On this day, in 1916, at the first Dada soirée at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, Hugo Ball read his Dada manifesto. While it is debatable when actually Dada began, this event is often heralded as the birth of this anti-art movement — which embraced irrationality, nonsense, surreality and rejected logic, reason, and the aesthetics of capitalism. Dada would go on to have a profound impact on all the arts and culture throughout the 20th century.
"How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanized, enervated? By saying dada. Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawnshop. Dada is the world's best lily-milk soap. Dada." — Hugo Ball
In the above video, a clip from the 1978 documentary, Europe After the Rain, actor Nickolas Grace plays Dadaist Tristan Tzara explaining how to write a Dada poem.
Bonus track:
