from Hugo Ball “Dada Fragments” originally published in 1927. trans. Jolas reprinted in Art in Theory: 1900-2000. ed. Harrison and Wood pp. 250-251
“June 12, 1916 – What we call Dada is an harlequinade made of nothingness in which all higher questions are involved, a gladiator’s gesture, a play with shabby debris, an execution of postured morality and plenitude…
The Dadaist loves the extraordinary, the absurd, even. He knows that life asserts itself in contradictions, and that his age, more than any preceding it, aims to the destruction of all generous impulses. Every kind of mask is therefore welcome to him, every plat at hide and seek in which there is an inherent power of deception. the direct and the primative appear to him in the midst of this huge anti-nature, as being the supernatural itself…” [ellipsis in original] p. 250