The moment when the world said
DADA 
Da da da da... DADA. Antidada. 
All or nothing,
there is no difference ...
Why? Well ... maybe
because the difference is
only in us, and we have
the ability to annihilate it,
and from this annihilation
to create something,
something that we want and
that is not subject to
any other rules than those
that we want. Or maybe
it really doesn't obey any
rules, because that's
how we want it. 
The DADA movement was obviously 
a radical one, of extreme
novelty, which decisively influenced the art of the 20th century.
DADA was followed by the surrealist movement, there was a certain
overlap between them,
soon to be followed by a dissociation between these two movements, but at the
same time the influence of DADA is still present in
the twentieth century,
being found in the FLUXUS
movement of the ‘60s, later
the neo-dada movements
especially from the French
space and above all it is the
playful spirit of DADA,
combined with an attitude of
especially political protest
that have influenced
all the artistic movements from
the XXth century until now.
DADA came about two or
three years after the
futuristic manifesto that
was instigating at arsening
and destroying museums.
Another genuine DADA
representative, Andre Breton,
defines it as follows: DADA
means to go out with the gun
on the street and shoot
whoever you catch. 
 Because ... DADA! Because we have the
freedom to break patterns,
to reconfigure everything,
to give significance and
meaning beyond dogmas or,
better yet, against dogmas.
This revolt, this
uprising against traditions
is due to Tristan Tzara and his group of friends.
Tzara was born in Moinești on April
16, 1896, his real name being Samuel Rosenstock.
He came from an old Jewish family, who was aware of
the importance of studies.
This is the reason why he
attended the courses of Sf Sava High School in Bucharest,
afterwards studying at Mihai Viteazul College.
During the same period, together with his friends
Marcel Iancu and Ion Vinea
he published "Simbolul" journal,
with the support of Al. Macedonski.
 The first poems
and articles are signed S. Samyro, Tristan Ruia and,
finally, Tristan Tzara.
In 1914 he applied for the
University of Bucharest, choosing the mathematics
and philosophy courses,
but he soon decided to leave
for Zurich, Switzerland
being the place of refuge for the young intellectuals who fled in
order not to face the horrors of the First World War.
Here, on April 6, 1916, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings,
Richard Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara
 and the painters
Jean Arp, Marcel Iancu and Sophie Taeuber 
inaugurate "Cabaret Voltaire", the literary and artistic café.
The name was carefully chosen, Voltaire being that
effervescent spirit that
went beyond the conveniences
of the time, mocking and criticizing them without
any restraint.
 Tristan Tzara was one of the representatives.
There were
also Hans Arp, some German
writers like Ball I guess
was his name, so I think
it was a mixture of brains
who thought this. 
It was the period when in this
crucible that was swirling in
the area of Switzerland, Paris and Germany, why not, with the German
expressionism, there were
the so-called movements that lasted 5, 6, 10, 15 years at most.
Well, here
is something that harms an
artist, because when you
are labeled as a surrealist
or expressionist and
after 10 years you deny
your work and switch sides,
things change with all the
flexibility that an artist
has when he wants to
contribute a little to what
is happening in politics,
for example, or to be a
citizen of a citadel, a city,
a country or a movement.
And then there was this
tendency in art to try to
change something.
 It is believed that the name of the
group appeared in Cabaret Voltaire.
Some suppose that
it comes from the Romanian language,
 Tzara and Marcel Iancu often saying da, da . Others
claim that it would be the
result of a knife being
thrusted into a French-German
dictionary, and the word that the blade stopped 
was dada, the French translation of the expression
wooden horse ... But what is known for sure is that DADA appeared in Zurich and
influenced, from the first
moment, the world culture. The first Dadaist essays
appeared in DADA magazine, being followed
by The first celestial adventure of Mr. Antipyrin, 
the Dada Manifesto and 25 poems
The DADA movement was primarily a movement of
attitude, a political protest against the First World War
 against the language and reasoning that made the war possible.
 Thus, the artists, Tristan Tzara
and of course all the other members of Cabaret
Voltaire movement in Zurich started by attacking this
language, by creating a fertile ground for its
rethinking, first of all for a kind of race board from
which somehow a new way of thinking could be started,
released by all the ideas of the bourgeoisie, by
the conservative ideas of the elite that led to the First World War.
 I think that Dadaism has a lot to do with the
present times, it's about the absurdity of Dadaism,
it's about those who created it. Why did DADA appear?
It seemed because it was the post-war period,
a very important period, when the artists wanted to
protest, it was a protest against the art, why not ...
Take, for example, Marcel Duschamp, who signs a
closet and sends it to the exhibition in New York
where it is very well received. Or take Da Vinci's Gioconda
with a mustache, which also sent to the exhibition.
Those artists used to obey the rules prior to
this movement, but then this protest appeared,
a protest against classical art,
if I may say so. 
 This multiethnic and multicultural group has become the
epicenter of a movement that, to this day, has shocked
all fields of art.
 Painting, poetry, dramatic art, music, film and photography
have gained new strengths and were approached from
a perspective that until then seemed not only unorthodox
but even impossible.
In fact Tristan Tzara himself explains how one can compose
a Dadaist poem. 
To make a Dadaist poem: Take a newspaper. Take a pair of scissors.
 Choose from the newspaper an article
that has the length you want to give to your poem
Cut the article. Carefully cut out all the words
that make up that article and put all those words in one bag.
Shake it gently. Put the words one after
the other, arranging them in the order in which you extract them.
