EBU Ars Acustica Special Evening 06

This year's EBU Ars Acustica Special Evening referred not only to Art's Birthday but also to the DADA movement as essential influence and role model for networked-based art and contemporary radio-art.

On February 5, 1916, Cabaret Voltaire 8 opened in Zurich. It became a birthplace of DADA and so of Ars Acustica as well. During the First World War which destroyed lives and social values, artists and writers from different countries met in Zurich and created the first multilingual Avantgarde movement, which only worked by international networking. Like today’s Ars Acustica network. Dadaism was an international movement from its very beginnings and spread across the world building centres and epicentres by creating events in New York, Paris, Geneva, Berlin, Barcelona, Cologne, Hannover, Zagreb, Holland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, Rumania, Hungary, Italy, and South America. Richard Huelsenbeck, one of DADA’s founding members, noted: “The word Dada in itself indicates the internationalism of the movement which is bound to no frontiers, religions or professions”.

Even the roots of acoustic poetry and sound performances in Ars Acustica derive from the new understanding of poetry and performing arts - thanks to DADA. By using the techniques of montage, collage, bruitism, simultaneism, and readymade, Dadaists developed a new approach to artistic material, which has became common in contemporary media arts – beginning with the Fluxus movement in the 1960s. Also Robert Filliou’s concept of "The Eternal Network" or "La Fête permanente" which has inspired the annual celebrations of Art’s Birthday by media artists can be seen as a revival of DADA spirit.

The Ars Acustica group is joining the international Art's Birthday Parties for the second time and take the 90th anniversary of Cabaret Voltaire as a point of reference in most of their contributions.

For this event, the Ars Acustica Group has designed a way to organize the contents and contributions under the idea of sound "presents". Ö1 Kunstradio in Vienna and the Swedish National Radio in Stockholm will collect these and send them to the two EBU satellite channels Ravel (R) and Verdi (V).