurich (Prof. Dr Sandro Zanetti, Department of Romance Studies, Division of General and Comparative Literary Studies) and Cabaret Voltaire (Salome Hohl), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF Agora project «Dada between Languages»). Contributors include Prof. Dr Tomáš Glanc (University of Zurich, Institute of Slavic and East European Studies) and Monica Unser (Cabaret Voltaire).
