396

 DADA’S CRADLE: AN EVALUATION OF ZURICH DADA’S SPACES
AS TO CORPOREALITY

The research focuses on the World War I period (1914-1918) to explore the
relationship between bodies-spaces-media in Zurich Dada, which unfolds through its
appropriation of performance, exhibition, and urban cultures, along with mediums of
magazine, collage, and photography. It comprises three layers: the theoretical layer,
where I review influential studies that explore the notion of avant-gardes (like the
works of Peter Bürger, Matei Călinescu, Hal Foster, Richard Murphy, Marjorie
Perloff, and Renato Poggioli) in light of various philosophies concerning the body and
perception (including the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Mary Douglas, Erving Goffman,
Michel Foucault, Norbert Elias, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty); the historical layer,
where I examine the institutional conditions under which Zurich Dada emerged,
reacted against, and dissolved; and the historiographical layer, where, by exploring the
relationship between verbal and non-verbal forms of expression in the practice of
“history-writing,” I describe an interface that not only portrays the publication network
of avant-garde movements in the early 20th century but also provides its bodily
utilizers with multidimensional domains for making critical arguments.
Keywords: Dada, Zurich, Body, Space, Historiography
v, kolaj, fotoğraf ortamları ile performans, sergi, ve kent
kültürlerini benimsenmesinde ortaya çıkan bedenler-mekânlar-ortamlar arasındaki
ilişkiyi keşfetmek amacıyla Birinci Dünya Savaşı dönemine (1914-1918) odaklanır ve
üç katmandan oluşur: Avangard kavramını araştıran kanonik çalışmaları (Peter
Bürger, Matei Călinescu, Hal Foster, Richard Murphy, Marjorie Perloff ve Renato
Poggioli’nin çalışmaları gibi) beden ve algıya ilişkin çeşitli felsefeler ışığında (Pierre
Bourdieu, Mary Douglas, Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, Norbert Elias ve Maurice
Merleau-Ponty’nin çalışmaları dahil) gözden geçirdiğim teorik katman; Zürih Dada’yı
ortaya çıkartan ve çözen, grubun tepki gösterdiği kurumsal koşulları incelediğim
tarihsel katman; “tarih yazma” pratiğinde sözlü ve sözlü olmayan ifade biçimleri
arasındaki ilişkiyi sorguladığım ve 20. yüzyılın başlarındaki avangard hareketlerin
karmaşık yayın ağını görselleştirmekle kalmayıp, aynı zamanda bedenli
kullanıcılarına eleştirel tartışmalar yapmaları için çok boyutlu alanlar sağlayan bir
arayüzü tanımladığım tarihyazımsal katman.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Dada, Zürih, Beden, Mekân, Tarihyazımı
vi
DEDICATION
To all forgotten bodies of yesterday,
May your stories be heard tomorrow.
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply grateful to several individuals who have played a significant role while I was
conducting this research. First and foremost, I express my sincere gratitude to Assist. Prof. Dr.
Ekin Pinar, whose unwavering guidance and support as my supervisor have been invaluable
throughout this journey. I would like to extend my thanks to Assist. Prof. Pelin Yoncacı
Arslan, under whose insightful teaching I developed a crucial part of my study. Prof. Dr. Adile
Jale Erzen truly deserves my appreciation for meticulously proofreading my writings and
posing thought-provoking questions that enhanced not only my research but also my
imagination.

I am also thankful to Markus Schels, Operations Assistant of Zunfthaus Zur Waag for
generously allowing me access to the guild house to document the place and sharing his
knowledge about traditional events specific to Zurich. I would like to thank my friends Arda
Ergin, Yaz Ertürk, Umut Gülcan, Zeynep Eda Gönen, and Cansu Türk, whose unwavering
support was a source of encouragement during challenging times.
I owe a debt of gratitude to my dear parents, brother, and friends for their kind-heartedness
and patience, providing me with the emotional strength to persevere. I am also thankful to the
administrative staff at Middle East Technical University, whose dedication eased all
procedures, enabling me to focus wholeheartedly on my research. Lastly, I am indebted to my
old masters whose teachings always ignited my curiosity and inspired me to delve deeper into
the realm of knowledge. Your collective contributions have been instrumental in shaping this
study, and for that, I am deeply grateful.
viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PLAGIARISM ................................................................................................................... iii
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................iv
ÖZ ....................................................................................................................................... v
DEDICATION ...................................................................................................................vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................................vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................. viii
LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................... x
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................xi
CHAPTERS
1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1
2. REBUILDING AVANT-GARDES .................................................................................. 9
2.1. Reviewing canonical studies on avant-gardes concerning corporeality .................. 9
2.2. The network of avant-garde magazines and possibilities of surfaces in reasoning 15
2.3. Extracting contents from avant-garde magazines vis-à-vis research questions...... 19
2.4. Relinking extracted material with artifacts, archival material, and critical studies 22
2.5. Rebuilding events of avant-gardes to test and produce critical arguments ............ 27
3. HISTORICAL CONTEXT ............................................................................................. 35
3.1. Science, technology, and built environment in Europe: 1870-1914 ...................... 36
3.2. Diverse public structures of Europe appearing on bodily agency: 1870-1914....... 43
3.3. Lives of Zurich Dadaists before 1914.................................................................. 63
3.4. Violent conflicts between 1870-1914, the Great War, and wartime conditions ..... 70
4. EMBODYING ZURICH DADA .................................................................................... 83
4.1. Birth of Dada, its foundations, and Cabaret Voltaire ........................................... 84
4.2. Reconsidering rehearsals concerning ideas of Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu ........ 92
4.3. Reassessing events regarding thoughts of Goffman and Douglas ....................... 100
4.4. Reviewing reconstitution in light of Foucault and Elias’s concepts .................... 106
5. CONCLUSION............................................................................................................ 119
BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................ 122
APPENDICES ................................................................................................................. 131
A. TURKISH SUMMARY / TÜRKÇE ÖZET ................................................................. 131
B. CURRICULUM VITAE / ÖZGEÇMİŞ ....................................................................... 140
ix
C. THESIS PERMISSION FORM / TEZ İZİN FORMU ..................................................142
x
LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1 States and Populations 1880-1914 (Millions of persons) ..................................... 36
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991 (London: Abacus, 1994), 342.
Table 3.2 The Decline in Family Size (Number of Children) in England and Wales............ 37
Edward Anthony Wrigley, Population and History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969),
197, quoted in John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to
the Present (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), 758.
Table 3.3 World Production and World Trade 17811-1971 (1913=100) .............................. 37
Walt W. Rostow, The World Economy: History and Prospect (London: University of
Texas Press, 1978), Appendices A and B, quoted in Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of
Extremes: 1914-1991 (London: Abacus, 1994), 349.
Table 3.4 Annual Output of Steel (In millions of metric tons) ............................................. 38
Carlo Cipolla, ed., The Fontana Economic History of Europe (London: Collins/Fontana
Books, 1976), 3(2):775, quoted in John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe: From
the Renaissance to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), 745.
Table 3.5 Emigration from Europe, 1876-1910 (Average annual emigration to non-
European countries per 100,000 population) ........................................................ 39
Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders: Europe 1800-1914 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987), 283.
Table 3.6 Estimated Casualties of the World War 1 ............................................................ 81
Jay Murray Winter, The Great War and the British People (London: Macmillan, 1985),
75.
xi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1 Max Ernst, Health through Sport, 1920; Ernst, Santa Conversazione, 1921;
Man Ray, Coat Stand, 1920; John Heartfield, Rationalization Marches!, 1927;
Raoul Hausmann, Self-Portrait of the Dadasoph, 1920. ........................................ 2
Max Ernst, Health through Sport, 1920, photograph of a photomontage on wood, 100
× 60 cm, The Menil Collection, Texas, https://www.menil.org/collection/objects/2508-
health-through-sport-la-sante-par-le-sport; Max Ernst, Santa Conversazione, 1921,
photograph of a photomontage on wood, 22 x 12.7 cm, private collection; Man Ray,
Coat Stand, 1920, 40,4 x 26,9 cm, Centre Pompidou, Paris,
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/ressources/oeuvre/czzAepB; John Heartfield, Die
Rationalisierung marschiert - Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa, 1927, photomontage,
31,7 x 24 cm, The Heartfield Community of Heirs, Bonn,
https://archiv.adk.de/objekt/2956711; Raoul Hausmann, Selbstporträt des Dadasophen,
1920, photomontage and collage on handmade Japanese paper, 36,2 x 28 cm, private
collection.
Figure 1.2 Raoul Hausmann, Tatlin Lives at Home, 1920; Johannes Theodor Baargeld,
Typical Vertical Mess as Depiction of the Dada Baargeld, 1920; George Grosz,
A Victim of Society, 1919; Raoul Hausmann, Gurk, 1918-9; Marcel Janco,
Portrait of Tristan Tzara, 1919. ............................................................................ 2
Raoul Hausmann, Tatlin Lives at Home, 1920, collage, 40.9 x 27.9 cm, Moderna
Museet, Stockholm; Johannes Theodor Baargeld, Typische Vertikalklitterung als
Darstellung des Dada Baargeld, 1920, photomontage, 37.1 x 31 cm, Kunsthaus Zurich,
Zurich; George Grosz, Ein Opfer der Gesellschaft (later titled Remember Uncle August,
the Unhappy Inventor), 1919, Oil and graphite on canvas with photomontage and
collage of papers and buttons, 49 x 39.5 cm, Centre Pompidou, Paris,
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/ressources/oeuvre/tNdteTj; Raoul Hausmann, Gurk,
1918-9, collage, 27 x 21.5 cm, private collection; Marcel Janco, Portrait de Tzara,
cardboard, burlap, ink and gouache, 1919, 55 x 25 x 0.7 cm, Centre Pompidou, Paris,
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr /ressources/oeuvre/cdqne44
Figure 2.1 Cover of Poesia (1909); Cover of 391(1917); Cover of Cabaret Voltaire
(1916); Cover of Collier’s (1910), Cover of Praesens (1930) .............................. 15
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, ed., Poesia, 1909, periodical, Museo di arte moderna e
contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, https://archive.org/details/poesia-a.-vn.-
4-3-5-6-aprile-luglio-1909; Francis Picabia, ed., 391, 1917, periodical, International
Dada Archive, Iowa, http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/391/; Hugo Ball, ed., Cover of
Cabaret Voltaire,1916, periodical, International Dada Archive, Iowa,
https://dada.lib.uiowa.edu/items/show/177; Norman Hapgood, ed., Collier’s Magazine
Vol. 46, No. 5, 1910, periodical, Brown University Library, Providence,
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:470535/; Praesens, 1930,
periodical, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, New York,
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-fcea-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
Figure 2.2 A page of an article about der Dada inevitably using a fragment from the
magazine; A page of Digital Dada Library showing der Dada............................ 16
Figure 1.4, and Figures from 1.6 to 1.16 were created after the digitalized pages of
Cabaret Voltaire, ed. Hugo Ball (Zurich: Julius Heuberger, 1916) in “Digital Dada
xii
Library,” The International Dada Archive, accessed August 4, 2023,
https://dada.lib.uiowa.edu/items/show/177.
Figure 2.3 A page showing “The Richard Mutt Case” in Blind Man ................................... 17
Louise Norton, "The Richard Mutt Case," in The Blind Man, eds. Henri-Pierre Roche,
Beatrice Wood, and Marcel Duchamp (New York: H.P. Roché, 1917), reprinted from
“Digital Dada Library,” The International Dada Archive, accessed August 4, 2023,
http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blindman/2/index.htm
Figure 2.4 Coding editorial divisions, mentions, dates, places, and angles of reading .......... 20
Figure 2.5 Denoting languages. .......................................................................................... 20
Figure 2.6 Denoting event programs .................................................................................. 20
Figure 2.7 Denoting ways of crafting images in magazines................................................. 21
Figure 2.8 A still from the decoding process in macro-level ............................................... 21
Figure 2.9 Mentioned published materials links themselves. ............................................... 22
Figure 2.10 Articles gather around the contents. ................................................................. 23
Figure 2.11 Contents bring their translation. ....................................................................... 23
Figure 2.12 Gathering all related material around mentioned times. .................................... 24
Figure 2.13 Mention of Marcel Janco in the system ............................................................ 25
Figure 2.14 Unfolding of an event program, mentioned composers, paintings, and places ... 26
Figure 2.15 Cover of Pocket Guide-Dada City Zurich; Some addresses from magazines
showing the locations of Tzara and the administration of Dada. ........................... 26
Pocket Guide Dada City Zurich, ed. Salome Hohl (Zurich: Cabaret Voltaire, 2021),
cover.
Figure 2.16 Satellite view of Zurich. Red spots show chief locations; blue spots show
contextual places. ................................................................................................ 26
Satellite view of Zurich, Google Earth, accessed August 4, 2023,
https://earth.google.com/web/@47.37075444,8.54507468,427.41891418a,3154.82208
901d,35y,268.299941h,0t,0r/data=OgMKATA?authuser=0. For the mapping showing
Dada locales in Zurich, see https://goo.gl/maps/wWCDbZCvZyPcVD4h7 and
https://goo.gl/maps/vyo47mEu9tcumvRX6
Figure 2.17 A division enabling one to gather artifacts and documents within space. .......... 27
Figure 2.18 Paolo Buzzi, Two pages from L’Ellisse la Spirale: Film + Parole in liberta,
1915. ................................................................................................................... 29
Paolo Buzzi and Luciano Caruso, L’Ellisse la Spirale: Film + Parole in liberta (1915;
reis., Firenze: SPES, 1990), 344-5. Edizioni Futuriste di "Poesia.”
Figure 2.19 Two pages from 1886 dated catalouge of Thonet. ............................................ 30
Thonet Catalogue, 1886, Museum Boppard, accessed August 4, 2023, https://museumboppard.
de/explore/thonet-varietyofproducts/#Katalog-Seite-01
xiii
Figure 2.20 Drum sets used between 1900-1930s. ............................................................. 31
Drumsets around 1920s, Left image from Matt Dean, The Drum: A History (Plymouth:
The Scarecrow Press, 2012), chap. 12. EPUB; right image from Drumstelgeschiedenis-
Deel 1, accessed August 4, 2023, http://drumsteladvies.nl/geschiedenis/geschiedenisvan-
het-drumstel-deel-1/
Figure 2.21 Janco, the art dealer Miecislas Sterling and Arp at the Galerie Wolfsberg,
1918. .................................................................................................................. 32
Janco, the art dealer Miecislas Sterling and Arp at the Galerie Wolfsberg, 1918,
photograph, Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin, https://stiftungarp.de/en/hans-arpbiography/#
Marcel%20Janco,%20the%20art%20dealer%20Miecislas%20Sterling%2
0and%20Hans%20Arp%20at%20the%20Galerie%20Wolfsberg,%20Zurich,%201918
Figure 2.22 Marcel Janco, Fleur-géométrie,1917; A detail of its wooden frame. ................ 32
Marcel Janco, Fleur-géométrie, 1917, gouche painted plaster relief, 60 x 49 x 6 cm, AM
1441 S, Centre Pompidou, Paris, photographed by the author; a detail photograph of the
relief’s wooden frame, photographed by the author. See also,
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/oeuvre/cejbzn8
Figure 2.23 Installation views from Salon Dada in Paris, 1921. ......................................... 33
Installation views from Salon Dada in Galerie Montaigne, Paris, June 6-30, 1921: Left
image from Leah Dickerman, ed., Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York,
Paris (Washington: The National Gallery of Art, 2006), 346; Right image from William
A. Camfield, Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism (Münich: Prestel, 1993),
98.
Figure 2.24 Installation view of the First International Dada Fair in Berlin, 1920. ............ 33
Installation view from First International Dada Fair in Berlin, June 30-August 24,
1920, reprinted from William A. Camfield, Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of
Surrealism (Münich: Prestel, 1993), 56.
Figure 3.1 A turret lathe built by Gisholt Machine Company. ............................................ 38
A turret lathe built by Gisholt Machine Co., reprinted from Sigvard Strandh, The
History of the Machine, trans. Ann Henning (New York: Dorset Press, 1989), 84.
Figure 3.2 Hélène Dutrieu, one of the pioneer pilots of the 1910s. ..................................... 40
Hélène Dutrieu, 1911(?), photograph, LC-USZ62-129830, Library of Congress Prints
and Photographs Division, Washington, https://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3c29830/
Figure 3.3 Jules Hervieu, Special work of the Opera neighborhood. A section from
Boulevard des Capucines, 1900s. ....................................................................... 42
Jules Hervieu, Ouvrage spécial de la place de l'Opéra. Coupe sur l'axe du boulevard
des Capucines, 1903/8, architectural section drawing,
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k132876m /f473.item
Figure 3.4 August Sander, Farm Children, 1913; Sander, Middle-Class Child, 1925. ........ 45
August Sander, Farm Children, 1913, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum of
Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193669; August
Sander, Middle-Class Child, 1925, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum of
Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org /collection/works/193830
Figure 3.5 August Sander, Farming Family, 1913/14......................................................... 46
xiv
August Sander, Farming Family, 1913/14, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum
of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193689.
Figure 3.6 August Sander, Farming Couple Spinning, 1927; Sander, Farm Woman from
the Sieg Valley, 1921. .......................................................................................... 46
August Sander, Farming Couple Spinning, 1925-30, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm,
Museum of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193689;
August Sander, Farm Woman from the Sieg Valley, 1921, gelatin silver print, 17.8 × 11
cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles,
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/1041EN#full-artwork-details.
Figure 3.7 August Sander, Farm Girl, Hesse, 1913. ........................................................... 47
August Sander, Farm Girl, Hesse, 1913, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum
of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193694.
Figure 3.8 August Sander, Road Construction Workers, 1927. ........................................... 49
August Sander, Road Construction Workers, 1927, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm,
Museum of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193785.
Figure 3.9 August Sander, Cafe Waitress, 1928/29; Sander, Servant in a Grand
Household, 1928. ................................................................................................ 49
August Sander, Café Waitress, 1928/29, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum
of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/194169; August
Sander, Servant in a Grand Household, 1928, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm,
Museum of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/194173.
Figure 3.10 August Sander, Working-Class Family, 1912. .................................................. 50
August Sander, Working-Class Family, 1912, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm,
Museum of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193787.
Figure 3.11 August Sander, Blacksmiths, 1926; Sander, Machine Operator, 1926. ............. 51
August Sander, Blacksmiths, 1926, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum of
Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193781; August
Sander, Machine Operator, 1926, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum of
Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193782.
Figure 3.12 August Sander, Circus Artistes, 1926-32. ........................................................ 53
August Sander, Circus Artistes, 1926-32, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum
of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/194119.
Figure 3.13 August Sander, Wine Merchant's Family, 1913; Sander, City Dweller, 1912. ... 54
August Sander, Wine Merchant's Family, 1913, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm,
Museum of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193845;
August Sander, City Dweller, 1912, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum of
Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193851.
Figure 3.14 Charles Félix Girard, Struggle for a child between the child's family and the
Church, the State and the Freemasons, 1909. ...................................................... 55
Charles-Félix Girard, L'Assiette au Beurre no. 453, eds. Samuel-Sigismond Schwarz,
André de Joncières, and Georges-Anquetil (4 December 1909), 1420-21, Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Département Réserve des Livres Rares, RES G-Z-337, Paris,
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1049880v/f8.item#.
Figure 3.15 August Sander, High School Student, 1926; Sander, Working Student, 1926. ... 57
xv
August Sander, High School Student, 1926, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum
of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/194157; August
Sander, Working Student, 1926, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum of Modern
Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/193889.
Figure 3.16 Dr. Krajewski’s Athletic Room. Walls were full of portraits of athletes;
Athletics Club. ................................................................................................... 58
Cabinet Athlètique du Docteur Krajewski, photograph, Edmond Desbonnet, Comment
on Devient Athlète (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1918), 21; L’Athetic-Club des Jeux
Olympiques stephanois, reprinted from Albert Surier, ed., La Culture Physique, no. 7
(September 1904): 156.
Figure 3.17 August Sander, Member of Parliament(Democrat), 1927; Sander, High
School Girl, 1928. .............................................................................................. 59
August Sander, Member of Parliament(Democrat), 1927, gelatin silver print, 25.8 ×
18.7 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York,
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/194000; August Sander, High School Girl,
1928, gelatin silver print, 25.8 × 18.7 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York,
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/194156.
Figure 3.18 Bertillon's physical measurements to identify criminals................................... 60
“The Bertillon system that cataloged criminals by their physical measurements,1894,”
Rare Historical Photos, accessed August 4, 2023,
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/bertillon-system-rare-photographs/
Figure 3.19 Suspension treatment at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, 1889. ................................ 60
Traitment de l'ataxie locomotrice: Par la suspension, 1889, photograph, Wellcome
Collection, London, https://wellcomecollection.org/works/zw4xhmzf/images?id=a8xbv6pa;
Le Nouveau Traitement De L’Ataxie Par La Suspension, A la Salpêtrière in L’Illustration,
no. 2640 (23 March 1889): 232.
Figure 3.20 Hugo Ball, 1916; Emmy Hennings in performance preceding the days of the
cabaret. .............................................................................................................. 64
Hugo Ball, 1916(?), photograph, C-04-a-OP-02-02, Helvetic Archives, Bern,
https://www.helveticarchives.ch/detail.aspx?ID=581945; Emmy Hennings, 1915(?),
photograph; C-04-b-OP-12-47, Helvetic Archives, Bern,
https://www.helveticarchives.ch/detail.aspx?ID=574362
Figure 3.21 The circle of Simbolul in 1912: from left to right, Samuel Rosenstock,
unknown, Marcel Iancu, Iuliu Iancu, Poldi Chapier, and Eugen Iovanaki. ........... 66
Tom Sandqvist, Dada East: the Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire (London: The MIT
Press, 2006), 74.
Figure 3.22 Hans Arp in Weggis, 1911; Sophie Taeuber in Munich, 1914. ........................ 68
Hans Arp in Weggis, 1911, photograph, Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin,
https://stiftungarp.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/arpbio_1886-1929_11.jpg; Eduard
Wasow, Sophie Taeuber in Munich, 1914, photograph, Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin,
https://stiftungarp.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/stabio_1889-1929_02.jpg
Figure 3.23 The arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst outside Buckingham Palace, 1914. ............ 71
Leader of the Women's Suffragette movement, Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst is arrested by
Superintendant Rolfe outside Buckingham Palace, London while trying to present a
petition to HM King George V, 1914, photograph, IWM Q 81486, Imperial War
Museums, London, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205022259.
xvi
Figure 3.24 A Medieval war with modern means; Old and new combat in World War I ..... 74
A Medieval war with modern means: German Cavalry with gas mask and lance,
photograph, J. H. J. Andriessen, World War I in Photographs (Kent: Grange Books,
2003), 130; Old and new combat in World War I, photograph, John Merriman, A History
of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2010), 890.
Figure 3.25 Some animals used in the war. ......................................................................... 75
A homing pigeon is released from a tank with a message for the command post., n.d.,
photograph, reprinted from J. H. J. Andriessen, World War I in Photographs (Kent:
Grange Books, 2003), 530; The horses also wear gas masks., n.d., photograph, reprinted
from J. H. J. Andriessen, World War I in Photographs (Kent: Grange Books, 2003),
275; Dogs were also used at the front, n.d., photograph, reprinted from J. H. J.
Andriessen, World War I in Photographs (Kent: Grange Books, 2003), 501.
Figure 3.26 Garments of French Infantrymen by 1914 and 1916 (Verdun). ......................... 75
Garments of French Infantrymen by 1914 and 1916 (Verdun), reprinted from Laurent
Mirouze, World War I Infantry (Wiltshire: The Crowood Press, 1999), 9-25.
Figure 3.27 Increasing number of woman workers during the war. ..................................... 75
Two frames were reprinted from “Wanderung in einer mechanischen Werkstätte,”
produced by Bild- und Film-Amt, distributed by A. Schimmel Film-Grosslager Berlin,
Kinos und Zubehör (1917), filmstrip, 5.20 min,
https://www.bpb.de/mediathek/video/332679/wanderung-in-einer-mechanischenwerkstaette/
Figure 3.28 German infantry advances across open terrain; French cycle-mounted troops
rush to help Belgium. .......................................................................................... 76
German infantry advances across open terrain, n.d., photograph, reprinted from J. H.
J. Andriessen, World War I in Photographs (Kent: Grange Books, 2003), 90; French
cycle-mounted troops rush to help Belgium, n.d., photograph, reprinted from J. H. J.
Andriessen, World War I in Photographs (Kent: Grange Books, 2003), 100.
Figure 3.29 Entities stuck in the mud. ................................................................................ 76
Transport regularly became stuck in the mud delaying food and munitions, n.d.,
photograph, reprinted from J. H. J. Andriessen, World War I in Photographs (Kent:
Grange Books, 2003), 139; British Royal Artillery dig out an eighteen pounder field
gun stuck in the mud at Ypres, n.d., photograph, reprinted from J. H. J. Andriessen,
World War I in Photographs (Kent: Grange Books, 2003), 142.
Figure 3.30 Plan of the dugout complex constructed by the 126th Infantry Regiment........... 77
Plan and section of a typical Brialmont fort as built at Namur, n.d., technical drawing,
reprinted from Keith Mallory and Arvid Ottar, Architecture of aggression: A history of
Military Architecture in North West Europe, 1900-1945 (London: Architectural Press,
1973), 26; Plan of the dugout complex constructed by the 126th Infantry Regiment, n.d.,
technical drawing, reprinted from Keith Mallory and Arvid Ottar, Architecture of
aggression: A history of military architecture in North West Europe, 1900-1945
(London: Architectural Press, 1973), 40.
Figure 3.31 German troops immediately before the attack; A British soldier inside a
trench .................................................................................................................. 78
German troops immediately before the attack, n.d., photograph, reprinted from J. H. J.
Andriessen, World War I in Photographs (Kent: Grange Books, 2003), 247; A British
soldier inside a trench on the Western Front during World War I, 1914–18, n.d.,
xvii
photograph, reprinted from “Trench Warfare,” Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed
August 4, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/trenchwarfare#/
media/1/604210/110333
Figure 3.32 Moments of spare time in the war. .................................................................. 78
Belgian soldiers take a rest behind the front line, n.d., photograph, reprinted from J. H.
J. Andriessen, World War I in Photographs (Kent: Grange Books, 2003), 92; Soldiers
at the front tried to create a feeling of home between the fighting. Australian soldiers
brew tea in their trench, n.d., photograph, reprinted from J. H. J. Andriessen, World
War I in Photographs (Kent: Grange Books, 2003), 343.
Figure 3.33 Objects of spare time activities: a diary, a cigarette, or a tiny set of playing
cards. ................................................................................................................. 78
Playing cards, miniature, in wallet, photographed by the author, EPH 2590, Imperial
War Museum North Collection, Manchester,
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30082425.
Figure 3.34 George Grosz, Battlefield with Dead Soldiers, 1915; Felix Vallotton, Barbed
Wire, 1916.......................................................................................................... 78
George Grosz, Battlefield with Dead Soldiers, 1915, offset lithograph, 23.8 x 39.8 cm
The Estate of George Grosz, https://estateofgeorgegrosz.org/; Felix Vallotton, Les Fils
de Fer, 1916, woodcut, 17.5 x 22.3 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York,
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/60313
Figure 3.35 Félix Vallotton, Verdun, 1917; Giro Severini, Cannon in Action, 1915. ........... 79
Félix Vallotton, Verdun, 1917, oil on canvas, Musée de l'Armée, Paris,
https://basedescollections.musee-armee.fr/ark:/66008/21889.locale=fr; Giro Severini,
Cannon in Action, 1915, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt
am Main, reprinted from Richard Cork, A Bitter Truth (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1994), 71.
Figure 3.36 Otto Dix, Dead Men before the Position near Tahure, 1924; Dix, Storm
Troops Advancing under a Gas Attack, 1924. ..................................................... 79
Otto Dix, Tote vor der Stellung bei Tahure, 1924, etching, aquatint, and drypoint, 19.6
x 25.8 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York,
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/87761; Otto Dix, Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas
vor, 1924, etching, aquatint, and drypoint, 19.3 x 28.8 cm, Museum of Modern Art,
New York, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/63260
Figure 3.37 A field hospital of the Allies; Stanley Spencer, Travoys arriving with
Wounded at a Dressing-Station at Smol, Macedonia, 1916. ................................ 80
A field hospital of the Allies, n.d., photograph, reprinted from J. H. J. Andriessen, World
War I in Photographs (Kent: Grange Books, 2003), 482. A field hospital of the Allies;
Stanley Spencer, Travoys arriving with Wounded at a Dressing-Station at Smol,
Macedonia, 1916, 1919, oil on canvas, 218.4 x 192.9, Art.IWM ART 2268, Imperial
War Museum, London, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/25132
Figure 3.38 Horace Nicholls, Reconstructive Plastic Surgery During First World War ...... 81
Horace Nicholls, A British soldier with a severe disfiguring wound between the eyes
due to a piece of exploded time-fuse which had lodged itself at the back of his cheek,
n.d., photograph, IWM Q 30449, Imperial War Museums, London,
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205127649.
Figure 3.39 Horace Nicholls, Repairing War’s Ravages: Renovating Facial Injuries ......... 81
xviii
Horace Nicholls, A selection of items used to conceal facial injuries during the early
development of plastic surgery, 3rd London General Hospital. n.d., photograph, 8.3 cm
x 10.9 cm, IWM Q 30460, Imperial War Museums, London,
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205213407
Figure 3.40 An amputee at L’Hopital du Grand-Palais attaches a tool to his prosthetic
device, 1919; Jean Larrivé, Statues showing functional forearm and hand
protheses, 1914; Paul Suján, Poster for the State War Welfare Exhibition in
Poszony, 1917. .................................................................................................... 82
An amputee at L’Hopital du Grand-Palais attaches a tool to his prosthetic device,
March-April 1919, reprinted from Leah Dickerman, ed., Dada: Zurich, Berlin,
Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris (Washington: The National Gallery of Art, 2006),
5; Jean Larrivé, Prothèses fonctionnelles d’avant-bras et de main, n.d., set of statues,
Prix de Rome de 1904 [sic], MA 2125 and 2121, Musée du Service de Santé des Armées
(Val-de-Grâce), Paris, photographed by the author; Paul Suján, Poster for the State War
Welfare Exhibition in Poszony (Bratislava), 1917, poster, reprinted from Patrick Facon,
1914-1918: La Guerre Des Affiches (Grenoble: Éditions Atlas, 2013), 146.
Figure 3.41 Otto Dix, Prostitute and War Wounded (Two faces of Capitalism), 1923; Dix,
War Cripples, 1920. ............................................................................................ 82
Otto Dix, Dirne und Kriegsverletzter (Zwei Opfer des Kapitalismus), 1923, ink on
cardboard, 46.8 x 37.3 cm, LWL-Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte
(Westfälisches Landesmuseum), Münster; Otto Dix, Kriegskrüppel, 1920, drypoint,
25.9 x 39.4 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York,
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/69799.
Figure 3.42 Raoul Hausmann, Mechanic Head, 1919; Bercher and Ginestet Maxillofacial
Helmet, a fixator settling mandible fractures without a surgery. ........................... 82
Raoul Hausmann, Mechanischer Kopf, 1919, wooden hairdresser's puppet and various
objects attached to it, 32,5 x 21 x 20 cm, Centre Pompidou, Paris,
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/oeuvre/cGzAKG; Casque Maxillo-facial
de Bercher et Ginestet, n.d., M 14027/1, Musée du Service de Santé des Armées (Valde-
Grâce), Paris, photographed by the author.
Figure 4.1 Serge Sudeikin, Cabaret, 1915 .......................................................................... 83
Serge Sudeikin, Cabaret “Halt of Comedians” (My Life), 1915-17, tempera on
cardboard, 45x70 cm, private collection, accessed August 4, 2023,
https://www.wikiart.org/en/serge-sudeikin/cabaret-halt-of-comedians-my-life-1915.
Figure 4.2 Some drawings depicted in the journal Cabaret Voltaire: Filippo Marinetti,
Dune (Parole in libertà), Pablo Picasso, Dessin, Oppenheimer, Zeichnung. ......... 85
Filippo Marinetti, “Dune (Parole in libertà),” in Cabaret Voltaire: Eine Sammlung
Künstlerischer und Literarischer Beiträge, ed. Hugo Ball (Zürich: Buchdruckerei Jul.
Heuberger, 1916), 22; Picasso, “Dessin,” in Cabaret Voltaire: Eine Sammlung
Künstlerischer und Literarischer Beiträge, ed. Hugo Ball (Zürich: Buchdruckerei Jul.
Heuberger, 1916), 10; Max Oppenheimer, “Zeichnung,” in Cabaret Voltaire: Eine
Sammlung Künstlerischer und Literarischer Beiträge, ed. Hugo Ball (Zürich:
Buchdruckerei Jul. Heuberger, 1916), 8. For the digital copies, see The University of
Iowa Libraries, Iowa,
https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui%3Adada_28802.
Figure 4.3 Some paintings depicted in the journal Cabaret Voltaire: Hans Arp, Teppich;
Otto Van Rees, Papierbild................................................................................... 85
Hans Arp, “Teppich,” in Cabaret Voltaire: Eine Sammlung Künstlerischer und
Literarischer Beiträge, ed. Hugo Ball (Zürich: Buchdruckerei Jul. Heuberger, 1916),
xix
29; Otto Van Rees, “Papierbild,” in Cabaret Voltaire: Eine Sammlung Künstlerischer
und Literarischer Beiträge, ed. Hugo Ball (Zürich: Buchdruckerei Jul. Heuberger,
1916), 25. For the digital copies, see The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa,
https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui%3Adada_28802.
Figure 4.4 Society in Simplicissimus; musicians and guests, 1910 ..................................... 88
Gesellschaft im Simplicissimus, Musikanten und Gäste, 1910, photograph, Stadtarchivs
München, Münich, DE-1992-FS-NL-KV-0750,
http://stadtarchiv.muenchen.de/scopeQuery/detail.aspx?ID=409890.
Figure 4.5 Max Tilke, Self-portrait at the opening of “The Hungry Pegasus”, 1902(?) ...... 89
Max Tilke(?), Selbstbildnis des Malers bei Eröffnung des Cabaret "Zum hungrigen
Pegasus,” Gouache on paper, 1902(?), 24cm x 33cm, signed, Collection Dr. Martin
Koenig, Zürich, accessed August 4, 2023,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Karl_Tilke#/media/File:Max_Tilke_Selbstbildnis.j
pg.
Figure 4.6 Hans Arp and Otto van Rees at work on the mural for the Pestalozzi School,
Zurich 1915; The wall at present......................................................................... 90
Hans Arp and Otto van Rees at work on the mural for the Pestalozzi School, Zurich
1915, Stiftung Arp e. V., Berlin, https://stiftungarp.de/en/hans-arpbiography/#
Hans%20Arp%20and%20Otto%20van%20Rees%20at%20work%20on%
20the%20mural%20for%20the%20Pestalozzi%20School,%20Zurich%201915;Wand
malerei von Hans Arp 1916, bei Kantonales Labor/Ehemaliges Pestalozzi-Schulhaus,
Fehrenstrasse 15b, Zürich-Hottingen, Schweiz, accessed August 4, 2023,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hottingen_Hans_Arp_1915.JPG.
Figure 4.7 Marcel Janco, At the Cabaret Voltaire, 1916. .................................................... 92
Marcel Janco, Au Cabaret Voltaire, 1916, graphite on paper, 33.3 x 30 cm, The Israel
Museum, Jerusalem,
https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2024918/photography_ProvidedCHO_The_Israel_
Museum__Jerusalem_243318
Figure 4.8 Emmy Hennings with one of the puppets she crafted(and probably performed
with); Hennings’ puppets depicted in the journal Cabaret Voltaire ..................... 93
Emmy Hennings, stehend, mit Dada-Puppe, 1916, photograph, 8.5 x 14 cm,
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv, Bern, C-04-b-OP-12-59,
https://ead.nb.admin.ch/images/hennings/HEN%20OP-12-59.jpg; Emmy Hennings,
“Puppen,” in Cabaret Voltaire: Eine Sammlung Künstlerischer und Literarischer
Beiträge, ed. Hugo Ball (Zürich: Buchdruckerei Jul. Heuberger, 1916), 20. For the
digital copy, see The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa,
https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui%3Adada_28802.
Figure 4.9 A visual argument about the design of the Cabaret Voltaire (afternoon). ........... 94
Figure 4.10 Marcel Janco, Mask, 1919; Marcel Janco, Cabaret Voltaire, 1916................... 96
Marcel Janco, Masque, 1919, assemblage of paper, cardboard, string, gouache and
pastel, 45 x 22 x 5 cm, Centre Pompidou, Paris, AM 1221 OA,
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/oeuvre/cejBaXy; Marcel Janco, Cabaret
Voltaire, 1916, oil on canvas, photograph of a lost painting, Kunsthaus Zurich, Zürich,
reprinted from Leah Dickerman, ed., Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New
York, Paris (Washington: The National Gallery of Art, 2006), 24.
Figure 4.11 Author near one of the masks by Marcel Janco.. ............................................. 96
xx
Author nearby one of the masks by Janco, photographed by Justine Trillaud. See also,
Marcel Janco, Masque, 1919, assemblage of paper, cardboard, string, gouache and
pastel, 35 x 27 x 5 cm, Centre Pompidou, Paris, AM 1220 OA,
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/oeuvre/cxAXGdE.
Figure 4.12 Marionettes designed by Taeuber for a 1918 dated play by Swiss Marionette
Theater. ............................................................................................................... 99
Two screenshots threedimensional scan of Sophie Taeuber, Marionette, König Hirsch:
Wache by Carl Fischer, 1918, wood turned and painted, 55.5x18, Museum für
Gestaltung Zürich, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Zürich,
https://www.eguide.ch/en/objekt/koenig-hirsch-wache/
Figure 4.13 Rudolf Laban, Sequential unfolding of movement within crystalline shapes;
Laban, Pentagonal shapes used to generate poses, n.d. ....................................... 100
Rudolf Laban(?), Sequential unfolding of movement within crystalline shapes, 1938-40,
National Resource Centre for Dance Archives, University of Surrey, Guildford,
L/C/1/87 and L/C/1/88; Rudolf Laban, Pentagonal shapes used to generate poses,
1938-40, National Resource Centre for Dance Archives, University of Surrey,
Guildford, L/C/7/152, reprinted from Carol-Lynne Moore, The Harmonic Structure of
Movement, Music, and Dance according to Rudolf Laban: An Examination of His
Unpublished Writings and Drawings (Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009), Plate D
and F.
