Dada and the power of Nonsense
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2020
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Subversion in art and writing and a project to re-imagine Dada. Curator Jade French, artist Jade Montserrat, writer Lottie Whalen and 2020 New Generation Thinker Noreen Masud are in conversation with Shahidha Bari.
You can find more about today's guests and their research at https://jademontserrat.com/ https://www.jadefrench.co.uk/research http://www.takedadaseriously.com/ http://lucywritersplatform.com/author/lottie-whalen/ https://www.dur.ac.uk/english.studies/staff/?id=17758
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to use their research to make radio.
In the Free Thinking archives you can find a playlist featuring artist interviews and discussions https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026wnjl Radio 3 broadcast a ten part series looking at the life of Arthur Cravan called The Escape Artist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000djhy
Producer: Robyn Read
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.2 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:36.8 | Hello, nothing seems to make sense recently. |
| 0:40.0 | So it's just as well that we have an episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast for you |
| 0:44.2 | in which we go Gaga over Dada. |
| 0:46.9 | We'll be celebrating the anarchy and avant-gardism of the first international Dada festival |
| 0:51.9 | 100 years ago with a digital Dada revival, plus an essay |
| 0:57.1 | on absurdity and Orwell. Join me, Shahedabari, just after this. |
| 1:06.4 | Hi, I'm Amal Rajan, and I want to tell you about a new podcast from the BBC. It's called Rethink. |
| 1:13.0 | The podcast is all about the enormous opportunity we have to change what the future looks like after the coronavirus pandemic. |
| 1:20.0 | We've asked leading thinkers from around the world to give us their three-minute audio essay on the kind of change they want to see, |
| 1:26.3 | covering issues such as travel, healthcare, |
| 1:28.5 | homelessness, democracy and humility. What kind of change can we expect? Will it be changed |
| 1:34.4 | for the better? Or will we pick up where we left off as if nothing had happened? We created |
| 1:40.7 | the Rethink podcast to find out. It's an opportunity for all of us to consider the kind of change we want to see in our own lives and in our societies. |
| 1:49.8 | Subscribe to the Rethink Podcast Now. You can find it on BBC Sounds. |
| 1:57.3 | Hello, do you hate stupidity and love nonsense? Well, first of all, that would make you an ideal listener of free thinking. |
| 2:04.3 | But almost exactly 100 years ago, it was also a prerequisite for anyone attending the first international Dada festival, which was held in Berlin in 1920. |
| 2:14.1 | As the invitation explained, admission criteria included opposition to the stinking hypocrisy of the patriarch and to the capitalist perishing in his armchair. |
| 2:24.0 | Who knew the Dadaists were so tough on soft seating, hey? |
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