Dada Data: Contemporary art practice in the era of post-truth politics

Convenors

Sarah Hegenbart (Technische Universität München)
Mara-Johanna Kölmel (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)

Session Abstract

The era of post-truth politics poses a new challenge for contemporary art practice. If populist politicians persuade the masses by simplified conceptions of reality, how can art highlight the neglected nuances and complexities of our contemporary moment? How can art foster critical discourse that is often abandoned when subscribing to simplified notions of reality? As part of the 100th anniversary of the Dada movement, the online anti-museum Dada-Data was established in 2016 to revive the ideas behind the revolutionary art movement. Mixing collages and hypertext, twitter and manifestoes, Instagram and readymades, the online platform provides a space to explore Dada, and connects its heritage with our everyday online life. Our session expands on the idea of Dada-Data.net. It asks how an engagement with the aesthetic tactics of Dada, can help develop critical vocabularies for confronting our era of post-truth politics mediated by information floods and ‘big data’. Since it has been pivotal to the Dada movement to approach art and reality as inextricably linked, this session explores whether and how Dada strategies such as alienation, anti-aesthetics, collage, fragmentation and irony, may contribute to face the complexities of our time.

Speakers and Papers

Rebecca Smith (Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University) Parafictions and Immateriality: The legacy of the Berlin Dada media hoaxes in contemporary parafictive acts

Davide Banis (Research School for Media Studies (RMes), University of Amsterdam) Hacking the Newsroom: Dadaism,
tactical media and the potential of counterfactualism

Jack Southern (University of Gloucestershire, City and Guilds of London Art School) The Multiple Narratives of Post-Truth Politics, Told through Pictures

Jaime Tsai (National Art School, Sydney, Australia) Pixel Pirates: Theft as Strategy in the Art of Joan Ross and Soda_Jerk

Vid Simoniti (Churchill College, University of Cambridge) Dadaist Strategies in Digital Art and in Alt-Right

Leonor de Oliveira (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, The Courtauld Institute of Art) Paula Rego: Chaos vs order. A Dada attitude against authority in the post –war period

Clara Balaguer (The Office of Culture & Design) DIGONG MY LABS: (Gender) fluid identity of trolls in the Philippines of
President Rodrigo Duterte Montage Mädels The Production of Counter-Propaganda

Sarah Hegenbart (Technische Universität München) and Mara-Johanna Kölmel (Leuphana University Lüneburg) The
Big DADA DATA: Tactics of resistance in the age of post-truth politics Dangerous