Dada ManifestoDada was a literacy and artistic movement formed in 1916. The dada artists have created such a wide variety

and performances to poetry, sculptures, advertisements and textures. This was a way of them expressing how they felt about the mistrust of the community and the progression of “a

senseless war”. They did this using very direct and vivid expression to show how they felt and what they thought about society. Everyone who wanted to keep their “freedom” decided to form DADA.

people who were involved in Dada such as Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters and many more.

Their work consisted of being very striking, daring, vibrant, impulsive, abstractive, playful, shocking and explosive. They used everything from a toilet, to wrappers, light bulbs, typography, and advertisement and so much more to portray this to the viewers.

What is a manifesto?A manifesto is a document, which sets forth the principles and goals of an organization. A manifesto is designed to be widely distributed to the public, and it serves as an

Often, a manifesto is political in nature, as is the case with the Communist manifesto, although artists and other collective groups can also employ a manifesto as a medium of communication. In many instances, a manifesto is highly revolutionary, and is designed to stimulate public dialog.

What is DADA?

“Dada is neither politics nor art. Dada is the most direct and vivid expression of its time.” Tristan Tzara.

Dada artist were involved in a variety of different things, two of them being performances and audio. One of the most known performances is Hugo Ball’s poem recital Karawane in 1916. What DADA achieved that made them stand out from the rest was the fact that their performance weren’t traditional. The words they would recite had no real logic meaning behind it, the only intention were to “trigger memories” from the audience, and create

This for them was freedom, they were able to say what they wanted, how they wanted, and be able to experiment with words, and sounds to achieve this.

Another way that they were able to get their message across was through sculptures and textures. Kurt Schwitters was one of the most well known artists who used different textures in his collage. He used every day materials such as tickets, wrappers, and maps etc,

rubbish. Raoul Hausmenn “mechanical Head” and Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” sculptures

By researching different artists, writers, actors etc who were involved in the DADA movement, I was able to gain a wider understanding of what a manifesto is, as well as the movement. This gave me a wide understanding of the intentions behind a manifesto, what kind of affect it has in the media and in the public. DADA still to this day exists, it may not be vivid and outrageous as it was in 1916, but it still to this day has

in expressing their views.

DADA Artists

were also very iconic to the dada movement. These works differentiated them from other artists and movements for different reasons. One was that is was meaningless! There was no meaning behind the “Fountain” aside from the fact that it was a humorous sculpture

conventional art. Their work was very playful, shocking and impulsive which caused a lot commotion in the art world. The second aspect which made Dada, Dada was the fact that they used

sculptures as seen in Raoul Hausmenn’s “Mechanical head”. The made space

art and in this they changed people’s opinions.

Research and what I took away from it

I watched a lot of video footage from Helvetica, Good Copy Bad Copy, A boatload of inventors, Bergehouse, Karsten Schmidt, Michelle Gondry to footage on Vimeo and YouTube. One of the main documentaries that I came across was PressPausePlay;; this for me was one of the most inspiring documentaries. I looked at John Fiorelli, Ted Hope, David Girhammer, Seth Godin and many more. I found it very helpful to see what producing meant to them, from their eyes, in their profession, and how it has changed over time with technology developing. One of the things I learned was that in order for them to stay successful and beat the competition, was the fact that they had to take everything on board. They cant just rely on their knowledge, they have to adapt to the changing ways otherwise they would not succeed. Ted Hope was one of the individuals I looked at which said the industry has changed a lot, and “it ’s scary, but yet so powerful and exiting”. This I thought was such a good point, because you cannot rely on just what you know, if you did life would be pretty boring. Although technology

opportunity to do things they couldn’t have before. Which is why everyone is able to produce anything they want, anywhere and instantly. All they need is a camera, which is now in every phone made, shoot a video and upload it on YouTube.

This has made it possible for people to create and pro-­duce what they want and how they want. It has opened

different light, and learn from the individuals who are tak-­ing this technology that is available to them and creat-­ing something just for fun, something meaningful, stupid, or powerful etc.