Figure 4.14 Photographs of Sophie Taeuber and Hugo Ball in “cubist costumes.” ............ 101
Sophie Taeuber dancing with a mask by Marcel Janco, Zurich 1917, photograph,
Stiftung Arp e. V., Berlin, https://stiftungarp.de/en/sophie-taeuber-arpbiography/#
Sophie%20Taeuber%20dancing%20with%20a%20mask%20by%20Marc
el%20Janco,%20Zurich%201917; Hugo Ball in kubistischem Kostüm, photograph, 8.5
x 14 cm, Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv, Bern, C-04-a-OP-02-03,
https://ead.nb.admin.ch/images/hennings/HEN%20OP-02-03.jpg
Figure 4.15 Another argument about the design of the Cabart Voltaire (evening). ............. 104
Figure 4.16 Architectural idiom ....................................................................................... 104
Figure 4.17 Tzara and Janco(from right) at the Zurich Lakeside with three people, 1916;
A photograph from Constructivist International, 1922 ....................................... 107
At the Lakeside, from righ: Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, Zurich 1916, photograph,
reprinted from Willy Verkauf, ed., Dada: Monograph of a Movement (New York:
George Wittenborn, 1957), 102; Die Kongressteilnehmer am 25. und 26. September
1922 auf der Freitreppe des Thüringischen Landesmuseums, photograph, Klassik
Stiftung Weimar, Weimar, https://blog.klassik-stiftung.de/assets/blog/images/2022/09-
September/04_GerdaWendermann_100-Jahre-Dada-in-Weimar_/Internationaler-
Kongress-der-Konstruktivisten-und-Dadaisten_Weimar-1922-1024x817.jpg
Figure 4.18 George Grosz, Frederick Street, 1918; Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara and Hans
Richter in front of the Hotel Elite, Zurich 1918 .................................................. 108
George Grosz, Friedrichstrasse, 1918, Off-set lithograph on wove paper, 26.35 x 17.46
cm, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, https://s3-uswest-
2.amazonaws.com/collections.lacma.org-images/remote_images/ma-134801-
WEB.jpg?DESmNSC2TdXhUxn9gCfxD5z202xXlxkH; Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara and
Hans Richter in front of the Hotel Elite, Zurich, 1918, photograph, Stiftung Arp e. V.,
Berlin, https://stiftungarp.de/en/hans-arpbiography/#
Hans%20Arp,%20Tristan%20Tzara%20and%20Hans%20Richter%20in%
20front%20of%20the%20Hotel%20Elite,%20Zurich%201918
xxi
Figure 4.19 Aerial view of Zurich. Cabaret Voltaire(1), Café Odeon(2), Café de la
Terrasse(3), Zunfthaus zur Waag (4); Gallery Corray/Dada(5), Zunfthaus zur
Meisen (6), site of Sechseläuten (7) ...................................................................110
View of the Limmat river and the inner city of Zürich, 1910-28(?), photograph, reprinted
from Eduard Spelterini, Über den Wolken/Par dessus les nuages (Zürich: Brunner &
Co, 1928), 13. See also
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spelterini_Z%C3%BCrich_City.jpg
Figure 4.20 A photograph showing Münsterhof: Zunfthaus zur Waag (1); Zunfthaus zur
Meisen (2). ........................................................................................................111
Reprinted from “History,” Zunfthaus Zur Waag, Zürich, https://www.zunfthaus-zurwaag.
ch/en/geschichte-history. See also https://images.squarespacecdn.
com/content/v1/6399afad06875d4366eabea3/ff5fcab7-0d13-4aed-9666-
6b2c9ed52be9/BAZ_099500.jpg
Figure 4.21 Interior of a hall in Zunthaus Zur Waag at the present. ...................................111
Interior of a hall in Zunthaus Zur Waag at the present, photographed by the author.
Figure 4.22 Restaurant Meierei (hosting Cabaret Voltaire) ; the backyard of the building
today; A photograph from the 50th anniversary of Cabaret Voltaire. ...................112
Münstergasse, 1930(?), photograph, Baugeschichtliches Archiv, Zürich, 036670,
https://baz.epics.
ethz.ch/catalog/BAZ/r/352598/viewmode=infoview/qsr=%20Meierei; The
backyard of the cabaret’s building at present, photographed by the author; A photograph
from the 50th anniversary of Cabaret Voltaire, 1968, Zürcher Dada-Feier zum 50-Jahr-
Jubilaum, February 1966, photograph, reprinted from Philippe Carrard, Cabaret
Voltaire Dada Zürich: Ein Eingriff von Rossetti + Wyss (Zürich: gta Verlag, 2004),
plates.
Figure 4.23 Sophie Taeuber, Dada Bowl, 1916; Few pages from Collection Dada
published in 1917. .............................................................................................112
Sophie Taeuber, (Untitled) Dada Bowl, 1916, black-lacquered turned wood, 20.4 x 15
cm, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg, photo M. Bertola,
https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/inventingabstraction/?work=223;
Tristan Tzara, La Première Aventure Céléste De Mr. Antipyrine (Zurich: Julius
Heuberger, 1916), 1, https://dada.lib.uiowa.edu/files/show/5205; Richard Huelsenbeck
and Hans Arp, Phantastische Gebete (Zurich: Julius Heuberger, 1916), folio 5, The
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/12341?association=illustratedbooks&page=1
&parent_id=12337&sov_referrer=association
Figure 4.24 Postcards showing usual Zurich festivals: Sechseläuten in 1916; Seenachtfest,
1910s. ...............................................................................................................113
Postcards showing usual Zurich festivals: Sechseläuten in 1916; Zürich – Seenachtfest,
1910-5(?), postcard, 9x 14 cm, registration on the reverse is “Photo- und Karten -
Centrale, Zürich. 739,” Museu del Cinema: Colꞏlecció Tomàs Mallol,
https://sgdap.girona.cat/fotoweb/archives/5002-Fotografia/FOTOGRAFIA/Colleccio_
MuseuCinema/AlbumVerd/350698.jpg.info
Figure 4.25 Drawings depicted in the first issue of the journal Dada: Hans Arp, Pathetic
Symmetry, 1917; Marcel Janco, Construction 3, 1917; Oskar Lüthy, Madonna,
1917. .................................................................................................................115
xxii
Hans Arp, “Broderie,” in Dada 1: Recueil Littéraire et Artistique, ed. Tristan Tzara
(Zürich: Jul. Heuberger, 1917), 1; Marcel Janco, “Construction 3,” in Dada 1: Recueil
Littéraire et Artistique, ed. Tristan Tzara (Zürich: Jul. Heuberger, 1917), 13; Oskar
Lüthy, “Madonna,” in Dada 1: Recueil Littéraire et Artistique, ed. Tristan Tzara
(Zürich: Jul. Heuberger, 1917), 5. For the digital copies, see The International Dada
Archive, Iowa, https://dada.lib.uiowa.edu/files/show/1433
Figure 4.26 Hans Arp, Plant Hammer, 1917; Marcel Janco, Blanc sur blanc, 1917; Sophie
Taeuber, Formes élémentaires en composition verticale-horizonatale, 1917. ...... 115
Hans Arp, Untitled (Plant Hammer), 1917(?), painted wood relief, 62 x 50 x 8, The
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Hague, reprinted from Leah Dickerman, ed., Dada:
Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris (Washington: The National
Gallery of Art, 2006), 67; Marcel Janco, Blanc sur blanc, 1917, wood, Centre
Pompidou, Paris, photographed by the author; Sophie Taeuber, Formes élémentaires en
composition verticale-horizonatale, 1917, Gouache and pencil on paper, 32.2 x 24.7 cm,
Stiftung Arp e. V., Berlin/Rolandswerth,
https://sophietaeuberarp.org/english/elementare-formen-in-vertikal-horizontalerkomposition/
Figure 4.27 Surrounding of Sprünglihaus, place of Gallery Dada/Corray, at the present.;
Han Corray in front of his book store, 1919. ...................................................... 117
Surrounding of Sprünglihaus, place of Gallery Dada/Corray at the present,
photographed by the author; Han Corray in front of his book store, 1919, photograph,
reprinted from Esther Tisa Francini, “‘Hot spot of international energies’ The network
of Dada artists, dealers, and collectors of African art,” in Dada Africa: Dialogue with
the Other, eds. Ralf Burmeister, Michaela Oberhofer, and Esther Tisa Francini
(Chicago: Scheidegger and Spiess, 2016), 93.
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must
pass over in silence.
–Ludwig Wittgenstein1
Since the 1990s, rapid changes in technology, violence, identity, and consumer culture have
prompted some scholars from social sciences to rethink the definitions of the body within
historical contexts. Thomas Csordas interpreted this turn of embodiment as an “opportunity to
reformulate theories of culture, self, and experience with the body at the center of analysis.”2
In the same way, this study targets rediscovering the interrelations between bodies, spaces,
and media. Accordingly, studying the art and architecture of as extreme a context as the Great
War (1914-1918) provides an appropriate point to start such reflection, because the context of
the war challenged living beings and their bodies in many aspects, which has evoked endless
debates since then over many divisions like human-machine, human-animal, or else animateinanimate.
Here, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that the period leading to the Great War was
the same period giving birth to the “historical avant-garde” movements.3 More to the point,
throughout the war, as Eric Hobsbawm observed, only two avant-garde movements made
noteworthy formal inventions: Constructivism and Dadaism (foretelling Surrealism).4 A
glance at the works of these movements suggests that manipulating corporeality was one of
the strategies helping the agents to cope with conventional, if not authoritarian, mentalities.
As Elza Adamowicz observed, in a context where “Western man has lost his sense of the
tactility in favour of the head in what constitutes a form of disembodiment, Dada poetry and
1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge, 1961), 3.
2 Thomas Csordas, “Introduction: The Body as a Representation and Being-in-the-world,” in
Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self, ed. Thomas Csordas
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 4.
3 Peter Bürger uses the designation historical avant-garde to distinguish the discussions of European
avant-garde movements of the early 20th century from the discussions of the neo-avant-garde of the
1960s. See Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1986), 54-9.
4 Eric Hobsbawm, “The Arts 1914-45,” in The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-
1991 (London: Abacus, 1994), 179.
2
art are literally embedded in the body.”5 Refusing mimetic representation and applying
different functions on bodies like relocating, distorting, or liquifying, Dadaists contradicted
the idea of the classical body developed in the art of the Italian Renaissance and cultivated the
idea of the grotesque body inherited from the art of Northern Europe. In these “limit-bodies,”
as Adamowicz named, “they[anatomical boundaries] become hybridised with the animal or
the machine; they replace academic, controlled delineation of form with deliberately messy
execution; they become blob or blur, organic proliferation, exaggerating the ornamental, the
tangential, the arbitrary.”6 Defining “Dada” has been a challenge for historians because of the
event-based aspect of its production and the diverse participants it held. Reviewers, therefore,
have practically combined the term Dada with the names of various cities where the movement
flourished.7 Accordingly, each Dada hub had also a unique style in the way of handling bodies:
Zurich embraced festive masks; Hanover assembled fragments of the earlier century; Berlin
criticized society through prosthetic photomontages; Cologne used laughter; Paris collectively
created “exquisite corpses;” New York critiqued machine and consumer culture through play.8
Figure 0.1 Max Ernst, Health through Sport, 1920; Ernst, Santa Conversazione, 1921; Man Ray, Coat
Stand, 1920; John Heartfield, Rationalization Marches!, 1927; Raoul Hausmann, Self-Portrait of the
Dadasoph, 1920.
Figure 0.2 Raoul Hausmann, Tatlin Lives at Home, 1920; Johannes Theodor Baargeld, Typical
Vertical Mess as Depiction of the Dada Baargeld, 1920; George Grosz, A Victim of Society, 1919;
Raoul Hausmann, Gurk, 1918-9; Marcel Janco, Portrait of Tristan Tzara, 1919.
5 Elza Adamowicz, “Introduction: Spare Parts,” in Dada Bodies: Between Battlefield and Fairground
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), 5.
6 Adamowicz, “Spare Parts,”12.
7 Elza Adamowicz, “Zurich Dada: Between Gas Mask and Carnival Dance,” in Dada Bodies: Between
Battlefield and Fairground (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), 45.
8 Adamowicz, “Spare Parts,” 6.
3
To understand how this kind of agency emerged and given the fact that the “Great War is not
central to Dada studies,”9 this research will concentrate on the performance, exhibition, and
urban practices of Zurich Dada along with the mediums of magazine, collage, and
photography. Staying neutral within the context of the Great War, Switzerland welcomed
many individuals from different nations who did not take part in the war. Among these
“iconoclasts of all kinds”10 as once put, there were “conspirators, spies, revolutionaries,
conscientious objectors, draft evaders, singers, musicians, scholars, scientists, philosophers,
traffickers in war material, speculators, informers, and propagandists,”11 some of whom
became notable figures of the following century such as Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924). While
everyone who suffered from the war was able to express herself freely in Zurich, Cabaret
Voltaire (carrying seeds of Dada) was an aesthetic materialization of this moral self-expression
against established systems of society. Set against intellect and seriousness associated with the
disaster of the war, the cabaret supported bodily impulses; energy, interaction, antagonism,
chaos, rage, and laughter constitute a few of the terms historians have used to define Dada.12
In brief, Zurich Dada gathered towards the beginning of 1916 and dispersed near the end of
1919 to spread across other cities. During these four years, the group presented a mix of
examples from plastic arts (including different techniques like weaving, printing, painting,
collage, or embroidery), performance, music, poetry, and dance.13 In such a mix, “modern
elements coexisted with conventional quotidian offerings,” blurring boundaries between
“low” and “high” art.14 In their productions, Zurich Dadaists also questioned boundaries
outlining many identities — be it human or woman.15 What is more, in the Dada environments,
not only collages hung but also recitations held were abstract. Dadaists embraced this brandnew
idea of nonrepresentational art more and more (e.g., at one point, they even rejected using
scissors while making collages to remove human traces). They sought a fundamental form of
art transcending language/intellect and resonating with the unconscious mind freed from the
disasters of the time.16 As Leah Dickerman observed, Zurich Dadaists’ “ideas about a primeval
stratum of the mind, ancient ritual, psychic regression, and infantile states were often
9 Geert Buelens, “Reciting Shells. Dada and, Dada in & Dadaists on the First World War,” Arcadia 41,
no. 2 (2006): 276, https://doi.org/10.1515/ARCA.2006.019.
10 Leah Dickerman, “Zurich,” in Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris, ed. Leah
Dickerman (Washington: The National Gallery of Art, 2006), 19.
11 John Erickson, Dada: Performance, Poetry, and Art (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984), 2.
12 Dickerman, “Zurich,” 19-25; Debbie Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis: Zurich,” in A Companion to Dada and
Surrealism, ed. David Hopkins (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 32.
13 Dickerman, “Zurich,” 23.
14 Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis,” 24; Dickerman, “Zurich,” 23.
15 Adamowicz, “Zurich Dada,” 37-41.
16 Dickerman, “Zurich,” 26-7; Adamowicz, “Zurich Dada,” 28; T.J. Demos, “Zurich Dada: The
Aesthetics of Exile,” in The Dada Seminars, eds. Leah Dickerman and Matthew S. Witkovsky
(Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2005), 33.
4
conflated, their differences collapsed into a general notion of primitive, or ur-consciousness.”17
This had them pay attention to illustrations of children, less valued techniques of production,
or African and Oceanic art, and present examples of simultaneous poems, sound-poems, chants
n’egres, or dances with archaic masks believed to carry historical forces of previous ages. The
cabaret constituted a domain where different mediums not only co-existed but also interacted.
As Emily Hage, observed, “the paintings in this intimate little theatre of war take on a sonic
and polemic quality.”18 Similarly, both experiments of dance and poetry conducted in the
cabaret nourished each other reciprocally.19 In the same way, Dadaists paid attention to
designing performance props concerning the properties of the surrounding stage, where
geometric abstraction stood not only as a principle unifying these two domains but also
allowing new possibilities of physical movement.20 Provided that the environment of artworks
in Dada had an important role in these intermedial negotiations, “Dada studies,” as Debbie
Lewer noticed, “tend to neglect 1) the significance of the geographical location; 2)
heterogeneity of Dada venues and locales within the city and 3) the significance of the different
times, periods, and frequency of the use of these venues and locales for Dada activity.”21Along
with using residences, cafés, or related places like printing houses, Dadaists presented
mentioned mixture of artworks through no less than 9 exhibitions, 9 publications, and 27
evening gatherings taking place in at least seven event settings in Zurich varying in character:
Cabaret Voltaire, Zunfthaus Zur Waag, Gallery Corray, Kunstsalon Wolfsberg, Zunfthaus Zur
Meisen, Kunsthaus Zurich, and Kaufleuten. This study, nevertheless, limits itself to the first
two, namely climax, years of the journey that gave birth to the movement, and three locations
that hosted at least 25 evening shows as well as 6 exhibitions. Even though there were many
individuals in contact with the group, what will be called Zurich Dada within the scope of the
study consists of eight artists: Hugo Ball (1886-1927), Emmy Hennings (1885-1948), Richard
Huelsenbeck (1892-1974), Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), Marcel Janco (1895-1984), Hans Arp
(1886-1966), Sophie Taeuber (1889-1943), and Hans Richter (1888-1976).
Using language, one cannot express every experience. Also, when the experience does not
belong to the one who tries to express it, or rather if there exists an interval between the
expression and the experience, this shortage of words brews trouble. To illustrate this, one can
17 Dickerman, “Zurich,” 31.
18 Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis,” 23.
19 Ruth Hemus, “Sex and the Cabaret: Dada’s Dancers,” Nordlit, no. 21 (2007): 99,
https://doi.org/10.7557/13.1677; Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis,” 31.
20 Renée Riese Hubert, “Zurich Dada and Its Artist Couples,” in Women in Dada: Essays on Sex,
Gender, and Identity, ed. Naomi Sawelson-Gorse (London: The MIT Press, 1998), 534.
21 Debbie Lewer, “From the Cabaret Voltaire to the Kaufleutensaal: ‘Mapping’ Zurich Dada,” in Dada
Zurich: A Clown’s Game from Nothing, eds. Brigitte Pichon and Karl Riha (New York: G.K. Hall &
Co., 1996), 45.
5
imagine a process of composing a historical study: first, an incident happens in many facets,
then this occasion gets recorded by someone who is there or not, later a historian re-constructs
the incident by using available material, and finally, she describes this reconstruction. And all
these phases dwell in a non-linguistic channel to be expressed with words: historical incidents
materialize in embodied beings and objects, records in crafted papers, reconstructions in
imaginations, and imaginations in narratives. Yet, as there are multiple ways of describing an
event, recording a description, relating a record, and narrating an imagination, the audience
cannot detect whether the final narrative pictures the primary incident “sufficiently.” When
this critical inquiry focuses on fine arts, the mentioned difficulty gradually multiplies because
the besieged incident tends to coincide with the very medium of expression: How can a
reviewer be sure of expressing a novel “aesthetic experience” or “art object” with “correct”
words? Here, standing chief in the discussions upon novelty, a controversial topic as avantgardes
could be interesting to pursue. Accordingly, Renato Poggioli revealed an acute
symptom about the criticism of avant-garde movements:
Unfortunately, avant-garde criticism, instead of working autonomously alongside
avant-garde art, has too often let itself be determined, in both the negative and the
positive way, by the avant-garde spirit. That spirit has historically conditioned
criticism in a more decisive manner than has avant-garde art, if not by necessity,
then by contingency. Critical judgment, in other words, instead of tending toward
a conscious reconstruction of the ambiance of the works or toward an intelligent
interpretation thereof, has preferred to develop the subordinate task of controversy
and polemic, of propaganda for or against.22
On the one hand, such a determination emerges due to commentators’ over-trust in the words
they use: one who builds her evaluation merely using language cannot easily criticize a
movement experimenting with the language. On the other hand, this problem emerges due to
commentators’ over-trust in the words they study: unfortunately, one cannot easily review a
movement inclined to manipulate the verbal treatise about itself. The intricate discourse of
Dada is more than enough to illustrate this, so much so that Marcel Janco felt necessary to
utter that “no Dadaist will ever write his memoirs! Do not trust anything that calls itself ‘dada
history’, however much may be true of Dada, the historian qualified to write about it does not
yet exist.”23 Therefore, considering the gaps amongst what happened, recorded, reconstructed,
and narrated, it would not be far-fetched to claim that one who merely uses language may
becloud the production and dissemination of knowledge.
22 Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Gerald Fitzgerald (Cambridge: Belknap
Press, 1968), 22-3.
23 C. W. E. Bigsby, Dada & Surrealism (1972; reis., New York: Routledge, 2018), 4–7.
6
Many of the most stimulating Dada and Surrealism exhibitions, Kathryn Floyd observed, “are
the stuff of myth but completely unknown to us visually. We must become comfortable with
new kinds of evidence or innovative approaches that take us beyond the typical strategies of
art history or museum conventions.”24 Fortunately, reviewers have been using information
technology as well as different mediums to enhance their textual treatise: owing to
photographs, games, or videos, today one can pay a visit to the Roman Forum or the Great
War “from the eyes” of citizens, soldiers, or clerics. Yet, while importing several techniques
from other mediums or using the tools provided by information technology, there remains a
risk for operators to take things for granted. Here, focusing on the “positive” side of getting
determined by the “avant-garde spirit” Poggioli mentioned, one can interpret such a spirit as a
power that prevents one from taking existing relations for granted to produce novel ones. In
that case, a review determined by “avant-garde spirit” — as it does not presume any tool,
manner, or material — can be useful while generating novel interpretations. In other words, a
frontline commentator should use various mediums only if she keeps away from pre-supposing
them. And this was extensively problematized by Johanna Drücker, who stressed that every
concept of science is a habituated construction waiting to be de-naturalized — from data to
interface.25 Johanna Drücker is a pioneering scholar researching intersections of digital
humanities, visual culture, and information studies. Her work explores graphical
communication, digital aesthetics, and the history of text, illuminating the relation between
technology and human understanding. Sketching a genealogy on visual epistemology, Drücker
observed that the derived way of conducting critical science research has unfortunately not
been determined “positively” by the avant-garde spirit:
Artists and innovative writers played with visual and spatial writing within the
avant-gardes of the twentieth century, but few if any of those radical works
changed the shape of critical or scholarly conventions put into place centuries
earlier. In spite of the networked condition of textual production, the design of
digital platforms for daily use has hardly begun to accommodate the imaginative
possibilities of constellationary composition, graphic interpretation, and diagrammatic
writing. We may use mind mapping or other schematic approaches to
outline a plan, sketch an argument, organize information flows, or do other tasks
that abstract process into graphic forms. We may read through our links and click
trails, follow our associations of thought in tracking one thing after another
through browsers and faceted searching. But very few acts of composition are
diagrammatic, constellationary, or associative. Fewer are visual or spatial.26
24 Kathryn M. Floyd, “Writing the Histories of Dada and Surrealist Exhibitions: Problems and
Possibilities,” Dada/Surrealism 21 (2017): 6, https://doi.org/10.17077/0084-9537.1327; Jed Rasula,
Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and The Unmaking of the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic
Books, 2015), 40.
25 Johanna Drücker, Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2014), 125-7.
26 Drücker, Graphesis, 182-3.
7
For Drücker, one of the main points of digital humanities should be generating “visualizations
that expose, rather than conceal, these principles of knowledge in the domains where the
authority of information makes (still persistent and often pernicious) claims to ‘truth’ through
the ‘transparency’ of the visualization.”27 However, Drücker defends, this attitude can survive
only if “spaces and supports that structure interpretative acts” are re-designed.28 In other
words, seeking a novel way of handling tools, approaches, or documents in art and
architectural history, one should start with establishing a domain where one can stay conscious
of these entities.
Before proposing a way for establishing the mentioned kind of domain, in order to set an
analytical framework as well as a terminology, one can start with questioning whether studies
conceptualizing avant-gardes had handled the interaction between bodies and environments
sufficiently. Therefore, holding a theoretical concern, the next chapter starts with a review of
canonical studies problematizing the term avant-garde and argues that a lack on behalf of the
relationship between bodies and environments in these theoretical attempts should prompt one
to find ways of closing the gap. As observed by Andreas Huyssen, “Despite its ultimate and
perhaps inevitable failure, the historical avantgarde aimed at developing an alternative
relationship between high art and mass culture.”29 Not only to do so but also to get in touch
with a broader audience, as Roy F. Allen observed, Dada used two of the most powerful
communication mechanisms of the early twentieth century: literary-artistic periodical and
political-literary cabaret.30 Accordingly, focusing on the first mechanism Allen mentioned
with a historiographical concern, the chapter also imagines an interface portraying the
publication network of historical avant-gardes. The interface not only connects magazines of
these movements with contextual documents, artifacts, locations, or critical studies but also
grants its embodied users multidimensional domains to make critical arguments. Then, to
historicize the discussion, along with bringing concise biographical material about Dadaists,
the third chapter of the study briefly describes how the modernization of the early twentieth
century appeared in the built environment, how people experienced those contexts, and how
struggles escalated. Finally, focusing on the second mechanism Allen observed, the fourth
chapter traces the birth and development of Dada within Cabaret Voltaire, Gallery Dada, and
other locales of Zurich with specific attention to corporeality and media. Stressing that each
setting inhabited by Dada might have granted the movement unique features, especially
27 Drücker, 135.
28 Drücker, 180.
29 Andreas Huyssen, “Introduction,” in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture and
Postmodernism (London: The Macmillan Press, 1986), viii.
30 Allan C. Greenberg, “The Dadaists and the Cabaret as Form and Forum,” in Dada/Dimensions, ed.
Stephen C. Foster (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1985), 24.
8
through the way it correlates embodied agents, the chapter also brings several concepts that
problematized body and perception provided by Pierre Bourdieu, Mary Douglas, Norbert
Elias, Michelle Foucault, Erving Goffman, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The chapter proposes
that these perspectives about corporeality may prove useful while understanding Dada’s
construction of intricate relationships between various bodily agents, spaces, and media.
9
CHAPTER 2
REBUILDING AVANT-GARDES
2.1. Reviewing canonical studies on avant-gardes concerning corporeality
In the beginning, it should be emphasized that the very handled material affects one’s
interpretation enormously. Accordingly, within studies of avant-gardes, researchers working
on practices using the body as a medium unsurprisingly have stressed corporeality to a greater
extent. For example, in The Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (Chicago: Chicago Review Press,
1993) by Richard Kostelanetz: all the examples stressing the use of the body were drawn from
the practices of dance and performance. Yet, the concern of this chapter is not to discuss the
awareness of bodies and environments within such practices, but to evaluate the know-how
developed outside of them. In other words, this chapter will not evaluate whether studies on
“avant-garde performance” handled corporeality or spatiality sufficiently but whether studies
handling the concept of avant-garde have done so.
In The Theory of the Avant-Garde, through concentrating on the manifestos and programs of
movements rather than the testimonies of agents, Renato Poggioli interpreted the emergence
of avant-garde movements as an upshot of a “flirt" between political and literary left circles
lasting from the 1840s to 1880s. Through studying various parts ranging from venues to
magazines, Poggioli positioned the term movement against the school.31 Thenceforth, Poggioli
"diagnosed” four “mythic” characteristics more or less carried by all avant-garde movements:
activism, antagonism, nihilism, and agonism: activism denotes a need for a goal to follow;
antagonism refers to a need for an authoritarian position to protest; nihilism, which was on the
word of Poggioli most visible in Dada, signifies a wish for self-destruction; and agonism
implies a need for a utopian justification of self-destruction to encourage the following
movements. Accordingly, the first two characteristics, which were rational and social for
Poggioli, “dialectically” struggle with the last two, which were irrational and psychological.32
In light of this dialectic, Poggioli described a common target for all avant-garde movements,
31 Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, 1-40.
32 Poggioli, 60-77.
10
and that was alienation — social, political, ethical, or aesthetic.33 Even though Poggioli’s
account touches upon many themes crucial to grasping avant-garde movements, it,
unfortunately, lacks a sustained analysis of corporeality. It seems that social and psychic
spheres affect only the “minds” of agents. Similarly, although he talks about alienation in
many layers, Poggioli refrained from commenting on the bodily dimension of alienation.
Two decades later, in Five Faces of Modernity, through defining “aesthetic modernity” as a
“crisis concept” opposing all types of authorities (including itself, tradition, and bourgeois
civilization), Matei Călinescu took the term avant-garde as one of the expressions of such
modernity.34 For him, the avant-garde was a “deliberate and self-conscious parody of
modernity” reminding the very crisis.35 Developing the etymologic research previously
conducted by Poggioli, Călinescu also highlighted that the career of avant-gardes indeed had
started with the French Revolution and that the term was associated with Saint-Simonian ideas
stressing the significance of “artists, along with scientists and industrialists” in the course of
sharing the benefits of life with people.36 For Călinescu, a notable shift in the meaning of the
word occurred in the mid-19th century when avant-garde got commissioned with “being
conscious of being in advance of its own time,” emphasizing the importance of the imagination
with many nuances.37After the mid-19th century, instead of artists, the term has been used by
social utopists and reformers targeting to “explode” the “existing social structures and make a
new and better world possible.”38 When this was applied to the sphere of art, nevertheless, it
pointed out a “type of commitment one would have expected from an artist who conceived of
his role as consisting mainly in party propaganda.”39 Such a definition of the avant-garde,
however, was rejected by many like Baudelaire, who saw a contradiction between
nonconformism and a programmed final aim.40 Around the 1870s, the term was used by artists
who criticized social configurations with the help of artistic ones, who also “become a seer, to
reach the unknown, to invent an absolutely new language.”41 Here, against Poggioli, Călinescu
saw the separation of the literary and the political left as more complicated, as the term was
associated not only with the revolutionaries but also with the “corrupted” bourgeois art of the
time.42 By the early 20th century, the avant-garde designated “new schools whose aesthetic
33 Poggioli, 102-129.
34 Matei Călinescu, Five Faces of Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987), 10.
35 Călinescu, Five Faces of Modernity, 141.
36 Călinescu, 101.
37 Călinescu, 102-5.
38 Călinescu, 109.
39 Călinescu, 110.
40 Călinescu, 108-11.
41 Călinescu, 112.
42 Călinescu, 113-15.
11
programs were defined, by and large, by their rejection of the past and by the cult of the new.”43
For Călinescu, however, after the mid-20th century, avant-garde became “an antistyle,” where
“alienated” artists aimed at defeating “the whole bourgeois system of values, with all its
philistine pretensions to universality.”44 This was also the time when the “death” of the avantgarde
was announced as the very shock of the avant-garde became “a widespread fashion.”45
Nevertheless, by emphasizing the crisis culture mentioned at the beginning, Călinescu
contradicted such a death, arguing that “avant-garde has been dying all along, consciously and
voluntarily.”46 Additionally, by recalling the Nietzschean stress on the death of God [sic], he
interestingly associated the term of the avant-garde with the crisis of Man [sic] in the modern
secular world that resulted in the discard of Man’s [sic] image from art.47 Călinescu, in sum,
demonstrated the colorful journey of the term avant-garde through history quite well. Yet, just
like Poggioli, he has shown such richness by merely focusing on written material: even though
the relationship between bodily agents and environments changed drastically throughout the
interval he studied, one cannot find any comprehensive reflection on such a change in the
study.
Around the same time as Călinescu, Peter Bürger commenced his Theory of Avant-Garde by
separating the institution of art from the content of the artwork: the effect of the work is
determined not by the content but by the surrounding institution.48 In brief, Bürger saw the art
historical journey of western Europe in three phases: sacral, courtly, and bourgeois. In the first
phase, Bürger argued, the object of art was produced and experienced collectively, and with
religious concerns; in the second phase, albeit enjoyed collectively, the art object was
produced by an individual artist and became a sign of aristocratic power; in the final phase,
the object of art was not only produced by individuals but its enjoyment was also confined
with bourgeois households than society. On the whole, by criticizing the non-autonomous
condition of art in bourgeois society, Bürger argued that historical avant-gardes tried breaking
away from art to reform life, even though such an attempt reformed art rather than life. This,
according to Bürger, had people understand that art, with all its aspects of production,
distribution, or reception, was an institution.49 Additionally, focusing on the medium of
collage, he rationalized avant-garde works of art through the conceptual pairs of part/whole
and organic/non-organic:
43 Călinescu, 117.
44 Călinescu, 119.
45 Călinescu, 121.
46 Călinescu, 124.
47 Călinescu, 125-6.
48 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, 24-31.
49 Bürger, 47-54.
12
Artists who produce an organic work (in what follows, we shall refer to them as
‘classicists’ without meaning to introduce a specific concept of what the classical
work maybe) treat their material as something living. They respect its significance
as something that has grown from concrete life situations. For avant-gardistes, on
the other hand, the material is just that, material. Their activity initially consists
in nothing other than in killing the ‘life’ of the material, that is, in tearing it out of
its functional context that gives it meaning.50
Bürger’s stress on the art institution stimulated many scholars of the time and followers about
the space bounding the work of art. Nevertheless, Bürger did not clarify how such an
institution manifests itself in the relationship between bodies and environments. How can one
interpret the role of places, or else changing places enveloping bodily agents differently, within
the instance of avant-garde movements’ withdrawal from the art institution? Besides, it is not
clear if Bürger’s dualist way of reading artworks could explain without difficulty collage
works of Dada epitomizing bodies in a large-scale disaster of the war.
Perhaps, instead of deducing that what is cited so far pays no attention to the relationship
between bodies and spaces, one may argue that “body [along with space, in our case] has
traditionally been something of an absent presence in the discipline [which signify attempts
of theorizing avant-gardes in our case].”51 Such an argument was proposed by Chris Shilling
to uphold some canonical studies in the history of sociology, which were argued to have
disregarded the body at the expense of the mind while speaking of a subject. Even though the
well-known social scientists had not focused on the very body, Shilling argued, the themes
they studied just as mobility or inequality could still be seen as a sensitivity touching human
embodiment.52 Accordingly, one can still argue that whenever mentioned researchers have
spoken of a subject, they were also speaking of corporeal and spatial one. Yet, is it enough to
emphasize corporeality as such and proceed as previously? How can such an emphasis be
helpful? The following studies might answer that question.
In The Futurist Moment, wondering how artists of the early twentieth century have supported
the Great War by seeing it “as the revolution that would remove the shackles of monarchy,
papacy, and class structure,”53 Marjorie Perloff distinguished the period before the war,
namely the “Futurist moment,” as “the period of artistic rupture — the rupture of established
genres and verse forms as well as of the integrity of the medium.”54 During this moment,
Perloff argued, avant-garde movements not only questioned and reformulated themselves vis-
50 Bürger, 68-82.
51 Chris Shilling, The Body and Social Theory (1993; reis., London: SAGE Publications, 2003), 10.
52 Shilling, The Body and Social Theory, 18-9.
53 Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Moment: Avant-garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), xxi.
54 Perloff, The Futurist Moment, 15.
13
à-vis a mass audience but also questioned many relations concerning the domain of art such
as art-life, art-politics, reality-representation, and so on.55 Focusing on a rich quantity of visual
and literary material as well as the phenomenon of war, Perloff’s study remains quite sensitive
to the relationship between corporeality-spatiality-materiality. Yet, it would be unfair to
attribute such a sensitivity only to the studied material, as Perloff reformulated many topics
related to avant-garde concerning the perceptual dimension of the parties involved as well as
the built environment. While sketching “simultaneity,” for instance, she stressed how one
experiences and remembers extreme environments, how one perceives impulses dissonantly,
or how space, time, or movement tend to be distorted within the progress of a lived
experience.56 Besides, contrary to Bürger, focusing on collages and assemblages produced at
that time, Perloff revealed how each artist focused on a different aspect while bringing things
together: while Picasso was displacing the meaning of the material, Tatlin listened to the very
nature of it; while Boccioni was emphasizing tectonics, Schwitters stressed the space.57
A similar sensitivity can be found in the studies of Hal Foster, who reviewed not only works
but also theories of the avant-garde in the light of psychoanalytical concepts. For example, in
The Return of the Real, through the application of the psychoanalytic concept of “deferred
action” to the model of “individual subject” within modernist history, Foster reformulated the
relationship between the “historical-avant-gardes” and “neo-avant-gardes.” The neo-avantgarde,
Foster argued, might have been the first attempt to grasp the historical avant-garde: “if
the historical avant-garde focuses on the conventional, the neo-avant-garde concentrates on
the institutional.”58 Besides, in Compulsive Beauty, asking “how is the surreal rather than what
is surrealism,”59 Foster reformulated surrealist concepts of marvelous, convulsive beauty, and
objective chance vis-à-vis Freudian uncanny.60 From the lookout of this study, the significance
of Foster’s interpretation is that embodied agents and environments became the very domain
on which concepts materialize: the marvelous appears on ruins and mannequins;61 the city
shows up “as array of anxious signs;”62 the machine represents a prosthetic model to be
imitated by “docile” bodies of agents;63 the shocked soldier signifies “the becoming machine
and/or commodity of the body.”64 Similarly, in Prosthetic Gods, the idea of primitive shows
55 Perloff, 38.
56 Perloff, 7-14.
57 Perloff, 42-79.
58 Hal Foster, The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the end of the Century (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1996), 17.
59 Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), xviii.
60 Foster, Compulsive Beauty, xix.
61 Foster, 21.
62 Foster, 48.
63 Foster, 131.
64 Foster, 136.
14
up as an outcome of heterogeneity in the European culture of early the twentieth century while
the idea of technology appears as the limit and the extension of the bodies’ capacity.65
Similarly, in The Sphere and the Labyrinth, Manfredo Tafuri read the production of historical
avant-gardes as a double-sided reaction to the frantic experience of the modern city: some
avant-garde clusters tried to grasp the energy of the city through magnification (chaos,
labyrinth, irrational subjectivity, or eccentricity); some avant-garde clusters tried to tame the
energy of the city by through attenuation (order, sphere, rational objectivity, or organization).66
Tafuri’s reading also echoes some ideas brought by Wilhelm Worringer around the 1900s
about the abstraction trend in fine arts. Positing real-life representation and geometric
abstraction as opposing approaches, Worringer associated the former approach with
empathetic acceptance of the world forces and the latter one with the annoyed elimination of
them.67
Acknowledging the progress avant-garde studies have been making on issues related to
corporeality and space, Sascha Bru wondered how one can problematize these within a
political framework.68 Following Étienne Balibar’s remark that modern politics is conducted
through the element of “citizen,” Bru also maintained that avant-gardists can be taken as units
of “citizen-bourgeois” containing both State and revolution.69 After Perloff, Foster, or Tafuri,
one can add that such a citizen-bourgeois is not only a cerebral being but also a corporeal one.
