Why the Dada movement used nonsense as a protest

HostWhen the world feels like it's falling apart, we usually look for someone with a plan to fix it. We want clear answers and a way back to normal. But back during the First World War, a group of young people did the exact opposite. They decided that since the world had stopped making sense, art should stop making sense too. They called it Dada. Why was acting like a bunch of kids the best way to fight back?

GuestIt sounds like a joke at first, but you have to look at what was happening right outside their door. While they were meeting in a little club in Switzerland, millions of young men were dying in the mud just a few miles away. The people in charge—the leaders and the generals—said all that killing was part of a grand, sensible plan. To the Dadaists, if common sense and the old ways of thinking led to a world on fire, then common sense was the problem. They felt that if they played by the rules of the polite world, they were basically agreeing with the war. So they threw the rules out. They didn't want to make pretty paintings; they wanted to scream.

HostSo it was a big no to everything the grown-ups were doing. But I still struggle with how shouting made-up words at a crowd actually changes anything. It feels like they were just being trolls.

GuestIn a way, they were the first trolls. But it was a troll with a very dark heart. One of their members, Hugo Ball, went on stage in a stiff outfit made of blue cardboard. He stood there and read out poems that were just sounds that didn't mean anything. Just gibberish and barks. If you're sitting in that crowd and you're mourning your friends who died for a flag, hearing someone bark like a dog is a slap in the face. It was meant to be annoying. It was meant to show that the language of the kings was hollow. If words could be used to send kids to die, then words were broken.

HostThat's a heavy way to look at it. So the nonsense was a mirror. They were saying, you think we're crazy? Look at the trenches.

GuestThat was the heart of it, and they took that vibe into everything they touched. Usually, an artist spends years learning how to paint a perfect sunset. The Dadaists would just tear up a piece of paper, drop the scraps on the floor, and glue them wherever they landed. They called it art by chance. They were saying the artist isn't some grand genius with a plan. Luck is just as good. If the world is a mess of random violence, why should a painting be orderly and perfect? It felt more honest to let the scraps fall where they may.

HostI can see why that would make the art world really angry. It's like saying their hard work doesn't matter. But did they really think they were helping? It feels like they were just adding more noise.

GuestThey weren't trying to help in the way a doctor helps. They were trying to clear the air. They thought that the old way of life had become this stiff, dead thing that only knew how to kill. They wanted to go back to zero. That's why they chose the name Dada. It's a child's word for a hobby horse. It was a way to start over from the beginning, like a baby. If you can't trust the language of your parents, you have to make up your own. Even if it sounds like oombah oombah.

HostSo the protest is the fact that you refuse to be useful to the system.

GuestRight. They were also very big on what they called the readymade. The most famous one was a common urinal that an artist signed and tried to put in an art show. He didn't make it; he bought it at a store. By calling it art, he was poking a stick at the people who decide what's worth a lot of money. He was saying, this is art because I say so, and your rules are just made up. It forces you to ask why we prize a painting in a gold frame but throw away a piece of trash. It was about breaking the spell of the art gallery.

HostIt's wild that stuff from a hundred years ago still feels so edgy. I see people online doing things that feel very Dada all the time—like memes that make no sense at all.

GuestWe're still living in their world. They showed us that when things get too scary, breaking the rules is a way to stay sane. It's a way to prove that you're still a person with a sense of humor, even when the world is trying to turn you into a cog in a machine. They proved that sometimes, the only sensible thing to do is to be totally and completely absurd.

GuestDada showed that you can't actually kill art by making it look like trash; you just end up making the trash look like art.

HostThe hobby horse they built out of scraps still has plenty of kick left in it.