Looking back on the words, amateur and professional, they are very different yet similar in other ways. I came across an interview of David Girhammer on PressPause-­Play. In this he talked about how he sees himself as a generalist, not a professional or an amateur. This for me rang alarm bells, because I instantly connected with that term and it was something in between, which I could incorporate into the manifesto.There were debates in our group, whether to concen-­trate on all aspects of producing, and if so which one? And how do we distinguish what is amateur and profes-­sional work? So this term really summarized things for me, it was the halfway point, which was the term I was looking for. Even though everyone is producing, it doesn’t mean that all the work is good. So this was able to separate the two. A generalist is someone “who doesn’t specialize in a certain topic, but is good at everything they do in their

What is a producer of culture and what is the difference between and amateur and a professional?

Anyone can be a producer in this time and age because technology is widely available for everyone to use. For example everyone has a video camera on his or her phone, they are able to take a video there and then, and then post it instantly around the world.This has changed from the typical meaning of producer, where you have to have a big production and budget in order to produce. We came to this conclusion by looking at what a producer is, and one of the main points that kept coming up was the word amateur and professional. These two words have so much meaning behind it, and I don’t think that it summarized the role of the producer solely on those two terms. I decided to look at what those two words mean. I did this by searching the words, looking at videos and works

distinct point that set them apart.

I decided to interview some individuals in my university to see what they thought of those terms. To see how they work and what inspires them, for me to get an idea of how and why people produce. The individuals I interview are all to me very talented in the work they are passionate about. One loves illustration,

because when I started searching for the meaning of producer, it

very limited for me to understand, as it doesn’t explain different areas of producing.

Listening back to the footage, the individuals I interviewed were all very different, and from this I gathered why they produce the

because they are passionate about what their learning, other just because they enjoy it and can express themselves.They were all very good points that helped me to think about what kind of manifesto to create.

Ideas and Final outcome

We looked at how we could combine all the

rules together so that the audience would be

able to get an understanding of our manifesto.

Some of the ideas we came up with were,

creating a city using the different materials, a

presentation, a video etc.

In the end we decided to create a mask to

represent the identity of the manifesto. It was

a way in which we could incorporate all the

to create the mask using our materials which

everyone is familiar with, and our imagination.

Once we had created all the different features

of the face, we decided to have projection on

the mask to portray the new and old technology

made it more exiting, more fun, different.

so that individuals in the presentation would be

able to draw or add anything they wanted to

the mask.

Short experiment

After doing the interviews and looking back

on the research, Diwani and myself decided

to make a short experiment. We wanted to

have some kind of test in which we could

see how people produced. We decided

to go up to different individuals and give

them a limited time to produce anything they

wanted, from drawing, to sound, to doing

etc.

From doing this short experiment we got to

look at how people think and why they think

like that. The experiment started off with a girl

who started drawing, we realized because

thing she decided to go for. It was a safe

option for her to create what she wanted.

We showed another individual the drawing

and so on. This showed the different views in

which people see the same thing, and that

everyone has a different reaction. Some are

hesitant to experiment, other think outside the

box. From what we gathered from this as well,

was the fact that when there was more than

one person producing, they were enjoying

the task more which made them come up

with new ideas.

We though this was something which we

could think about including into our mani-­

festo. That individuals would be able to work

and collaborate with each other.

Manifesto Rules

After we had all researched and looked

at different areas, we than came back to

share with each other what we had learnt,

or found interesting, to see if we could

come up with any ideas.

From bouncing ideas, we came up with our

manifesto points based on what we had

researched and what we though would

be good to have in a manifesto. We

looked at not only artists, documentaries,

movies, books, articles but also different

manifesto’s, we decided to look into that

to see what their intentions where and

whether we agreed with it or not. This all

: -­

1. To celebrate the past and the future,

2. To use different skills and mediums

3. Participating and collaborating,

4. Use open source

5. If it doesn’t work make it better

6. Producing with responsibility

7. Making it with a meaning or for a purpose.

mask we created, with the projection and

the footage we took. I found this brief to

be challenging in terms of working with

other people, but work wise it was very

enjoyable.

It gave me a much clearer understanding

of what a manifesto is, why its created,

but also the meaning of a producer. It

showed me to not stay focused on one

area and try to perfect it, but also to try

other things which I enjoy and incorporate

those into the work that I do.

Final instillation