Besides, such a unit occupies space, as the very name signals. Here, Bru noted “the avantgarde’s
artistic production, in mediated and at times overdetermined ways, translated or
filtered social events and material shifts elsewhere in the public space, where it found itself
boxed in by various state apparatuses.”70 Accordingly, the space surrounding an agent can be
seen as a container of societal forces affecting, even defining, the agent.
A reproach to this way of reading can be about the danger of overgeneralization while speaking
of the body, poet, spectator, artist, or city experience as if these words can depict a welldistinguished
entity. How can one conceptualize the relationship between agents, space, and
65 Hal Foster, Prosthetic Gods (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), xi.
66 Sascha Bru, The European Avant-Gardes, 1905–1935: A Portable Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2018), chap. 9, EPUB.
67 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A contribution to the Psychology of Style, trans.
Michael Bullock (1908; reis., Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1997), 18; Worringer, Abstraction and
Empathy, 42-5; Hal Foster, “1908,” in Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism,
eds. Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, and David Joselit (2004;
reis., New York: Thames & Hudson, 2016), 97-101.
68 Sascha Bru, “Introduction,” in The Invention of Politics in the European Avant-Garde (1906-1940),
eds. Sascha Bru and Gunther Martens (Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2006), 12.
69 Bru, “Introduction,” 23.
70 Bru, 15.
15
institutions without falling into over-generalization? Here, one can visit some discussions from
social sciences having similar concerns. Even so, as Bru remarked, “whatever theoretical
model we may devise, we will always fall short in uniting all poetics and programmes it
[modernist avant-garde] put forth in order to ground an alternative society in art.”71 For this
reason, rather than proposing a single way to introduce corporeality and spatiality in what has
been discussed so far, the final chapter of the study will bring more than one interpretation of
the body while reviewing the case of Zurich Dada, which may prove useful while setting a
wider strategy while handling bodies in other cases of avant-garde movements. Yet, all these
ideas have also hinted that the very same institution may not conduct on bodies in the same
manner. So, there is still a need to understand institutions on their account, which will be
addressed in the second chapter.
2.2. The network of avant-garde magazines and possibilities of surfaces in reasoning
From where should one start to imagine the critical domain having one stay conscious while
handling tools, approaches, or documents in art and architectural history? Drücker stressed
that “the structure of an interface is information, not merely a means of access to it.”72 Then,
one should begin with studying an apt document enabling shifts between word and non-word.
Here, it should be noted that historical avant-garde movements chiefly used little magazines
to record and spread their experimental works, events, and ideas.73
Figure 2.1 Cover of Poesia (1909); Cover of 391(1917); Cover of Cabaret Voltaire (1916); Cover of
Collier’s (1910), Cover of Praesens (1930)
71 Bru, 10.
72 Drücker, Graphesis, 143.
73 Recapping a common definition, Eric Bulson stresses that the term little magazine is “associated with
an Anglo-European print culture and used to define this noncommercial, experimental medium
produced in limited quantities (usually under one thousand) for a select group of readers between 1910
and 1940.” See Eric Bulson, Little Magazines, World Form (New York: Columbia University Press,
2017), 2.
16
On the intimacy between avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century and little
magazines, for instance, Poggioli saw the identity of “avant-garde” as it appeared in the
dynamic way of using periodicals:
We can express the difference by defining the romantic, nineteenth-century
periodical as essentially an organ of opinion, exercising an avant-garde function
only insofar as it leads and precedes a vast corps of readers in the labyrinth of
ideas and issues; but the avant-garde periodical functions as an independent and
isolated military unit, completely and sharply detached from the public, quick to
act, not only to explore but also to battle, conquer, and adventure on its own.74
The novel scholarship should be able to model discourse-making documents, critical studies,
and lived experience, Drücker argued.75 Given that there was an alliance between historical
avant-gardes and periodicals, little magazines indeed became valuable documents for the
history of avant-garde movements: there are reams of critical studies focusing on the design,
circulation, and reception of modernist magazines.76
Figure 2.2 A page of an article about der Dada inevitably using a fragment from the magazine; A
page of Digital Dada Library showing der Dada.
74 Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, 22-23.
75 Drücker, Graphesis, 135.
76 Even in the last fifteen years of scholarship one can find numerous accounts on little magazines:
Suzanne W. Churchill and Adam McKible, eds. Little Magazines and Modernism: New Approaches
(Burlington: Ashgate, 2007); Ann L. Ardis and Patrick Collier, eds. Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880–
1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Peter
Brooker and Andrew Thacker, eds. The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines,
3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009;2012;2013); Robert Scholes and Clifford Wulfman,
Modernism in the Magazines: An Introduction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010); Eric B.
White, Transatlantic Avant-Gardes: Little Magazines and Localist Modernism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2013); Eric Bulson, Little Magazines, World Form (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2017); Sophie Seita, Provisional Avant-Gardes: Little Magazine Communities from Dada to
Digital (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019); Emily Hage, Dada Magazines: the Making of a
Movement (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020).
17
These critical studies revealed how each movement shaped magazines vis-à-vis their form,
content, and function. For example, analyzing the typographic experiments of the historical
avant-garde movements, Drücker characterized experiments of Russian Futurism with
“orchestral arrangements which mimic the conventions of musical notation,” experiments of
Italian Futurism with “typographic variety, with a certain pictorial quality and a degree of
chaos,” and experiments of Parisian avant-gardes with “recognizable iconic form in the
arrangement of the words on the page.”77 Even so, surfing among the digital archives of avantgarde
magazines found on the web such as Digital Dada Library one realizes that little
magazines were exhibited as full scans with few remarks. At this juncture, one can question
whether avant-garde studies responded to the 21st century sufficiently.78
Figure 2.3 A page showing “The Richard Mutt Case” in Blind Man
Suitably, magazines of Dada could be interesting to study as Dadaists not only emphasized
inconsistency as a discursive theme but also constituted at once an international and
interdisciplinary group. Besides, Dadaists identified themselves as magazine editors rather
than artists given that they criticized the act of making art; attacked the routine use of
magazines to emphasize magazine’s crafted character; and cited the works or ideas of other
international artist groups.79 This editorial persona can be illustrated at best with the 1917 dated
77 Johanna Drücker “Experimental, Visual, and Concrete Poetry: A Note on Historical Context and
Basic Concepts,” in Experimental -Visual – Concrete: Avant-Garde Poetry Since the 1960s, eds. K.
David Jackson, Eric Vos & Johanna Drücker (Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 1996), 39-42.
78 “Digital Dada Library,” The International Dada Archive, accessed August 4, 2023,
https://dada.lib.uiowa.edu/; “The Journals,” Modernist Journals Project, accessed August 4, 2023,
https://modjourn.org/journal/.
79 Emily Hage, “The Magazine as Strategy: Tristan Tzara's Dada and the Seminal Role of Dada Art
Journals in the Dada Movement,” The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 2, no. 1 (2011): 40,
https://doi.org/10.5325/jmodeperistud.2.1.0033.
18
case of Fountain where Marcel Duchamp defended his famous work in a journal he was
editing, Blind Man, where he dubbed the work as The Richard Mutt Case. Moreover, Dadaists
were the first to use the magazine medium as a performative site, Emily Hage observed.80
Dada and its magazines, therefore, provide fruitful material to study the interaction between
lived experience and the magazine as a medium.
Accordingly, as little magazines provide shifts between word/non-word, as the existing
scholarship on these magazines needs a recapture within the 21st century, and as these
magazines interacted interestingly with the events, experiments, and personalities of the avantgarde
movements, a focus on the relationship between avant-garde movements and the
medium of the magazine might prove useful while establishing the interface enabling one to
review tools in art and architectural history. This study will focus on Dada, even though every
studied journal and movement necessitates a different set of qualities and research questions.
Given that observers and phenomena are co-dependent entities, Drücker stressed that a
research interface should acknowledge that “embodied and situated persons” utilizing the
system possess varying needs and questions.81 To design such a flexible form, one can turn to
Breande Laurel who conceptualized interfaces as surfaces mediating between operators and
tasks.82 Conceptualizing interfaces as surfaces could prove useful, especially if one recalls
recent stress by Mike Anusas and Cristián Simonetti on the importance of surfaces while
dealing with the interaction amongst minds, bodies, and the environment.83 Drawing upon
James J. Gibson’s seminal study on the act of perception as a function between organism and
environment where surfaces become alive “thresholds” of cognitive engagement, Anusas and
Simonetti also highlighted the shortcomings of dualist understandings such as
superficial/deep, matter/mind, solid/fluid, optic/haptic, thin/thick in derived scholarship. They
accordingly emphasized how thinking with surfaces — which denote different information
according to changes in scale, context, or form — can open new possibilities for intellectual
growth. Provided that corporeal agents interact with the environment across surfaces, any
operation conducted upon the surfaces of the interface — whether it is numerical, physical, or
intellectual — can change agents’ interpretations. Here, an agent can fold, cut, or juxtapose
the interface concerning her needs and questions, while the final condition of the system or
the form of the surfaces turns out to be her creation. And the richness of this outcome depends
80 Emily Hage, “New York and European Dada Art Journals, 1916-1926: International Venues of
Exchange,” PhD diss., (University of Pennsylvania, 2005), 1.
81 Drücker, Graphesis, 146.
82 Drücker, 147.
83 Mike Anusas and Cristián Simonetti, “Introduction: Turning to Surfaces,” in Surfaces:
Transformations of Body, Materials and Earth, eds. Mike Anusas and Cristián Simonetti (New York:
Routledge, 2020), 1–13.
19
on the initial set of questions related to operations provided by agents. Accordingly, the
flexibility of the interface constitutes the system’s capacity to remain as much as pliable.
Nevertheless, in this formula, even a simple-looking function such as color-coding,
highlighting, or outlining can be pliable. For example, using color-coding, an agent can assign
different hues, chromas, and values for different research questions wondering if a text in a
magazine signifies a poem, a song, or an event program. Accordingly, the final color
composition with various intricate blends, splashes, or juxtaposes could expose novel
information for the agent. World Wide Web of Avant-Gardes, as a mentioned kind of system,
aims to portray a view from the publishing network of historical avant-garde movements. After
divorcing the content within the digitalized pages of magazines crafted by these movements,
the interface connects divorced information with contextual documents, artifacts, sites, or
critical studies, and grants its embodied users multidimensional domains to make reasonable
speculation or unreasonable exploration. By visiting several ideas proposed by Johanna
Drücker, the rest of the chapter will focus on Dada magazines to explore how such an interface
may facilitate and what outturns it may bring to art and architectural historiography.
2.3. Extracting contents from avant-garde magazines vis-à-vis research questions
For example, recalling Dadaists’ roleplay as editors, one can commence by taking Dada
magazines as coherent entities of communication where every design choice on each page
serves a specific purpose. This enables one to designate the editorial categories within the
magazines such as titles, explanations, or referential names regardless of whether they are
about a person, location, or another magazine. The second concern then might be about the
transnational quality of Dada, if not all historical avant-gardes, which allows one to designate
languages within the magazines. Next, recalling the relationship between Dada magazines and
performances, one can focus on the records of events, such as event programs, dates, and
locations. Provided that after the Great War, almost all avant-garde movements focused on
film rather than theatre, one may ask whether there was a remarkable change in using
photographs on magazines after the war, and eventually code the ways of introducing images
upon magazine pages.84 Without a doubt, while denoting all these categories, some records in
the magazines will necessitate other discernments, such as the angle of reading or words
representing voices in the case of Dada.
84 Bruce McConachie, “Theatres of the Avant-Garde, 1880–1940,” in Theatre Histories: An
Introduction, ed. Gary Jay Williams (London: Taylor & Francis, 2010), 365.
20
Figure 2.4 Coding editorial divisions, mentions, dates, places, and angles of reading
Figure 2.5 Denoting languages.
Figure 2.6 Denoting event programs
21
Figure 2.7 Denoting ways of crafting images in magazines
Running a decoding process with all these layers of transnationality, craft, citation, style, and
events in mind, one grasps several changes in the magazines to test out some arguments about
the movement. The traffic of citations might also set a scope for the system: when the decoding
function observes a novel mention of another magazine, it links the digital copy of the
mentioned magazine to decode. When all mentions end, the interface, World Wide Web of
Avant-gardes, can stop.
Figure 2.8 A still from the decoding process in macro-level
22
Figure 2.9 Mentioned published materials links themselves.
2.4. Relinking extracted material with artifacts, archival material, and critical studies
Scholars inevitably build their arguments by using only samples from magazines.
Accordingly, one can relink critical studies with the material they cite. For example, the title
of the simultaneous poem L’amiral cherche une maison a louer can connect all critical studies
that mention itself. At best, this reveals which archival material was studied in a more detailed
manner than the others. To be sure, connecting secondary studies with primary sources could
be useful only if one understands the primary source. The interface therefore can provide all
existing translations of the contents as well as contextual artifacts, incidents, or documents.
When these were combined with a division enabling a reviewer to comment upon, one can
portray the derived discourse, and most importantly how it was derived.
23
Figure 2.10 Articles gather around the contents.
Figure 2.11 Contents bring their translation.
24
Figure 2.12 Gathering all related material around mentioned times.
Likewise, all curatorial information about the mentioned artworks like dimensions, craft
techniques, or owners can be shown in the system, which might visualize lost works as well.
The interface can also connect the mentioned names with further information. The details of
the provided information may change according to the situation, the movement, and the related
figure. For example, when one peruses a composer who is affiliated with Dada, one may
experience the composer’s other works, ideas, diaries, and so on. Conversely, when one
browses a composer who is not directly affiliated with the studied movement, one may rather
experience a piece of introductory information about the composer. If there is an unfamiliar
name, experts can also comment on them.
25
Figure 2.13 Mention of Marcel Janco in the system
Figure 2.14 Unfolding of an event program, mentioned composers, paintings, and places.
Eventually, when all names were “hyperlinked,” one can evaluate which agent contributed
what, how, when, and where. For example, crisscrossing the mentioned addresses and names,
26
one can map Tristan Tzara’s journey spreading from Zurich to Paris. Relatedly, a recent survey
dubbed Pocket Guide Dada City Zurich has shown how wide the spaces of Dadaists were.
Figure 2.15 Cover of Pocket Guide-Dada City Zurich; Some addresses from magazines showing the
locations of Tzara and the administration of Dada.
Figure 2.16 Satellite view of Zurich. Red spots show chief locations; blue spots show contextual
places.
27
2.5. Rebuilding events of avant-gardes to test and produce critical arguments
Pocket Guide remains interesting: on the cover, editors juxtapose two pictures — one is taken
from an event of Dada, the other from an event preceding Dada — to have readers imagine an
ill-documented occasion. At this juncture, Drücker discerns visualizations that display
information from the ones generating knowledge.85 Portraying artifacts, documents, spots, or
agents can be placed within the former category. Nevertheless, once all these materials become
visible, one can also gather them to produce new arguments or challenge existing ones. In
other words, one can hang digital versions of paintings, artifacts, or documents upon the virtual
walls of Cabaret Voltaire. “It remains a challenge,” Joyce Cheng noted, “to develop an
interpretative framework capable of addressing the poetic/textual, plastic/artisanal, and
performative (in the sense of theater and choreography) dimensions of Dada.”86 Here, curating
on space can be the very function that generates knowledge.
Figure 2.17 A division enabling one to gather artifacts and documents within space.
Problematizing the relationship amongst time, space, narrative, and audience orientation,
Drücker also emphasized how the form of graphic novels — gathering images, framing
actions, visualizing effects — can be useful in producing knowledge:
A frame can extend, intensify, connect, embed, juxtapose, or otherwise modify
another frame and perception. The terminology is spatial and dynamic. It
85 Drücker, Graphesis, 10.
86 Joyce Suechun Cheng, “Cardboard Toys and Dancing Marionettes: Play, Materiality, Agency in
Zurich Dada,” in Virgin Microbe: Essays on Dada, eds. David Hopkins and Michael White (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 2014), 275.
28
describes cognitive processes, not simple actions of an autonomous user, but
codependent relations of user and system. In invoking frame analysis as part of
the diagrammatic model of interpretation, we have moved from a traditional
discussion of graphical formats as elements of a mise en page to a sense that we
are involved with a mise en scene or système.87
Accordingly, not only the form of a graphic novel but also the very process of creating a
graphic novel can produce different sets of questions revealing new facts. Take a few pages of
Hugo Ball's diary documenting the first week of Cabaret Voltaire, on which almost all stories
about Dada have grounded themselves: at a glance, such a diary may seem like a document
revealing important moments steeped in personal experience. However, the more one wanders
between the sentences of the diary with the questions of what and how, who and where
(specifically questions one asks oneself before composing anything, in this case, a graphic
novel), the better she grasps interesting aspects of the movement.
5.II
The place was jammed; many people could not find a seat. At about six in the
evening, while we were still busy hammering and putting up futuristic posters, an
Oriental-looking deputation of four little men arrived, with portfolios and pictures
under their arms; repeatedly they bowed politely. They introduced themselves:
Marcel Janco the painter, Tristan Tzara, Georges Janco, and a fourth gentleman
whose name I did not quite catch. Arp happened to be there also, and we were
able to communicate without too many words. Soon Janco's sumptuous
Archangels was hanging with the other beautiful objects, and on that same evening
Tzara read some traditional-style poems, which he fished out of his various coat
pockets in a rather charming way.
6.II
Poems by Kandinsky and Else Lasker. The "Donnerwetterlied" [Thundersong] by
Wedekind:
In der Jugend frühster Pracht
tritt sie einher, Donnerwetter!
Ganz von Eitelkeit erfüllt,
das Herz noch leer, Donnerwettcr!
[In the early splendor of youth
She entered, by thunder!
Filled with vanity,
But with an empty heart, by thunder!]
"Totentanz" [Dance of Death] with the assistance of the revolutionary chorus. "A
la Villette" [To Villette] by Aristide Bruant (translated by Hardekopf). There were
a lot of Russians there. They organized a balalaika orchestra of about twenty
people and want to be regular customers.88
For instance, Ball's awareness of time made me question personal items like pocket clocks if
not all clothing. Likewise, after his use of the adjective "oriental looking" to describe the
arriving group consisting of Marcel Janco and Tristan Tzara, one can wonder how Ball
87 Drücker, Graphesis, 157.
88 Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, trans. Ann Raimes (1974; reis.,
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 50-51.
29
perceived such a difference in an environment where almost all men have used suits as daily
wear. As the question of clothing arises throughout the process of composing the graphic
novel, it requires a detailed study of the identities of the time, especially as they manifest
themselves in material culture. From then on, a simple phrase like "poems of Kandinsky"
becomes a huge dilemma. What poems of Kandinsky has Hugo Ball chosen to read on the
opening night of Cabaret Voltaire? The magazine Cabaret Voltaire, which portrays several
works presented in the cabaret, cites only one poem of Kandinsky, that is Sehen. Yet, as Ball
read many poems of Kandinsky, such an act of visualizing the first night of the cabaret
necessitates one to bring the other poems of Kandinsky into the discussion. How to interpret
unknown poems? Here, I chose the poem Später(Later), which describes a chain I found
interesting to cross with a futurist poster having an elliptical shape by Paolo Buzzi, which was
in fact exposed in the cabaret:
In the deep summit I know I will find you. Where smooth pricks. Where sharp
doesn’t cut. You hold the ring in your left hand. I hold the ring in my right hand.
No one sees the chain. But these rings are the last links of the chain.
The beginning.
The end.89
Figure 2.18 Paolo Buzzi, Two pages from L’Ellisse la Spirale: Film + Parole in liberta, 1915.
Besides, in the process of composing a graphic novel, to interpret unknown poems, one can
bring the other works of the poets mentioned at the time and select several poems concerning
89 Wassily Kandinsky, “Later,” in Sounds, trans. Elizabeth R. Napier (1912; reis., New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1981), 91.
30
the war environment, general themes of the time, or any other content that might be interesting
to study. Here, every design choice refers to a specific layer of information, a separate
argument about Dada. If one extends this problem and questions the other objects of the
cabaret — from the tables to the chairs; from the tablecloths to the glasses; from the piano to
the drums — the questions of harmony and discord between objects could be interesting,
especially in a context of war where the design of each object changed rapidly. Following the
evolution of modern furniture, for example, one can depict cabaret furniture as it was from
Thonet.90Similarly, following the evolution of musical instruments, one can imagine the drum
set Huelsenbeck played as it includes Chinese cymbals specific to the era.91The difficulty
perhaps doubles when one wonders how to separate a recited song from a recited poem in a
graphic novel. Should one put all the verbs of the songs or only the verses? How to separate
the piano from the drums? Among these songs and poems, the stories told in the cabaret, such
as Oscar Wilde's Selfish Giant recited by Ernst Tape, remain as another interesting dimension
because these stories produce different concrete realities for those who listen to them. These
stories bring the question of imagination into the discussion, where one can wonder how
people in the 1910s imagined an alternate reality. Should one bring the story as a text, or
should one include these narrations as sub-plots of the novel? All these questions were asked
without even putting the pen on the paper.
Figure 2.19 Two pages from 1886 dated catalouge of Thonet.
90 Karl Mang, History of Modern Furniture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979), 46-56.
91 Matt Dean, The Drum: A History (Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, 2012), chap. 12. EPUB.
31
Figure 2.20 Drum sets used between 1900-1930s.
A similar process can be conducted while investigating the plastic production presented in the
cabaret. By focusing on the diary passages about the discussions on art held in the cabaret, one
can question the paintings, painters, and groups mentioned. As shown in Figure 3.6, the journal
Cabaret Voltaire includes a catalog for the exhibition held in the cabaret. Nevertheless, one
cannot fully find information about paintings mentioned in the catalog. Interested in how these
objects were displayed, I have chosen several paintings dated 1916 that could replace unknown
paintings. Unlike poems or stories, however, to “hang” these paintings on the wall of the
cabaret, one must imagine the relationship between the painting and the wall, including the
style of framing, the distance, etcetera. Unfortunately, there is not any graphic source revealing
how paintings were exhibited in Cabaret Voltaire and Gallery Dada, but only comments such
as Tzara’s way of recapping Cabaret Voltaire exhibition as follows “On the walls: van Rees
and Arp, Picasso and Eggeling, Segal and Janco, Slodky, Nadelmann, colored papers,
ascendancy of the NEW ART, abstract art and geographic futurist map-poems: Marinetti,
Cangiullo, Buzzi.”92 Could the way Tzara has mentioned paintings give an idea about the
sequence of the exhibition? Having a similar concern, to estimate the exhibition in Gallery
Dada, Emily Hage followed Charlotte Klonk’s famous study on the interiors of modern art
galleries stressing the rise of a novel exhibition technique used in the early twentieth century
where paintings were hanged as one row in the eye-line of a standing person with a spacious
gap between instead of multiple rows of nearby paintings coating the entire wall.93 Some
photographs from later Dada exhibitions in Zurich and Paris put by Tzara, Arp, or Janco
support this interpretation. Nevertheless, some other photographs from German Dada
92 Tristan Tzara, “Zurich Chronicle,” in The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, ed. Robert
Motherwell (1951; reis., Boston: The Belknap Press, 1981), 235.
93 Emily Hage, “Mise-en-page to Mise-en-scène: Intersecting Display Strategies in Dada Art Journals
and Exhibitions,” Dada/Surrealism 21 no. 1 (2017), 3-4, https://doi.org/10.17077/0084-9537.1332.
32
exhibitions do not. For sure, both techniques could have been used, yet is should be noted that
Richard Huelsenbeck left Zurich Dada in the summer of 1916, after the closure of Cabaret
Voltaire, to set up a cluster in Berlin (it is unlikely that he was present in Gallery Dada). What
if Huelsenbeck carried the idea of Dada, which includes the way it exhibits paintings, to Berlin
only with an experience of Cabaret Voltaire? In other words, Tzara, Arp, and Janco might
have decided to exhibit the paintings differently than before, following the novel techniques
of the day, while Huelsenbeck was only loyal to what he had seen in the Cabaret Voltaire.
Alternatively, assuming the exhibition in the Cabaret Voltaire followed a system Hage
mentioned, one can wonder whether the eye-line was set for a standing person or a sitting one.
Figure 2.21 Janco, the art dealer Miecislas Sterling and Arp at the Galerie Wolfsberg, 1918.
Figure 2.22 Marcel Janco, Fleur-géométrie,1917; A detail of its wooden frame.
33
Figure 2.23 Installation views from Salon Dada in Paris, 1921.
Figure 2.24 Installation view of the First International Dada Fair in Berlin, 1920.
To test out all these questions, a model of the cabaret was created after the well-known lost
painting depicting the environment (Figure 4.10) as well as the architectural drawings.
Accordingly, every object in the model (from Thonet chairs to lighting elements) was placed
differently to emphasize that every detail has a naïve power to influence the overall perception
(Figures 4.9, 4.15, and 4.16). Besides, after Hage’s argument, the exhibition in the wall was
curated responding to both old and new styles of exhibiting things while the first argument
included contextual paintings to give an idea about the splendor of the exhibition in the cabaret.
This is more than enough to reveal that every question asked to create a scene in a graphic
novel is indeed an argument revealing novel aspects, or gaps, about the historical incident.
34
Nevertheless, a graphic novel is a novel. In other words, it has a narrative that has a point.
What should be the goal of a Dada graphic novel? For instance, should it reveal the impact of
the movement on the existing condition? Within such a domain, therefore, an agent is able not
only to generate new knowledge but also to explore these movements. This ability, therefore,
can also ease the way of educating art history.
If an act of denoting magazines with color codes can produce some fresh arguments, one
should be eager to bring much more complex functions into the interface. Accordingly,
speculation was and will be used throughout the study to produce new research question. With
the pliability of an interface as a surface in mind, one should accordingly ask proper questions
that can be flexibly traced out. Within such an interface, I presume, one is much closer to the
“book of the future” Drücker anticipates:
The “book” of the future will combine reading and writing, annotation and social
media, text processing and analysis, data mining and mind-mapping, searching
and linking, indexing and display, image parsing and distant reading, in a multimodal,
cross-platform, inter-media environment. Pages will be temporary
configurations based on calls to repositories and data sets. We will “publish” our
data trails as guidebooks for the experience of reading, pointing to milestones and
portals for indepth exploration of stories, inventories, and the rich combination of
cultural heritage and social life in a global world. The display will take advantage
of the n-dimensional space of the screen in ways that combine multiple design
visions.94
94 Drücker, Graphesis, 63.
35
CHAPTER 3
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
To assess bodily interactions deployed by Dada while challenging its surroundings, one should
also question if such a series of acts constituted a willful strategy. This is simply because one
can quite reversely argue that it’s impossible to pinpoint corporeality as a distinct dimension,
given that a deed cannot exist without its bodily aspect. In other words, what urged Dadaists
to work on bodies? Was it an all-of-a-sudden action or an upshot of culture inherent in the
period? Besides, if there was a change in the consciousness of people at the time highlighting
a return to bodies as a distinct strategy of coping with the existing order, how can one expose
it? With all these questions in mind, in this chapter, a portrayal of the background that gave
birth to the Great War will be provided. John Merriman observed, “The post-war period,
rampant with hard times and disappointments, caused many people to look back even more on
the pre-war period as the ‘Belle Epoque,’ the good old days.”95 Even so, as Jonathan Sperber
remarked, these good old days were indeed oscillating between peace and conflicts at different
levels.96 To understand such oscillation, the first subdivision of this chapter briefly describes
how those good old days were manifested in environments while the second examines how
people experienced them. To contextualize the discussion further, both subdivisions also bring
some ideas from the domain of fine arts at the time. Then, the third subdivision carries some
biographical material about the examined Dadaists. Finally, the last subdivision focuses on
how people acted in accordance and discordance with all mentioned changes escalating to the
Great War. Given that the examined era had many similarities with the present one, or rather
it held the roots of many contemporary problems, such portrayal, I hope, will help readers to
put their bias about the era aside while assessing Dada’s novelty.
95 John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present (New York: W.
W. Norton & Company, 2010), 925.
96 Jonathan Sperber, Europe 1850–1914: Progress, Participation and Apprehension (New York:
Routledge, 2013), 217.
36
3.1. Science, technology, and built environment in Europe: 1870-1914
On the way to preparing a palette portraying the Belle Epoque expressively, one should hold
the rapid population increase as the primary marker. Even though birth rates were decreasing
towards the end of the 19th century, a result of changing marriage patterns if not birth-control
methods of the time, more children survived compared to before, a result of improvements in
medicine, nutrition, and sanitation as well as changing parental care.97
Table 3.1 States and Populations 1880-1914 (Millions of persons)
97 Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 (London: Vintage Books Edition, 1989), 193;
Michelle Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” in A History of Private Life: From the Fires of Revolution to
the Great War, ed. Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London: Harvard University Press,
1990), 181-201; T. C. W. Blanning, ed., The Oxford History of Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), 102-5; Richard J. Evans, The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–1914 (New York:
Penguin Books, 2017), “Out of the Shadow of Death” in chap. 5, EPUB; Jan Lucassen, The Story of
Work: A New History of Humankind (London: Yale University Press, 2021), 332-3; Alain Corbin,
“Bedenlerin Buluşması,” in Bedenin Tarihi 2: Fransız Devriminden Büyük Savaşa. eds. Alain Corbin,
Jean-Jacques Courtine, and Georges Vigarello, trans. Orçun Türkay (İstanbul: Alfa, 2021), 211; Corbin,
“Bedenlerin Buluşması,” 274.
37
Table 3.2 The Decline in Family Size (Number of Children) in England and Wales
The second marker on the palette can be the overall improvement that happened within the
energy, chemical, and steel industries, a process dubbed the Second Industrial Revolution.98
With the help of novel business models easing capital accumulation as well as the
comprehensive application of scientific concepts in technology, such a revolution at best had
many people in the continent intervene in their environment more efficiently than before.99
Novel techniques of engineering — such as taking advantage of water power to produce
electricity, processing petroleum, or using fertilizers in agricultural production — allowed
many people to produce the same amount of goods with fewer resources.100 Even so, this
efficiency did not have manufacturers exhaust less reserve per object. For a manufacturer in a
context where the number of people was rapidly rising, such efficiency meant producing more
entities per hour.101
Table 3.1 World Production and World Trade 17811-1971 (1913=100)
98 Norman Davies, Europe: A History (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998), 770-1; Merriman, A History
of Modern Europe, 744-48; John Merriman and Jay Winter, eds., Europe 1789 to 1914: Encyclopedia
of the Age of Industry and Empire (Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale, 2006), 1156-62; Evans, The
Pursuit of Power, “The Second Industrial Revolution” in chap. 4.
99 Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 749-758; Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe,
67; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Passion For Knowledge” in chap. 6. For a detailed chronology
of important publications of the time, see Merriman and Winter, Europe 1789 to 1914, lviii-lxxi.
100 Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders: Europe 1800-1914 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1987), 294-7; Evans, The Pursuit of Power,“The Second Industrial Revolution” in chap. 4; Hobsbawm,
The Age of Empire, 251.
101 Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War (New York:
Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2014), 294; Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 26-7.
38
Mentioned efficiency projected itself at the subtlest on mechanics. Steel, the latest costeffective
structural element of the time, enabled industrialists to assemble novel mechanisms
that manufactured the other ones, a course called the industry of industry: mills and lathes,
thenceforth electrified and automated, began to shape any metal object soon to be a modular
unit of a greater whole within minutes.102 As a result, for the first time grains were harvested
not by horses, but by tractors, and costumes were tailored not by hand, but by sewing
machines.103
Table 3.2 Annual Output of Steel (In millions of metric tons)
Figure 3.1 A turret lathe built by Gisholt Machine Company.
Thanks to steel, bicycles, airplanes, and zeppelins were assembled while trains, ships, and
motorcars were reassembled.104 Run by gasoline, the period’s discovered energy source, the
internal combustion motor began to ensoul those booths. More these mechanisms became
widespread, both goods and people traveled far distances with less effort.105 Relocations had
not been unusual occasions, though during the period their recurrence increased
102 Sigvard Strandh, The History of the Machine, trans. Ann Henning (New York: Dorset Press, 1989),
84-85.
103 Davies, Europe, 766-7; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 747.
104 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Shrinkage Of Space” in chap. 5.
105 Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 753-5.
39
considerably.106 Seeking better conditions of living and working, some saw this mobility as a
one-way ticket and migrated to urban centers or oversea lands.107 Seeking novel supplies and
stories, some saw this mobility as a round-trip and spread to rural centers or oversea lands.108
As Jim Jaraush observed, tolerating wider know-how, ampler capital, tougher self-awareness,
studier organization, and severer rivalry, European states couldn’t help but attempt to
dominate non-European states. Strategies of domination were used adaptably and included
using direct military force, supporting inferior groups in local conflicts, or just maintaining
exchange. In the last-mentioned strategy, dominators were exporting valuable labor force as
well as resources from the dominated states and importing institutions related to the monetary
system, administration, science, education, or culture. Nevertheless, motivations behind the
course of colonization were not always the same: there were adventurers, entrepreneurs,
administrative employees, missionaries, welfare volunteers, and so on. In addition, the
rational mindset producing the cited technologies had also been studying the irrational side
of humans, eventually obliging art clusters of the time to move away from the accepted idea
of autonomous/rational individual and to review the production of children, mads, or
Africans.109 Accordingly, Hal Foster spotted two situations that shocked European society in
the early 20th century: the emergence of divergent cultural forms in the European metropoles
because of imperial expansion, and the rational re-organization of working bodies.110 For
Foster, many modernists could not help but tackle either by embracing or negating these two
shocks manifesting themselves in the fetishistic figures of the primitive and the machine.
Table 3.5 Emigration from Europe, 1876-1910 (per 100,000 population)
106 Konrad H. Jarausch, Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2015), 6-42; Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe, 105-6.
107 Davies, Europe, 774; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Great Exodus” in chap. 4.
108 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Building The New Jerusalem” in chap. 4; Hobsbawm, The Age of
Empire, 63-4; Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 277-89.
109 Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 275-80; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 798-804; Corbin,
“Bedenlerin Buluşması,” 244-48; Adamowicz, “Spare Parts,” 5.
110 Hal Foster, Prosthetic Gods, xi.
40
Figure 3.2 Hélène Dutrieu, one of the pioneer pilots of the 1910s.
Since things may not go as planned during a trip, precision became crucial. Therefore, backed
by scientific institutions and transport companies, administrative offices arrived at a consensus
on the systems organizing time, distance, temperature, and so on.111 In sum, not only the
physical distances between people began to dissolve, but also the mental ones. Simultaneously,
novel mechanisms of communication of the time eased any kind of exchange, from goods to
ideas, at an international level.112 Telegraphs, for instance, were introduced to reduce the
duration of a message traveling between two cities to minutes. Typewriters snatched the ideas
while newspapers transmitted them.113 People of the time, on the other hand, were not satisfied
with conveying their thoughts only through scripts. Sound and light, re-conceptualized as
waves, were fruitfully worked out. As a result, phonographs started to record echoes of things
while telephones conveyed these through distances. The exterior of an object was recorded by
a light-sensitive film while the interior was captured by an X-ray.114 Backed up by the evolving
paper industry, postcards began to accompany letters in their travels.115 Reacting to recent
discoveries in science and technology, art movements of the time were also reviewing
fundamental concepts like space or time to find ways of breaking with the past. Making things
easier, Jonathan Sperber discerned two tendencies in fine arts before the great war: the first
111 Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1983), 12-15; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Making of Modern Time” in chap. 5.
112 C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 17; Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 49-53.
113 Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 226.
114 Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 267-8.
115 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Shrinkage Of Space” in chap. 5; Corbin, “Bedenlerin Buluşması,”
226.
41
cluster — Cubists, Futurists, or Constructivists — have searched for novel ways of grasping
the outer world; the second cluster — Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, or the experiments
in music and literature — have searched for novel ways of conveying the inner world.116
Nevertheless, as David Krasner stressed, whether the aim was to capture reality as it is or to
create a non-referential system as it ought to be, the theatre practitioners of the era encountered
the materiality of bodies while moving away from the physical to the metaphysical.117
Accordingly, some theatre visionaries of the time reconceptualized actor/spectator bodies to
create total illusions. Edward Gordon Craig (1872–1966), for instance, proposed using large
puppets (Übermarionettes) on the stage instead of performers.118
All mentioned mechanisms were in close relation with their surroundings. Such an expansion
of mechanisms, therefore, led to a series of spatial conflicts too. Large-scale building programs
were run in cities to resolve these conflicts.119 Rail work, for instance, eased the horizontal
movement in the space while the elevator improved the vertical one.120 The ground was dug
out and deepened to make space for vast pipes of water, long cables of electricity, or fast
compartments of transport.121 Evolving from earth to asphalt and being ornated with several
regulative signs, streets were also disciplined to allow less problematic transport, and they
were, along with buildings, lit with lamps.122 Getting complex more than ever, businesses
necessitated better-organized settings for their operations. Rather than cottages of the
countryside, things henceforth would be produced in factories and traded in department stores
of the towns.123 Crossicks observed:
[The department stores] were amongst the first to introduce pneumatic tubes to
dispatch orders round the store, cash registers for on-the-spot transactions, lifts
and escalators not only to transport customers between floors but to lead them
116 Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 275-80; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Rites of Spring,” in chap. 6.
Also see Philip Hook, “Beyond Instinct,” in Art of the Extreme 1905-1914 (London, Profile Books,
2021).
117 David Krasner, “Introduction,” in Theatre in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology, ed. David Krasner
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 1-5.
118 McConachie, “Theatres of the Avant-Garde, 1880–1940,” 354-89.
119 Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 251-4.
120 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Shrinkage Of Space” in chap. 5.
121 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Building the New Jerusalem” in chap. 4.
122 Anne Martin-Fugier, “Bourgeois Rituals,” in A History of Private Life: From the Fires of Revolution
to the Great War, ed. Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London: Harvard University Press,
1990), 279.
123 Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: Global History of the Nineteenth Century,
trans. Patrick Camiller (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 687; Catherine Hall, “The Sweet
Delights of Home,” in A History of Private Life: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, ed.
Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London: Harvard University Press, 1990), 71; Michelle
Perrot, “The Family Triumphant,” in A History of Private Life: From the Fires of Revolution to the
Great War, ed. Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London: Harvard University Press, 1990),
117; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Gendering Of Emotion” in chap. 6; Davies, Europe, 681;
Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 778.
42
through the theatre of the store, as well as experimenting with new construction
methods and plate-glass windows to maximise display without as well as within.
