Dada: "art imitates life" (4 out of 8)

Dada both as a word and as an art movement consists of building blocks of fragmented parts (elements specifically speaking to art) to create a new, and different reality. This process of building is similar to the process of learning language that at its elemental stage, involves putting sounds and words together that don't necessarily make sense, but somehow they fit together. This linguistic process is the overarching metaphor surrounding the creation of Dada. Dada emerged amid the brutality of World War 1 (1914-1918). The war confirmed the degradation of social structures that led to the horrific violence that the war produced. Dada essentially represents the chaos of the post-World War 1 world, and the breakdown of human nature. This movement, like many of the art movements we have studied this semester, imitate the conditions of life they are created in. The past notions of a universal rationality or truth had been blown away by the mechanization of the war. As a result, a new, different, ambiguous, and fragmented world had emerged, and it had to be approached differently. Dada challenged its followers to think about art in a different way. In the same way that the world was forced by dire circumstances, to think not only about the world but, also their lives in a different way. Dada is is the channeling of all the nonsensical, unexplainable, existences, situations, etc. that make up our everyday lives into a movement that instead of trying to change (to clean up) this chaos, embraces it, even celebrates it as the only normal. If any kind of normal exists.