1 Lost Paradise - Armin Kerber

Lost Paradise – “Tu n’as rien vu à Hiroshima”
The Swiss art-historian Beat Wyss locates the great rupture with
tradition achieved by the Modern among the German philosophers Schopenhauer
and Nietzsche, rooting the Classical Modern deep in the 19th
century, when the function of art ceased to be the affirmation of existing
social conditions in order to commit to the revolution of any conventional
social values. Nietzsche proclaimed an art revolution against Hegel’s
reasonable Weltgeist or “World Spirit” in favour of complete abandonment
to hedonistic impulses. The individualist aesthetic revolt also released
art, no longer beholden to superior powers, from the mission of providing
an aesthetic social education to the people. In so doing, Nietzsche introduced
aspects that were to be crucial to 20th-century art, i.e. the negation
and destruction of that which has existed.
“Gadji beri bimba” — They were experts in the destruction of that which
had existed, the “revolutionary artists”. Hugo Ball from Munich, fending
for himself in Switzerland, made art and literary history as a destroyer of
language when – wearing his notorious Cubist outfit on June 23rd,
1916 – he recited the sound poem “Gadji beri bimba” at the Zürich
cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of the Dadaist artist movement.
“With these sound poems we wanted to renounce a language that had
been destroyed and made impossible by journalism. We must retreat into
the deepest alchemy of the word, and even leave behind the alchemy of
the word, in order to safeguard poetry’s holiest domain.” This retreat from
language was, of course, immediately related to a world that had been
thrown out of joint by the First World War. The lies of those in power,
and the suffering inflicted on people by the war had become literally “unspeakable”.
Artists were silenced and the Dadaists realised how manipulable
language can be, debunking its abuse by kings and field marshals.
During their “linguaclastic” expeditions at Cabaret Voltaire, the alphabet
morphed into loops and spirals chasing each other and congealing into
unreadable lines. As he gave his recitals in his Cubist costume, Ball had
an inspiration, recognising the power of creative abundance beyond language,
and perceiving the ocean of possibilities of expression, vast and
adventurous beyond reason: “Dadaism – a masquerade, laughter”, Ball
wrote later, having turned away from Dadaism to embrace the mystical
aspects of Catholicism.
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