The new building which Jourdain built for the Samaritaine in Paris between 1905
and 1910 had electric awnings on the exterior to protect merchandise from the
sun; steam heating ducts and electric conduits in each floor’s exposed metal
stanchions and girders; a pneumatic tube system for messages; motor-driven
conveyor belts to transfer packages from the sales to the delivery area; and much
more. Department stores were becoming machines for selling.124
Figure 3.3 Jules Hervieu, Special work of the Opera neighborhood. A section from Boulevard des
Capucines, 1900s.
This process eventually pulled labor out of the domestic sphere: the gap between public and
private domains, which was already gendered, was enlarged.125 At that time, medical
discourses were not in harmony: along with old but still practiced concepts such as humoral
124 Geoffrey Crossick and Serge Jaumain, “The World of the Department Store: Distribution, Culture,
and Social Change,” in Cathedrals of Consumption: The European Department Store, 1850-1939, eds.
Geoffrey Crossick and Serge Jaumain (1999; reis., New York: Routledge, 2018), 11-3.
125 Lynn Hunt, “The Unstable Boundaries of the French Revolution,” in A History of Private Life: From
the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, ed. Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London:
Harvard University Press, 1990), 44-5; Tamar Garb, Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-
Siècle France (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998), 11; Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 197-8; Hall,
“The Sweet Delights of Home,” 70-71.
43
theory, scientists have reconceptualized the human body through pairs of unit-whole and
interior-exterior, or terms of microbe and metabolism.126 Accordingly, dirt-free kitchens and
hygienic bathrooms were inserted into building flats, which changed the routines of bathing
and catering.127 So, the privatized sphere turned out to be not only a reminder of identity
concerning objects and furniture it contained, but also an upholder of the body concerning
safety, hygiene, or sexuality. In a few words, cities not only marshaled novel offices, hospitals,
parks, sports facilities, canals, ports, or stations, but also removed city walls, slums, or
flammable edifices.128 Even so, since the earth did not expand as much as the number of people
or goods did, what was efficient and healthy for people was indeed an imperceptible
destruction of the environment, above all considering disrupted forests, poisoned rivers,
yellow clouds, or exploded mountains.129
3.2. Diverse public structures of Europe appearing on bodily agency: 1870-1914
All these environments and mechanisms were used by people, yet not in the same manner.
Such diversity not only formed some selves but also quaked a few. The family unit might
prove useful while identifying how this setting up or tremor ran. Perrot acknowledged the
importance of the family for the social order:
As the linchpin of production, it [family unit] kept the economy running and
managed the transmission of wealth from generation to generation. As a
reproductive cell, it produced children and assumed responsibility for their early
socialization. As the guardian of the race, it was responsible for racial purity and
health. As the crucible of national consciousness, it inculcated symbolic values
and memories of the nation's founding.130
In the household, the family would designate who was the husband, father, or sister; in the
neighborhood, it would signal who was the relative, foreigner, or suitable; in the workplace, it
would emphasize who was the head, hand, or arbitrator.131 For instance, holding resources of
the family, the father (or the oldest brother) would be considered a major decision-maker: he
126 Olivier Faure, “Hekimlerin Bakışı,” in Bedenin Tarihi 2: Fransız Devriminden Büyük Savaşa. eds.
Alain Corbin, Jean-Jacques Courtine, and Georges Vigarello, trans. Orçun Türkay (İstanbul: Alfa,
2021), 21-49; Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 265-7.
127 Georges Vigarello, “Bedenin Temizliği ve Görüntüsü Üstüne Çalışmalar,” in Bedenin Tarihi 2:
Fransız Devriminden Büyük Savaşa. eds. Alain Corbin, Jean-Jacques Courtine, and Georges Vigarello,
trans. Orçun Türkay (İstanbul: Alfa, 2021), 389-407; Julie L. Horan, The Porcelain God: A Social
History of the Toilet (Secaucus: Carol Publishing Group, 1997), 104-9.
128 Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 44; At that time, people considered Europe as a face, or center, of modernity,
see Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe, 11; Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern
Europe, 234.
129 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Mastering the Elements” in chap. 5.
130 Perrot, “The Family Triumphant,” 111; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Triumph of The
Bourgeoisie” in chap. 4.
131 Perrot, “The Family Triumphant,” 116; Perrot, “The Family Triumphant,” 133; Perrot, “Roles and
Characters,” 183; Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 226-31; Martin-Fugier, “Bourgeois Rituals,” 261.
44
would have a special zone within the dwelling, and often his death would signal a resolution
for the family.132 In turn, the mother (or the eldest sister) would be responsible for many tasks
concerning the upkeep of the family, whether material or emotional.133 In this formula,
considered short of a family, single, widow, and divorced people would not be much
respected.134 Regarding members’ temporal or spatial duties, families surely varied in form,
yet not as much as conceptions about them: from Liberals to Traditionalists, from Socialists
to Feminists, many groups reconceptualized the family unit, which unfortunately will not be
discussed here in detail.135 Even so, focusing on families from different orders, regions,
religions, or classes, this subchapter will briefly describe how people of the Belle Epoque may
have experienced their surroundings differently. Wealth, nevertheless, will be held as the
primary condition separating these families. Here, Tim Blanning’s observation on the
difference between social orders and classes might be helpful:
The notion of orders rested on a belief in a static society. The first order was the
clergy because they kept the devil at bay. The second order, the nobility, were
responsible for organizing the defence of the community from more visible
enemies. The third order, which included everyone else, provided for the bodily
needs of society. During the medieval and early modern periods the wealthier
members within each order acquired privileges, the most desirable of which were
fiscal. By the eighteenth century the tail wagged the dog. Privilege, limited to a
small, wealthy subsection of each order, came to be a definition of the order itself,
while their original duties were performed by the poorer elements of each group.
Financial standing and perceived status, the basis of a modern notion of class,
emerged within the vertical subsections of the society of orders.136
Along with bringing many themes related to corporeality, the following description will also
exercise the viewpoint of a growing child. This is to defend not only that cultures are learned
entities but also that those who study a historical occasion cannot understand the studied era
better than a child discovering it.
At that time, born into a peasant family, a child would primarily grasp that self-sufficiency
was the main principle organizing daily life in rural areas.137 Villages, for instance, would
assemble in the way that huts within would share some resources and edifices that were in
short supply. Barely lit and ventilated by tiny openings, a peasant’s hut would shelter at best
a bench, one or two beds each carrying four to five beings, a niche as a cellar, and a machine
for handicrafts.138 Such a hut would be heated by an oven having a cauldron nearby which one
132 Lucassen, The Story of Work, 335-7; Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 173.
133 Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 187; Perrot, 220; Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 247.
134 Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 190; Perrot, 241-5.
135 Perrot, “The Family Triumphant,” 99-132; Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe, 120-1.
136 Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe, 107-109.
137 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The ‘Dangerous Classes’” in chap. 4; Perrot, “The Family
Triumphant,” 116.
138 Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 476-7; Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 223.
45
would sleep on cold nights. The reeking cesspit, which would be placed out of — and even
sometimes under the hut — would draw many rats, mosquitos, or snakes eventually giving
rise to famed diseases of the time such as cholera, tuberculosis, or smallpox.139 Nevertheless,
from sexual intercourse to bathing, deeds would not be narrowed to a certain place but spread
into the whole landscape.140 One had to desire only in line with the premises of the
environment. Clothes, shoes, or dolls, soft objects would be tailored out of wool, linen, or
leather. Axes, pitchforks, plows, or sickles, else would instead be crafted out of wood or
iron.141 If not resting, lands would carry grains from autumn to winter, and crops from winter
to spring. According to season and what was available, therefore, one would eat gruel and
bread at most, some dairy products, nuts, or crops, and hardly any meat.142 These would be
baldly boiled, salted, smoked, dried, or pickled within a stew, a griddle, one or two pans, and
a few bowls.143 What was drunk, in turn, would vary between milk and herbal tea, homemade
beer and wine, or vodka and cider.144 In rural, all in all, the weather would regulate where to
be and what to do.
Figure 3.4 August Sander, Farm Children, 1913; Sander, Middle-Class Child, 1925.
139 Horan, The Porcelain God, 97; Horan, The Porcelain God, 122.
140 Alain Corbin, “Backstage,” in A History of Private Life, ed. Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur
Goldhammer (London: Harvard University Press, 1990), 594.
141 Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 204.
142 Melanie Byrd and John P. Dunn, eds. Cooking Through History: A worldwide Encyclopedia of Food
with Menus and Recipes (Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2021), 322.
143 Byrd and Dunn, Cooking Through History, 322.
144 Merriman and Winter, Europe 1789 to 1914, 1751-57.
46
Figure 3.5 August Sander, Farming Family, 1913/14.
Figure 3.6 August Sander, Farming Couple Spinning, 1927; Sander, Farm Woman from the Sieg
Valley, 1921.
Work routines would also differ according to age, gender, ability, or any other preconception
of the time, though many tasks, for the sake of self-sufficiency, would be handled together or
interchangeably.145 Women would mainly get involved in cooking, cleaning, gleaning,
spinning, or else looking after animals if not children. If there was any, a senior member of
the family would take responsibility for crafting objects and raising children. Men would
145 Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World, 677; Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 196.
47
mainly get involved in sowing the land, repairing the tools, and reaping the harvest. Even
though agricultural machines were introduced, they were not common.146 Besides, when they
were available, rather than making things easier for workers, these machines would exhaust
them. Evans described this richly:
up to thirty men for each machine, carrying out tasks such as stoking and carrying
water to the engine, baling the straw, collecting the ears of corn, and so on. A few
machine-owners also used a mechanical binder or baler, which reduced the
number of men needed, but mostly the work was done by hand. Conditions of
work were almost unbearable. The machine made a deafening noise, and the dust
it threw up stopped the workers’ noses, made their eyes swollen, and got in their
throats and lungs, so that they coughed up ‘black lumps of black mucus’, as
Rehbein reported. If it rained, the dust clung to their skins in a thick layer. The
labourers were paid an hourly rate that could be as low as 15 pfennigs. Work often
began at three in the morning, and carried on until nine or ten in the evening,
sometimes even longer. Breaks were allowed only for meals, or to allow the
machine to be oiled.147
Figure 3.7 August Sander, Farm Girl, Hesse, 1913.
On the important days of the year, members of the village would assemble mostly in the open
air not only for tribute, worship, or revel — which also contained some bloody games — but
also for discussing issues related to the governance of the land such as “rights to water,
passages, grazing, gleaning, and wood-gathering.”148 For instance, as Merriman noted, if there
were "conscription; abuses by local lords; illegal imposition of excessive corvee or taxation,”
family heads would settle on “smashing fences and walls, filling up ditches, tearing down
146 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Decline of the Aristocracy” in chap. 4; Gildea, Barricades and
Borders, 290.
147 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “‘Nothing to Lose but Their Chains’” in chap. 4.
148 Merriman and Winter, Europe 1789 to 1914, 1754; Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World,
680-81.
48
hedges, and occupying ‘usurped’ land,” or else burning records and smashing houses.149 Yet,
this was also the period when landlords began to control this and similar violent actions like
blood feuds through the police force as well as market pressure.150 What is more, the
developments mentioned in the previous subchapter gradually decreased crop prices.
Accordingly, a child growing up in a peasant family would realize in time that the concern of
self-sufficiency was indeed getting unachievable.151 Owing to the rapid changes in machines
as well as products, many businesses at that time were constantly appearing and disappearing.
In this context, except for special industries like machinery, printing, or moto-car, being
unskilled would be considered an opportunity given that one would get trained about a specific
machine and start to work in a few days.152 Hence, from spring to autumn, when roads were
more accessible and lands were resting, many country people, per the approval of their
landlords as well as village heads, would travel to urban regions to work in constructions,
mines, or forests.153 In Gelsenkirchen of 1907, for example, half of the miners, which
constituted %60 percent of the workforce, were from rural areas.154 This mobility was also a
work opportunity for those who lost their cottage professions on account of emerging factory,
women.155 Even though women’s wages remained less than men’s, many of them would work
in factories as soon as their children were able to look after themselves.156 Besides, in a city, a
single woman would be able to work as a child carer, laundry washer, housekeeper, servant,
or depending on her familial bond, as a prostitute.157 For sure, if there were animals, women
would stay in the village to look after them, but if there were not, immigration would occur
together.158 Aware of being seen as a burden in those harsh days, a child would have two
choices: to master the husbandry of animals as well as special crops or leave the hut.159
149 Merriman and Winter, Europe 1789 to 1914, 1754.
150 Dominic Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914 (London: The Macmillan Press, 1992), 91;
Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The ‘Dangerous Classes’” in chap. 4; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The
Age of the Masses” in chap. 7; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 521.
151 Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 289-90.
152 Gildea, 304; Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 115; Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World,
686-7.
153 Merriman and Winter, Europe 1789 to 1914, 2153; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Shrinkage
Of Space” in chap. 5; Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914, 78; Merriman, A History of
Modern Europe, 761; Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 245-6; Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 115.
154 Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 282-3.
155 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “‘Nothing to Lose but Their Chains’” in chap. 4.
156 Lucassen, The Story of Work, 334; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 765; Sperber, Europe
1850–1914, 247.
157 Perrot, “The Family Triumphant,” 119; Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 192-4 and 232-9; Evans, The
Pursuit of Power, “Controlling The Primal Urge” in chap. 5; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe,
764-7; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 50.
158 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “‘Nothing to Lose but Their Chains’” in chap. 4.
159 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Shrinkage Of Space” in chap. 4; Merriman and Winter, Europe
1789 to 1914, 1756.
49
Figure 3.8 August Sander, Road Construction Workers, 1927.
Figure 3.9 August Sander, Cafe Waitress, 1928/29; Sander, Servant in a Grand Household, 1928.
A child born into a family of workers, nevertheless, would not find living in a city easier than
rural.160 Higher death rates in industrial towns validate this.161 At that time, a great number of
workers were living in overcrowded sheds, and there was no landscape providing clean water
or fresh air anymore.162 So, even though a city shed was not so different from a counterpart in
50
rural, diseases spread in cities much faster.163 For sure, crates of city stores were not empty,
yet the pockets of workers were. Evans illustrated how workers “often had to live off food
bought as leftovers even for their good meals; on broken eggs, stale bread, bruised fruit, offal,
and unsold and unfresh meat and fish. Bread, potatoes, polenta or other starchy foods provided
the bulk of their diet,” while milk for a child was the deadliest one.164 Tuchman similarly
remarked, “fish on Sundays was the weekly protein for a family of eight, at two and a half
ounces per portion. Children were stunted and pale, with rotting teeth, and if they went to
school, sat dully at their desks or fell asleep.”165 Education, therefore, was a short, if not
impossible, path for children of workers: just like their parents, they had to work as earliest
moment as they could.166
Figure 3.10 August Sander, Working-Class Family, 1912.
The conditions of work were the toughest. In 1910 Budapest, for instance, out of 5000 studied
factories, merely 109 contained restrooms and only 75 included eateries.167 Without any
weekly off or lunch break, workers operated for twelve to fourteen hours a day.168 Monday
taken off work would be called “Holy Monday” when the family would have a journey towards
163 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Building The New Jerusalem” in chap. 4; Sperber, Europe 1850–
1914, 245-6.
164 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “‘Nothing to Lose but Their Chains’” in chap. 4.
165 Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 476-7.
166 Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 764; Poor would be sent to boarding schools, see Perrot,
“Roles and Characters,” 217.
167 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “‘Nothing to Lose but Their Chains’” in chap. 4.
168 Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World, 688; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 477.
51
rural or relatives.169 Work was not regulated with rural songs anymore but with clock hours
and bells.170 The air was full of noise, poisonous gas, and dust.171 If workers were lucky enough
not to have any accidents resulting in a burn, limb loss, fracture, or even death, they would get
sick in time.172 Alive or dead, the bodies of the poor therefore became objects of study for
doctors of newly established hospitals. There, pain and its interpretation have always
constituted a domain where patients and doctors struggled, but with the arrival of questionaries
and anesthesia, doctors began to take control. Eventually, they declared new diseases just like
silicosis or pneumoconiosis.173 Evans illustrated this:
in the London-based Bryant and May company the fumes from the white
phosphorus used to make the combustible matchheads began to have a terrible
effect on the workers – almost all of them women and teenage children – whose
job it was to prepare the phosphorus solution and dip frames of matchsticks into
it. Their gums began to ulcerate, their teeth fell out, and their jawbones began to
rot, exuding a vile-smelling pus, sometimes through the nose. This was ‘phossy
jaw.’174
Figure 3.11 August Sander, Blacksmiths, 1926; Sander, Machine Operator, 1926.
169 Perrot, “The Family Triumphant,” 136.
170 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Pursuit of Happiness” in chap. 6.
171 Lucassen, The Story of Work, 301.
172 Alain Corbin, “Bedenin Acıları, Sıkıntıları ve Sefaleti,” in Bedenin Tarihi 2: Fransız Devriminden
Büyük Savaşa. eds. Alain Corbin, Jean-Jacques Courtine, and Georges Vigarello, trans. Orçun Türkay
(İstanbul: Alfa, 2021), 324-338.
173 Corbin, “Bedenin Acıları, Sıkıntıları ve Sefaleti,” 328-353; Faure, “Hekimlerin Bakışı,” 31-41;
Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Management of Pain”in chap. 5.
174 Apart from being disabled, being injured was embraced with dignity by workers of the time. See
Henri-Jacques Stiker, “Yeni Özürlü Beden Algısı,” in Bedenin Tarihi 2: Fransız Devriminden Büyük
Savaşa. eds. Alain Corbin, Jean-Jacques Courtine, and Georges Vigarello, trans. Orçun Türkay
(İstanbul: Alfa, 2021), 386; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “‘Nothing to Lose but Their Chains’” in chap.
4.
52
Yet, neither workers nor administrators of the time took these conditions for granted. The
former group acted towards uniting to boost their wages, rights, and conditions of work.175
Accordingly, they have used different strategies of resistance.176 Following the scientific
know-how, the latter group acted towards enhancing their operation, its place, and ways of
motivating workers.177 They reorganized the relationship between the worker’s body and the
surrounding engine, two “motors” working together as Rabinbach described, vis-à-vis themes
varying from fatigue to efficiency.178 Hobsbawm explicated this review briefly:
The task on which 'Taylorism' immediately concentrated its efforts, and with
which 'scientific management' was to become identified in the public mind, was
how to get more work out of workers. This aim was pursued by three major
methods: (i) by isolating each worker from the work group, and transferring the
control of the work process from him, her or the group to the agents of
management, who told the worker exactly what to do and how much output to
achieve in the light of (2) a systematic breakdown of each process into timed
component elements ('time and motion study'), and (3) various systems of wage
payment which would give the worker an incentive to produce more.179
Even though harshly criticized, such re-organization was progressively adopted by many
facilities on the way to the Great War.180 Concerning rising wages and refurbishing
environments, a worker’s appetite for living in a city therefore can be justified.181 In a newly
industrialized city, for example, a worker family would be offered a two-story lodgment within
a naïve garden. Such lodgment would have rooms separating sleeping from living as well as
cooking from cleaning; each room would contain a fireplace and a closet.182 Within the
neighborhood of this lodgment, parents would find inexpensive services for childcare,
medicine, cleaning, eating, education, trade, or recreation.183 A child of a worker would be
able to desire without being limited to weather: both local and colonial goods thenceforth
175 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Rise Of The Welfare State” in chap. 7; Evans, The Pursuit of
Power, “The Second International and Its Rivals” in chap. 7; Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 306-7;
Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 119-123.
176 Albert S. Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe: From 1815 to the Present (West Sussex: John
Wiley & Sons, 2013), 135-140 and 148-168; Lucassen, The Story of Work, 302-4; Merriman and Winter,
Europe 1789 to 1914, 2485; Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe, 36; Evans, The Pursuit
of Power, “The Second International and Its Rivals” in chap. 7; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 547.
177 Lucassen, The Story of Work, 350; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 547.
178 Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (New York:
Basic Books, 1990), 2-3; Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 48-52; Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 248.
179 Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 44-5.
180 Lucassen, The Story of Work, 345; Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 123; Rabinbach, The Human
Motor, 239-45; Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 250-58; Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 44-5.
181 Michelle Perrot, “At Home,” in A History of Private Life: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great
War, ed. Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London: Harvard University Press, 1990), 351;
Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 247; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 759; Merriman, A History
of Modern Europe, 779.
182 Roger-Henri Guerrand, “Private Spaces,” in A History of Private Life: From the Fires of Revolution
to the Great War, ed. Michelle Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London: Harvard University Press,
1990), 414; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 767-71.
183 Guerrand, “Private Spaces,” 419.
53
could be served out of a can while concentrated soups, margarine, condensed milk, pasta, and
vitamins would accompany them.184 With reduced hours, workers would also be able to listen
to many cheerful stories that can erase unwanted ones, because numberless cafes, fairs,
circuses, cinemas, variety theatres, or music halls, would invite them to inspect “spectacular”
bodies — dubbed burlesque queens, exotic dancers, or freaks — and to eat and drink.185
Figure 3.12 August Sander, Circus Artistes, 1926-32.
A diverse group of people discerned themselves from workers through spending what they
earned on services bringing societal status rather than “immediate” pleasure.186 Evans
designated them:
The bourgeoisie. The name itself – bourgeois, Bürger, borghese – meant citydweller.
In the pre-industrial urban social order, the dominant elite of guildsmen
would include a handful of educated, literate doctors, lawyers, notaries,
apothecaries, clerks and scribes. Many long-established towns were dominated by
an hereditary patrician elite that increasingly had to make room for bankers,
industrialists and professionals without necessarily being displaced by
them…Nevertheless, the old patrician elite was in effect merging into a new urban
middle class as its legal privileges were gradually eroded…In 1850 a further
184 Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 64.
185 Bruce McConachie, “Popular entertainments, 1850–1920,” in Theatre Histories, ed. Gary Jay
Williams (London: Routledge, 2016), 327-53; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Pursuit of Happiness”
in chap. 6; Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 375-7; Corbin, “Backstage,” 638; Alain Corbin,“Bedenlerin
Buluşması,” in Bedenin Tarihi 2: Fransız Devriminden Büyük Savaşa. eds. Alain Corbin, Jean-Jacques
Courtine, and Georges Vigarello, trans. Orçun Türkay (İstanbul: Alfa, 2021), 232-70; Stiker, “Yeni
Özürlü Beden Algısı,” 368-79.
186 Michael D. Richards and Paul R. Waibel, Twentieth-Century Europe: A Brief History, 1900 to the
Present (West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), 32; Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 127; On how
middle-class interpreted workers, see Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe, 125.
54
municipal reform defined citizenship (as distinct from mere domicile) in even
broader terms of educational and propertied factors, including possession of a
degree, exercise of a profession such as architect, surgeon, apothecary and so on;
ship’s captains and master artisans were included in the list, as were lawyers and
tradesmen.187
Concerning the professions of its members, such a group possessed a diverse set of know-how,
bodily practices, and utensils, which cannot be recapped here easily. Besides, it had been
diversifying with new members: the re-organization of businesses, namely the emergence of
giant corporates and factories, offered numerous positions in services for bright individuals,
soon to be branded “white-collar.”188 The same process challenged certain parties in the middle
class who had been running family businesses for a long time. Many artisans, for instance,
eventually found themselves cooperating with unskilled people under the roof of a factory,
which created fear.189 Accordingly, out of work hours, many family/business heads would
gather in special clubs to defend their interests.190
Figure 3.13 August Sander, Wine Merchant's Family, 1913; Sander, City Dweller, 1912.
At that time, perhaps not so different than today, children would be considered one of the most
important assets to be invested in.191 They would therefore be disciplined from the very
187 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Triumph of The Bourgeoisie” in chap. 4.
188 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Triumph of The Bourgeoisie” in chap. 4; Gildea, Barricades and
Borders, 305; Crossick and Jaumain, “The World of the Department Store,” 18; Merriman, A History
of Modern Europe, 771-2; Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 248; Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 258.
189 Lucassen, The Story of Work, 328-31; Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 305; Sperber, Europe 1850–
1914, 258; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 763-6; Osterhammel, The Transformation of the
World, 686-7; Hall, “The Sweet Delights of Home,” 67.
190 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Petty Bourgeoisie” in chap. 4; On the difference between Clubs
and Salons, see also Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Triumph of The Bourgeoisie” in chap. 4;
Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 255.
191 Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 196; Perrot, 211-13.
55
beginning through carrot and stick: every action would be observed by a tutor reminding them
what was proper and what was not.192 Within this journey of disciplining the self, gender
usually would not be emphasized until the age of five: both boys and girls would keep dresslike
outfits as well as long hair. With their toys, either crafted or bought by their fathers
depending on the family’s background, children would play around with their mothers or
household servants, both of whom would, unfortunately, be in the kitchen. Mothers hence
would be responsible for the early education of children.193Around the age of eight, namely
the age when one would gain reason as people of the era believed, the family would begin to
gradually supervise, if not surveil, the children concerning their gender: fathers would be
responsible for educating the boys to become new patrons of family/businesses while mothers
would be responsible for training the girls to become new dames of households.194 Yet, this
also would be the threshold when children would be noticed by over-family institutions like
the state, church, or clinic, often possessing different concerns than families.195 Accordingly,
during the turn of the century, regardless of which background they came from, children began
to receive fundamental education customarily in a boarding school up until the age of thirteen,
which was about disciplining them under a national dialect, history, and religion.196
Figure 3.14 Charles Félix Girard, Struggle for a child between the child's family and the Church, the
State and the Freemasons, 1909.
192 Perrot, 208-11.
193 Perrot, 204-5.
194 Hall, “The Sweet Delights of Home,” 68; Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 203-213; Corbin,
“Backstage,” 496; Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 354.
195 Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 203; Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe, 20.
196 Fritz K. Ringer, Education and Society in Modern Europe (London: Indiana University Press, 1979),
117; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Christianity and Beyond” in chap. 6; Gildea, Barricades and
Borders, 352-4; Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 25; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 774;
Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 216.
56
As a middle-class initiation as well as an indicator, secondary education was indeed
constituted earlier than the primary counterpart.197 It was about preparing children, more
accurately middle-class boys rather than girls and poor, for universities where they would be
learning how to conduct professions often run by their families. Nevertheless, these schools
varied in style, syllabus, and clientele, which interestingly cannot be abridged to specific social
groups, as Ringer illustrated: in Germany, not only high officials and landowners sent their
children to Gymnasium, the most prestigious secondary education at the time, but also lower
officials and able farmers. Likewise, in Oberrealschules, one would find children of rich
entrepreneurs taking classes along with children of minor tradesmen.198 Secondary education
cultivated the mind and soul: in “barrack-like” buildings, pupils would learn literature,
religion, sciences, ancient Greek and Roman classics, or practical subjects.199 If the male body
was still the nation’s favored tabula to manifest, the female body was a favorite of the church,
which was losing its symbolic power against the state.200 Accordingly, churches would help
mothers during their coaching by reproducing the discourse about the importance of virginity,
and by surveilling them.201 Interestingly, even though it was targeted to evaporate corporeality,
asceticism was indeed materializing the body through the constant control of consumption and
behavior.202 And, not surprisingly, all these transformations had individuals feel difficulty in
self-actualization, which manifested itself in journal keeping as well as increasing cases of
suicide, hysteria, and alcoholism.203 Still, days were changing: both young men and women at
the age of fifteen were leaving the household regardless of attending school.204
197 Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 351-57; Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 174-5.
198 Ringer, Education and Society in Modern Europe, 76-7; Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-
1914, 190-7.
199 Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe, 114; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 773;
Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Passion for Knowledge,” in chap. 6; Lieven, The Aristocracy in
Europe, 1815-1914, 169; Ringer, Education and Society in Modern Europe, 87; Perrot, “Roles and
Characters,” 216.
200 Alain Corbin, “Dinin Etkisi,” in Bedenin Tarihi 2: Fransız Devriminden Büyük Savaşa. eds. Alain
Corbin, Jean-Jacques Courtine, and Georges Vigarello, trans. Orçun Türkay (İstanbul: Alfa, 2021), 64;
Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 207. For the relationship between state, church, and females, see
Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe, 163-64; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 773-8;
Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Dissent, Doubt and Disbelief” in chap. 6; Anthony J. Steinhoff noted
that unchurching does not necessarily mean secularization due to at least four conditions: one cannot
find a correlation between secularized and urbanized locations; religious practices were indeed
conducted in family scale; church going declined but life-time events like death were conducted under
the authority of church; people started to be able to reach out to religion through institutions over church.
See Anthony J. Steinhoff, “Protestantism,” A Companion To Nineteenth Century Europe 1789–1914,
ed. Stefan Berger (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 251.
201 Corbin, “Dinin Etkisi,” 64-86; Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 207.
202 Corbin, “Dinin Etkisi,” 89-94.
203 Corbin, “Backstage,” 498-502; Corbin, “Backstage,” 615-647; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The
Pursuit of Happiness” in chap. 6; Corbin, “Bedenlerin Buluşması,” 192-206; For different body
understandings appeared on literature, see Corbin, “Bedenlerin Buluşması,” 221.
204 Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 219.
57
Figure 3.15 August Sander, High School Student, 1926; Sander, Working Student, 1926.
This was also the interval when many sports were institutionalized in parallel with the military
if not aristocratic values like endurance, perseverance, or courage. Therefore, depending on
their familial and national background, students would join a sports association about athletics,
football, rugby, cricket, golf, swimming, rowing, skiing, cycling, horse racing, boxing, or
gymnastics.205 Another interrelated wonder of the period was the body in movement and its
record with new media.206 Accordingly, some dance practitioners of the time were criticizing
traditional dance such as ballet, and were searching for a novel foundation for dance. Rudolf
von Laban (1879-1958), one of these vanguard practitioners, was problematizing the
interaction between dance, space, and time and defending the importance of dancing naked in
nature to free the body from the unhealthiness of the existing urban culture. Perhaps a positive
side of all these interests was that the garments special to these disciplines have set people of
the era free from their traditional clothes, which can be seen at best from women's fashion.207
205 Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 780-81; Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 182; Lieven, The
Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914, 190; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Climbing the Tower of Babel,”
536-544; Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 209-11.
206 Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918, 20-35.
207 Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body
Decorations, and Footwear through the Ages-Volume 4: Modern World Part I: 1900-1945, ed. Sarah
Hermsen (Farmington Hills: UXL, 2004), 663-718. On clothing bodies in public, see Corbin,
“Backstage,” 486-491.
58
Figure 3.16 Dr. Krajewski’s Athletic Room. Walls were full of portraits of athletes; Athletics Club.
Along with education and leisure time activities, the middle class distinguished themselves
from the “lowers” through the standard of living and dwellings. Equipped with novel
household technologies of the time and encircled with a garden, a middle-class property would
contain many divisions for activities and roles: in addition to separate rooms for bachelors,
young ladies, servants, and parents, such a dwelling would have; a smoking room for men; a
morning room for women; an attic; a dining room; a drawing room; a training room; a kitchen;
a nursery; and a bathroom.208 Houses of the rich would possess additional rooms just like
kitchens for the production of confection or dairy.209 To fill the spaces not only protecting but
also defining them, the middle class had to buy things.210 Therefore, even though household
technology had not changed so much, a great amount of time would still pass in the department
stores where they were more than welcome, as Crossick and Jaumain observed:
The department stores offered new services, both to ease their customers’
transactions and to make the act of shopping as agreeable as possible. Free entry
with no obligation to buy was designed to remove all hesitation about going into
the store, encouraging passers-by to inspect the vast range of merchandise as if in
an exhibition hall, before deciding whether to become not merely observers but
customers. No shop assistant or floor walker would harass those who entered, but
were available to offer advice in response to the merest inquiry. To help the
customer, prices were fixed, ticketed and even published widely through
newspaper and other advertisements. As a final incentive to buy, home delivery
and mail order were introduced together with a commitment to accept goods
returned because the purchaser had changed her or his mind.211
208 Hall, “The Sweet Delights of Home,” 70-3; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 49-50. Members of middleclass
had been living outside of the towns to where they travelled between home and work daily. After
industrial town-centers got re-vitalized, they moved back to live in town houses. See Evans, The Pursuit
of Power, “Building The New Jerusalem” in chap. 4.
209 Byrd and Dunn, Cooking Through History, 321-2; Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 247.
210 Crossick and Jaumain, “The World of the Department Store,” 27.
211 Crossick and Jaumain, 11-3.
59
Towards the end of the 19th century, what empowered industrialists did indeed threaten
landowners. Landowners, therefore, either concentrated more on their governmental duties or
turned to investing in factories. In turn, to gain political prestige, plutocrats embraced several
activities formerly associated with aristocrats such as sailing, gambling, or sponsoring arts and
sciences. Ultimately, these mutual gestures were crowned with a bloodline: wealthy families
espoused noble ones.212 Therefore, as Evans noted, “a new, hybrid social elite had emerged,
based on bourgeois values of thrift, hard work, sobriety and responsibility,” which manifested
itself at best in governmental reforms and the cited urban recovery.213 Having a tycoon father
and a baroness mother, children of such elite would grow up in many properties belonging to
the family: a townhouse for winter; a country house for spring; a chateau with a massive garden
for summer; and a shooting box for hunting.214 Yes, they would love hunting — and exhibiting
— animals, be it wild ones like elephants, tigers, crocodiles, and bears, or fast ones like ducks,
rabbits, and deer.215 Tuchman illustrated this well:
With the opening of the grouse season in August, and until the reopening of
Parliament in January, the great landowners engaged in continuous entertainment
of each other in week-long house parties of twenty to fifty guests. With each guest
bringing his own servant, the host fed as many as a hundred, and on one occasion
at Chatsworth, four hundred extra mouths while his house party lasted. Shooting
was the favored pastime and consisted in displaying sufficient stamina and
marksmanship, assisted by a loader and three or four guns, to bring down an
unlimited bag of small game flushed out of its coverts by an army of beaters.216
Figure 3.17 August Sander, Member of Parliament(Democrat), 1927; Sander, High School Girl, 1928.
212 Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 171; Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 308-10.
213 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Great Exodus” in chap. 4; Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 254.
214 Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 48-49.
215 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Taming the Wild,” in chap. 5.
216 Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 49.
60
Figure 3.18 Bertillon's physical measurements to identify criminals.
Figure 3.19 Suspension treatment at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, 1889.
Experiencing wonders of nature thoroughly outside of these estates, children would find every
object within — from glasses to candle holders, from chairs to clocks — covered with golden
leaves, shiny glasses, and colorful sateen. Each gesture, animal, or plant within paintings on
walls would narrate a story for them to remember: a boy should walk a political, military, or
diplomatic path while a girl should stand as the backbone of such man, an idea soon to be
challenged by women partaking in higher education.217 Even though it was often represented
contrarily, grown members of this group also would not experience an effortless day regarding
the body. Tuchman described how “the day began at ten with a gallop in the [Hyde] Park and
ended at a ball at three in the morning.”218 Gentlemen’s morning activity was keeping bodies
217 Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914, 134-7; Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 245-50;
Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 47-9; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The New Elite” in chap. 4.
218 Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 37.
61
fit by riding a horse soon to be replaced with a moto-car, which was always accompanied by
private meetings of fellows.219 In the afternoon, respectively, a cigar in one hand and a glass
of punch in the other, they would meet in various houses vis-à-vis their status in society to
discuss politics, economy, diplomacy, or any topic related to their affairs.220 With the rising
population, for instance, crime was one of the problems gentlemen had to handle: after intense
meetings, the public sphere would start to witness individuals with detailed names and bodily
records along with personas dubbed bohemians, dandies, or freaks.221 They imagined special
institutions where an orphan or an elderly person could be cared, a mad or disabled person
could be cured, and a homeless or a murderer could be disciplined.222 Given that
homosexuality threatened the settings of these institutions, gentlemen introduced physical
exercises in the day as a way of discharge.223 Similarly, rising alcoholism cases forced many
executives to facilitate the development of leisure time activities — entertainment, or pulp
fiction — to keep people away.224
If clubs and houses were special for men who had to govern the public domain, salons were
special for women who had to govern the private one.225 Disappearing in time, manuals of
appropriate behavior would set up the manners.226 Accordingly, the lady would get up before
everyone. The first breakfast, a slice of bread with a cup of hot drink, would be taken next to
awakening. The lady would then check the tasks of the day, related inventory, and children
heading out to school, even if all were set properly by servants responsible for catering,
maintenance, and logistics. The second breakfast would include starters, cold meat, or snacks,
and be taken around ten. After that, the lady would peruse received mail, fabricate garments,
or play piano as respectable women “should” neither show up in the streets before noon nor
be saluted if they do. Even though lunches started to be taken outside of the house because of
the changing work conditions, they had to be taken among family members: outsiders would
219 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The New Elite” in chap. 4; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Decline
of Aristocracy” in chap. 4; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 23; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 38; Tuchman,
The Proud Tower, 51.
220 Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914, 137; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 52.
221 Corbin, “Backstage,” 468-75; Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914, 17-8; Perrot, “Roles
and Characters,” 248-58.
222 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Madness and Civilization” in chap. 5; Perrot, “Roles and Characters,”
223; Perrot, “Roles and Characters,” 258-9; Corbin, “Bedenin Acıları, Sıkıntıları ve Sefaleti,” 293-307;
Stiker, “Yeni Özürlü Beden Algısı,” 360-68; Stiker, “Yeni Özürlü Beden Algısı,” 379-84.
223 Corbin, “Bedenlerin Buluşması,” 210-12.
224 Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 353-4; Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 373; Merriman, A History
of Modern Europe, 804-6; Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 248; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 503; Davies,
Europe, 775; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Pursuit of Happiness” in chap. 6.
225 Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 255.
226 Martin-Fugier, “Bourgeois Rituals,” Perrot 268-85. For yearly and lifetime activities, see Martin-
Fugier, “Bourgeois Rituals,” 285-337.
62
not be invited. So, the rules were stricter than one can imagine.227 Aside from elaborate family
gatherings held on Sunday, the lady had to assign a day in a week to receive guests in the
afternoon, between three and seven. On these receptions, she would sit in the center of the
salon and only get up to address visiting women, seniors, and priests, not men — who would
usually be a proprietor or literate. Also, it was an old-fashioned behavior to embroider during
the meeting, so any object reminding such activity would be removed. A table would contain
gorgeous appetizers while the daughters of the house would serve the tea. Guests would stay
fifteen to thirty minutes and they would not talk much during farewell in order not to disrupt
the conversation. For sure, the context affected these receptions a lot. Affairs of men getting
stricter, these receptions advanced in time to be held in the evenings. Similarly, as some
women did not want to remain at home, they would receive guests on the second and the fourth
Tuesdays of the month, between five and six. Other than hosting, the lady had to show up at
other receptions, which were many: for relatives; for nearness; for weddings; for employment;
for awards. If one cannot find the host at the home, she would leave a card whose folding style
would indicate if the host was visited by the very person who sent the card or a representative.
