Word Salad
The Dadaists attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its usefulness for contemplative immersion. The studied degradation of their material was not the least of their means to achieve this uselessness. Their poems are “word salad” containing obscenities and every imaginable waste product of language. The same is true of their paintings, on which they mounted buttons and tickets. What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production.
Walter Benjamin (1936), from "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
Carey Young
Cautionary Statement (2007)
A bit of matter and a little bit more
Lawrence Weiner (1976)
Marcel Broodthaers holding Sadoul's L'Invention du Cinéma
Photo: Joaquin Romero Frias
Induction valve (Soupape d'admission) by Francis PICABIA
50x33 cm. Gouache over an engineering blueprint. Private collection.
Dada stirs up everything (Dada soulève tout)
15 January, 1921
The Bearded heart (Le Coeur à barbe)
Sole issue of a "transparent newspaper" published by Tristan Tzara in April 1922. 2x14 cm., 8 p. Black printing on pink paper.
SPIRIT VESSEL by Katherine Ng
WORKING NOTE: SPIRIT VESSEL is letterpress printed artist book produced through a Brody Arts Fund Grant. The hand set type was printed on two sides of the paper, then cut into strips (pages) and woven into the shape of a gourd. The text lists the uses of gourds from different cultures and so does the title of this piece. In the Chinese culture, the gourd is used as a container to capture evil spirits, whereas in the Japanese culture, the gourd is used as a vessel for intoxicating spirits.
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