In what amounts to our first guest clog here at the c>log, what follows is a comment that was left by one of our readers in response to a recent post on the c>log entitled "Dada Responds To The Horrors Of War." One could only hope for a more quality comment than this. So, may we present Stephen Boyling, Dadaist, and our first guest clogger.  [applause]

I am a Dadaist who has gone from its art to the art of its politics. From its exculpatory past to its pedantic future. Dada issued many a screed against war, but that was not its raison d'etre. Dada abandoned the relics of historical assesment and its complex history of manipulation and interpretation. This reversal of critical polemics contributed to the interdiction of dadaist works and its authors. Dadaist ideals, its ideological philosophy even its ability to incite revolution replaced the political/commercial subjectivization of all artistic expression. Dada has been defined as belonging to a regime of conflict and obsfucation. This, of course, is not true. Dada does not have an aesthetic dimension. It is merely an uncommon landscape that both signifies and defines our capacity for change. In iconic form, it is a purposed construction of our present circumstance. The very idea of Dada was born in the "outsider" hierarchies of the day. It was Art defined by the "equality" of its labours, a stand-alone neutralization of the philistine, inventing a criteria that would allow art, in and of itself, to be carried forward from the wall-paintings of dark caves to the psycho-babble of the well-lit museum. Dada's "language" was created to push forward from the past, into the present and eventually - the future. Let's be clear. Dada does not speak to any particular forum. Dada exists only to deconstruct the definitions the infirm elite have constructed to define their own taste and perception. Dada was born to encourage all who are trying to tear down these boundaries of definition. Born to redefine what the cognoscenti promotes. It exists for all those who define art by the absence of definition ... the erasure of bias and its influence as a measurement of "greatness". Dada exists to define the paradox where by art is a common experience that can only be appreciated when what it is and what it isn't, is erased and the artificial adjudication impossed on artists and their art is ignored. Jacques Ranciere said, "I am neither a historian of art nor a philosopher of politics, but I work on this question: What landscape can one describe as the meeting place between artistic and political landscape?". Dada acknowledges the existential dilema between what is considered "Art" and what is considered "not Art". This question suggests a long overdue examination of Dada's reconstruction of the present and all those who create within it. Stephen Boyling

Related c>log Articles Dada Responds To The Horrors Of War Dada Lives! Dada: Merz ("something cast-off, as in junk")