With dinners being taken later, around seven-thirty, people started to have a snack — butter,
bread, and a cup of tea — around five o’clock. Evenings then again would be assigned for
dinner parties, theaters, balls, operas, or looking over horses in sales. The theater or opera box
would be considered an extension of the salon, thus private: not sitting in a box, proper women
had to be accompanied by a male relative.228 Elaborate dinners would be prepared by a French
chef and, other than hunted animals, they would present diverse plates of beef, lamb, veal, and
mutton; chicken, ham, and duck; tongue and kidneys; sole fillets, turbot, and lobster.229 In
dinners with guests, if there is not any modest performance by children, a recital by an amateur
group, or a game such as charades, men would play billiards while women would embroider
or paint. In the climax of the night, around two in the morning, a supper would be served,
which could be very fancy. For sure, on important evenings a professional orchestra would be
hired, and guests would dance. And all mentioned phases of the day would require a special
garment, as Tuchman illustrated “at private dinner tables draped in smilax, with a footman
behind each chair, gentlemen in white tie and tails conversed with ladies in clouds of tulle over
bare shoulders, wearing stars or coronets in their elaborately piled hair.”230 While all these
experiences were running in the background, one can center on the lives of Dadaists.
227 Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914, 137.
228 Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 39-44.
229 Byrd and Dunn, Cooking Through History, 322; Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914, 149.
230 Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 38; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 50; Lieven, The Aristocracy in
Europe, 1815-1914, 138.
63
3.3. Lives of Zurich Dadaists before 1914
Member of a committed Catholic family of eight, Hugo Rudolf Ball was born in 1886 in
Pirmasens, Germany.231 His father was a shoe salesman. Ball’s early childhood was not
recorded well, even though his biographers acknowledge that he experienced an emotionally
unstable childhood full of religious stories. Because his parents were unable — or unwilling—
to finance him for further study, Ball, started working in a local leather factory at age fifteen,
after his primary education. Interested in poetry and music, Ball started writing poems and
plays during these four years of work. At the age of seventeen, for instance, he wrote der
Henker von Brescia. At the age of nineteen, he quit his job and managed to enroll in a
Gymnasium around Zweibrücken and completed three years of education in one year. This
was also the interval when he discovered the writings of Nietzsche. In 1906 when he was
twenty years old, Ball decided to try Munich for studying literature, philosophy, and history,
as well as diving into anarchist/communist literature. This was also the interval when he met
artists from the Expressionist circle such as Frank Wedekind, who had been challenging moral
rules of the time with his skits using body just like masturbating or urinating in the scene.232
Interestingly, when he was 21 years old, Ball was in Heidelberg and had an operation to change
his “Jewish” nose on account of common antisemitic ideas at the time, which had him also
write Die Nase des Michelangelo. His final dissertation was about Nietzsche, even though he
did not complete his education for the sake of attending the Drama School of Reinhardt in
Berlin in 1910, where he was going to make friends like George Heym, Richard Huelsenbeck,
and Klabund. At the age of twenty-five, Ball started to work as a stage manager in Stadttheater
in Plauen even though he got disappointed due to the coldness of the audience, and returned
to Munich in 1912.233 In Munich, he got closer not only to Der Blaue Reiter run by Wassily
Kandinsky but also to Hans Leybold, who was going to die in the war after three years,
eventually having Ball and Huelsenbeck organize an expressionist soirée in Berlin against the
war — The First Memorial of Fallen Poets. 1913 was a dynamic year for Ball: in addition to
231 For a much more detailed biographical material, see John Elderfield, “Introduction,” in Hugo Ball,
Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, trans. Ann Raimes (1974; reis., Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), xv-xix; Karl Riha, “‘I Was Born a Great Enthusiast’:
On Hugo Ball,” in Dada Zurich: A Clown’s Game from Nothing, eds. Brigitte Pichon and Karl Riha
(New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996), 63. Also see Hans Bolliger and Willy Verkauf, “A Dada
Dictionary,” in Dada: Monograph of a Movement, ed. Willy Verkauf (New York: George Wittenborn,
1957), 115-76.
232 RoseLee Goldberg, Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present (New York: Harry Abrams, 1979),
34-5.
233 Ball had produced Hauptmann’s Helios, Blei’s Die Welle, Andreev’s The Life of Man during the
days preceding the cabaret.
64
producing plays in Münchner Kammerspiele, he collaborated with some artists and writers on
the journal Die Revolution, Die Neue Kunst, Die Aktion, or Phöbus, and met Emmy Hennings.
Figure 3.20 Hugo Ball, 1916; Emmy Hennings in performance preceding the days of the cabaret.
Emmy Hennings, originally Emma Coldsen, was born in 1885 in Flensburg, Germany.234
Member of a German and Danish seafaring family of three, she experienced a life she saw in
between opposites of religion and entertainment. Her father was a helmsman on a sailing ship,
who would do ship models for Hennings when she was younger. Similar to Ball, there is no
information about her early childhood, unfortunately. At the age of fifteen, in 1900, Hennings
left home and worked as a maid, kitchen helper, and washwoman. This was the time when she
also gave her first stage performances. At seventeen, she married Josef Paul Hennings and
gave birth to her first child who would die soon after, while the couple was traveling
throughout other cities. Then her second child, Annemarie, was born. When she was 21 years
old, her husband deserted, which forced Hennings to sell bathroom supplies at doors for a
living while the child remained with Emmy’s mother. At the age of twenty-three, in 1908,
Emmy Hennings started working as a cabaret performer where she worked almost every day
from seven pm to three am. In 1910, she was on morphine and diagnosed with typus as well
as syphilis. This was the time when she decided to become a Catholic. At that time, she met
Ferdinand Hardekopf, an Expressionist artist as well as a morphine addict, and started to travel
with him. Between 1911 and 1914, she had been arrested multiple times for streetwalking and
234 For a much more detailed biographical material, see Paula K. Kamenish, “Emmy Hennings: From
Cabaret Singer to the First Mama of Dada,” in Mamas of Dada: Women of the European Avant-Garde
(Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 2015), 11-7; Riese Hubert, “Zurich Dada and Its Artist
Couples,” 517-23; Hubert Van Den Berg, “The Star of the Cabaret Voltaire: Other Life of Emmy
Hennings,” in Dada Zurich: A Clown’s Game from Nothing, eds. Brigitte Pichon and Karl Riha, trans.
Roy F. Allen (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996), 83; Thomas F. Rugh, “Emmy Hennings and the
Emergence of Zurich Dada,” Woman’s Art Journal 2, no. 1 (1981): 1, https://doi.org/10.2307/1357892.
65
theft. At the age of twenty-eight, in 1913, she was present in Munich as a cabaret performer
(performing in Café Simplicissimus) as well as a poet close to the expressionist circle like
many artists of the time. This was the time when she also met Ball, who would ask her to recite
her songs and poetry again and again.
Marcel Janco (originally Iancu) was born in 1895 in Bucharest, Romania.235 He was a member
of an upper-middle-class Jewish family of six. His father was a merchant selling suits; his
mother was a trained piano player. Janco grew up in one of Bucharest’s largest houses. At age
thirteen, in 1908, he enrolled a popular elementary school, Gheorghe Sincai. Around 1910,
Janco enrolled in Gheorghe Lazar Lyceum. Around these times, Janco also took classes in
painting and graphic arts from Iosif Iser, a famous caricaturist drawing “simple people” against
bourgeois taste. Educated in Munich and Paris, Iser was a fan of Cézanne as well as Nabis and
was publishing works in the journal of the Café Simplicissimus. Besides, during his high
school education, Janco visited numerous museums across Hungary, Austria, Germany,
Switzerland, and Holland. This was also the time when he met Samuel Rosenstock(Tzara),
Eugen Iovanaki (Ion Vinea), Paul (Poldi) Chapier, and Jacques Costin, whom he collaborated
with while publishing the journal Simbolul that appeared in 1912, during the Balkan Wars.
Along with sponsoring the journal, he was responsible for the graphical section. So, this was
the time when he and Tzara were learning the basics of preparing something to publish.
Tristan Tzara, namely Samuel Rosenstock (also used S. Samyro), was born in 1896 in Moineşti
in Romania, a village famous for the oil business and mineral waters.236 Member of a relatively
secular Jewish bourgeois family of four, Tzara experienced a childhood full of medical stories
as he, for example, had vertigo. His father was working in forest exploitation. Tzara was
educated in the Israelite School of Moineşti between the ages of six and ten where he took
Romanian, modern languages, science, and religion. Nevertheless, he was also getting
educated in languages as well as music at home. In 1906, at the age of ten, he left the household
to attend the first year of a gymnasium in Foşcani. He was good at German, French, and
mathematics. In 1907, peasants in Romania revolted against landowners and marched upon
the capital, which was sadly suppressed with blood. Tzara’s parents concluded that capital
would be better for Tzara’s education. So, he moved to Bucharest, a provoking city with its
235 For a much more detailed biographical material, see Tom Sandqvist, “Marcel Iancu Becomes Marcel
Janco,” in Dada East: the Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire (London: The MIT Press, 2006), 65-79.
236 For a much more detailed biographical material, see Marius Hentea, Tata Dada: The Real Life and
Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara (London: The MIT Press, 2014), 1-56. Also see Tom Sandqvist,
“Samuel Rosenstock Becomes Tristan Tzara,” in Dada East: the Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire
(London: The MIT Press, 2006), 123-140; Marius Hentea, “The Education of Samuel Rosenstock, or,
How Tristan Tzara Learned His ABCs,” Dada/Surrealism 20 no. 1 (2015), 1-22,
https://doi.org/10.17077/0084-9537.1294.
66
boulevards, casinos, cafés, and cinemas, where he was going to be staying for the next eight
years. There, for the second year of gymnasium, Tzara attended Schewitz-Thierrin Institute, a
famous preparatory school where he took classes in Romanian, French, German, Latin,
religion, history, geography, mathematics, and natural and physical sciences. Also, he was
trained in drawing, music, gymnastics, and calligraphy. So, it was a serious institution where
one would get 42 hours of education in a week, where everyone would also get training related
to the military and hygiene (which was a hot problem at the time). In 1910, Tzara accordingly
wrote a final thesis about the importance of hygiene. After a rough year in Dimitrie Cantemir
and Sf. Gheorghe, in 1912, at age sixteen, Tzara enrolled in Mihai Viteazul Lyceum in
Bucharest. In addition to the cited publication of Simbolul, Tzara was also going to publish
the journal Chamerae with Vinea, showing up in 1915.
Figure 3.21 The circle of Simbolul in 1912: from left to right, Samuel Rosenstock, unknown, Marcel
Iancu, Iuliu Iancu, Poldi Chapier, and Eugen Iovanaki.
Hans Peter Wilhelm/Jean Pierre Guillaume Arp was born into a family of three in 1886 in
Strasbourg, which was a part of Germany at that time.237 Being Alsatian, he was able to speak
both French and German. He had loved painting and sculpting since his early childhood.
Around the age of fourteen, Arp accordingly enrolled École des Arts et Métiers in Strasbourg.
237 For a much more detailed biographical material, see Jean Arp, “Reflections Of A Sculptor,” in Jean
Arp, ed. Henry Gelzaher (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1972); H. Henkels, and F. C.
Nagels, “The Beginning of Dadaism: Arp and van Rees in Zürich 1915,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch
Jaarboek (NKJ) / Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 23 (1972): 373–90,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/24705675.
67
Five years later, in 1905, he went to Weimar to attend two-year course at the Kunstschule
under Professor Ludwig von Hoffman, where he also found the chance to study French
painting thanks to exhibitions by Count von Kessler and Henry Van de Velde. At twenty-two,
Arp then went to Paris to attend Académie Julian for a year, where he reviewed cubist
drawings. As Garb noted, “French art students had long studied the internal structure of the
body in their anatomy classes. Studying the human skeleton and drawing the structure of the
muscles from famous statues of flayed figures such as Jean Antoine Houdon’s Ecorché was
standard practice.”238 After two years of personal study at home in Weggis, Switzerland, and
visits to Paris, in 1910, Arp, contacted some friends from Paris — Wilhelm Gimmi, Walter
Helbig, and Oskar Lüthy — to publish Der Moderne Bund that came in the following year. He
then went to Lucerne to open an exhibition of Der Modern Bund exhibiting paintings from
Arp, Aimet, Friesz, Gaugin, Gimmi, Helbig, Hodler, Lüthy, Matisse, and Picasso. In 1911, at
the age of twenty-five, Arp went to Munich and met Kandinsky who invited him to collaborate
in Der Blaue Reiter. He was hired by expressionist Robert Delaunay for Herwarth Walden’s
Sturm Gallery where he organized exhibitions and wrote reviews. In 1912, Arp moved back
to Munich for the second exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter. At age 26, he went to Zurich to put
on the second exhibition of Der Modern Bund, then to Berlin to exhibit his works in the First
German Autumn Salon at Sturm Gallery.
Sophie Henriette Gertrud Taeuber was born into a family of five in 1889 in Davos,
Switzerland.239 She was able to speak French and Swiss German but also tutored in English.
Her mother was a proprietor of a large building rented by architects, florists, dressmakers, or
paper merchants, and was into a business of linen goods, both hand-crafted and machine-made.
Sophie learned to do everything on her own from her mother, who had designed even the very
house they dwelled in. So, she experienced a childhood full of arts and crafts. Accordingly, in
1907, she became a student at the Drawing School of the Industrial and Weaving Museum at
St. Gallen. Next year, Taeuber enrolled in a two-year program at the School of Applied Arts
of St. Gallen. In 1910, she moved to Munich and enrolled in the Teaching and Research Studio
for Applied and Fine Arts — an experimental textile workshop of Wilhelm von Debschitz and
Hermann Obrist — in the city’s bohemian quarter. The school was aiming to integrate
traditional craft with industrial mass production (forerunning the reorganization of the School
238 Garb, Bodies of Modernity, 62.
239 For a much more detailed biographical material, see Roswitha Mair, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and the
Avant-Garde: A Biography, trans. Damion Searls (London: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), 1-
36; Jill Fell, “Zurich Dada Dance Performance and the Role of Sophie Taeuber,” in Dada and Beyond,
Volume 2: Dada and Its Legacies, eds. Elza Adamowicz and Eric Robertson (Amsterdam-New York:
Rodopi, 2012), 17-22; Riese Hubert, “Zurich Dada and Its Artist Couples,” 527-535. See also Naima
Prevots, “Zurich Dada and Dance: Formative Ferment,” Dance Research Journal 17, no. 1 (1985): 3–
8, https://doi.org/10.2307/1478215.
68
of Arts and Crafts by Henry van de Velde and the establishment of Bauhaus) and was
defending the importance of athletics and leisure within a creative process. Accordingly, in
addition to studying famous movements of the time such as Judengstil, Nabis, or Japonism,
students would hike, sail, play tennis, ski, or else put on festivals and theatrical performances,
balls, and public readings where nearby artists — such as Stefan George, Karl Wolfskehl,
Clara Rilke-Westhoff, Wassily Kandinsky, or Gabriele Münter — would be invited to. In 1912
when she was twenty-three, Taeuber visited the School of Applied Arts in Hamburg for a year.
There, along with contemporary popular discussions about art, Taeuber studied folk arts. In
1913, Laban, a friend of Obrist, founded a dance school in Munich where Isadora Duncan,
Clotilde von Derp, and Alexander Sakharoff had already been present, while Taeuber was
observing their work. Besides, this was the interval during which Arp, Ball, Hennings, or
Huelsenbeck co-lived in the city whether aware of each other or not.
Figure 3.22 Hans Arp in Weggis, 1911; Sophie Taeuber in Munich, 1914.
Carl Wilhelm Richard Huelsenbeck was born in 1892 and raised in Dortmund, Germany.240
He was a member of a family of four. The father of Richard was a chemist. His maternal
grandfather had Richard love poetry at a young age. After having a primary education, at age
fifteen, Huelsenbeck enrolled in a Gymnasium in Burgsteinfurt, where he found the chance to
write his first poems. In 1911 when he was nineteen years old, his father wanted Huelsenbeck
to work in civil service, thus study law, even though he was interested in literature and art
history. He, therefore, managed to go to Munich to study with Heinrich Wölffin and Arthur
240 For a much more detailed biographical material, see Hans J. Kleinschmidt, “The New Man—Armed
with the Weapons of Doubt and Defiance: Introduction,” in Richard Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada
Drummer, ed. Hans Kleinschmidt. trans. Joachim Neugroschel (1974; reis., Berkeley and Los Angeles,
CA: University of California Press, 1996), xv-xix.
69
Kutscher, two of the most famous art historians of the time while the latter was also close to
Wedekind and would hang out in Café Simplicissimus. This was the time when Huelsenbeck
also met Hugo Ball, who was also close to Franz Marc and Paul Klee. Between 1912-3, at the
age of twenty, Richard Huelsenbeck went to Paris to study philosophy but also wrote in Die
Revolution as a Paris reporter in collaboration with Ball and Leybolds. At age twenty-two, just
before the war, he went to Berlin to study literature and published writings in Die Aktion.
Perhaps war changed his mind as Huelsenbeck decided to study medicine for a living.
Nevertheless, while taking classes in anatomy, physiology, histology, and chemistry, he kept
writing poems for Die Aktion.
Johannes Siegfried Hans Richter was born into a wealthy family of eight in 1888 in Berlin,
Germany.241 His father was a real estate speculator, farmer, and furniture maker while art was
cared for a lot in the family. In 1902, at fourteen, Richter enrolled in a boarding school in
Seesen where he made his first drawings. Two years later, he visited a pastel drawing
exhibition of Manet in Berlin that impressed him a lot. In 1906, Richter graduated from Falk-
Real-Gymnasium of Berlin. He wanted to become a painter, even though his father had him
choose architecture. At age 20, in 1908, Richter completed his apprenticeship in carpentry and
then was allowed to enroll at the Academy of Art where he took classes for a year. Richter then
moved to Weimar to attend the Academy of Art. At that time, he was studying paintings from
the Old Masters Exhibition in the National Gallery as well as the Kaiser Friedrich Museum of
which results were going to return as a source of income in the following years. Between 1910-
11, Richter was commissioned by a publisher to illustrate Decameron he would be ruining
later. Then, just like Arp, he attended Academie Julian in Paris, where he also worked with
Emil Szittya on a publication dubbed Les Hommes Nouveaux/Neue Menschen that also
included his poems. In 1912, Richter returned to Berlin where he saw the Secession Exhibition
as well as Cezanne’s painting Les Grandes Baigneuses. This was the time when he started
working on political themes as well as moving towards abstraction. Richter was up to
contemporary painting: around 1913, he was close to Der Sturm in Berlin, Die Brücke in
Dresden, and Der Blaue Reiter in Münich. At that time, he also met Marinetti and distributed
the Futurist Manifesto in Germany. The next year, in 1914, Richter was close to expressionist
artists assembled around Die Aktion where he published his sketches of artists. Now, one can
address how World War I challenged all these lives.
241 Marion von Hofacker, “Chronology,” in Hans Richter: Activism, Modernism, and the Avant-Garde,
ed. Stephen C. Foster (London: The MIT Press, 1998), 240-8.
70
3.4. Violent conflicts between 1870-1914, the Great War, and wartime conditions
None of the mentioned changes remained without reaction. By the turn of the century, owing
to the expansion in the exchange of ideas as well as in education, more people wanted to be
politically represented.242 And yet, determining the very identity people wanted to be largely
represented by has brought endless struggles. Blanning observed:
Industrialization, imperialism, the growth of cities, the decline of the countryside,
the power of money and the power of machines, the clenched fist of the working
class, the red flag of Socialism, the wane of the aristocracy, all these forces and
factors were churning like the bowels of a volcano about to erupt.243
Because of their complex backgrounds, none of these struggles can be easily cited here.244
What matters from the lookout of this study are the implemented approaches of selfjustification
and confronting others. In the first place, many pressure groups of the time
justified their actions by reasoning that they, in contrast with the cluster they contradicted, did
not benefit from the achieved result as much as they suffered to achieve such a result. In other
words, the struggle of these movements, their representatives declared, was about setting a
fairer world. Interestingly, not only unifying factions of the time but also the discriminator
ones followed such an approach. For example, like many of his antisemite fellows, Hermann
Ahlwardt asserted “wherever there are opportunities to make money, the Jews have established
themselves, but not in order to work — no, they let others work for them and take what the
others have produced by their labor.”245 In the second place, many action groups of the time
eventually remained unsatisfied with the progress achieved through give-and-takes conducted
in words. In other words, they couldn’t help but implement violence to defend their points or
draw attention.246At that time, for example, not only anarchist groups but also feminist ones
were taking actions of terror.247 Emmeline Pankhurst had to declare "only justification for
violence, the only justification for damage to property, the only justification for risk to the
242 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “The Age of the Masses” in chap. 7; Gildea, Barricades and Borders,
313.
243 Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe, 117-8; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 22; Tuchman,
The Proud Tower, 230.
244 For the idea of revolution manifesting itself on the period, see Blanning, The Oxford History of
Modern Europe, 16-36; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, 597-608; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 506-7;
Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe, 159-160; Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe, 175. For
women groups, see Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 256. For Irish question, see Lindemann, A History of
Modern Europe, 132.
245 Hermann Ahlwardt, “The Semitic Versus the Teutonic Race,” in Sources of European History Since
1900, eds. Marvin Perry, Matthew Berg, and James Krukones (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2011), 28.
27. For a brief explanation of antisemitism, see Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 219-24; Lindemann, A
History of Modern Europe, 140-6; Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe, 164-7.
246 For a brief explanation of the declining violence in political movements, see. Blanning, The Oxford
History of Modern Europe, 36.
247 Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe, 174.
71
comfort of other human beings is the fact that you have tried all other available means and
have failed to secure justice.”248
Figure 3.23 The arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst outside Buckingham Palace, 1914.
Even the Great War can be seen as an upshot of an international escalation that couldn’t be
prevented through words, namely diplomacy. As Sperber noted, the escalation perhaps had
started with the Moroccan Crisis of 1905, then respectively followed the Young Turk
Revolution, the second Moroccan Crisis of 1911, and the Balkan Wars of 1912-13.249 All these
sad battles enkindled many debates about the fate of nations under multinational empires. The
well-known peak point was going to be the moment when a Serbian separatist assassinated the
heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.250 While the empire had been backed up by Germany,
the Serbian separation had been supported by Russia, which was close to France. England was
intermediating but also highly suspicious of Germany that — like many other delayed but
strong rivals in the competition of colonization, industrialization, and culture — had been
alarming.251 For sure, the colonial/imperial project had already been in question owing to
another series of struggles — Boxer Rebellion, Boer Wars, or Russo-Japanese War — that
also caused people to see the effectiveness, if not the horror, of the latest warfare technology
248 Emmeline Pankhurst, “Why We Are Militant,” in Sources of European History Since 1900, eds.
Marvin Perry, Matthew Berg, and James Krukones (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2011), 12-3.
249 Sperber, Europe 1850–1914, 219-24.
250 Sperber, 219-24.
251 Sperber, 219-24; Evans, The Pursuit of Power,“The Second Industrial Revolution” in chap. 4;
Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 54-58.
72
at the time, which also had many defenders of imperialism to feel obliged to prove their project
through a novel accumulation of wealth owing to novel resources like petroleum.252 The
justification of violence, especially in the international domain, was also related to
misinterpretation of the Nietzschean and Darwinian ideas, which had many people consider
that their race was superior to others. Cecil Rhodes, for instance, chronicled “we are the finest
race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human
race.”253 Ultimately, even though there had been many clusters opposing larger battles just as
socialist or religious groups, in the company of militarist desires, “yellow” press, unhurried
reason of the leaders, and steadfast jolly folly of followers, the great powers of Europe started
to march upon each other.254 Austria-Hungary declared to march over Serbia; Russia mobilized
its armies to the place; Germany then declared war against Russia and marched to France over
Belgium; the United Kingdom declared war against Germany on account of Belgium. The
Great War has started.
Imagining an overall revitalization in society, many artists of the time supported the Great
War, at least until the war exposed its dark side.255 Likewise, although disgusted by the war,
most of the Dadaists were not pacificists, as Buelens noted “their own rhetoric and
iconography were to a very large extent drenched in violence and aggression.”256 When the
war came, Ball volunteered three times but got rejected due to his health issues. He accordingly
made a private journey to the front, which eventually had him protest the war. Huelsenbeck
volunteered in military service and was trained for an artillery unit. Luckily, he did not
experience the front, as he was released from service owing to nerve pain. Unlike many male
expressionist artists of the time, Hennings was pacificist from the beginning. She was even
imprisoned for forging passports on behalf of draft evaders. In 1915 when the context became
harsher regarding nationalism, Ball and Hennings decided to leave Berlin for Zurich. In the
summer of 1914, both Janco and Tzara were high school graduates about to enroll in a
university. For a Romanian Jewish child at the time, the typical successful path was going to
252 Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe, 158; Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe, 170-3;
Blanning, The Oxford History of Modern Europe, 235-7; Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 41; Hobsbawm, The
Age of Empire, 63-4; Gildea, Barricades and Borders, 277-89; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Building
The New Jerusalem” in chap. 4; For Belgian crisis, see Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe, 170-
173; Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “‘The White Man’s Burden’” in chap. 8.
253 Cecil Rhodes, “The Superior Anglo-Saxon Race,” in Sources of European History Since 1900, eds.
Marvin Perry, Matthew Berg, and James Krukones (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2011), 20-1.
254 Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe, 178-184; Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 64-70; Richards and
Waibel, Twentieth-Century Europe, 10; Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 53-9; Evans, The Pursuit of Power,
“‘The Great War We All Hope For’” in chap. 8; For the characteristics of the great powers before the
war, see Richards and Waibel, Twentieth-Century Europe, 13-27; Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 30; Evans,
The Pursuit of Power, “The Workshop Of The World,” in chap. 4.
255 Adamowicz, “Zurich Dada,” 23.
256 Buelens, “Reciting Shells,” 295.
73
Paris. Feeling that Romania was about to enter the war, Janco nevertheless went to Zurich to
study chemistry, soon to be replaced with architecture. This was followed by Tzara in the
autumn of 1915. Days before the cabaret were boring: they would hang around in the city,
cafés, and friends.257 When the war came, Arp went to Paris with one of the last trains departing
from Cologne. He lived in Montmartre and met important artists of the time like Apollinaire,
Cravan, Jacob, Picasso, and Modigliani. Nevertheless, he was arrested by French officials and
directed to leave France. Arp then headed out to Switzerland where he was sent to German
officials. There, he managed to skip the duty by acting insane. He then moved near Romanian
artist Arthur Segal living in Ascona. There, just as “renaissance painters,” Arp collaborated
with Otto van Rees for a wall painting of a children's school, run by Han Corray, one of the
main supporters of Dada in the following years.258 In 1915, Arp announced an exhibition in
Galerie Tanner with Van Reeses. There, Arp also met Taeuber along with Tzara and Janco.
As a newly graduated designer, Taeuber was traveling around northern Europe just before the
war. She then decided to settle near her sister in Zurich and work as a painter and carpet
designer. When she got economically comfortable, she contacted Laban, who was offering
dance classes in Zurich. In the school of Laban, Taeuber explored how to create and maintain
bodily forms in a dance, how to move with or without a surrounding group, or how to
improvise. Among the Dadaists this study focuses on, Richter was the only member who
directly experienced the front. When the war started, he immediately was taken for the army.
In a farewell party organized by Hardekopf and Ehrenstein, Richter and the organizers
promised each other to meet in Zurich after two years. In the following few months, Richter
was fighting in light artillery. Just like his two brothers, Richter was wounded and sent to
Berlin for treatment. In 1915, his two drawings appeared on Die Aktion. After eighteen months
of service, in 1916, Richter was discharged from duty, which was announced in Die Aktion
with a special issue. This was followed by an important exhibition of him in Galerie Neue
Kunst in Munich. In August, Richter married Elisabeth Steinert, the nurse who looked after
him in the military hospital, which was also a common incident among war veterans. Be it
related to the honeymoon, ensuing treatment, or the mentioned rendezvous; Richter managed
to visit Zurich in the summer of 1916. As luck would have it, in Café de la Terrasse, Richter
was able to meet not only Hardekopf and Ehrenstein but also Tzara and Janco, who were
sitting next to them.259
257 Hentea, Tata Dada, 59.
258 Esther Tisa Francini, “‘Hot spot of international energies’ The network of Dada artists, dealers, and
collectors of African art,” in Dada Africa: Dialogue with the Other, eds. Ralf Burmeister, Michaela
Oberhofer, and Esther Tisa Francini (Chicago: Scheidegger and Spiess, 2016), 93.
259 Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art. trans. David Britt (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1997), 27.
74
Figure 3.24 A Medieval war with modern means; Old and new combat in World War I
Scholars have characterized the Great War as a “total war” where states wrestled not only on
the battlefield but also in the homeland.260 In other words, a state was powerful in the war as
much as it was able to support the frontline with its internal institutions — from business to
household. This primarily manifested itself in the reorganization of scientific knowledge visà-
vis the wartime requirements: many specialists collaborated on reformulating the human
body vis-à-vis fatigue, nutrition, or ergonomics, and maturing special plans, techniques, and
garments to support the body of a soldier in extreme conditions. Besides, they not only
modernized conventional weapons like bayonets, sidearms, rifles, or mortars but also
developed new ones like grenades, machine guns, flamethrowers, or poisonous gas machines.
Unfortunately, the fatal mistakes made on the battlefield were going to be the very feedback
developing all these gadgets: leaders were going to severely understand that the colorful outfits
and vertical postures used in the prior wars would not be able to perform well anymore against
novel machine guns. And yet, all these could not be done without the necessary resources and
workforce, i.e., the reorganization of civil life concerning the wartime conditions.
Accordingly, in addition to being responsible for raising the morale of soldiers per the
propaganda run by the state, civilians — women, elderly, and children — were going to apply
firm diets: it was hard to find local goods like fish, potato, or fresh crops while sugar, milk,
butter, jam, cereal, cheese, eggs, bacon, meat, lard, or canned goods were going to be rationed.
As men had to fight, women also speedily started to work in jobs running all previously
mentioned institutions just as laboratory assistants, battlefield nurses, manual laborers, car
drivers, office secretaries, accountants or any other white-collar job formerly associated with
men. Even though many pressure groups lost their strength over the state during the war, this
260 Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, “Combat,” in A Companion to World War I, ed. John Horne, trans.
Heather Jones (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2010), 174; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 295;
Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 308; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 897-901; Lindemann, A
History of Modern Europe, 189-91; Richards and Waibel, Twentieth-Century Europe, 41-62; Jarausch,
Out of Ashes, 75-76; Jarausch, 90-100; Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 259-70.
75
employ, positively, was going to be the very power that forced leaders to acknowledge the
rights of women and workers. Nevertheless, no matter how much to be prepared, the very
environment — cold, rain, mud, snow, pests, and mice— was going to challenge the infantry
from the very beginning.
Figure 3.25 Some animals used in the war.
Figure 3.26 Garments of French Infantrymen by 1914 and 1916 (Verdun).
Figure 3.27 Increasing number of woman workers during the war.
76
Figure 3.28 German infantry advances across open terrain; French cycle-mounted troops rush to help
Belgium.
Figure 3.29 Entities stuck in the mud.
If the home was redesigned as a battlefield, the battlefield was reshaped as a home. The land,
for example, was bordered, piled up, and dug out to create a trench system not only protecting
the army from attacks but also consolidating it. Embracing different elements — like artillery
platform, information ditch, staging area, or observation post — such a system typically
consisted of two parallel lines connected with minor ones, which would be protected by
sandbags, steel wires, and heavy artillery. The spare time of the soldiers was decisive in
deciding whether the trench system was going to be articulated well or not: the more time
soldiers had, the better they set up the trench, their new home. Among the soldiers attacking,
only half were able to pass the trenches to fight with the enemy hand-to-hand. It is impossible
to recap the experience of soldiers during an attack:
For most soldiers, fighting in the First World War was anything but heroic.
On October 29, 1914, Sergeant I. F. Bell of the Gordon Highlanders was
admiring his “almost perfect trench” near the Belgian town of Ypres “when
all hell seemed let loose.” Suddenly the great guns roared and made the earth
heave, ears ring, and eyes tear. Then “Germans sprang from everywhere and
attacked us,” throwing hand grenades, ducking into craters, cutting through
barbed wire, tiptoeing through minefields, and ignoring dying comrades.
Terrorized defenders crouched behind sandbags, countering with rifle and
machine-gun fire until their barrels glowed, but were forced to fall back. In a
ritual repeated a thousand times, a British officer rallied his troops, ordering
them to “retake the trench” with bayonets in hand-to-hand combat. Then Bell
felt a “dull thud,” tumbled head over heels, and “discovered that [his] right
foot was missing.” The dead piled up three deep, but hardly any ground was
77
gained. Eventually stillness returned and corpses rotted in the mud, emitting a
nauseating stench. The “stark hellishness” of the scene was indescribable.261
Owing to the very trench system setting a strong defense, days were boringly long. So, forming
the trench was not the only leisure time activity of the soldiers: other than cooking, sleeping,
getting prepared, and fighting, soldiers would play cards, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and
visit the adjacent brothels if there were any. Along with rewards like chocolate or jam, a meal
of a soldier would consist of a dry biscuit, bread, bean, pork fat, bully beef, soup, tea, wine,
rum, or brandy. In sum, the war was not only challenging senses of seeing or hearing but also
of taste, touch, and smell, be it of mold, sandbags, motionless water, wet woolen clothes,
gunpowder, chemical gasses, toiles, cleaning chemicals, blood, trench, foot, or
unwashed/decomposing body.262
Figure 3.30 Plan of the dugout complex constructed by the 126th Infantry Regiment
261 Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 74-86; Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, 892-918; Richards and
Waibel, Twentieth-Century Europe, 46-49.
262 With its defenders and opposers, the violence has a long history. See Corbin, “Bedenin Acıları,
Sıkıntıları ve Sefaleti,” 277-292.
78
Figure 3.31 German troops immediately before the attack; A British soldier inside a trench
Figure 3.32 Moments of spare time in the war.
Figure 3.33 Objects of spare time activities: a diary, a cigarette, or a tiny set of playing cards.
Figure 3.34 George Grosz, Battlefield with Dead Soldiers, 1915; Felix Vallotton, Barbed Wire, 1916.
79
Figure 3.35 Félix Vallotton, Verdun, 1917; Giro Severini, Cannon in Action, 1915.
Figure 3.36 Otto Dix, Dead Men before the Position near Tahure, 1924; Dix, Storm Troops
Advancing under a Gas Attack, 1924.
Against all that happened, it’s hard to understand whether living was easier than death. From
the lookout of this study, a few occasions after the war might be interesting to underline. In a
recent study about internment conditions in Switzerland, Susan Barton fruitfully illustrated the
context that facilitated the emergence of Dada. First, many Swiss officials at the time had
people festively decorate cities to salute the arriving interned groups and to establish a feeling
of safety. Citizens, for example, would gift interned soldiers packages of “garments, soap,
games, writing materials, picture postcards, cigars, tobacco, chocolate, fruit and cash.”263 For
sure, the conditions of Switzerland went bad throughout the war: in time, the government
started to ration vital goods like bread, fat, or coal.264 Another interesting point is about the
segregation and integration while treating soldiers: they would be grouped not only concerning
their nations and military ranks — which cannot be separated from familial background —
but also their diseases.265 So, the very physical body brought different social corpora together.
263 Susan Barton, Internment in Switzerland during the First World War (London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2019), 45-65; 166-69.
264 Barton, Internment in Switzerland during the First World, 68.
265 Barton, 45-48; Barton, 64; Barton, 72-75.
80
And within medical treatment, as Marjorie Gehrhardt recently stressed, a brand-new type of
artist has emerged: an artist who collaborates with doctors to unite disintegrated bodies.
Emphasizing the uniqueness of the incident, Gehrhardt also maintained “historical
documentation focuses on the work of surgeons with no mention of sculptures, photographers
or artists contribution to the reconstructions of wounded faces.”266
Figure 3.37 A field hospital of the Allies; Stanley Spencer, Travoys arriving with Wounded at a
Dressing-Station at Smol, Macedonia, 1916.
Perhaps a final remark from the lookout of this study could be about the ways of bringing
injured soldiers to life. As Barton has also shown, because of the long daytime and the trauma
they had, many interned soldiers couldn’t help but appear in the environments of “low”
entertainment as consumers, even though it was very hard for them to mix with people (and
more specifically with women).267 Aware of the danger while integrating such fragile soldiers
back — either to life or to service — governments consequently promoted both agonist and
personal sports, practical and theoretical education, practices of religion, or arts and crafts.268
Even though this has not totally prevented soldiers from being present in the environments
states had not liked very much, it at least had soldiers feel like active agents again. And
interestingly almost every cluster of these soldiers was also sharing their ideas through local
newspapers.269 If abstract questions have been asked in the first chapter and how complex the
answers could be was shown in the second, one should also highlight a path enabling one to
bounce over the difficulties. While getting closer to the case of Zurich Dada, the next chapter
will address some methodological concerns by focusing on the artifacts that remained from
avant-gardes.
266 Marjorie Gehrhardt, The Men with Broken Faces: Gueules Cassées of the First World War (Bern:
Peter Lang, 2015), 203.
267 Barton, Internment in Switzerland during the First World War, 79-110; Barton, 159.
268 Barton, 113-173.
269 Barton, 157-158.
81
Table 3.5 Estimated Casualties of the World War 1
Figure 3.38 Horace Nicholls, Reconstructive Plastic Surgery During the First World War.
Figure 3.39 Horace Nicholls, Repairing War’s Ravages: Renovating Facial Injuries
82
Figure 3.40 An amputee at L’Hopital du Grand-Palais attaches a tool to his prosthetic device, 1919;
Jean Larrivé, Statues showing functional forearm and hand protheses, 1914; Paul Suján, Poster for the
State War Welfare Exhibition in Poszony, 1917.
Figure 3.41 Otto Dix, Prostitute and War Wounded (Two faces of Capitalism), 1923; Dix, War
Cripples, 1920.
Figure 3.42 Raoul Hausmann, Mechanic Head, 1919; Bercher and Ginestet Maxillofacial Helmet, a
fixator settling mandible fractures without a surgery.
83
CHAPTER 4
EMBODYING ZURICH DADA
In dance as in painting we are on the threshold of the art of the future. The same
rules must be applied in both cases. Conventional beauty must go by the board
and the literary element of "story-telling” or "anecdote” must be abandoned as
useless. Both arts must learn from music that every harmony and every discord
which springs from the inner spirit is beautiful, but that it is essential that they
should spring from the inner spirit and from that alone.
