One February evening in 1916, Cabaret Voltaire was born in Zurich with a primal scream that still resonates today: «Dada, Dada, Dada». Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Marcel Janco, Sophie Taeuber and Richard Huelsenbeck roared, danced, sang and stomped «Dada».
From that point onward, Cabaret Voltaire evolved into a melting pot of nationalities, art genres and styles. Dada was hypermodern, provocative, inventive and dissolved the boundaries that separated life from art. By the beginning of the 1920s, Dada had become a worldwide network.
By way of their «movement international» and «world congresses», the protagonists occupied and roamed through the world’s big cities with the aim of turning the globe into a branch of Dadaism. Dada became avant-garde’s primal expression without which surrealism, pop art, fluxus, mail art or punk would not have seen the light of day and which continues to galvanize artists, writers and designers to this very day. (source: dada100zuerich2016)
Dada and Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire: swissinfo
