At first, the dada manifesto comes off as absurd, hard to follow, unconventional blabber. But as you dive deeper into the manifesto and continue to read, it begins to shed some light on the world at the time and the urge to step out of societies pre-conceived norms of how to live. This excerpt exemplifies just that,
"I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional
language, no less, and to have done with it. Dada Johann Fuchsgang
Goethe. Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai Lama, Buddha, Bible, and Nietzsche.
Dada m'dada. Dada mhm dada da. It's a question of connections, and of
loosening them up a bit to start with. I don't want words that other
people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I
want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too,
matching the rhythm and all my own. If this pulsation is seven yards
long, I want words for it that are seven yards long. Mr Schulz's words
are only two and a half centimetres long."
It is about starting something new, a manifesto that focuses largely on the role language plays in a society, and how language limits the way in which people can perceive and experience the world. The dada movement attempts to push past the boundaries of language and to explore the world of dada, dadaism, dada life, dada this dada that ooooo ahhhh daaaaa dahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Nothing is wrong in dada, it aims at decontextualizing objects and turning them into art, just like the legendary fountain piece of 1917 by Marcel Duchamp, which was a urinal turned upside down signed by the name R.Mutt. It challenged people to abolish the ways in which language and social norms affect our every life, and unleashed the possibility to turn everything and anything into a working art piece.
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