photo: Dominique Meienberg, 2017. Adrian taking care of (dusting) Cabaret Voltaire, an artwork by Kerim Seiler (CH) named «Cabaret Voltaire as Sculpture», 2016.

Adrian Notz (*1977 in Zurich) is a freelance curator and curator at the Tichy Ocean Foundation, Mentor of Strategy and Vision at the ECCA, King of Elgaland-Vargaland and Chevalier de la Tombe de Bakunin. From 2012-2019 he was Director of Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. He worked there first as a curatorial assistant from 2004 and from 2006 to 2012 as Co-director. From 2010 to 2015 he was Head of the Department for Fine Arts at the School of Design in St. Gallen. Since 2007, Notz has been a diplomat of NSK State and from 2008-2018 he was Ambassador of the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland for Zurich. Notz has organized numerous exhibitions, events and actions with international artists, activists and thinkers. He is currently researching a personal theory he calls «End of Future», fed by his nostalgic approach to the avant-garde.

How did you become director of Cabaret Voltaire and how does this change you?

It was more or less by chance that I first started working in Cabaret Voltaire almost seventeen years ago. And it was a great luck that I could start there as assistant right after I finished my studies in theory of art and design. I had been working for Philipp Meier, who was appointed director. He called himself «clubcurator» and he asked me to be his «theory back up», as my diploma work was basically about what he was doing in the clubs in Zurich and how that could be a new artform named «Installative Event Sculpture». In the first two years we had created some “scandals” that provoked local politicians to use as their own campaign propaganda in the province of Zurich. The mayor wanted Philipp to leave, but instead I was appointed to be co-director. After another six years in which we had won our first citywide referendum with 65 % yes votes by selling all possible objects in the city like the cathedral, a zebra crossing or the UBS bank as artworks, inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s idea of the readymade, and after engaging into activist activities during Occupy and the Arab spring, we got into massive financial problems, my colleague left and I stayed to get the institution into a place, where we could graciously celebrate the 100 year jubilee.

Cabaret Voltaire didn’t change me, it formed me. Everything I know, from accounting to queer movements, fundraising, project management and the abolition of future and memory, I know thanks to my work in Cabaret Voltaire and my service for Dada. It was like a trainer and a passepartout for everything. This is great of course, but also slightly haunting. So quite often I needed to resist a bit against the total brainwash by Dada. And then, when my Dada adolescence arrived, after fifteen years, I was ready to leave and explore the world.

You’ve traveled to Romania a couple of times when you were the curator and director of Cabaret Voltaire. Did you manage to find the roots of Tristan Tzara’s spirit and thinking in your travels to Romania? Or in the Romanian artists that you’ve met?

I am quite proud to be able to say that Romania is my most visited country. Even before Cabaret Voltaire I had been there, so I am now looking back on almost a quarter century of visiting Romania. And now, after my long-term Cabaret Voltaire adventure I am still travelling a lot to Romania, unfortunately only digitally. It is a bit tricky to say, that I found roots of Tristan Tzara’s “esprit dada” in Romania, because he was very triste about Romania, as his pseudonym seems to suggest. With the exhibition “Dada East? The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire”, inspired by Tom Sundqvist’s book with the same title (but without question mark) I tried to explore this idea of the “origins” of Dada in Romania. It was mainly three elements: the Jewish culture out of which Tzara and Janco came, the Romanian avantgarde, which was formed by artists from the Jewish culture, and folk traditions, which, compared to other folk traditions, wasn’t a special Romanian reference in Dada. Also, a word I hear a lot again today, the “cosmopolitanism” of that time, before World War 1, played an important factor. As an example, I like Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, that was published on the same day in Le Figaro in Paris and in Democratia in Craiova. When researching contemporary artists for Dada East in 2006, mainly guided and introduced by Dan Perjovschi, I found a lot of artists who had a great witty and playful sense of irony and humor, a politically engaged drive and some also the obsessive vision driven insistence and tendency to provocation that Tzara had. But, like Lia Perjovschi told me, it might be more important to see how contemporary artists can relate to Dada and Tzara and how it can inspire them. Lia, who’s birthday almost coincides with Tzara’s, said, if I remember correctly, making Tzara Romanian again and talking about the origins of Dada in Romania, gives her a certain sense of an artistic identity.

Which was the particular influence exerted by Tristan Tzara on the Cabaret Voltaire movement? We like to think that it was a decisive one and he was the main founder of the dadaism. Was it really? Or it was more like a communion of spirits and conjunctures at that time?

He was just the loudest one. He made Dada famous and formed it as a brand. I like to say, that he was the marketing guy of the Dada movement. As an idea and movement it was a collective founding of the glorious seven in Cabaret Voltaire: Jean Arp, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Richard Huelsenbeck, Marcel Janco, Sophie Taeuber and Tristan Tzara. If any of them would not have been there in that moment, and also later, crucial elements of what we nowadays see as Dada would be missing. Of course, the group dynamics weren’t always easy and there were a lot of fights and fury, but also a lot of fun and play. Also, the international connections were important. Starting in Zurich, Tristan Tzara as well as Jean Arp were crucial in establishing them. Without Tzara molesting Francis Picabia during the second wave of the Spanish Flu in his spa retreat in the Swiss Alps, Dada would have never become international and moved to Paris and New York. In Berlin it was Huelsenbeck, who was received as messiahs of Dada, where artists like Hannah Höch and John Heartfield with their collages gave a dominant visual art form to Dada. Even isolated Kurt Schwitters in his «Merzbau» home office was crucial for Dada. He formed his Gesamtkunstwerk Merz in opposition to Dada, and therefore defined Dada very clearly. Tzara also wrote letters to Man Ray in New York. But much more crucial for the success of Dada in New York was the Dada Baroness – Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, who performed herself as a queer artwork all around New York. Inspired by Tzara’s “Dada accounting” I found 165 Dadaists, who were all part of the international formation of Dada from 1916 to 1923. Tzara loved to make lists of the members of the Dada movement, it’s presidents, directors and contributors. And of course, some of the names are inventions, like Mac Robber in Kolkata. But, as I only found out recently, thanks to the participation of a queer activist artist from Kolkota in the ECCA Autumn School of Curating, that I was leading, there was an art community and school inspired by Dada and the Bauhaus formed during that time close to Kolkata which is still existing. Tzara was a master of manifestation and assertion, which helped Dada arise.