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)270
The new theater will use masks and stilts again. It will recall archetypes and use
megaphones. Sun and moon will run across the stage and proclaim their sublime
wisdom.
Hugo Ball (1886-1927)271
Figure 4.1 Serge Sudeikin, Cabaret, 1915
First, one reads literary thoughts to create new heavens. Next, one sees “a slum atmosphere of
the music-hall performers, the singers, the magicians, fire-eaters, and others.”272 Finally, one
hears screams of injured people “lying around all over the place, with arms and legs ripped off
270 Wassily Kandinsky, The Art of Spiritual Harmony, trans. Michael Sadleir (London, UK: Chiswick
Press, 1914), 100.
271 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 7.
272 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 5-6.
84
and stomachs split open.”273 Without a doubt, the people of La Belle Époque felt a dense blend
of emotions when the Great War came to shred modernization’s harvest of individuals,
institutions, goods, and ideas. Staying neutral within the context of the Great War, Switzerland
greeted many exiles who did not take part in the war. In April 1915, nine months after the
Great War had begun, one of these exiles, Hugo Ball, wrote in his diary “who wants to act
now, or even see acting?”274 In January 1916, after another nine months and a couple of suicide
attempts, however, he could not help but be on the way to realizing his “new theatre.” How
can one recite the well-known story of Dada’s spread from Cabaret Voltaire?
Dadaists were corporeal beings. Besides their “vanguard” ideas, they rushed and washed,
laughed and cried, starved and dined. And all these deeds inhabited a specific place and time.
So, with the relationship between bodies and environments in mind, one still may discover
novel aspects about Dada. This chapter, accordingly, starts with a review of two ideas paving
the way for the birth of Dada: Gesamtkunstwerk and the cabaret culture of early twentiethcentury
Europe. Then, in light of the discussion brought in the first chapter of this study and
several concepts that problematized corporeality by Pierre Bourdieu, Mary Douglas, Norbert
Elias, Michelle Foucault, Erving Goffman, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the chapter examines
several incidents that happened in Cabaret Voltaire, Zunfthaus Zur Waag, Gallery Dada, and
other locales of Zurich.
4.1. Birth of Dada, its foundations, and Cabaret Voltaire
The journal Cabaret Voltaire welcomed its readers by illuminating the cabaret’s start:
I went to Herr Ephraim, the owner of the “Meierei” and said: “Herr Ephraim,
please give me your room. I would like to start a cabaret.” Herr Ephraim agreed
and gave me the room. And I went to some people I knew and asked “Please give
a picture, a drawing, an engraving. I would like to put on an exhibition in my
cabaret.”275
When Dada scholars concentrate on Zurich, they tend to elucidate the emergence of Cabaret
Voltaire and artworks inside with “Ball’s keen interest in the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk —
the total work of art that would integrate various media into a multisensory whole,” which was
an outcome of Ball’s pre-war collaboration with Kandinsky, who defended the idea for the
273 A letter Huelsenbeck got from the fiancé of his sister, quoted in Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada
Drummer, 6.
274 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 16.
275 Hugo Ball, “Introduction,” in Cabaret Voltaire, ed. Hugo Ball (Zurich: Julius Heuberger, 1916), 5
translated in Debbie Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis: Zurich,” in A Companion to Dada and Surrealism, ed.
David Hopkins (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 21.
85
sake of getting a bodily reaction from audience than an intellectual one.276 Even so, as
Annabelle Melzer observed, Kandinsky was also opposing the idea’s practical application by
Wagner at the time for “never really aiming at a true fusion: at times making the music
prominent, at times the text, and never even considering color and pictorial form.”277
Accordingly, Kandinsky was searching for ways of fusing three elements of theatre: musical
movement, pictorial movement, and physical movement, all of which had to be abstract.278
Figure 4.2 Some drawings depicted in the journal Cabaret Voltaire: Filippo Marinetti, Dune (Parole
in libertà), Pablo Picasso, Dessin, Oppenheimer, Zeichnung.
Figure 4.3 Some paintings depicted in the journal Cabaret Voltaire: Hans Arp, Teppich; Otto Van
Rees, Papierbild.
Yet, as mentioned in the introduction, a closer look at the samples presented in Cabaret
Voltaire exposes that the latest artworks of the time were indeed combined with commercial
cabaret pieces poking “fun at politics, literature, human behavior, or anything else that people
276 Dickerman, “Zurich,” 23. David Roberts recaps a canonical discernment of Gesamtkunstwerk made
by Roger Fornoff as “I. An inter-or multimedial union of different arts in relation to a comprehensive
vision of the world and society; II. An implicit or explicit theory of the ideal union of the arts; III. A
closed worldview, combining a social-utopian or historical-philosophical or metaphysical-religious
image of the whole with a radical critique of existing society and culture; IV. a projection of an aestheticsocial
or aesthetic-religious utopia, which looks to the power of art for its expression and as the aesthetic
means to a transformation of society.” See David Roberts, The Total Work of Art in European
Modernism (New York: Cornell University Press, 2011), 7.
277 Annabelle Melzer, Dada and Surrealist Performance (London: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1994), 17.
278 Kandinsky, The Art of Spiritual Harmony, 101.
86
will understand.”279 And, such an eclectic combination was going to challenge both categories
in a short time and be a defining feature of Dada.280
Here, one may wonder why Ball and Hennings needed a cabaret room to realize a total theater
rather than, for instance, a theater hall. Economy, perhaps, lies on one side of the answer, since
Ball, just like Hennings, “was obviously poor; he could never spend much money, and he lived
in very modest rooms.”281 Accordingly, they must have asked permission from Jan Ephraim,
the Dutch owner of a wine bar, to use a room with a stage by “arguing that it would be popular
with intellectuals and draw a crowd,” which hopefully would increase Ephraim’s “sales of
beer, sausage and rolls.”282 Familiarity, equally, could be on the other side: as mentioned,
Hennings had already been performing in cabarets while Ball was playing the piano as well as
directing theater pieces.283 Having met in a Café Simplicissimus, a cabaret in Munich famous
among Expressionist artists, the couple had already been working together in a traveling group
dubbed Flamenco just before establishing their “miniature variety show.”284 Besides, the
intended audience was already familiar with the venue: the room wanted by Ball and Hennings
had already hosted a faction of Swiss poets two years before under the title of Cabaret
Pantagruel, namely the first literary café of Zurich. This question, nevertheless, also requires
a clearer demarcation for cabarets, which will be provided here by Peter Jelavich as:
a small stage in a relatively small hall, where the audience sat around tables. The
intimacy of the setting allowed direct, eye-to-eye contact between performers and
spectators. The show consisted of short (five- or ten-minute) numbers from
several different genres, usually songs, comic monologues, dialogues and skits,
less frequently dances, pantomimes, puppet shows, or even short films. They dealt
in a satirical or parodistic manner with topical issues: sex (most of all),
commercial fashions, cultural fads, politics (least of all). These numbers were
usually presented by professional singers and actors, but often writers, composers,
or dancers would perform their own works. The presentations were linked
together by a conferencier, a type of emcee who interacted with the audience,
made witty remarks about events of the day, and introduced the performers.285
For sure, such an ideal image constantly fluctuated in line with the attendants’ background:
While Parisian cabarets were tavern-like settings encouraging consumption and free
279 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 10; Erickson, Dada: Performance, Poetry, and Art, 65-
6; See also Ball, Flight Out of Time, 50-7.
280Jeanpaul Goergen, “The Big Drum: Boom Boom Boom Boom: The Music of Zurich Dada,” in Dada
Zurich: A Clown’s Game from Nothing, eds. Brigitte Pichon and Karl Riha (New York: G.K. Hall &
Co., 1996), 155; Debbie Lewer, “‘Mapping’ Zurich Dada,” 50; Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis: Zurich,” 24;
Dickerman, “Zurich,” 21.
281 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 2.
282 Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, 13; Dickerman, “Zurich” 21.
283 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 4.
284 Roy F. Allen, “Zurich Dada, 1916-1919: The Proto-Phase of the Movement,” in Dada/Dimensions,
ed. Stephen C. Foster (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1985), 6.
285 Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret (London: Harvard University Press, 1993), 2.
87
movement for the sake of intimacy, German counterparts were theater-like settings separating
stage and audience.286 For Jelavich, cabarets can be seen as successors of variety shows, an
outcome of a metropolitan experience, namely the experience of abrupt changes driven by
consumerism.287 Nevertheless, in the wake of Nietzsche’s ideas, many artists at the time
believed in variety shows’ energy to revitalize culture. The final aim for these artists was to
infuse “everyday existence” with “aesthetic vitality,” achieved by enhancing applied arts with
“applied lyrics.”288 For Jelavich, cabarets oscillated between dramatic theater and Nietzschean
variety show with a bulky pinch of “antiauthoritarian sarcasm,” a German contribution to save
entertainment from being an object for consumption. The best example of this mixture, which
Jelavich dubs a revolution, was Max Reinhardt’s 1901 dated cabaret Schall and Rauch. In a
context where drama was chiefly drawing on spoken word, Reinhardt believed in the stage’s
ability to create another reality, and at this juncture, the cabarets — with their gift to use visual,
gestural, and musical elements — could revitalize the stage.289 In other words, cabaret was
seen as the exact place to experiment with new media to revitalize the drama of the time. It
would not be far-fetched to argue that Hugo Ball had a similar understanding since he was one
of Reinhardt’s students.290 So, for Ball and Hennings, whatever the “new theatre” would be,
one needed to discover it from the joyful path of a cabaret.291 Anyhow, Ephraim accepted the
offer. On the February 5th, 1916, a few weeks before the Battle of Verdun, the press declared:
Cabaret Voltaire. Under this name, a group of young artists and writers has been
formed whose aim is to create a center for artistic entertainment. The idea of the
cabaret will be that guest artists will come and give musical performances and
readings at the daily meetings.292
The phrase “a center of artistic entertainment” is of note, given that Ball at first imagined the
venue as a bistro of artists, “in the [Café] Simplizissimus style, but more artistic and more
deliberate.”293 Also, the cabaret was promoted as Künstlerkneipe Voltaire, “not a cabaret
exactly but something between a saloon or pub and a student club — a beer joint,” as
deciphered by Jed Rasula.294 Dadaists’ chronicles are in accord with Peter Jelavich’s
286 Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret, 36-61.
287 Jelavich, 17-8.
288 Jelavich, 10-35.
289 Jelavich, 62-84.
290 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 9.
291 Allen, “Zurich Dada, 1916-1919,” 27-8.
292 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 50; For Verdun, see Lindemann, A History of Modern Europe, 192;
Richards and Waibel, Twentieth-Century Europe, 51-53; Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 84.
293 Richard W. Sheppard, “Hugo Ball an Rathe Brodnitz: Bisher unveroffentlichte Briefe und
Kurzmitteilungen aus den ‘Dada’-Jahren,” Jahrbuch der deutschen Schiller-Gesellschaft 16 (1972): 50,
quoted in Roy F. Allen, “Zurich Dada, 1916-1919: The Proto-Phase of the Movement,” in
Dada/Dimensions, ed. Stephen C. Foster (Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1985), 6. At that time, terms
bistro and cabaret were used together/interchangeably.
294 Rasula, Destruction Was My Beatrice, 3.
88
description of cabarets. Janco, for instance, recalls the cabaret as “a small hall with some
fifteen or twenty tables and a 100 square feet of stage, the place could hold about 35 to 50
guests.”295 In terms of elegance, nevertheless, Cabaret Voltaire was on the deprived side as
Huelsenbeck noted “the furnishings of the cabaret were inconceivably primitive. Emmy, on
whose success or failure as a singer the existence of the cabaret hinged, had no dressing room.
She would change behind a trestle over which a canvas was stretched with holes as big as your
fist.”296 Following Jelavich’s discernment of setting and program, one can identify Cabaret
Voltaire as a sample of pub-cabarets, of which primary example can be Max Tilke’s (1869-
1942) 1901 dated Zum hungrigen Pegasus, which also “took place in a small back room of an
Italian restaurant” while the fifteen tables accommodated sixty to hundred people ranging from
artists to financiers that were sometimes invited to perform on stage, creating an atmosphere
of “amusement” with "absolute equality" and "indifference.”297 The decoration of The Hungry
Pegasus is interesting especially when compared with Cabaret Voltaire, as the walls were also
decorated with drawings of Tilke.
Figure 4.4 Society in Simplicissimus; musicians and guests, 1910
295 Marcel Janco, “Creative Dada,” in Dada: Monograph of a Movement, ed. Willy Verkauf (New York:
George Wittenborn, 1957), 28; Huelsenbeck also described the atmosphere: “Whenever someone
opened the door, thick clouds of smoke would come pouring out like the smoke that hovers over fields
during the burning of the harvest leavings. A caustic, cindery smell wafted through the corridor. The
Zurich students would bring their long pipes with them from the restaurant. This was their way of
irritating the bourgeois. They would sit at round tables with their feet up on the boards.” See
Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 9.
296 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 10.
297 Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret, 86.
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Figure 4.5 Max Tilke, Self-portrait at the opening of “The Hungry Pegasus”, 1902(?)
Even Café Simplicissimus had paintings on the wall. At this juncture, perhaps one can ask
whether it is enough to put pictures, drawings, or engravings on the walls to create a total work
of art. To be sure, there was a programmatic intersection of different activities in Cabaret
Voltaire where embodied agents interacted with space differently. Huelsenbeck, for instance,
noted that Ball and Hennings “had transformed [the setting] into a combination [of] artists’
club, exhibition hall, pub, and cabaret.”298 Yet, did that intersection of activities manifest itself
as a combination by external means as Kandinsky’s criticism of Wagner implied, or did that
intersection manifest itself as a fusion of those pictorial, musical, and physical movements
where the entire setting was reorganized from the beginning? To what degree one can argue
that Cabaret Voltaire, as a distinct entity, formed a Gesamtkunstwerk? There are two
possibilities to follow. On the one hand, one can assume that Cabaret Voltaire was an
intersection of different art practices and can study presented pieces as separate attempts to
298 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 8-9.
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create a total work. Ruth Hemus, for instance, saw Dada dances as separate examples
reinforcing a search for a total artwork.299 On the other hand, one can assume that Ball was
very aware of Kandinsky’s effort to revitalize Gesamtkunstwerk and study Cabaret Voltaire
assuming that it was re-organized from tip to toe. The second alternative is still likely, as some
reports suggest that the cabaret had a blue ceiling, black walls, and red tables, all designed by
Arp.300 Plus, Ball was conscious of Kandinsky’s preoccupation “with the regeneration of
society through the union of all artistic mediums and forces.”301 He understood the
Gesamtkunstwerk proposed by Kandinsky as follows:
[Kandinsky] envisages a counterpositioning of the individual arts, a symphonic
composition in which every art, reduced to its essentials, provides as an
elementary form no more than the score for a construction or composition on the
stage. Such a composition would allow each individual art its own material mode
of operation, and it would create the future monumental work of art [total-workof-
art] from a blend of the refined materials.302
Since this study is dealing not only with Dada’s emergence but also its development, one can
consider those two paths together too. In other words, one can argue that what Dadaists could
not achieve in the Cabaret Voltaire was set up in the Gallery Dada, which can provide a point
to compare the cabaret and the gallery.
Figure 4.6 Hans Arp and Otto van Rees at work on the mural for the Pestalozzi School, Zurich 1915;
The wall at present.
In both cases, one should also study the intersected activities of the cabaret one by one to
understand their relationship with embodied agents as well as the built environment, as Ball
noted:
There is a distinct need for a stage for the truly moving passions; a need for an
experimental theater above and beyond the scope of routine daily interests. Europe
paints, makes music, and writes in a new way. A fusion of all regenerative ideas,
not only of art. Only the theater is capable of creating the new society. The
299 Hemus, “Dada’s Dancers,” 99.
300 Mair, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and the Avant-Garde, 38; Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis: Zurich,” 23.
301 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 8.
302 Ball, 233.
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backgrounds, the colors, words, and sounds have only to be taken from the
subconscious and animated to engulf everyday routine along with its misery.303
Accordingly, the following discussion proposes that Dada’s discourse appeared day by day as
well as through a daily cycle of rehearsal, reaction, and reproduction. The rehearsal phase
speaks for Dadaists’ preparation of events and exhibitions; the reaction phase stands for the
very performing moments where the prepared pieces met with the audience; and the
reproduction phase acts for the discursive activities reinterpreting what has been achieved.
Projecting these phases upon the course of a day, the chapter treats mornings as times of
reproduction, afternoons as times of rehearsal, and evenings as times of reaction. In other
words, the chapter follows a cycle where morning discussions had Dadaists create works in
afternoons; these works were evaluated during evenings; and these evaluations summoned
new morning discussions. Nevertheless, a study of these phases cannot be done profoundly
without an analytical framework helping one to handle corporeality.
Emphasizing that derived thought systems of modern social sciences had separated “mind”
from “body,” Simon J. Williams and Gillian Bendelow wondered about the ontological status
of the body within the social order. Accordingly, they brought two lines of reasoning in
sociology with distinctive outlooks on the relationship between organizations and agents: the
first saw social actors as the creation of systems; the second saw agents as free beings able to
control systems. Reviewing the first line of reasoning from the perspective of corporeality,
Williams and Bendelow outlined three interpretations more or less arguing that the human
body is a passive entity over against the social order: Michel Foucault’s discursive body;
Norbert Elias’ civilized body; and Mary Douglas’s symbolic body. In turn, reviewing the
second line of reasoning, the authors brought three interpretations exploring the use of the
body in social action: Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus; Erving Goffman’s carnal
intercommunication in everyday life; and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s the bodily being-in-theworld.
Ultimately, Williams and Bendelow emphasized a need to harmonize representational
and experientially grounded understandings of the body to set an “ethics of existence” as well
as a base for an embodied discipline — sociology, in their case.304 As will be shown, these
concepts have underlined from different viewpoints that subjects and institutions interrelate
with each other through bodies inhabiting spaces. So, the body as a medium can constitute an
epistemological field intersecting both communal history and personal experience, which is
not so different from echoing Williams and Bendelow’s call to harmonize representational
and experientially grounded understandings of the body. The following subchapters will
303 Ball, 8.
304 Simon J. Williams and Gillian Bendelow, Lived Body: Sociological Themes, Embodied Issues (New
York: Routledge, 1998), 9-24.
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briefly recap these interpretations and apply them to phases in the cycle of rehearsal-reactionreproduction.
The description, nevertheless, will not follow the sequence of morningafternoon-
evening, but afternoon-evening-morning to emphasize a cyclic repetition of
rehearsal-reaction-reproduction.
4.2. Reconsidering rehearsals concerning ideas of Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu
The cabaret was announced in the newspapers with enthusiasm that did not endure. After a
series of evenings, a crisis came out: Herr Ephraim, the landlord, asked protagonists to arrange
“better entertainment and draw a larger crowd or else shut down the cabaret.”305 Dadaists,
having a Nietzschean vitality, turned that crisis into a fortune by ever-increasing the quality of
the entertainment: Ball noted how trying to be entertaining pushed them “in an exciting and
instructive way to be incessantly lively, new, and naïve” by adding that “it is a race with the
expectations of the audience, and this race calls on all our forces of invention and debate.”306
An examination from a corporeal side of the existing photographs taken in Zurich
performances and of artworks created in the following years recalls Craig’s call for using large
puppets instead of actor bodies. This wouldn’t be unfamiliar as Hennings and Sophie Taeuber
were already into crafting puppets or performing with costumes.307 A close look at diaries
reveals that Dada’s innovations did not appear in performances but in rehearsals, when bodily
practice constantly encountered collective contemplation.
Figure 4.7 Marcel Janco, At the Cabaret Voltaire, 1916.
305 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 17.
306 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 54.
307 Adamowicz, “Zurich Dada,” 35-42; On the relationship between religious women and puppets, see
Corbin, “Dinin Etkisi,” 94-99.
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Figure 4.8 Emmy Hennings with one of the puppets she crafted(and probably performed with);
Hennings’ puppets depicted in the journal Cabaret Voltaire
While examining the role of the cabaret within such a creative process, the first moment when
Dadaists used “cubist” masks, which scholars characterize as a distinguishing mark for Dada
performances, could be valuable:
Janco has made a number of [presumably blood-red]308 masks for the new soirée,
and they are more than just clever. They are reminiscent of the Japanese or ancient
Greek theater, yet they are wholly modern. They were designed to be effective
from a distance; in the relatively small space of the cabaret they have a sensational
effect. We were all there when Janco arrived with his masks, and everyone
immediately put one on. Then something strange happened. Not only did the mask
immediately call for a costume; it also demanded a quite definite, passionate
gesture, bordering on madness. Although we could not have imagined it five
minutes earlier, we were walking around with the most bizarre movements,
festooned and draped with impossible objects, each one of us trying to outdo the
other in inventiveness. The motive power of these masks was irresistibly
conveyed to us. All at once we realized the significance of such a mask for mime
and for the theater. The masks simply demanded that their wearers start to move
in a tragic-absurd dance.
Then we looked more closely at the masks; they were made of cardboard and were
painted and glued. Their varied individuality inspired us to invent dances, and for
each of them I composed a short piece of music on the spot. We called one dance
"Fliegcnfangen'' [Flycatching]. The only things suitable for this mask were
clumsy, fumbling steps and some quick snatches and wide swings of the arms,
accompanied by nervous, shrill music. We called the second dance "Cauchemar''
308 Arp said “I haven’t forgotten the masks you used to make for our Dada demonstrations. They were
terrifying, most of them daubed with bloody red. Out of cardboard, paper, horsehair, wire and cloth,
you made your languorous foetuses, your Lesbian sardines, your ecstatic mice.” See Jean Arp, On My
Way: Poetry and Essays, 1912…1947 (New York: Wittenborn Schultz, 1948), 46; Huelsenbeck noted
how “Janco had also made a series of extremely beautiful blood-red masks that now adorned the walls
of the cabaret.” See Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 22.
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[Nightmare]. The dancing figure starts from a crouching position, gets straight up,
and moves forward. The mouth of the mask is wide open, the nose is broad and in
the wrong place. The performer's arms, menacingly raised, arc elongated by
special tubes. The third dance we called "Fcstliche Vcrzwciflung" [Festive
Despair]. Long, cutout, golden hands on the curved arms. The figure turns a few
times to the left and to the right, then slowly turns on its axis, and finally collapses
abruptly to return slowly to the first movement.309
How to elucidate this “strange” innovation? How could masks call for a costume or a gesture?
What was the role of the setting within such an association? To study these questions, first,
the anecdote can be divided into phases: I. Janco’s arrival with masks; II. Masks’ call for
costumes and gestures; III. Creation of novel dances and figures.
Figure 4.9 A visual argument about the design of the Cabaret Voltaire (afternoon).
To understand the use of bodies in Zurich Dada, Valerie Preston-Dunlop discerned the term
object-body from experienced-body vis-à-vis the grasp of own-body-as-object from the grasp
of own-living-body, which Elza Adamowicz finds useful but undeveloped.310 With the help of
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology as well as Bourdieu’s habitus/field reading, this subchapter
tries expanding Preston-Dunlop’s discernment by bringing spatial awareness into the
discussion. On the one hand, masks are object-bodies: having colors, forms, and textures, they
denote a set of quasi-gestures for observers.311 On the other hand, masks are experiencedbodies:
as an item of clothing, they regulate the deeds of performers. Here, a mature mask
illusion comes into view only if performers turn quasi-gestures promised by masks into more
309 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 64.
310 Valerie Preston-Dunlop, “Notes on Bodies in Dada,” in Dada, The Coordinates of Cultural Politics,
ed. Stephen C. Foster (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996), 171-5; Adamowicz, “Spare Parts,” 16.
311 To set a scope of investigation, I will be drawing merely upon the experience of seeing.
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defined gestures through an iterative negotiation between object-body and experienced-body.
Accordingly, Joyce Suechun Cheng saw these masks also as toys rather than only sculptures:
In the case of Zurich Dada and its performing bodies and objects, a historicalanthropological
approach would accept that masks and marionettes, some of the
most challenging artifacts fabricated by participants of this milieu, can be
understood as sculpture but not only as such. For instance, the carton masks and
body costumes made by Marcel Janco, Hans Arp, and Hugo Ball are plastically
formed objects with a specific structure and facture, yet they are also performance
props that demand to be addressed in relation to problems in avant-garde theater
and dance. Similar considerations are applicable to the abstract marionettes
designed by Sophie Taeuber-Arp for Carlo Gozzi's fairy-play King Stag, which
plastically qualify as polychrome sculpture but are better understood functionally
as a kind of action toy, reflecting the double vocation of their designer as teacher
of applied arts and Dada performer.312
In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty — by examining the unfinished ways where
one constantly constructs notions of perception, perceived object, and judgment — argued that
one’s perception ends up in objects.313 Therefore, talking about a perceiving subject is talking
about a perceived environment. Reminding the fact that sensations are simultaneous and
double (seeing/being seen, touching/being touched), he also argued that it is one’s body that
carries intentionality linking one to surroundings.314 In other words, one’s body is not an object
in the world but the medium of one’s communication with these objects and the world. What
is more, he argued that the pair of bodily space-external space, namely a perceptual field
against the background of the world, produces a practical system for one’s understanding of
the world.315 Studying a case where a veteran had lost one of his legs without losing the feeling
of it, Merleau-Ponty argued that one is conscious of her body by way of the world: when there
is no obstacle, bodies feel nothing, namely remains in silent moments; when there are obstacles
and embodied agents intend to do something habitually, these obstacles remind the agents that
they cannot do what they want. Consequently, embodied agency holding earlier experiences
faces the limit of “I can” rather than “I think.” Following such an interpretation, one can bring
separate-looking understandings of exterior space and interior body together: observing a
novel bodily action, one can hunt for a spatial change; observing a spatial change, one can
search for a new corporal deed.
Following Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on correspondence between the perceiving subject and
the perceived world, and focusing on the first phase, it can be argued that Janco’s masks owed
their clever, terrifying, or wholly modern effects not only to their relationship with the context
312 Cheng, “Cardboard Toys and Dancing Marionettes,” 276.
313 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (1945; reis., New York:
Routledge, 2005), 75-83.
314 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 106-7.
315 Merleau-Ponty, 115-7.
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but also those of Dadaists.Photographs of the artifacts could verify this: when there is a blank
sheet behind, one cannot fully grasp a mask’s illusion. When there is a background filled with
objects and “normal” bodies to compare with, however, it is easier to label them.316 In other
words, by surrounding both masks and observers, the setting can shape the signification
process in between. If the cabaret had been larger than the extent that masks’ effective distance
had demanded, or if it had been in the way to conceal each mask’s varied individuality, would
Dadaists realize a sensational effect or any other illusion? The answer is likely to be no.
Figure 4.10 Marcel Janco, Mask, 1919; Marcel Janco, Cabaret Voltaire, 1916.
Figure 4.11 Author near one of the masks by Marcel Janco. Masks were not always so large.
316 It is especially important in the case of masks as they represent part of bodies. Also, I assume that
Marcel Janco has tried to represent the atmosphere of the cabaret in his painting. This could also make
one to ask several other questions such as whether Janco was aware of the “relatively small space of the
cabaret,” and designed the masks accordingly or whether the cabaret, especially in rehearsal times,
worked like an atelier to craft artifacts used in performances and exhibitions.
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If one studies phase II, masks’ call for gestures and costumes, in the light of Merleau-Ponty’s
emphasis on the pair of bodily-external space as well as double sensation emphasizing a
simultaneity, one can bring two stresses on Preston-Dunlop’s discernment of the grasp of own
body-as-object and the grasp of own-living-body: Embodied agents do not understand
themselves either as objects or as life-forms without a background of the world and the
separation between object-body and experienced-body is of use as long as these experiences
remain attached/double. In other words, the grasp of object-body-in-world and the grasp of
experienced-body-in-world appear concurrently. Since one is aware of what she perceives and
the possible ways in which she is perceived during an action within a setting, and since this
double awareness changes meaning according to one’s awareness of the environment, in the
end, the very setting can influence one’s actions without any direct contact. In other words,
the built environment’s aptitude to alter the meaning of an artifact that affects agents’
movement (e.g., masks, clothing, furniture, or anything else) could be enough to vary agents’
action programs. If this concurrent awareness is projected into the moment when Dadaists
used the masks rather than being content with observing them, it can be argued that Dadaists
not only grasped these massive masks’ effects from outside, but also imagined the ways
themselves would be seen within these masks, and since they were aware that an effort could
change such a portrait, their double awareness of object-body/experienced-body resulted in a
“call” to enhance masks’ illusions with gestures, tricks, and clothing.317 At this moment,
Janco’s masks began to animate as atypical creatures.
The international encounter of the Great War let Marcel Mauss realize that people from various
backgrounds use their bodies quite differently during an action. He, accordingly, wrote one of
his most famous articles, Techniques of the Body, which interpreted body techniques as
technical, efficient, and traditional. There, Mauss argued:
These 'habits' do not just vary with individuals and their imitations, they vary
especially between societies, educations, proprieties and fashions, prestiges. In
them we should see the techniques and work of collective and individual practical
reason rather than, in the ordinary way, merely the soul and its repetitive
faculties.318
Recalling Marcel Mauss’s such influential but subjective study, Williams and Bendelow
emphasized how bodies can be used differently in changing social environments through the
term “habitus” both Bourdieu and Mauss used. Accordingly, they argued that individuals
adopt social, political, or economic inscriptions through their bodily activities in an
317 Huelsenbeck noted how Hennings had joyfully presented him “the different costumes that belonged
to the different numbers.” Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 10.
318 Marcel Mauss, “Techniques of the body,” trans. Ben Brewster, Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973):
73, https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147300000003.
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environment.319 Bourdieu argued “the body is linked to a place by a direct relationship of
contact, which is just one way among others of relating to the world. The agent is linked to a
space, that of a field, proximity within which is not the same as proximity in physical space.”320
Here, a field, for Bourdieu, was the entirety of the associations between people within an
environment. And when an agent enters the field, “it has a memory, it will be submitted to
forces and will suffer the effects of those forces, among other things; at every moment it will
be modified by the forces that it suffers and tries to resist.”321 Bourdieu termed this memory
“habitus,” namely “the inertia of all the past experience that we have accumulated in our
biological bodies.”322 Nevertheless, to understand what an agent can do, he maintained, one
has “to know its whole trajectory: where it has come from, how it happened to arrive here, and
so on,” while “the momentary stimulus is important, but only in so far as it acts on the
individual.”323 The whole idea of memory that shows up during physical action remains very
interesting especially when one thinks of the efficient machinery of modernization along with
Dada’s irrational performances.324
One cannot expect these newborn “tragic-absurd” creatures to behave, move, talk, or chant
like “normal” human beings, which needs serious practice. Studying phase III in the light of
Bourdieu’s “habitus/field” notions, it can be argued that by systematically articulating bodily
movements for “impossible” creatures through different combinations of dances, sounds,
actions, and music, Dadaists widened the limits of their existing “habitus.” Didier Plassard, as
Elza Adamowicz argues, discerned dances of Laban that liberated bodies by omitting clothes
from the dances of Dada that limited bodies by masking them.325 Nevertheless, it is not clear
if tectonic limitation and bodily liberation constitute a contrast. What would happen if a
mask’s, if not any costume’s, restriction of bodily movement could postulate a new
understanding for the agent? With Merleau-Ponty’s case study on a veteran who lost a leg in
mind, one can reread the difference between “normal” use of the body and “abnormal” use of
319 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, trans. Richard Nice (1997; reis., Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2000), 141-2; Williams and Bendelow, Lived Body, 49-51.
320 Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, 135.
321 Pierre Bourdieu, Habitus and Field: Lectures at the Collège de France (1982-1983), trans. Peter
Collier (2015; reis., Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), 20-1.
322 Bourdieu, Habitus and Field, 21.
323 Bourdieu, 21.
324 For the sake of this study, I will limit this audience to the other artists of the Dada movement.
325 Adamowicz, “Zurich Dada,” 39; Such a “call” incites me to also make another discernment upon the
awareness of object-body-in-world, which is reminiscent of discussions on body-image: awareness of
one’s actual body within the environment and awareness of one’s augmented body within the
environment. Without the latter, the former could not create a target point for the body-experience-in
world. In other words, if Dadaists were not aware of how the illusion of masks within their bodies
become more “finished” or “proper,” they would not be able to move towards that “finished” or “proper”
object-bodies.
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the body with a positive understanding. It can be argued that the very inability to do a habitual
movement could offer a novel understanding of reality for the mask-wearer, which one can
also call a moment of liberation. As Hemus observed, “Here, the costumes were designed
to limit the performer’s physical movement, conceal the body, and prevent individual
psychological expression. The dancer is somewhere between body and machine, agent
and puppet, nature and technology.”326 From then on, the limits of that impossible universe
would only depend on the limits of the restricted body. Indeed, following the Bakhtinian
notion of the grotesque body, Adamowicz argued that Dada’s costumed/masked dances not
only blurred the border between human/mechanical, human/animal, male/female but also
transgressed bodily constraints.327 In my opinion, Sophie Taeuber’s puppet designs could be
understood as a similar attempt.
Figure 4.12 Marionettes designed by Taeuber for a 1918 dated play by Swiss Marionette Theater.
326 Hemus, “Dada’s Dancers,” 95.
327 Elza Adamowicz, “Hybrid bodies (II): the grotesque,” in Dada Bodies: Between Battlefield and
Fairground (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), 92-114. Interestingly, Ball’s diary
ratifies that the use of masks precedes his innovation of “sound poems,” though it is hard to establish a
strong connection between the two.
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Figure 4.13 Rudolf Laban, Sequential unfolding of movement within crystalline shapes; Laban,
Pentagonal shapes used to generate poses, n.d.
In sum, during practice times, the cabaret was the laboratory to evaluate the developed ideas
of the morning, where Dadaists, listening to the call of masks and music, released their bodies
to move and discover. The atmosphere of evenings stays far more limiting for that kind of
discovery. Under the gaze of an entertainment-demanding audience such as yelling students,
Dadaists would not be able to not free their bodies to listen to the call of masks. The existence
of a large audience at the cabaret during rehearsal times, therefore, is not plausible.
4.3. Reassessing events regarding thoughts of Goffman and Douglas
Dadaists prepared the pieces in rehearsals, but evenings were the sifter through which these
pieces would pass. The newborn creatures socialized with the audience in the soirées having
them gain new identities. Here is an interesting example: at the outset of his “little premiere”
for sound poems “everyone was curious” about, Hugo Ball “was carried onto the stage in the
dark,” above all due to his inability to move easily with a blue, white, scarlet, and golden
colored cardboard costume depicted in Figure 4.14. Lights were switched on and the
performance began. The pieces were doing very well up until “the stresses became heavier,
the emphasis was increased as the sound of the consonants became sharper.” Aspiring to stay
grave due to the presence of Laban’s pupils in the audience, Ball carried on briskly flapping
his “wings” and moving to the left, to the right, and to the middle of the stage along with
reciting his other sound poems. Unfortunately, this was not helping him to stay serious.
Following a crescendo, Ball couldn’t help but finalize his performance by suddenly beginning
to intone like a priest in a liturgy. Finally, when “the lights went out,” he “was carried down
off the stage like a magical bishop.”328 To grasp that identity shift, Goffman’s sociology is
fruitful to ensue.
328 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 70-1.
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Figure 4.14 Photographs of Sophie Taeuber and Hugo Ball in “cubist costumes.”
In Relations in Public, deciphering physical encounters among people in public space,
Goffman argued that agents gain their identities through constantly “externalizing” and
“scanning” gestures that denote special meanings — often related to the agent’s position in
the situation — vis-à-vis their form, path, or context. For sure, this exteriorization and
examination run iteratively:
When an individual deems that a simple body-check is not sufficient, as when a
collision course is apparent or there is no clear indication of the other's course,
then additional assurances are likely to be sought. He can ostentatiously take or
hold a course, waiting to do this until he can be sure that the other is checking him
out. If he wants to be still more careful, he can engage in a "checked body- check";
after he has given a course indication, he can make sure the signal has been picked
up by the other, either by meeting the other's eyes (although not for engagement)
or by noting the other's direction of vision, in either case establishing that his own
course gesture has not likely been overlooked.
In all of this maneuvering, two special moments can be found. First, there is the
"critical sign": the act on the part of the other that finally allows the individual to
discover what it is the other proposes to do. Second, there is the "establishment
point": the moment both parties can feel that critical signs have been exchanged
regarding compatible directions and timing, and that both appreciate that they both
appreciate that this has occurred. It is then that movements can be executed with
full security and confidence; it is then that those involved can feel fully at ease
and fully turn their attention elsewhere.329
329 Erving Goffman, Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (New York: Basic Books,
1971), 11-3.
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This constant give-and-take, therefore, inaugurates novel selves in the embodied agents and
novel hierarchies in the social order. In other words, not only bodies can influence the
constitution of social identities but also agents can control public order, albeit at a micro level,
through bodily communication.330 Goffman’s study is fruitful in terms of showing how
communication is indeed corporeal as well as spatial, and how the result can be influenced by
the tiniest detail of agents. Accordingly, the anecdote effectively proves how a body idiom of
a performer, a result of an emotional improvisation, converts an abstract creature of a
performer to a colored gibbering bishop for a spectator.
What would happen if observers could change the very setting where such an identity shift
happens?331 Dadaists, to be sure, were aware that Ball’s “cubist” costume would create a kind
of enthusiasm in the audience, especially when combined with his sound poems. In order not
to break this enthusiasm, they carried Ball to the stage in darkness and then switched the lights
on. In other words, to visually withdraw the domain of the stage from the domain of the
cabaret, the darkness became an outline for the piece. Comparing the settings in Figure 4.14,
for instance, one realizes that Dadaists might have intended to neutralize the surroundings for
the sake of the illusion of the costumes. Nevertheless, the immediacy of the cabaret atmosphere
disallowed the separation of the audience from the performers. If Ball was not aware of the
audience (e.g., if they were in a bigger, more silent, or artificially darkened stage of a theatre),
he would do as he planned (or at least something different from what he did), which would
give rise to a planned identity on behalf of costumed figures.332 So, Dadaists were planning to
create a particular body idiom, yet the very setting subverted such a plan. Here, one realizes
another dimension of the relationship between space and body. During corporeal
communication between agents, tectonic space could motivate the agents to change their
pattern of “body idiom” resulting in a change of identities and hierarchies. Correspondingly, I
will name this ability architectural idiom. To be clearer, in my understanding, architectural
idiom is the setting’s ability to gather embodied agents in a way to have these agents change
their planned flow of “body idioms,” which eventually creates new identities and social
hierarchies. Accordingly, it can be argued that the pub-cabaret idiom had the audience give
330 Williams and Bendelow, Lived Body, 55-61.
331 For example, Huelsenbeck narrated his first day in the cabaret when “Hugo was sitting at the piano,
playing classical music, Brahms and Bach. Then he switched over to dance music. The drunken students
pushed their chairs aside and began spinning around.” Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 10.
