Dada manifesto

     Hugo Ball's description of dada is very optimistic.  He believes in it, saying that today nobody knows what it is, but tomorrow everyone will be talking about it in Switzerland.  Dada isn't just a local or temporary movement, but an international one that will continue forever.  Ball says that dada is first a word, and that word is what became a movement.  He prefaces other words with 'dada' to show that everything can be dada, even nonsense words that people make up.  Creating your own words is especially important to ball, as he says that "I don't want words that other people have invented."  This seems like a way of saying that dada art should be unlike everything else, even though it can be influenced and reference anything and everything, whether or not it exists yet.
     Tzara's view of the word dada is that it is meaningless.  That opinion is the opposite of Ball, who believed that the word dada meant everything.  It is interesting though, that Ball said in his essay that made up words were central to dada, and Tzara says that they are useless, but writes nonsensical words in his manifesto, such as crystalbluffmadonna and boomboom.  Either this word means something specific to Tzara, or they both share that opinion of words.
     Tzara says that the dada movement was born out of a need for independence and a dislike of togetherness.  He doesn't think that dada artists fit in with any style, as they see their art as protesting rather than interpreting.  He wants art that defies logic and are "beyond understanding," similar to Ball's ideas of newly invented words.  Tzara seems to lay out more clearly the goals of a dada artists, how they differ from the more popular styles, and how they view criticism and praise.  His manifesto is just that: a manifesto, while Ball's is more of a rant on his interpretation of the manifesto.  Both give a somewhat vague idea of what dada is, but it seems like that's the point.  Using the rough outline of the main principles, it's up to the artist to create his own version of dada

Hito Steyerl

     Steyerl's view on piracy is hard to determine.  On one hand, she seems to have a negative opinion of it, calling poor quality youtube videos of an old film a "pile of stuff," while she reveres non pirated yet equally poor quality films.  On the other hand, she says that piracy makes it possible for these films to be circulated efficiently despite not being popular in the overall society.  It seems like she doesn't have an opinion either way, and is just stating what she thinks is fact.  She uses a whole section of her article to talk about how privatization of media production destroyed the art film's presence in the mainstream entertainment culture, but goes on to say that circulation plays into some sort of commercial agenda. It's incredibly confusing to understand her.  It's clear that this article was for people who have some sort of vested interest in this kind of art and who understand the politics and history of art films, not for someone who's looking for a starting point to learn about it.
     One part that I thought was interesting was that she calls it an "art of the people."  She thought that by copying or distributing poor image media, people are also contributing to their production, as the digital copying will likely degrade the image further.  It makes sense after seeing her quote.  It's almost like the audience unintentionally becomes part of a performance piece by unknowingly altering the media when they copy it.  At one point, she talks about intentionally creating poor quality pieces, and I don't really know what the point of that is.  Steyerl says that it pushes against the fetishization of the not poor image, but why? What does a painting of pixelated missiles have to do with a dislike of clear images and modern technology?  I would assume that this kind of art falls under the blanket of conceptual art, and is more about the artist's intent than it is about the actual image.  I like that she describes some of it as the afterlife of an older piece, and that the poor quality copy is the only version of that piece in existence.  Based on the title of the article, I thought she was going to argue that the poor image, in general, was superior to clearer images, but, even though many of her points were to me convoluted, I now see that she was instead saying that the poor image is the only way some pieces can exist and still be appreciated.

Video Project

I wanted to do a video mocking the style of videos we saw in class as examples which showed the artist 'performing' some mundane activity for far too long and calling it art, such as in Bas Jan Ader's creepy crying and the smiling lady's video.  For my pointless act, I chose to film myself writing "I am not an artist" over and over again on some paper on a wall, then tearing it off.  I picked this phrase because anyone can create a video like this, and people will either see it as genius or nonsense, depending on whether or not he is an established artist.  I wanted to show that these kinds of videos, in my opinion, are stupid and ridiculous, but also that it doesn't really matter what I think if the artist considers what he does as art.