A BLK DADA RHAPSODY
by Ta-Nia
commissioned by the Schauspielhaus Zürich
DIRECTED BY: Ta-Nia (Talia Paulette Oliveras, Nia Farrell)
PFAUEN
“Hate gets more powerful with more hate. […] If we fight, we have to do it with love.” (Bad Bunny)
In the midst of the First World War, in 1916, a group of European exiles in Zurich revolutionised art: Dada was born. The mechanised slaughter of human beings in gruelling trench warfare discredited everything that had come before. A new form of language was needed: to counter violence with playfulness, uniformity with freedom, and nationalist isolationism with open, collective practices.
110 years later, the principle of violence is once again on the rise. Fear, nationalism and hatred are being fuelled and exploited for political ends. The New York theatre-making duo Ta-Nia respond with a ritual of love – love as a revolutionary force, love as antidote, love as politics. Inspired by the visual and theoretical vocabulary of “Black Dada”, which US conceptual artist Adam Pendleton has been steadily developing for the past twenty years, and in dialogue with Zurich’s Dadaists past and present, the theatre collective transforms the Pfauen into one of its immersive poetic worlds – a world of sound, movement and imagination, in which reflection on and experience of encounter become possible.