332 Cornelius Partsch observed “The Dadaists’ body language on stage both embodied and dissimulated
the familiar gestures and symbols of the authoritarian types.” Cornelius Partsch, “The Mysterious
Moment: Early Dada Performance as Ritual,” in Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-Garde, ed.
Dafydd Jones (Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2006), 53; Buelens interpreted the same costume as
following: “With his pseudo-metal coating and aerodynamic body, Ball looks in fact like an absurd
warhead, a reciting shell.” Buelens, “Reciting Shells,” 281.
103
transparent, if not transgressive, reactions.333 If the audience was not satisfied with the
proposed entertainment, owing to alcohol and intimacy, they instantly reacted with wild
gestures and sounds.334 Huelsenbeck noted “it was too wild, too smoky, too way out. Hugo
had written a poem against war and murderous insanity. Emmy recited it, Hugo accompanied
her on the piano, and the audience chimed in, with a growl, murdering the poem.”335 The
protest in modern music surely was not a new thing, yet it became a typical feature of Dada
evenings as an outcome of Cabaret Voltaire.336 During evening performances, in brief, the
audience assessed the values and meanings of Dadaists’ inventions, yet their authority was a
result of the pub-cabaret idiom.
One speaks of an audience as it is a homogeneous group, but such a group always consists of
people having different backgrounds and, therefore unpredictable reactions.337 Investigating
the psychic effects of the war on Dadaists, T.J. Demos argued that Dadaists first deconstructed,
then relearned the meaning as well as the form of words in their performances while sound
became the smallest unit for language within the transnational context of Cabaret Voltaire.338
The simplification of language could also be related to the physical inability to speak.339
Marjorie Gehrhardt’s study on war veterans, for instance, shows that at least 12 percent of
wounded soldiers had a damage in the face.340 Most of these veterans were unable to physically
speak, as Gehrhardt noted:
the silence, understood here as the inability to communicate, surrounds injured
men. The only sound is the voice of the nurse who has the responsibility to tell
soldiers about the seriousness of their injuries. If death puts an end to any
communication, facial injuries isolate their victims but leave them alive and
conscious of their loss.341
333 Huelsenbeck noted how Ball “played anything the drunken audience demanded.” Huelsenbeck,
Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 16.
334 Huelsenbeck noted “I would roar my lungs out, more like a sideshow barker than a reciter of verse,
and wave my cane about in the air. The spectators saw me as an arrogant and utterly belligerent young
man. I would often recite the poem “Rivers” because it contains extremely daring images and always
brings out the audience’s antagonism. I got on the podium with a blasé expression on my face and doing
my best to hide my stage fright. As I spoke, I saw L. [Huelsenbeck’s lover at that time] get up and head
for the door. I stopped in the middle of the poem and leaped off the podium. The audience protested…”
along with “talk, singing, shrieks, and cries of protest became audible.” Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a
Dada Drummer, 21-2.
335 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 9.
336 Evans, The Pursuit of Power, “Rites of Spring,” in chap. 6.
337 Lewer, “‘Mapping’ Zurich Dada,” 49; Ball felt “ashamed of the noise of the performance, the mixture
of styles and moods” when there were Turks and Japanese “who watched all the activities with real
astonishment.” Ball, Flight Out of Time, 65
338 T.J. Demos, “Circulations: In and around Zurich Dada.” October 105 (2003): 147–58.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3397690.
339 Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, 25.
340 Gehrhardt, The Men with Broken Faces, 4.
341 Gehrhardt, 54.
104
If there were “broken mouths” inside the audience, what would yelling syllables mean?
Figure 4.15 Another argument about the design of the Cabart Voltaire (evening).
Figure 4.16 Architectural idiom
There is a symbolic correlation between the physical body and social corpus, Douglas argued
in Purity and Danger:
The body is a model which can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can
represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious. The body is a
complex structure. The functions of its different parts and their relation afford a
source of symbols for other complex structures. We cannot possibly interpret
rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared
to see in the body a symbol of society, and to see the powers and dangers credited
to social structure reproduced in small on the human body.342
342 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966; reis.,
New York: Routledge, 2001), 115-6.
105
In other words, in an experience of the physical body, it is the boundary of the social system
that designates whether something is dirty, dangerous, or taboo.343 Even though Douglas refers
to the role of rituals in mediating these two spheres, it is not clear in her study how such a
correspondence gets exactly constituted.344 Even so, one can wonder what happens when two
types of social bodies encounter each other through physical bodies. For instance, Gilles
Deleuze saw the power of avant-garde art in its ability to mold new forms of bodies enabling
spectators to imagine novel societal relations.345 Accordingly, does the mentioned kind of
cultural mismatch affect embodied agents, for instance, “alienate” them? Nevertheless, this
question might also prove useful given the transnational atmosphere of the Great War where
many migrating people, soldiers, or artists, experienced each other’s social boundaries through
their physical bodies.
Here, in the light of Mary Douglas’ reading, I will argue that the intimate atmosphere of the
cabaret — the use of alcohol; closeness between people; and most importantly the thematic
emphasis on bodies everyone had — blurred boundaries between the audience members that
would have been carrying different social corpora through their physical bodies. That is why,
despite the protests, Dadaists occasionally were able to catch the audience. Huelsenbeck, for
instance, reported “the songs created the ‘intimate’ atmosphere of the cabaret. The audience
liked listening to them, the distance between us and the enemy grew smaller, and finally
everyone joined in.”346 Similarly, Janco remarked, “people came not for amusement, but to
take part in that wonderful atmosphere of mental regeneration.”347 Such a blur of differences
might have helped Dadaists to realize the limits of art-practice, which can remind one of
Dada’s “anti-art” discourse, if not Bürger’s argument on avant-garde movements’ breaking
away from the art institution.348
When Zurich Dadaists embraced abstraction to veil the “repulsive” limbs with surfaces of
materials, they entered a new universe where the corporal fragments devastated by the war
were kept alive by an assemblage of artificial body parts. The adjective “alive” is used as these
343 Williams and Bendelow, Lived Body, 26-29.
344 Douglas argued “The rituals enact the form of social relations and in giving these relations visible
expression they enable people to know their own society. The rituals work upon the body politic through
the symbolic medium of the physical body.” Douglas, Purity and Danger, 129.
345 Bru, The European Avant-Gardes, 1905–1935, chap. 9.
346 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 10
347 Janco, “Creative Dada,” 30.
348 Ball noted “One cannot exactly say that the art of the last twenty years has been joyful and that the
modern poets are very entertaining and popular. Nowhere are the weaknesses of a poem revealed as
much as in a public reading. One thing is certain: art is joyful only as long as it has richness and life.
Reciting aloud has become the touchstone of the quality of a poem for me, and I have learned (from the
stage) to what extent today's literature is worked out as a problem at the desk and is made for the
spectacles of the collector instead of for the ears of living human beings.” Ball, Flight Out of Time, 54.
106
corporeal assemblages, which were already introduced by Picasso and Braque to the realm of
the canvas at the beginning of the 1910s, danced and chanted in the performances of Cabaret
Voltaire. Dadaists might have emphasized how earlier artistic attempts at vanishing bodies
became meaningless within the context of war dissolved bodies more than ever. By masking
wounded bodies to make them a part of a total work with a critique of such “reality,” Dadaists
might have provided the audience and themselves with the strength to survive. Hennings, for
example, noted in a letter “All types of mask were good for the Dadaists. We still don’t know
if each one chose the mask which suited him. But the mask was essential; it served as the
underground refuge to hide the overagitated faces.”349 Now, one can center on the mornings
when Dadaists reviewed what they had discovered during the evenings.
4.4. Reviewing reconstitution in light of Foucault and Elias’s concepts
During matinées, Cabaret Voltaire was an “artist’s co-op,” namely “a gathering place for all
artistic trends, not just modern ones.”350 Within a relatively censor-free context of Zurich, the
group would discuss politics, philosophy, psychology, literature, and art, of which not only
the “primitive” version but also the “futurist” reformulation. They were never in full accord,
and alliances dynamically changed: Ball logged “an idea, a gesture, some nervousness is
enough to make the constellation change without seriously upsetting the little group.”351
During mornings, the group would likely review the pieces presented on the previous night
and plan novel strategies to follow on afternoons. Presumably, the cabaret’s exhibition hall
side was highlighted at these times, even though the debates were not constrained to the very
setting: The group would discuss while drinking beer in taverns, attending events in theaters,
or strolling streets in Zurich. Many Dadaists recorded the life out of the cabaret, yet it was
Huelsenbeck who illustrated it in the greatest detail:
He [Ball] took me through a maze of angular streets, opened an old wooden door,
and climbed up an ancient groaning stairway. I found myself alone in a garret.
Below me, Zurich lay asleep, not a puff of air was stirring, and the red sickle of
the moon hung over me.
The next day I ambled through Zurich. I paused at Bellevue-Ecke, which hadn’t
yet become a traffic center. Then I walked along the lake, watching the swans
whose feed Ball had envied; I walked, last but not least, down the Bahnhofstrasse,
which was more of an international promenade in those days. One might see
refugees from all over the world; you could tell them by their clothes, which were
so different from the respectable Swiss coats.
349 Robert Maguire, Le hors théâtre: Essai sur la signification du théâtre de notre temps (PhD diss.,
Sorbonne, 1963), 68, translated in Annabelle Melzer, “Dada Performance at The Cabaret Voltaire,”
Artforum 12, no. 3 (November 1973), 76. https://www.artforum.com/print/197309/dada-performanceat-
the-cabaret-voltaire-37407.
350 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 19.
351 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 59.
107
I sat in the Café des Banques, which no longer exists and where we subsequently
saw Mary Wigman dance. She put on a special performance for us dadaists and
“danced Nietzsche.” I can still see her in the center of a circle, waving Zarathustra
about. Left, right, left, right — “and conceived deeper than day.”352
So, Dadaists dwelled in a network of places in the city, which was a result of a constant
negotiation between geographical, social, political, financial, cultural, and historical forces.353
Figure 4.17 Tzara and Janco(from right) at the Zurich Lakeside with three people, 1916; A
photograph from Constructivist International, 1922
352 Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 11; There are a lot of entries in Dada diaries observing
off-cabaret hours, and suitably other venues in Zurich: Ball noted “The city is beautiful, The
Limmatquai is especially attractive. However many times I walk up and down this quay, I know I will
like it over and over again.” Ball, Flight Out of Time, 18; Huelsenbeck reported “At the time, Zurich
was still an unhurried city; there was no traffic problem, there were no cafeterias or Möwenpicks…The
city is constructed within a medieval framework against the lake, although the Bahnhofstrasse, the
avenue along the railroad terminal, leaves nothing to be desired in the way of modernity. Zwingli’s
cathedral and the maze of little streets in Niederdorf always reminded me of a good, pious past”
Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 8; Huelsenbeck also mentioned “We walked wordlessly
through nighttime Zurich, which in those days did not as yet illuminate its venerable' buildings with
neon lights. It was really dark, very dark.” Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 24; See also
Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, 14-9; Tzara reported “In the most obscure of streets in the
shadow of architectural ribs, where you will find discreet detectives amid red street lamps—birth—
birth of the cabaret voltaire—… bustle and stir, the joy of the people, cries, the cosmopolitan mixture
of god and brothel” Tzara, “Zurich Chronicle,” 235; Just like Tzara complaining of the weather that
was not “kind,” Hennings remarked “in the winter of 1915 we were hired by Flamingo to perform at
the ‘Glock’ in Basel. We thought that the world had never seen such a winter. It was horribly cold. The
place was very big. A large crowd could fit into this room which was heated only by a very small
furnace. Heated! It only turned warm when there were many people, and a crowd was only present on
Saturdays and Sundays. On icy days and weekdays attendance was, to use our jargon of that time, rather
weak.” Emmy Ball-Hennings, “Das Varieté: Die Zeit vor dem Cabaret Voltaire, in Hugo Ball Almanach
1984, ed. Ernst Teubner (Pirmasens: City of Pirmasens, 1984-5), 106ff, quoted in, Karl Riha, “Dada in
the Cabaret Voltaire,” in Dada Zurich: A Clown’s Game from Nothing, eds. Brigitte Pichon and Karl
Riha, trans. Barbara Allen (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996), 36.
353 For a survey of settings inhabited by Zurich Dada see Salome Hohl, ed. Pocket Guide Dada City
Zurich (Zurich: Cabaret Voltaire, 2021); Ruth Hemus emphasized how these locales were gendered.
See Ruth Hemus, Dada’s Women (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009), 64.
108
Dadaists, nevertheless, were not the only flâneurs in Zurich. They were in fact a division of
“coffeehouse revolutionaries,” as brought by Roswitha Mair, namely the refugees that spent
afternoons in coffeehouses with a single cup of coffee. Arp, to exemplify, dubbed Café Odeon
“Mecca and Medina” for Dadaists and reported, “the numbers of Dadaists became so large
that whoever wanted to have a sensitive exchange of ideas had to find a quieter place.”354 What
is interesting, however, is that the Swiss citizens, according to Mair, “rarely showed their faces
there[in coffeehouses], and when they did, it was generally to watch the scene rather than to
take part.”355
Figure 4.18 George Grosz, Frederick Street, 1918; Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara and Hans Richter in front
of the Hotel Elite, Zurich 1918
In Discipline and Punish, through studying the shifts in the state-run institutional procedures
conducted between the 17th and 19th centuries, Foucault argued that historically “contingent”
power/knowledge mechanism not only disciplines beings through their bodies but also
discursively re/produce them.356 He, for instance, stated:
354 Hans Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Tristan Tzara, Die Geburt des Dada: Dichtung und Chronik
der Gründer (Zurich: Verlag die Arche, 1957), 92, quoted in Reinhard Döhl, “Hans Arp and Zurich
Dada,” in Dada Zurich: A Clown’s Game from Nothing, eds. Brigitte Pichon and Karl Riha, trans. Roy
F. Allen (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996), 118.
355 Mair, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and the Avant-Garde, 36; Scholars rationalize this with the fact that Swiss
citizens had to work during the day.
356 Williams and Bendelow, Lived Body, 28-36.
109
The classical age discovered the body as object and target of power. It is easy
enough to find signs of the attention then paid to the body - to the body that is
manipulated, shaped, trained, which obeys, responds, becomes skilful and
increases its forces. The great book of Man-the-Machine was written
simultaneously on two registers: the anatomico-metaphysical register, of which
Descartes wrote the first pages and which the physicians and philosophers
continued, and the technico-political register, which was constituted by a whole
set of regulations and by empirical and calculated methods relating to the army,
the school and the hospital, for controlling or correcting the operations of the
body. These two registers are quite distinct, since it was a question, on the one
hand, of submission and use and, on the other, of functioning and explanation:
there was a useful body and an intelligible body. And yet there are points of
overlap from one to the other.357
Accordingly, one can ask whether an avant-garde movement’s emergence — corporeal,
material, or discursive — can be read on account of such a power/knowledge mechanism.
Accordingly, one may ask whether Dada’s discursive emergence can be read as an outcome
of a power/knowledge mechanism in Zurich and whether the relationship between Cabaret
Voltaire and Zurich can be understood accordingly.358 If not, one can ask whether such a
procedure can discursively reproduce a movement. For instance, can one read Dada’s change
of setting as a discursive reproduction?359
Indeed, Cabaret Voltaire was not the only setting in the city providing entertainment. As
Debbie Lewer noted, Niederdorf, the neighborhood around the cabaret, was already famous
for its countless “bars, restaurants, inns, and Variétés(Variety shows). These establishments
offered entertainment of many kinds: comedy, popular songs, folk music, dancing girls, and
the hawking of unusual animals, dwarfs, fat ladies and other ‘freaks’ around bar to bar.”360
Accordingly, many refugees, not only Ball and Hennings, were reading the entertainment
offered in the neighborhood as a chance for work while many landlords, not only Ephraim,
were reading it as a chance for sales.361 For instance, unable to contact his family to ask for
money because of poor communications, the upshot of the war, Janco recalled how “looking
for work, one evening I found myself in one of the medieval alleys of old Zurich. In an old
357 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (1975; reis., New York: Vintage
Books, 1977), 136.
358 Huelsenbeck described “There were no newspaper stands in those days. There were no taxis on the
square, and at nine o’clock it was as lonely as the Sahara…and in my time there was no entertainment
to be had after work. Radio was unknown, movie houses were few, concerts were given only on high
holidays. Recreation consisted in reading good books.” Huelsenbeck, Memoirs of a Dada Drummer,
16; Lewer noted how at that time the atmosphere of Zurich was emphasizing a feeling of order, see
Lewer, “‘Mapping’ Zurich Dada,” 51.
359 Here, one can perhaps read Bürger’s institutional critique with respect to Foucault’s interpretation
of power/knowledge mechanism: it not only disciplines bodies of spectators and artists but also
discursively reproduces the artwork.
360 Lewer, “‘Mapping’ Zurich Dada,” 47.
361 Lewer, 50.
110
night-club, there was music. To my amazement I discovered, seated at the piano, a gothic
personality,” who was Hugo Ball.362
So, the conditions of being an immigrant as well as unemployed brought many Dadaists
together and such a gathering took place in an area of Zurich that was seen as not only
appealing but also appalling, just like the movement. Peter Jelavich stressed the importance of
artists’ persona as it grants unique facets to cabarets.363 Quite conversely, an investigation into
Cabaret Voltaire proposes that the idea of cabaret could grant unique facets to artists.
Figure 4.19 Aerial view of Zurich. Cabaret Voltaire(1), Café Odeon(2), Café de la Terrasse(3),
Zunfthaus zur Waag (4); Gallery Corray/Dada(5), Zunfthaus zur Meisen (6), site of Sechseläuten (7)
Even so, Zurich Dadaists have stayed in Cabaret Voltaire as well as in Niederdorf for only
about five months and the reason for the cabaret’s dissolution is not clear.364 After shutting the
cabaret down and publishing the first and only volume of the journal Cabaret Voltaire,
Dadaists held the first “public” evening of Dada on 14th July 1916 in Zunfthaus zur Waag, a
362 Marcel Janco, “Creative Dada,” 32-4. This meeting has not been necessarily taken place in the
Cabaret Voltaire, as Ball also working on another company before establishing the cabaret. As it
recorded by Ball, in the first day of the cabaret Janco arrived with Tzara (Tzara’s also account verify
this). So, it is possible that Janco met Ball before, then he took Tzara with him to the opening of Cabaret
Voltaire.
363 Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret, 3.
364 According to Richter, the owner “listened to the complaints of respectable citizens outraged at the
nightly excesses committed in the name of Voltaire.” Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art, 39.
111
guild house facing one of the main squares of Zurich.365 In general, nothing was novel in the
program except for the place hosting the occasion.366
Figure 4.20 A photograph showing Münsterhof: Zunfthaus zur Waag (1); Zunfthaus zur Meisen (2).
Figure 4.21 Interior of a hall in Zunthaus Zur Waag at the present.
365 It was Ball who characterized the event as the first “public” event of Dada. The day was Bastille
Day. The Battle of Somme had started on June 24th 1916.
366 Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis,” 27; See also, Ball, Flight Out of Time, 74.
112
Figure 4.22 Restaurant Meierei (hosting Cabaret Voltaire) ; the backyard of the building today; A
photograph from the 50th anniversary of Cabaret Voltaire.
Together, they have one wonder whether the events of Dada spread out of the cabaret to streets in a
festive manner.
Subsequently, to tour Switzerland with the pieces discovered, Ball and Hennings dropped the
group that would stay in Zurich and publish three collections attributed to Dada until
October.367 At that moment, as Mair observed, “the Heuberger print shop served as the Dadaist
headquarters, but in truth there was no place for them except in the coffeehouses where they
met and talked.”368
Figure 4.23 Sophie Taeuber, Dada Bowl, 1916; Few pages from Collection Dada published in 1917.
After a few months, between 12 January and 28 February 1917, the group in Zurich organized
a Dada exhibition in the recently opened gallery of Han Corray facing Bahnhofstrasse, the
international “center of the city’s commercial and public life.”369 Subsequently, Ball and
Hennings rejoined the group to open a gallery, alias Gallery Dada, which would have not only
a richer inventory and better-dressed audience but also a shorter lifespan: between 17th March
367 Elderfield, “Introduction,” xxix.
368 Mair, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and the Avant-Garde, 51; For sure, Mair only considers public locations.
369 Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis: Zurich,” 30; See also, Ball, Flight Out of Time, 100.
113
and 29th May 1917. Accordingly, be it calculated or impulsive, such a series of displacements
across various locales had Dada not only move “upwards” but also, as Partsch noted, “fix its
art as objects and texts in exhibits and journals, thus entering a different discursive economy
of ‘art’ and exchange.”370 Following the argument about Zurich Dadaists’ embrace of
Gesamtkunstwerk, should one be able to observe a difference in character responding to these
changes of settings between the cabaret, gallery, and journal pages? By the same token, should
one be able to observe the impact of a traditional event happening in Zurich — like
Sechseläuten or Seenachtfest — on the production of Dada?
Figure 4.24 Postcards showing usual Zurich festivals: Sechseläuten in 1916; Seenachtfest, 1910s.
In Civilizing Process, Elias compared the behavioral codes — as they unfold in songs, poems,
or parental warnings — of medieval times when behavior was loose and violence at its peak
with the stricter behavior of the 17th century when the codes were no longer repeated, and
bodies had got civilized. He accordingly proposed that in everyday life, social forces
constantly infuse the rational, emotional, and bodily impulses of individuals through
historically changing behavioral codes, which can be seen at best in the gap between the
attitudes of adults and children.371 Yet, this process of civilization, Elias argued, only can be
grasped in a look from a wider angle as it is conducted through minor iterations:
Nothing in table manners is self-evident or the produce, as if were, of "natural"
feeling of delicacy. The spoon, fork and napkin were not invented one day by a
single individual as technical implements with obvious purposes and clear
directions for use. Over centuries, in direct social intercourse and use, their
functions became gradually defined, their forms sought and consolidated. Each
370 Partsch, “The Mysterious Moment,” 38-9; Remarking Dada’s upward move, Debbie Lewer cannot
find a source verifying that Dadaists calculated such a shift. See Lewer, “‘Mapping’ Zurich Dada,” 52;
One, nevertheless, can find several entries showing that Dadaist were aware of being observed in the
city. For instance, Janco recalled “one evening three motor-cars stopped in front of our cabaret. It was
an unexpected invasion: A dozen or so students, with some Viennese professors, had come to study us.
Flourishing their notebooks the disciples of Jung and Adler took the particulars of our case: Were we
schizoid, or were we simply pulling everybody's leg? When the programme was over we sat down for
a drink and to expound our creed, our faith in a direct art, a magical, organic, and creative art, like that
of primitives and of children. They threw each other significant glances, then took fright, laid down
their pencils and fled.” Janco, “Creative Dada,” 32-4.
371 Williams and Bendelow, Lived Body, 36-43.
114
custom in the changing ritual, however minute, was established infinitely slowly,
even forms of behavior that to us seem quite elementary or simply "rational", such
as the custom of raking liquid only with the spoon. Every movement of the hand
— for example, the way in which one holds and moves knife, spoon or fork-was
standardized only step by step. And the social mechanism of standardization can
itself be seen in outline if the series of images is surveyed as a whole.372
How can one take this reading in the light of Renato Poggioli’s emphasis on alienation as a
final aim for avant-garde art or Peter Bürger’s reading of historical avant-garde movements’
withdrawal from art institutions? Can one argue that historical avant-garde movements have
“civilized” the bodies, minds, and emotions of the artists and spectators? Given that a change
in a corporeal action (e.g., a specific way of painting, acting, or dancing) cannot occur without
a code, can one read avant-garde publications as continuous “codes of behavior” enabling that
civilization process? Following these questions, rather than a solitary analysis of magazines
or events, one can seek whether there was a reciprocal change echoed between a movement’s
magazines and the bodily actions of agents taking place in the events of the movement.
Here, with Elias’ ideas in mind, one can ask whether Dada’s journey in and outside of Zurich
can be read as a de/civilization process.373 The term de/civilization is tricky because the more
“civilized” the movement has been, the better it has antagonized the civilization surrounding
it.374 As mentioned in the first chapter, one can interpret the complex discourse of Dada as a
“code of behavior” enabling this de/civilization process, and perhaps the publications of Dada
as elements carrying such a code. To study this line of reasoning, let me concentrate on the
last displacement mentioned so far, namely the establishment of Gallery Dada. Be it related to
the Gesamtkunstwerk or not, Gallery Dada fruitfully offered the most recent art, poetry, music,
and dance of the time through four exhibitions and six evening gatherings, which eventually
have the group “being pointed out in the street: ‘There come the Dadaists.’”375
372 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, eds. Eric
Dunning, Johan Goudsblom, and Stephen Mennell, trans. Edmund Jephcott (1939; reis., Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 2013), 92.
373 As Elias noted, “In reality, our terms ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ do not constitute an anti-thesis of
the kind that exists between "good" and "bad", but represent stages in a development which, moreover,
is still continuing. It might well happen that our stage of civilization, our behaviour, will arouse in our
descendants feelings of embarrassment similar tot we sometimes feel concerning the behaviour of our
ancestors.” Elias, Civilizing Process, 52.
374 Chaos of an event was a beloved aim of Dadaists. To create a scandal, they would even exaggerate
things while narrating the events they had. See Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis: Zurich,” 29-32.
375 A letter from Ball to August Hoffman (June 26, 1917), Hugo Ball, Saemtliche Werke und Briefe
1904-1927, eds. Ernst Teubner and Gerhaud Schaub (Göttingen: Wallsetin Verlag, 2003), 181, quoted
in Esther Tisa Francini, “‘Hot spot of international energies’ The network of Dada artists, dealers, and
collectors of African art,” in Dada Africa: Dialogue with the Other, eds. Ralf Burmeister, Michaela
115
Figure 4.25 Drawings depicted in the first issue of the journal Dada: Hans Arp, Pathetic Symmetry,
1917; Marcel Janco, Construction 3, 1917; Oskar Lüthy, Madonna, 1917.
Figure 4.26 Hans Arp, Plant Hammer, 1917; Marcel Janco, Blanc sur blanc, 1917; Sophie Taeuber,
Formes élémentaires en composition verticale-horizonatale, 1917.
The gallery was at best an attempt to crystallize, or consolidate, the morning discussions
mentioned at the outset of this subchapter. A record by Janco fairly illustrates how Dada’s
discourse was advanced all over daytime gatherings in the gallery:
Day after day the little group sat in its[Gallery Dada’s] cafe, reading aloud the
critical comments that poured in from every possible country, and which by their
tone of indignation showed that Dada had struck someone to the heart. Stricken
dumb with amazement, we basked in our glory. Tristan Tzara could think of
nothing else to do but write manifesto after manifesto, speaking of “l’art nouveau,
which is neither futurism nor cubism,” but Dada. But what was Dada? “Dada,”
came the answer, “ne signifie rien.” [signifies nothing]376
Oberhofer, and Esther Tisa Francini (Chicago: Scheidegger and Spiess, 2016), 93; As Huelsenbeck
noted “The Gallery Dada capriciously exhibited cubist, expressionist and futurist pictures, it carried on
its littlee art business at literary teas, lectures and recitation evenings, while the word Dada conquered
the world. It was something touching to behold” Richard Huelsenbeck, “En Avant Dada: A History of
Dadaism,” in The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, ed. Robert Motherwell (Boston: The
Belknap Press, 1981), 32-3; For works presented in the gallery, see Ball, Flight Out of Time, 100-17.
376 Huelsenbeck, “En Avant Dada,” 33.
116
In parallel, Dadaists reevaluated the work fashioned in the cabaret at the utmost during the
days in the gallery.377 Correspondingly, Gundolf Winter observed how Zurich Dadaists “had
eliminated, little by little and in varying degrees of swiftness, all subjective, elitist,
conventional forms, motifs, and techniques still present in their art.”378 Given that such a
review procedure cannot run without an analytical point of departure, Dadaists also gave
attention to incorporating theoretical lectures into their usual discussions.379 This had Dadaists
not only develop their work but also reinterpret them apropos boiling concepts of the time.
Sound poems of Ball, Debbie Lewer exemplified, were “recited as ‘abstract dances’ and placed
in the context of serious artistic contemplation, which aim at ‘magical invocation, ’ ‘to liberate
from time,’ and the expression of the subconscious.”380 This entire process of “civilizing” was
supported by the architectural idiom of the gallery, which was stricter than the cabaret’s: No
further wanting to produce work for an imaginary or uncontrolled audience, Dadaists
announced higher entry fees, preferred organizing invitational parties, and forbade hard drinks
in the setting.381 As a result, Ball recorded:
The gallery has three faces. By day it is a kind of teaching body for schoolgirls
and upper-class ladies. In the evenings the candlelit Kandinsky room is a club for
the most esoteric philosophies. At the soirées, however, the parties have a
brilliance and a frenzy such as Zurich has never seen before.382
The presence of bourgeois women in the gallery is of note so much so that Huelsenbeck called
Gallery Dada a “‘manicure salon of the fine arts,’ characterized by tea-drinking old ladies
trying to revive their vanishing sexual powers with the help of ‘something mad.’”383
Accordingly, even though the location change eliminated certain types of audiences special to
the cabaret and its neighborhood like students, institutionalizing morning times indeed
introduced a novel few.384 Perhaps as a rival of department stores, the gallery stood as a novel
extension of public space ready to embrace bourgeois women when daily program of them
theoretically began to be freed from “day” gatherings.
377 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 101.
378 Gundolf Winter, “Zurich Dada and the Visual Arts” in Dada Zurich: A Clown’s Game from Nothing,
eds. Brigitte Pichon and Karl Riha, trans. Roy F. Allen (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996), 146-51.
379 For works presented in the gallery, see Ball, Flight Out of Time, 100-17.
380 Lewer, “‘Mapping’ Zurich Dada,” 41.
381 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 98.
382 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 112.
383 Huelsenbeck, “En Avant Dada,” 33.
384 Dadaists did not exclude economically distressed individuals on purpose. They even arranged
special, albeit unsuccessful, tours for them. Yet, the procedure applied in the gallery caused such an
exclusion. See Lewer, “‘Mapping’ Zurich Dada,” 53-4.
117
Figure 4.27 Surrounding of Sprünglihaus, place of Gallery Dada/Corray, at the present.; Han Corray
in front of his book store, 1919.
Yet, under which conditions has this happened? Was it just related to the change of
neighborhood? What exactly attracted upper-class women to enter Gallery Dada? It is well
noted that while designing their magazines, Dadaists used novel tactics of regulating readers’
navigation akin to galleries of the time, and such a flirt revealed itself in the following Dada
exhibitions.385 By the same token, one wonders whether Dadaists have also learned the way
of presenting their art from the design of novel department stores of the time. For example,
many of these stores were designed to openly signal what they were from the very outset.386
And many art exhibitions of the time were also learning from the spectacle offered by
department stores. Paul Greenhalgh observed:
As with the stores, women were a principal target. Decorative and applied arts
palaces, fashion and textile pavilions, thousands of private manufacturers stalls
and restaurant facilities were arranged self-consciously to attract what was
thought to be the feminine eye. Thus a substantial part of the site was made
specifically to captivate those sections of the female population able to buy, giving
rise to massive areas of artificially constructed femininity.387
Gallery Dada was in fact a transformed version of Han Corray’s gallery that had hosted the
first Dada Exhibition after Cabaret Voltaire’s closure. Here, one wonders what exactly
385 Hage, “Mise-en-page to Mise-en-scène,” 8-10.
386 Crossick and Jaumain, “The World of the Department Store,” 25.
387 Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World’s
Fairs, 1851–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 190; Crossick and Jaumain, “The
World of the Department Store,” 29.
118
Dadaists have done to transform Gallery Corray to make it Gallery Dada. As Esther Tisa
Francini noted, Corray was not only eclectic in taste — as he would gather artifacts one can
categorize as old and new, western and eastern — but also sensitive to the surrounding space
of artwork while putting his exhibitions. Nevertheless, with furniture coming from Corray’s
home, Gallery Corray was more like a salon than a catchy gallery.388 Accordingly, one may
wonder whether Dadaists have replaced some of these artifacts in a way to create a
Gesamtkunstwerk. Even though there are many positive remarks about the use and design of
the Gallery Dada, unfortunately, there is not any visual document enabling us to imagine the
place, as noted in the introductory chapter.389
388 Francini, “‘Hot spot of international energies,’” 92.
389 Ball noted “The gallery was very interesting, often grotesque, often entertaining. We had four rooms
in the middle of the main street in Zurich, in the house belonging to the millionaire Sprüngli.” The letter
from Ball to August Hoffman (June 26, 1917), Hugo Ball, Saemtliche Werke und Briefe 1904-1927,
eds. Ernst Teubner and Gerhaud Schaub (Göttingen: Wallsetin Verlag, 2003), 181, quoted in Esther
Tisa Francini, “‘Hot spot of international energies’ The network of Dada artists, dealers, and collectors
of African art,” in Dada Africa: Dialogue with the Other, eds. Ralf Burmeister, Michaela Oberhofer,
and Esther Tisa Francini (Chicago: Scheidegger and Spiess, 2016), 93; Ball also noted “[Klee’s
paintings] will scarcely be seen again in such a beautiful and lively setting.” Ball, Flight Out of Time,
103; Ball maintained how a “play was performed in two adjoining rooms; the actors wore body masks.
Mine was so big that I could read my script inside it quite comfortably. The head of the mask was
electrically lighted; it must have looked strange in the darkened room, with the light coming out of the
eyes. Emmy was the only one not wearing a mask. She appeared as half sylph, half angel, lilac and light
blue. The scats went right up to the actors. Tzara was in the back room, and his job was to take care of
the ‘thunder and lightning’ as well as to say ‘Anima, sweet Animal’ parrot fashion. But he was taking
care of the entrances and exits at the same time, thundered and lightninged in the wrong place, and gave
the absolute impression that this was a special effect of the production, an intentional confusion of
backgrounds.” Ball, Flight Out of Time, 106; Early reviewers of the cabaret noted how works were
united well, see Lewer, “Dada’s Genesis: Zurich,” 23.
119
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
This, nevertheless, does not necessarily mean that one needs to stop interpreting. If Dadaists
were sensitive to their social, political, or aesthetic spheres, how is it possible that they were
not to their physical environment? Indeed, Thomas Elsaesser noted a problem on the
conceptualization of the Dada film, because the first reception of some films attributed to
Surrealists just like Entr’acte (1924) was designed as regards their exhibition contexts, that is
Dada soirées, where the audience was expected to protest them — a failed wish.390 Similarly,
as Naima Prevots observed, Laban's Zurich activities lack documentation and a further
investigation of existing records on his performances and teachings is needed.391 Accordingly,
a simple question such as “how would one day of a Dadaist elapse in the city?” or “how did
Dada soirées affect the setting of a ballroom?” could be very interesting to study with
architectural sections, plans, and perspectives. Such an act of rebuilding the environments of
Dada with the existing records could reveal unnoticed sides not only of the presented artwork
but also of the protagonists. As Paula Kamenish observed, even though female artists in Dada
were acknowledged in the accounts of male artists on which the common story of Dada was
based, details about female artists’ lives, works, or networking methods that led to the spread
of Dada is still missing.392 So, there is still a lot of work to do.
The first issue of the journal Dada was published in July 1917, just after the termination of
Gallery Dada. This was also the time when Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings left the group.
Yet, Dada was born, and it had to continue its journey, eventually inhabiting exhibitions places
in Zurich and magazine medium more and more intimately. The termination of the gallery was
followed by a Dada Exhibition in Kunstsalon Wolsberg in November 1917, exhibiting novel
works of Arp and Taeuber, who had been collaborating on “duo” paintings, collages,
390 Thomas Elsaesser, “Dada: Cinema,” in Dada and Surrealist Film, ed. Rudolf Kuenzli (New York:
MIT Press, 1996), 13-27.
391 Prevots, “Zurich Dada and Dance,” 4.
392 Paula K. Kamenish, “Introduction: The Problem with Dada,” in Mamas of Dada: Women of the
European Avant-Garde (Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 2015), 8.
120
sculptures, and embroideries, which explored margins between mediums as well as categories
of applied and fine arts.393 The second issue of the journal Dada was published in December
1917. By the beginning of 1918, people also began to hear some doings of Dada in Berlin. On
the 23rd of July 1918, a Dada evening was held in Zunfthaus Zur Meisen. In that month, as a
part of Collection Dada, 25 poems of Tzara were published with 10 woodcuts of Arp.
September 1918 was a fruitful month as it not only welcomed the famous play of the Swiss
Marionette Theater, of which geometric and colorful props were designed and produced by
Taeuber but also a Dada Exhibition in Kunstsalon Wolfsberg was organized by Janco, Arp,
and Richter. And then, in November 1918, the Great War came to an end. In December 1918,
the third issue of the journal Dada was published with a radical change in mise-en-page, which
was followed by a Dada Exhibition in Kunsthaus Zurich, problematizing new art trends of the
time. As a result of increasing mobility after the war, Dadaists in Zurich got in touch with
novel artists like Francis Picabia (1879-1953), Walter Serner (1889-1942), Christian Schad
(1894-1982), or Viking Eggeling (1880-1925), manifesting itself in solo exhibitions of
Eggeling or Schad in the Kunsthaus Zurich and a shift of Dada discourse. Schad, for example,
was experimenting with photographic paper and fixative, creating compositions out of
everyday objects.394 Serner, Arp, and Tzara not only collaborated on Dadaist poems but also
pranked newspapers with articles narrating fake Dada activities like a duel, undermining
journalism's credibility. 8th and final Dada evening in Zurich was held in Kuafleuten while the
details of this scandalous event cannot be addressed here. In late 1919, Dada split into two
factions: Tzara, Picabia, and Serner versus Richter, Janco, and Arp (who formed the Alliance
of Revolutionary Artists, greeting Munich and Budapest revolts through embracement of
abstraction). The disagreement centered on Dada’s nihilism as well as political sympathy for
postwar Europe's revolutionary artists.395 Then, Tzara, Huelsenbeck, and Richter left Zurich
while Arp and Janco remained.396 “Continuing the labeling and mapping of itself as a social
enterprise, indexed in social space,” Timothy Benson argued, “Dada was no longer a single
site or place but had become an array of multiple sites within a widening cultural and
geographical space,” linking Hannover, Cologne, Paris, and other cities of the continent.397
Accordingly, until 1923, Dada protagonists organized at least 24 exhibitions and 24 evening
shows across cities in Europe.
