the true DADA spirit

Today I read a book called 'The Post-human Dada Guide'. I was relatively short but filled with info and ideas that at some points came to me as revelations. The basis of the book is that Lenin, the communist revolutionary and Tristan Tzara, the dadaist poet and visionary, are in a chess match. Lenin's communist ideas of establishing logic and order stand as opposite to the dada vision of creating chaos and madness, but both are opposed to the same thing - capitalism. For such a short book, there was a lot to it and I highly reccomend reading it.

I have been fascinated with dadaism for a long time and found it very hard to pin down as a movement. The dadaist wanted to unleash the human spirit in it's rawest form and were very nihilist. They were anti-art and anti-future, dedicated to shocking the bourgeois. Societies excessive rationality was what led to the devestation of the first world war, and dadaism was mainly an outcry againist it. However, how could such a nihilistic movement stand for something so humanistic? This is a contradiction, and the dadaist thrived on them.

Throughout my life I have encounters many contradictions within my own life and belief systems. I've talked about them on here before, and one of the things i've learned from the dadaist (though I don't think you're supposed to 'learn' from them) is to embrace these contradictions. The very essense of humanity and existense is full of contradictions, and dada strives to embrace the human spirit in it's most unadulterated and true form.