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Jun. 2nd, 2005 02:12 pmTomas and I had a talk the other night about how my brain works. I was attempting to explain to him that I need to look at the individual parts of something before I can really understand the bigger picture. He functions the other way around. For instance, before I could understand and appreciate jazz I had to learn about the people who made it and how it evolved. Someone saying 'this is Bebop, this is what makes it Bebop' wouldn't have worked. But tell me the stories of the men who created it and how it came to be, what it evloved from and I can grasp it. My sense of direction functions much the same way. In my mind I can untangle bit of the city that I live and move in. I know how to get around Grant Park. Seperate from that I understand how to get around the Ponce de Leon area. Ask me to drive from Grant Park to a specific location on Ponce and I get really confused. Now that I've started to map out the areas that connect the two in my brain I'm doing a little better. I just can't see the city as a whole.
I realized last night that finally after all this reading I am only just now starting to get a really good understanding of Dada and its impact on art and modern culture. It's not because I'm slow or dumb and it's not because it's really a tricky topic. It's just the way my damn brain works. What triggered things for me was reading a particular passage in the Surrealist book I'm slogging away at. The writer was explaining the difference between Futurism and Dada,
"Hans Richter draws a distinction between Dada and Futurism not so much in terms of techniques and enthusiasm - many of which (simultaneity, sound-poems, machines) they shared - but in point of programme. That is to say, Futurism had a programme which its works were designed to 'fulfil' whereas Dada 'not only had no programme, it was against all programmes. Dada's only programme was to have no programme... The frailty of human nature', Richter adds, 'guaranteed that such a paradisal situation could not last.' To this blank sheet Richter attributes Dada's 'explosive power to unfold in all directions'. "
All of this was of course information I'd read before but for some reason this time, this phrasing of it clicked something in me and it all fell together in my head like a map. I was going to make a longer post wherein I babbled about Dada and its influence but words aren't working out for me today so I'll save it for another day.
I realized last night that finally after all this reading I am only just now starting to get a really good understanding of Dada and its impact on art and modern culture. It's not because I'm slow or dumb and it's not because it's really a tricky topic. It's just the way my damn brain works. What triggered things for me was reading a particular passage in the Surrealist book I'm slogging away at. The writer was explaining the difference between Futurism and Dada,
"Hans Richter draws a distinction between Dada and Futurism not so much in terms of techniques and enthusiasm - many of which (simultaneity, sound-poems, machines) they shared - but in point of programme. That is to say, Futurism had a programme which its works were designed to 'fulfil' whereas Dada 'not only had no programme, it was against all programmes. Dada's only programme was to have no programme... The frailty of human nature', Richter adds, 'guaranteed that such a paradisal situation could not last.' To this blank sheet Richter attributes Dada's 'explosive power to unfold in all directions'. "
All of this was of course information I'd read before but for some reason this time, this phrasing of it clicked something in me and it all fell together in my head like a map. I was going to make a longer post wherein I babbled about Dada and its influence but words aren't working out for me today so I'll save it for another day.