Copy them properly. The poem will resemble you. And here you are, a writer of infinite
originality and gifted, with
a delightful sensibility, although, understandably, not understood by the vulgar people.
 Starting from these lines, the collage
has become over time a
kind of business card of the Dadaists, especially
by choosing some unconventional
materials for the
transmission of messages and ideas that were, in
their turn, breaking the pattern.
But the influence of Tzara and his colleagues went much further. We
find Dadaism in the creations
of Marcel Duschamp,
Dali or
de Chirico
Francis Picabia
Max Ernst
Juan Miro
Paul Klee
Pablo Picasso
Henri Matisse
Andy Warhol
For example, Picasso's famous word, le contre viens avant le pour,
against comes earlier than for,
 is a Dadaist statement. But Picasso was not even a
Dadaist himself, although he did exhibit with Dadaists,
but DADA also exhibited with Brancusi, for example.
DADA was saying this: and non-DADA is also DADA,
it is one of their slogans. Everything is a bit of anarchy, that is,
everything is DADA, and
whoever is against it is still a Dadaist. Very interesting as a phenomenon,
very interesting. 
 It was something completely new and the main
concept was actually the
absurd, the nonsense, but as the DADA Manifesto itself said, anyone can be
a poet, anyone can be an
artist, if they juggle with words, if they juggle with existing material and
re-invent, reconfigure,
reshape it into something completely new, something completely different.
 Interpretãrile noastre, sentimentele, înțelegerea noastrã asupra
vieții a devenit mai bogatã,
mai deschisã prin DADA. Astãzi și ieri și în ziua de dinainte 
DADA a fost un punct
de referințã în multe feluri.
Astãzi nu facem DADA, dar
suntem influențați de DADA.
Pentru cã arta conceptualã,
arta gata fãcutã,
toate aspectele artei de azi pornesc de la
DADA pentru cã pânã atunci
istoria artei era liniarã,
dupã DADA s-a deschis în
atât de multe feluri.
 In just two years, DADA was everywhere,
from Europe to the US and even Japan. 
The denial of traditional values, the improvisation, the
direct involvement of the
public had become a standard.
Tristan Tzara moves to Paris, trying to contribute
to the establishment
of DADA as a real alternative
to the classical school.
He publishes „Seven DADA Manifests" and holds various conferences and shows.
DADA este un punct fundamental în istoria
artei, pentru cã noi
toți am primit un nou suflu, ca o ușã deschisã. Arta pânã atunci mersese
pas cu pas pânã la cubism,
dar dupã cubism DADA a rupt aceastã cadențã, DADA a deschis complet ușa artei cãtre idei.
 Before World War II, Tzara published "The
Approximate Man", with an illustration by Paul Klee, considered Tzara's first maturity writing.
This work was followed by "The Anti-head", with an illustration by Picasso
"Cereals and problems" (Grains et issues, with engravings by Salvador Dali),
 "The hand that passes by" (La Main passe, with drawings
by Wassily Kandinsky) etc.
It means a lot, both for the Romanian culture and for the international one.
It has somehow developed, if we see what happened
in art in the last century,
and what had happened a century ago, it is completely different. Through that
negation, borders were
opened, new possibilities for some to experiment and find new solutions in/for
the artistic development.
It is an honor for us
that he was first here, in this area.
 The changes in Tzara's work were probably the result of the tense situation in the
years leading up to the
Second World War and, of course, the outbreak of the war. Tristan Tzara fought
for the French partisans,
joining the French Communist Party from which he subsequently resigned
 because of the USSR's intervention in the 1956 Hungarian uprisings.
He continued to publish after the war ,maintaining collaborations
with some of the greatest
artists of the time who illustrated his volumes. Tzara is thus doubled by Picasso,
Georges Bracque
Joan Miró
Sonia Delaunay
 Francis Picabia.
Can anything be denied more than DADA did? No, there is no such possibility.
All the denials that came later and
with earlier echoes tried to exhaust the negativism. The negation was exhausted
and in this way modernity
put order into things, filled this drawer too, like a lemon that we
squeeze to the end.
 Tristan Tzara died in Paris on December
25, 1963 and was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery.
However, his legacy is to be found
throughout the world, and Dadaist works are in
Georges Pompidou Center in Paris
 Tate Modern
Art Gallery in London,
at the Art Museums in New
York and Philadelphia.
Much of Tristan Tzara's legacy was not recognized at all until 1989 in Romania.
There were turbulent times,
Romanians didn't know what was going on in the world. You know what they were
saying, the border guards
were aiming at the people inside the country itself, and not outside. We
were not interested, there
were decadent ideas on everything about Dadaism, Tristan Tzara, surrealism and so on.
Most of the dadaists were anyway out of the country, look at
Victor Brauner for example.
 In 1996, the centenary year of Tzara, the DADA monument was inaugurated in Moinești,
the work of the well-known artist Ingo Glass. The
assembly is 25 m long, 2.6 m wide,
 10 m high, weighing 120 t, a combination of steel and concrete. 
Also in 1996, Bacovia Theater staged a DADA show, directed
by the well-known director Dumitru Lazãr Fulga.
The show was also successfully played in France and is now a model for what a
DADA performance means.
The show was set up at Bacovia Theater in Bacãu and had the opportunity to
receive an offer from Paris
on the occasion of Tristan Tzara Centenary. In Paris it was set up and played
at the UNESCO Center and
at the theater hall of the
Romanian Embassy in Paris.
Through everything he did,
Tzara became immortal.
And don't forget ... those
times when you want to
overthrow the world are the
times when you are Dada.
Those are the moments
when the world says DADA.