393 Dickerman, “Zurich,” 36-8.
394 Dickerman, 40-1.
395 Allen, “Zurich Dada, 1916-1919,” 15.
396 Dickerman, “Zurich,” 41; Some scholars think that Janco may have attended the first event of the
French Dadaists in Pari, see Sandqvist, “Marcel Iancu Becomes Marcel Janco,” 98.
397 Timothy O. Benson, “The Dada Text and the Landscape of War, ” Dada/Surrealism 23 (2020): 15-
6, https://doi.org/10.17077/0084-9537.1358
121
Following Brenda Farnell’s discernment of two recent turns in critical theory — if the first
turn was remembering body, the second one was recalling the fact that this body is a moving
one — Emma Bond saw “body as a liminal, multifaceted, and generative space capable of
both reproducing and subverting cultural, national and gender norms and inscriptions,” and a
“locus of ultimate certainty or uncertainty, depending on location and orientation, leading to
sensations of either ‘being at home’ or being ‘out of place.’”398 Accordingly, reviewing the
whole journey of Dada concerning the moving body can open new interpretations allowing
one to understand different aspects not only of Dada but also of contextual movements whose
protagonists sometimes shared similar locations with Dadaists. Given that the
acknowledgment of Dada's relation with Constructivism had the Dada gain a progressive
persona,399 such research may bring productive stories about the movement. With
interrelations between bodies, spaces, and media in mind, a deeper investigation of Dada
environments across the continent, as well as the city, is therefore needed as it could provide
scholarship fruitful ways not only for reviewing Dada’s works and discourse but also
appreciating them:
We must add: they cannot persuade us to enjoy eating the rotten pie of human
flesh that they present to us. They cannot force our quivering nostrils to admire
the smell of corpses. They cannot expect us to confuse the increasingly disastrous
apathy and cold heartedness with heroism. One day they will have to admit that
we reacted very politely, even movingly.400
398 Emma Bond, Writing Migration Through the Body (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 11.
399 Rasula, Destruction Was My Beatrice, xvi.
400 Ball, Flight Out of Time, 67.
122
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APPENDICES
A. TURKISH SUMMARY / TÜRKÇE ÖZET
1990'lardan bu yana kamusal alandaki hızlı değişimler, sosyal bilimlerdeki bir grup bilim
insanının beden kavramını tarihsel bağlam içinde yeniden düşünmesine sebep oldu. Paralel
olarak bu çalışma, bedenli varlıklar, mekânlar ve ortamlar arasındaki karşılıklı ilişkileri deşifre
etmeyi amaçlar. Buna göre, Birinci Dünya Savaşı (1914-1918) gibi bedenli varlıklara birçok
açıdan meydan okuyan bir bağlamın sanatı ve mimarisini incelemek böyle bir düşünceyi
başlatmak için uygun bir nokta gibi görünmektedir. Birinci Dünya Savaşı’na sebep olan
tarihsel bağlam aynı zamanda erken yirminci yüzyıl avangard hareketlerini doğurmuştur. Eric
Hobsbawm’ın gözlemlediği kadarıyla savaş boyunca bu hareketlerden yalnızca
Konstrüktivizm ve Dadaizm kayda değer biçimsel icatlar yapmıştır. Bu hareketlerin
çalışmaları daha dikkatli incelendiğinde, bedenselliği manipüle etmenin geleneksel
zihniyetlerle başa çıkmada yardımcı bir strateji olarak kullanıldığı fark edilmektedir. Bu tür
bir eylemliliğin hangi şartlar altında geliştiğini anlamak amacıyla bu araştırma, Zürih Dada'nın
performans, sergi ve kent pratiklerine odaklanır.
İkinci bölümde, kavramsal bir çerçeve oluşturabilmek adına, avangard terimini ele alan
kanonik çalışmaların bedenler ve mekânlar arasındaki etkileşimi yeterince derinlemesine ele
alıp almadığı sorgulanır. Örneğin The Theory of the Avant-Garde, çev. Gerald Fitzgerald
(Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1968) adlı çalışmasında Renato Poggioli, avangard hareketlerin
ortaya çıkışını siyasi ve edebi sol hareketler arasındaki bir “flörtün” sonucu olarak görür.
Avangard hareketlerin kullandığı mekânlardan dergilere kadar çeşitli detayları inceleyen
Poggioli, avangard hareketlere has dört özellik (aktivizim, antagonizm, nihilizm, ve agonizm)
ve bir hedef (sosyal, politik, estetik veya etik yabancılaşma) olduğunu gözlemler. Poggioli’nin
çalışmasından yaklaşık yirmi yıl sonra, “estetik modernite”yi her türlü otoriteye karşı çıkan
bir “kriz kavramı” olarak tanımlayan Matei Călinescu, Five Faces of Modernity (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1987) adlı çalışmasında avangard hareketleri estetik modernitenin
bahsi geçen krizi hatırlatan bir yüzü olarak görür. Ayrıca Poggioli tarafından yürütülen
etimolojik araştırmayı geliştirerek avangard teriminin renkli ve zengin yolculuğunu da
belgeler. Bahsi geçen iki düşünür de avangard hareketleri kavramak için hayati öneme sahip
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pek çok temaya değinmiş olsa da çalışmalarında ne yazık ki beden-mekân arasındaki ilişkinin
sürdürülebilir bir analizini bulmak mümkün değildir; bahsettikleri tüm alanlar yalnızca
faillerin “zihinlerini” etkiliyor gibi gözükmektedir. Theory of the Avant-Garde, çev. Michael
Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986) adlı çalışmasında Peter Bürger,
erken yirminci yüzyıl avangard hareketlerinin — kendisi bu hareketleri 1960’lı yıllardaki
avangard hareketlerden ayırmak adına “tarihsel avangardlar” olarak yeniden adlandırmıştır —
hayatı reforme edebilmek amacıyla sanattan kopmaya çalıştığını iddia eder. Bürger’e göre bu
girişim hayattan ziyade sanatı reforme etse de insanların da sanatın bir kurum olduğunu
anlamasını sağlamıştır. Bütün detaylı okumalarına rağmen Bürger çalışmasında bir kurumun,
özellikle sanat kurumunun, bedenler açısından kendini nasıl gösterdiğine açıklık getirmez. The
Futurist Moment: Avant-garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1986) adlı çalışmasında, sanatçıların nasıl olup da Birinci Dünya
Savaşı’nı desteklediğini merak eden Marjorie Perloff, savaştan hemen önceki dönemi sanatsal
kopuş dönemi olarak nitelendirir. Ona göre bu dönemde avangard hareketler yalnızca kitlesel
bir izleyici karşısında kendilerini sorgulayıp yeniden formüle etmekle kalmaz, aynı zamanda
sanat-politika, sanat-zanaat, sanat-tüketim gibi sanat alanındaki birçok ilişkiyi de sorgular.
Zengin bir malzemeye odaklanan Perloff, çalışmasında önceki teorisyenlerden farklı olarak
yapılı çevrenin yanı sıra ilgili tarafların bedensel ve algısal boyutuyla ilgili birçok konuyu
olumlu bir şekilde yeniden formüle eder. Örneğin avangard hareketler tarafından sıklıkla
kullanılan “eşzamanlılık” ilkesini açıklarken kişinin ekstrem ortamları nasıl deneyimleyip
hatırladığını, duyuları uyumsuz olarak nasıl algıladığını veya uzay-zaman-hareketin bir
deneyim içerisinde nasıl çarpıtılma eğiliminde olduğunu tartışır. Perloff’unkine benzer bir
duyarlılık Hal Foster’ın çalışmalarında da görülür. Foster, sadece avangard hareketler
tarafından üretilen işleri değil, aynı zamanda avangard üzerine yazılan teorik tartışmaları da
psikanaliz ışığında inceler. Fosterin çalışmalarında çevreler ve bedenli failler, kavramların
somutlaştığı alan olarak ortaya çıkar. Örneğin Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1993) adlı çalışmasında, "harika" kavramı harabelerde ve mankenlerde kendini gösterirken,
“şehir” ise bir endişeli işareteler dizisi olarak ortaya çıkar. Benzer şekilde “makine,” faillerin
"uysal" bedenleri tarafından taklit edilecek protez bir model olarak ortaya çıkarken “şok olmuş
asker,” bedenin makine veya meta haline gelmesini hatırlatır. The Invention of Politics in the
European Avant-Garde (1906-1940), eds. Sascha Bru and Gunther Martens (Amsterdam-New
York: Rodopi, 2006) adlı çalışmanın giriş bölümünde avangard hareketleri ele alırken beden
ve mekânın politik bir çerçeve içerisinde nasıl sorunsallaştırılabileceğini merak eden Sascha
Bru, avangard sanatçıların hem “devleti” hem de “devrimi” içeren “yurttaş-burjuva” birimleri
olarak ele alınabileceğini önerir. Burada bu yurttaş-burjuvanın yalnızca zihinsel değil, aynı
zamanda mekânı da işgal eden bedensel bir varlık olduğunu hatırlatmak gerekir. Yine de
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böylesi bir okumada “beden,” “sanatçı,” ya da “şehir deneyimi” gibi sözcükleri kullanırken —
sanki bu sözcükler iyi tanımlanmış varlıkları tasvir ediyormuşçasına — fazla bir genelleme
yapma tehlikesi bulunmaktadır.
Buna göre aynı bölüm avangard hareketlerden kalan eserlere odaklanarak bazı tarihyazımsal
kaygıları ele alır. Johanna Drücker’in Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014) adlı çalışmasında yaptığı tartışmalar
bağlamında, olup bitenler, kaydedilenler, yeniden inşa edilenler ve anlatılanlar arasındaki
boşluklara dikkat çekerek, yalnızca yazıyı kullanan birinin bilginin üretimi ve yayılması
sırasında birtakım engellerle yüzleşebileceğine dikkat çeker. Poggioli’nin anladığı haliyle
“avangard ruh” ile şekillendirilmiş bir araştırma alanının da — herhangi bir aracı, yöntemi
veya malzemeyi önceden varsayarak işe başlamadığı için — yeni bilgi üretmede faydalı
olabileceğini savunur. Bedenli varlıkların birtakım yüzeyler vasıtasıyla çevreyle etkileşime
girdiği göz önünde bulundurulduğunda, bahsi geçen eleştirel araştırma alanını bir yüzeyler
sistemi olarak okumak faydalı olabilir. Burada bahsi geçen alanın yüzeyleri üzerinde
gerçekleştirilen herhangi bir işlem, bedenli faillerin yorumlarını da değiştirebilir ki sistemin
başarısı olabildiğince “katlanabilecek” esneklikte kalabilmesine bağlıdır.
Avangard hareketler tarafından sıklıkla kullanılan dergiler yalnızca söz-görüntü arasında
geçişler sağlamakla kalmamış, aynı zamanda bahsi geçen hareketlerin etkinlikleri ve bedenli
failleriyle ilginç bir şekilde etkileşime girmiştir. Bu yayınlar üzerine mevcut bilgi birikiminin
çevrimiçi arşivlerin yayınlanmaya başladığı XXI. yüzyılda yeniden ele alınması da
gerektiğinden, dergi ortamına odaklanmak sanat ve mimarlık tarihi araçlarının gözden
geçirilebileceği bu eleştirel alanı oluştururken yararlı olabilir. Dolayısıyla ilk bölümde erken
yirminci yüzyıl avangard hareketlerinin yayın ağını tasvir eden bir arayüz betimlenir. Bahsi
geçen arayüz, avangard haraketler tarafından kullanılan yayınları içeriklerine kadar böldükten
sonra, yalnızca bölünmüş materyali bağlamsal belgeler, eserler, konumlar veya kritik
çalışmalarla bağlamakla kalmaz, aynı zamanda bedenli kullanıcılarına, uzam içerisinde kritik
argümanlar üretebilecekleri çok boyutlu alanlar sağlar. Arayüzün sağladığı bahsi geçen bu çok
boyutlu alanları örneklendirelim. 1916 ve 1917 yıllarında Kabare Voltaire’de ve Galeri
Dada’da yapılmış olan ve hakkında hiçbir görsel veri bulunmayan Dada sergilerinin nasıl
kurulduğunu merak eden Emily Hage, Charlotte Klonk'un modern sanat galerilerinin iç
mekanları üzerine yaptığı kanonik araştırmadan yararlanarak Galeri Dada’da sergilenen
resimlerin tüm duvarı kaplayan çok sayıda yakın tablo yerine göz hisasında ve tek sıra halinde
devam eden bir dizi şeklinde sergilenmiş olabileceğine varır. Benzer bir hedefle, ilk olarak
eldeki mevcut malzemeden (mimari çizimler, mekânın güncel fotoğrafları, dönemdeki
resimler, vb.) yola çıkarak Kabare Voltaire’in üç boyutlu taslak bir modeli oluşturuldu. Taslak
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modeldeki her tasarım tercihi (Hage’in argümanı gibi veya anılarda bahsedilen olayların
gelişimiyle alakalı) çeşitli araştırma sorularının ardından farklılaştırılarak kabarenin farklı
modelleri oluşturuldu. Bu, tarihsel olayı yeniden üretmek için yapılan her yeniden inşa
denemesinin, olayın kendisine ilişkin yeni yönleri/boşlukları ortaya çıkartan ve olaya dair yeni
bilgiler üretebilen bir argüman olduğunu hatırlatmaktadır.
Zürih Dada dosyasına yaklaşırken, üçüncü bölüm, okuyucunun 1870-1914 arasındaki bağlamı
daha iyi kavramasına yardımcı olacak şekilde bilgiler sunar. Örneğin bu dönemde eskiye
oranla daha fazla çocuk hayatta kalmıştır. Ayrıca “ikinci sanayi devrimi” olarak adlandırılan
bir süreç, birçok insanın çevrelerine eskisinden daha verimli bir şekilde müdahale etmesini
sağlamıştır ki böylesi bir verimlilik en incelikli olarak kendini mekanikte göstermiştir. Ayrıca
bu dönemde ulaşım araçlarının yaygınlaşmasıyla hem bölgesel hem de uluslararası
hareketlilikler artmıştır. Görüntü ve sesin farklı ortamlarda kayıt edilebilmesi gibi teknolojiler
hızla gelişirken dönemin yöneticileri, zamanı, mesafeyi veya sıcaklığı düzenleyen sistemler
üzerinde fikir birliğine varmıştır. Buna parallel olarak zamanın sanatçıları hem dış hem de iç
dünyaları kavramanın yeni yollarını aramıştır. Hareket halindeki beden mefhumu ise dönemin
birçok düşünürün ilgisini çeker. Bu bağlamda Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) gibi zamanın önde
gelen dans kuramcıları, hareket, mekân ve zaman arasındaki etkileşimi yakından incelemiştir.
Fakat fiziki olandan metafizik olana doğru giderken varlıkların bedenselliği dönemin
performans uyguluyacıyıları için sorun teşkil etmiştir. Buna göre Edward Gordon Craig (1872-
1966) gibi zamanın bazı tiyatro vizyonerleri sahnede tam bir yanılsama yaratmak için
oyuncular yerine büyük kuklalar kullanmak gibi fikirler ortaya atarak oyuncu/izleyici
bedenlerini yeniden kavramsallaştırmıştır. Bahsi geçen bütün bu yeni mekanizmalar bir yer
kapladığı için böylesine sayıca bir genişleme bir dizi mekânsal çatışmaya da yol açmıştır.
Sonuç olarak büyük ölçekli inşaat programları yürütülmüştür. Modern şehir fabrikalar, ofisler,
hastaneler, parklar, spor tesisleri, kanallar veya istasyonlar gibi yeni mekânsal örgütlenme
biçimlerine tanık olurken kamusal ve özel alan arasındaki ayrım daha da genişlemiştir.
Bütün bu mekanizmalar insanlar tarafından kullanılmıştır ama aynı şekilde değil. Buna göre
bölüm, 1870-1914 yılları arasında farklı geçmişlerden ailelerin yaşamlarına odaklanarak köylü
bir ailede doğan bir çocuğun nasıl kendi kendine yeterliliği temel bir ilke olarak kavradığını,
işçilerin nasıl zorlu koşullarda çalıştığını, yöneticilerin iş akışını ve işçinin bedeni ile
çevresindeki motor arasındaki ilişkiyi nasıl yeniden düzenlediğini, eğlence tesislerinin
insanları nasıl “muhteşem” bedenleri tüketmeye davet ettiğini, aile üstü kurumların çocukları
eğitime nasıl götürdüğünü, sporun nasıl kurumsallaştığını, kamusal alanda farklı bedenli
varlıkların nasıl ortaya çıktığını, bu “öteki” varlıkların özel kurumlarda nasıl ehlileştirildiğini
ve buna benzer döneme özgü bedenli varlık üzerinde tezahür eden kurumsal kuvvetleri
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betimler. Buna ek olarak bu dönemde artan okuryazarlık sayesinde daha fazla insan siyasi
olarak temsil edilmek istemiştir. İnsanların büyük ölçüde temsil edilmek istediği kimliğin
belirlenmesi ise sonsuz mücadeyi beraberinde getirmiştir. Bu çalışmanın perspektifinden
önemli olan, uygulanan kendini haklı çıkarma ve başkalarıyla yüzleşme yaklaşımlarıdır.
Birincisi, dönemin pek çok baskı grubu, karşı çıktıkları kümenin aksine, böyle bir sonuca
ulaşmak için çektikleri acı kadar elde edilen sonuçtan fayda sağlayamadıklarını gerekçe
göstererek eylemlerini meşrulaştırmıştır. İkincisi, zamanın pek çok grubu kendi görüşlerini
savunmak için şiddet uygulamaktan kendini alıkoyamamıştır. Birinci Dünya Savaşı bile
diplomasiyle dindirilemeyen bir kriz ortamının şiddet üzerinden tezahür eden bir çözüm
arayışı olarak görülebilir. Uzmanlar, Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nı, devletlerin sadece savaş
alanında değil, arka planda da güreştiği bir “topyekün savaş” olarak nitelendirmiştir. Bu,
öncelikli olarak bilginin ve sivil yaşamın savaş zamanının gereksinimlerine göre yeniden
düzenlenmesinde kendini göstermiştir. Yuvanın bir savaş alanı biçiminde yeniden
düzenlenmesi gibi, ilginç bir şekilde savaş alanı da bir yuva olarak yeniden şekillendirillmiştir.
Ayrıca savaş ortamında yeni bir sanatçı tipi ortaya çıkmıştır. Bu, parçalanmış bedenleri
birleştirmek için doktorlarla iş birliği yapan sanatçıdır. Ayrıca esir olan birçok asker can
sıkıntısından kendini tutamayıp eğlence ortamlarında boy göstermiştir. İlginçtir ki tehlikenin
farkında olan yöneticiler tutsak askerlere sporu, eğitimi, dini, sanat ve zanaatı teşvik ederek
askerleri ucuz eğlence ve tüketimden uzak tutmaya çalışır.
Tüm bu tartışmalar ışığında dördüncü bölüm, Dada'nın Kabare Voltaire, Galeri Dada ve
Zürih'in diğer mekanlarında doğuşunun ve gelişiminin izini sürüyor. Birinci Dünya Savaşı
bağlamında tarafsız kalan İsviçre, farklı uluslardan savaşa katılmayan birçok şahsı da ağırladı.
Bunun bağlamda Dada, 1916'nın başlarında Zürih'te toplandı ve 1919'un sonlarına doğru
Berlin, Köln, Paris, New York gibi şehirlere yayıldı. Zürih’te geçen bu dört yıl boyunca grup,
en az 9 sergi, 9 yayın ve 27 akşam toplantısı aracılığıyla plastik sanatlar, dans, performans,
müzik ve şiirden karma örnekler sundu.
Dada uzmanları Zürih'e yoğunlaştıklarında, Kabare Voltaire'in ortaya çıkışını ve içerideki
resim sergisi-performans-dans gibi farklı mecralarda sunulan sanat eserlerini Hugo Ball'un
(1886-1927) Gesamtkunstwerk (bütünsel sanat eseri) fikrine olan ilgisiyle açıklama
eğilimindedir. Ancak daha yakından bakıldığında, dönemin son sanat eserlerinin nispeten daha
ticari kabare eserleriyle birlikte sunulduğu görülür. Burada Hugo Ball ve Emmy Hennings'in
(1885-1948) bütünsel bir tiyatro oluşturabilmek için neden bir kabare odasına ihtiyaç
duyduğunu sorgulamak gerekir. Ekonomi cevabın bir tarafında yer alırken aşinalık diğer
tarafındadır. Savaş şartlarında durumu iyi olmayan çift önceden başka kabarede birlikte
çalışıyorlardı. Ayrıca hedef kitle zaten mekâna aşinaydı çünkü Kabare Voltaire’i kurmak için
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kiraladıkları oda zaten birkaç yıl önce Zürih'in ilk edebiyat kafesi olarak İsviçreli bir gruba ev
sahipliği yapmıştı. Ancak bu soru aynı zamanda kabareler için de daha net bir sınır çizmeyi
gerektirir. Peter Jelavich’in hatırlattığı haliyle kabare mekânı, enerjisi ve yeni mecraların
denenebileceği deneysel bir yer olması sebebiyle yirminci yüzyılın başındaki kültürü
canlandırmak isteyen dönemin sanatçılarının zaten ilgisini oldukça çekiyordu. Daha dikkatli
incelendiğinde ise zamanın pek çok kabaresinin duvarlarında resimlerin sergilendiği görülür.
Bu noktada bir performans mekânının duvarlarına resimler asmak “bütünsel bir sanat eseri”
yaratmak için yeterli midir? Bir diğer deyişle, Kabare Voltaire'in ayrı bir varlık olarak bir
Gesamtkunstwerk oluşturduğu ne ölçüde iddia edilebilir? Şüphesiz ki Kabere Voltaire'de
bedenli faillerin mekânla farklı şekilde etkileşime girdiği farklı etkinliklerin programatik bir
kesişimi vardı. Dolayısıyla kabarenin kesişen faaliyetlerini de tek tek incelemek de gerekir.
Bu nedenle bu bölüm, Dada'nın karmaşık söyleminin prova-tepki-yeniden üretim döngüsünü
takip ederek gün be gün ortaya çıktığını öne sürüyor. Prova aşaması (öğleden sonrayla
ilişkilendirildi), Dadaistlerin etkinlik ve sergi hazırlıklarını yaptıkları zaman dilimini temsil
ederken, tepki aşaması (akşamla ilişkilendirildi), hazırlanan eserlerin izleyiciyle buluştuğu,
performans anlarını temsil ediyor. Bu döngüde yeniden üretim aşamasıysa (sabahla
ilişkilendirildi), Dada’cıların performans anlarını geriye dönük bir şekilde yeniden
yorumlayan söylemsel faaliyetlerini betimliyor. Beden üzerine kavramsal bir çerçeve olmadan
bu aşamalara odaklanmak tehlikeli olabilir.
Buna göre bölüm, “beden” kavramını sorunsallaştıran önemli çalışmaları da hatırlatır. Lived
Body: Sociological Themes, Embodied Issues (New York: Routledge, 1998) adlı çalışmada,
Simon J. Williams ve Gillian Bendelow, modern sosyal bilimlerin, "zihin” kavramını “beden”
kavramından ayırmış olduğunu hatırlatarak bedenin toplumsal düzen içindeki konumunu
merak eder. Yazarlar buna göre sosyal bilimler tarihinde sistemler ve aktörler arasındaki
ilişkiyi anlamaya çalışan iki okuma olduğunu hatırlatır. Birinci okuma, sosyal aktörleri
sistemlerin yaratısı olarak görürken ikinci okuma aktörleri sistemleri kontrol edebilen özgür
varlıklar olarak görmüştür. Yazarlar bu bağlamda modern düşünce tarihinden üçü kabaca
insan bedeninin toplumsal düzene karşı pasif bir varlık olduğunu savunan (Michel
Foucault’nun “söylemsel” bedeni, Norbert Elias’ın “uygar” bedeni, Mary Douglas’ın
“sembolik” bedeni), üçü de toplumsal bir eylemde bedenin aktif kullanımını araştıran (Marcel
Mauss'un "beden teknikleri" ile Pierre Bourdieu'nun "habitus"u, Erving Goffman'ın gündelik
yaşamdaki "bedensel" iletişim üzerine gözlemi, Maurice Merleau-Ponty'nin “yaşantılanan
bedeni") altı kanonik çalışmayı hatırlatır.
Discipline and Punish, çev. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977[1975]), adlı
çalışmasında, 17. ve 19. yüzyıllar arasında kurumsal prosedürlerdeki değişimleri inceleyen
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Michel Foucault, güç/bilgi mekanizmasının varlıkları yalnızca bedenleri aracılığıyla disipline
etmekle kalmayıp, aynı zamanda onları söylemsel olarak yeniden ürettiğini savunur. Buna
göre avangard bir hareketin — bedensel, maddi veya söylemsel — gelişiminin böyle bir
güç/bilgi mekanizması üzerinden okunup okunamayacağı sorulabilir. The Civilizing Process:
Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, eds. Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom, and
Stephen Mennell, çev. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2013[1939]) adlı
çalışmasında Norbert Elias, davranışların gevşek, şiddetin zirvede olduğu Orta Çağ’daki
davranış kodlarını, kodların artık tekrarlanmadığı ve bedenlerin “uygarlaştığı” sonraki
yüzyılların daha katı davranışlarıyla karşılaştırır. Bu bağlamda günlük yaşamdaki sosyal
güçlerin, tarihsel olarak değişen davranış kodları aracılığıyla bireylerin rasyonel, duygusal ve
bedensel dürtülerini sürekli olarak şekillendirdiğini öne sürer. Bu çalışma ışığında avangard
dergiler tarafından kullanılan yayınları “davranış kodları” olarak okuyarak tarihsel
avangardların sanatçıları ve izleyicileri “uygarlaştırdığı” iddia edilebilir mi? Purity and
Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge,
2001[1966]) adlı çalışmasında Mary Douglas, fiziksel beden deneyiminde bir şeyin kirli,
tehlikeli veya tabu olup olmadığını belirleyen şeyin sosyal yapının sınırı olduğunu öne sürer.
Buna paralel olarak Birinci Dünya Savaşı'nın uluslararası atmosferi göz önüne alındığında, iki
tür toplumsal yapının fiziksel bedenler aracılığıyla birbiriyle karşılaşması durumunda ne
olduğu merak edilebilir. Aslında böylesi bir karşılaşma Marcel Mauss'un farklı kökenden
gelen insanların bir eylem sırasında bedenlerini oldukça farklı şekilde kullandıklarını
gözlemlemesini sağlamıştır (Mauss bunu 1935 yılında yayınlanan “Techniques of the body”
adlı makalesinde tartışır). Hem Pierre Bourdieu hem de Mauss'un kullandığı "habitus" terimi
aracılığıyla Williams ve Bendelow, bireylerin sosyal, politik veya ekonomik kurumları
bedensel faaliyetleri aracılığıyla benimsediklerini iddia eder. Relations in Public:
Microstudies of the Public Order (New York: Basic Books, 1971) adlı çalışmasında kamusal
alanda insanlar arasındaki fiziksel karşılaşmaları deşifre etmeye çalışan Erving Goffman,
faillerin kimliklerini bedensel “deyimler” alıp vererek kazandıklarını savunur.
Phenomenology of Perception, çev. Colin Smith (New York: Routledge, 2005[1945]) adlı
çalışmasında Maurice Merleau-Ponty, kişinin algıyla ilgili kavramları sürekli olarak inşa ettiği
tamamlanmamış yolları inceleyerek kişinin algısının nesnelerde sonuçlandığını önerir. Başka
bir deyişle, ona göre algılayan bir özneden bahsetmek, algılanan bir ortamdan bahsetmek
demektir. Ayrıca duyuların eş zamanlı ve ikili yapıda (görme/görülme, dokunma/dokunulma)
olduğunu hatırlatarak kişinin bedeninin dünyadaki bir nesne değil, bu nesnelerle ve dünyayla
iletişim aracı olduğunu savunur. Bütün bu farklı görüşler ışığında denilebilir ki beden, bir araç
olarak hem toplumsal tarihin hem de kişisel deneyimin kesiştiği bir alandır. Ancak aynı kurum
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bedenli varlıklar üzerinde aynı şekilde tezahür etmez. Dolayısıyla tüm bu fikirleri akılda
tutarak tartışmayı tarihselleştirmek gerekmektedir.
Günlüklere yakından bakıldığında Dada'nın çoğu yeniliklerinin akşam performanslarında
değil de öğleden sonraki provalarda ortaya çıktığı görülüyor. Böylesine yaratıcı bir süreçte
kabare mekânının rolünü incelerken Dadaistlerin “kübist” maskeleri ilk kez kullandıkları an,
çalışmak açısından değerli olabilir. Bir gün Dada’cı Marcel Janco (1895-1984) diğer grup
üyelerinin çok etkilendiği maskelerle çıkagelir. Grup üyeleri bu maskeleri kullanır, tuhaf
davranışlar sergiler ve ortaya “alışılmadık yaratıklar” için yeni danslar çıkar. Merleau-
Ponty'nin fikirlerini takip ardından yapılı çevrenin maske gibi bedenli faillerini hareketlerini
etkileyebilecek bir nesnenin anlamını etkileme yeteneğinin, faillerin eylemlerini
değiştirebileceği iddia edilebilir. Ayrıca Dada’cılar, farklı eylem kombinasyonları yoluyla
"imkansız" yaratıklar için bedensel hareketleri sistematik bir şekilde ifade ederken
Bourdieu’nün anladığı haliyle mevcut "habituslarının" sınırlarını genişletmiş olabilir.
Akşam etkinliklerinde ise bu yeni doğan “alışılmadık yaratıklar” izleyiciyle sosyalleşerek yeni
kimlikler kazanmıştır. Burada Goffman'ın fikirlerini anımsamak mümkün. Örneğin, bir gün
soyut kostümlerle bir dans parçası hazırlayan Ball, karanlıkta sahneye götürülür. Orada
seyirciyi yakından görür, heyecanlanır ve yaşadığı stres sonucu çocukluğundan hatırladığı dini
bir ezgiyi söylemeye başlar. Sonunda bu durum onun seyirciler tarafından sahnede "sihirli bir
piskopos" olduğu düşünülmesine yol açar. Yani mekân, faillerin planlı beden “deyimlerinin”
akışını bozacak şekilde failleri bir araya getirme yeteneğine sahiptir ve bu da sonuçta yeni
kimlikler ve sosyal hiyerarşiler yaratabilir. Ayrıca Douglas'ın okumasının ardından akşam
etkinliklerinde faillerin sosyal sistemler arasındaki farkları bedenleri aracılığıyla gözardı ettiği
söylenebilir. Alkol kullanımını desteklemesi, insanlar arasındaki yakınlığı sağlaması ve en
önemlisi herkesin sahip olduğu bedenlere yaptığı tematik vurgudan dolayı kabare mekânının
bu muğlaklaştırma sürecinde rolü büyüktür.
Sabahları (yeniden üretim aşamalarında) ise Dadaistler birçok şeyi tartışırken yeni stratejiler
planlamak için önceki geceyi gözden geçiriyorlardı. Kabarenin sergi salonu tarafı bu
zamanlarda vurgulansa da aslında grup, tartışmalarını tavernalarda bira içerken tiyatrolarda
oyun izlerken veya Zürih sokaklarında dolaşırken yapıyordu. Böylesi bir “aylak” zaman
geçirme, savaş zamanında daha çok çalışmak zorunda olan İsviçreli vatandaşlardan ziyade
uluslararası savaş sığınmacılarına mahsustu. Bu bağlamda, Foucault'nun fikirlerinin ardından
Dada'nın söylemsel ortaya çıkışının Zürih'teki bir iktidar/bilgi mekanizmasının sonucu olarak
okunup okunamayacağı ve Kabare Voltaire ile Zürih arasındaki ilişkinin buna göre anlaşılıp
anlaşılamayacağı sorulabilir. Aslında Kabare Voltaire şehirde eğlence sunan tek ortam değildi,
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çünkü pek çok sığınmacı kabarenin bulunduğu eğlence mahallesinde çalışıyordu. Şunu da
eklemek gerekir ki aktif olarak on yıllık bir yolculuğu olmasına rağmen Dada, Kabare
Voltaire'de yalnızca beş ay kadar kaldı. Kabare’nin kapanışının ardından grup, şehrin eğlence
merkezinden ziyade merkezine yakın bir yerde yeni açılan bir galeride bir Dada sergisi
düzenledi. Buna müteakip grup birkaç ay içinde galeriyi yeniden organize ederek nispeten
daha sofistike sergiler, gösteriler, dersler sunan "Galeri Dada’yı” kurdu. Bu dönüşümde tam
olarak neyin değiştiği hala bir merak konusu olmakla birlikte, Dada'nın Zürih içi ve Zürih dışı
yolculuğunun Elias’ın anladığı haliyle bir “uygarlaşma” süreci olarak okunup okunamayacağı
sorulabilir.
Galeri Dada'nın kullanımı ve tasarımı ile ilgili günlüklerde pek çok olumlu yorum bulunsa da
maalesef mekânı hayal etmemizi sağlayacak görsel bir belge yok. Dadacılar sosyal, politik
veya estetik alanlarına duyarlı idiyse, fiziksel çevrelerine duyarlı olmamaları nasıl mümkün
olabilir? Buna göre “bir Dadaistin şehirdeki bir günü nasıl geçerdi?” veya "Dada partileri,
partinin düzenlendiği etkinlik alanının düzenini nasıl etkiledi?" gibi soruları mimari kesitler,
planlar ve perspektif çizimlerle çalışmak bir hayli ilginç olabilir. Dolayısıyla bedenler,
mekânlar ve ortamlar arasındaki karşılıklı ilişkilere odaklanan daha derin bir araştırmaya
ihtiyaç vardır. Çünkü bu, yalnızca Dada'nın çalışmalarını ve söylemini yeniden
değerlendirmek için değil, aynı zamanda onları takdir etmek için de verimli yollar
sağlayacaktır.
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B. CURRICULUM VITAE / ÖZGEÇMİŞ
Trained as an architect with experience in performing arts, I possess a diverse skillset
that includes expertise in photography, freehand drawing, storytelling, video editing,
three-dimensional modeling, and the use of Adobe Creative Cloud. Uncovering
forgotten dimensions of ideas, historical occasions, or places is where my true passion lies.
My goal is to tell stories that challenge present-day debates on discrimination, violence, and
technology.
-Middle East Technical University (METU) 09, 2020-09, 2023
Master of Arts, The Dept. of History of Architecture, CGPA: 4.00/4.00
-École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville 02, 2022-07, 2022
Erasmus European Mobility Program
-Middle East Technical University (METU) 09, 2015-07, 2020
Bachelor of Architecture, The Dept. of Architecture, CGPA: 3.15/4.00
Graduation Project: “City as Archive: A New Ground for Bodrum”
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
-Architects' Association 1927 02, 2021-03, 2021
Execution of “Nejat Ersin Digital Archive”
-METU Faculty of Architecture & The Getty Foundation 11, 2019-01, 2020
Execution of “METU Dept. of Architecture Archive”
in “Keeping It Modern: 2017 Grants”
-SCRA Architecture 08, 2019-10, 2019
Office Internship
-METU Design Factory & Anadolu Efes 02, 2018-05, 2018
Interdisciplinary Design Studio
-YDA Group 06, 2017-08, 2017
Construction internship in the construction of “YDA Center”
-METU Faculty of Architecture 06, 2016-08, 2016
Internship on surveying, model making, and construction materials.
EXTRA-CURRICULAR EXPERIENCE
-METU Theatre Club/ODTÜ Oyuncuları 09, 2015-09, 2019
Performer
Designer (graphic, video, scenery)
Coordinator of the annual METU Theatre Festival
Executive Board Member
Trainer
Creative Director
Director
-Ankara Tiyatrolar Platformu (Ankara Theatres Platform) 06, 2017-10, 2019
Designer
Executive Board Member
Coordinator of Ankara Summer Theatre Festival
Coordinator of weekly short courses
EDUCATION
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-METU Department of Architecture 09, 2016-06, 2018
Co-representative of 2nd and 3rd year studios of architecture, with Ezgi Geyik
-METU Mountaineering & Winter Sports Community/DKSK 09, 2015-01, 2016
ATTENDEE
-Şiirsel Komedi: Bir Clown Araştırması (Poetic Comedy: A Clown Exploration) 2019
Instructor: Güray Dinçol, Assistant: Hazal İspirli
-BETONART: 18. Architecture Summer School
2019
-Introduction to Jacques Lecoq’s Mask Theatre 2019
Instructor: Pınar Akkuzu
-Immersive and Responsive Environments: Performative Arch. Design in MR 2018
-Cocoon: A Computational Design Workshop 2018
-UTAK: Simulation and Personas 2017
-IDEO: Design Thinking Workshop 2016
AUDITOR
-International Association of Aesthetics Interim Conference 2021
European Avant-Garde – A Hundred Years Later
Organizer: Slovenian Society of Aesthetics
-Mediterranean Congress of Aesthetics 2021
Organizer: The Hellenic Society for Aesthetics
- The 5th Vienna Forum for Intercultural Philosophy 2021
Demarginalizing Futures: Rethinking Embodiment, Community and Culture
- METU Architectural History Grad. Symposium 11 2020
Spaces, Times, People: Fiction and Architectural History
-UTAK: Tasarım ve Umut 2019
-Koruma: Geçmiş, Bugün, Gelecek arasında bir diyalog 2017
-MSTAS.2017: Imkansız Mekanlar: Olanaksızın Olanağı 2017
-UTAK: Sorumluluk, Bağlam, Deneyim ve Tasarım 2017
SELECTED COMPETENCIES IN NUMERICAL MEDIA
-Adobe Illustrator/InDesign/Photoshop/Premiere Pro Advanced
-Autodesk AutoCAD/Fusion360/Maya/Revit Advanced
-McNeel Rhinoceros/Grasshopper for Rhinoceros Advanced
-Lumion Render Intermediate
LANGUAGES
-Turkish Native
-English Advanced
-French Intermediate
-Syrian Arabic Conversational
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C. THESIS PERMISSION FORM / TEZ İZİN FORMU
ENSTİTÜ / INSTITUTE
Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences
Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Social Sciences
Uygulamalı Matematik Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Applied Mathematics
Enformatik Enstitüsü / Graduate School of Informatics