To what extend the influence of Dada movement can be recognize in our days. Did you identify remains of the Dada philosophy on important artists of our times? Or in political movements?

In contrast to Tzara, I had the strict rule to only say that an artist refers to Dada, when they actually also say so. Else it can become an infinite field of assertion. Paul McCarthy for example told me that he was fascinated by Hugo Ball and the boxer and poet Arthur Cravan. Marina Abramovic saw herself in the history of performance, as an heir of Dada. Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn is inspired by Kurt Schwitters «Merzbau» and also Mexican artist Carlos Amorales I managed to convert to Dada, thanks to the Jean Arp boot camp I made with him. Also, activists like the Yes Men, Reverend Billy, Grupo Etcetera and Voina refer to Dada. So, yes, there is a number of artists that are inspired by the Dada and avant-garde philosophy, even if productively undoing it. Tzara might have just asserted that certain artists, activists and stars are Dada. He claimed that Charly Chaplin had joined the Dada movement in 1921 and that Chaplin would attend a Dada Soiree in Salle Gaveu in Paris. In this sense, Tzara might say today, that Pussy Riot, or Maurizio Cattelan with his Banana, Bansky, Lady Gaga, Sacha Baron Cohen, or maybe even Beeple with its NFT artwork, are Dada.

Or to answer with a quote by Kurt Schwitters: „Since 30 December 1923, I have introduced the accent to the word dada. One can now write dáda, dada or dadá. In the first case the sound rests on the first syllable, in the last on the last syllable, in the second case each syllable is equally accented. You don’t see the point? Please pronounce it: dáda sounds Saxon, trivial; dadá sounds French, like Berlin, just élan or cosmopolitan; dada, on the other hand, sounds indifferent, like someone who doesn’t know what he wants. And now the proof. At our evenings, the, forgive me, stupid mass of the audience shouted „dáda” at us. You wouldn’t believe how stupid such a crowd can be under certain circumstances. In the most tragic parts of Shakespeare’s plays I have heard the audience laughing as if they were sitting in a dadá performance. That is to say, do not think that laughter would be more inappropriate in dadá; dadá is the moral seriousness of our time. And the audience is bursting with laughter. Just like with Shakespeare. Art critics have always written only „dada”, without an accent, in order to prove that they are just as indifferent to dadá as they are to art. Dadá, however, has always been the battle cry of the dadaists. Even the first people who consciously introduced the concept of the word DADA into their activities, the founders of Dadaism in Zurich: Arp, Hülsenbeck, Tzara, called the word „dadá”, correctly recognizing the élan that lies in this emphasis. And when the great Hülsenbeck introduced dadá in Germany, he attached great importance to this accentuation: „dadá”. The only new thing is the official introduction of the accent by me for the purpose of clarification. In Merz 1. p. 5 it says: „Our time is called dáda, we live in the age of Dada. We are living in the age of dáda, nothing is as characteristic of our time as dáda. For our culture is dáda” and: „Dadá is the confession of stillness. Dadá is the style of our time.” It is best to read the whole article again with the insertion of the accents. I repeat only briefly: dáda is the face of our time, dadá is the movement that aims to heal the time by diagnosing it. Therefore, dadá is a danger that should not be underestimated.”

So, I would say, our time is still dáda, quite possible even more than a century ago, and we quite desperately need massive injections of the dadá vaccine to get out of our indifferent dada state of mind.

What is the level of interest that Cabaret Voltaire is arousing in the young generation? How does it manage to remain relevant at least at a conceptual level?

It might be a transgenerational constant level of arousing in all adolescents for Dada since Dada had become more commonly known around four to five decades ago. Most of them get to know Dada in school and maybe the art or German teacher would bring them to Cabaret Voltaire. A bit later on they would come to the bar of Cabaret Voltaire and then again, a little bit older, somewhere around their thirties the performance of the local art scene might attract them. But I would say, Cabaret Voltaire is only relevant as a monument of timeless transhistorical rebellious «Dada spirit» for the “young generation”. And maybe Tzara himself, can answer the question better with his early eulogy on Dada in Weimar in September 1922: « […] You will often hear that Dada is a state of mind. You may be gay, sad, afflicted, joyous, melancholy or Dada. Without being literary, you can be romantic, you can be dreamy, weary, eccentric, a businessman, skinny, transfigured, vain, amiable or Dada. This will happen later on in the course of history when Dada has become a precise, habitual word, when popular repetition has given it the character of a word organic with its necessary content. Today no one thinks of the literature of the Romantic school in representing a lake, a landscape, a character. Slowly but surely, a Dada character is forming. » So, in the last thirty years, Dada has become precise and habitual, organic with its necessary content and the Dada character is formed. Or more simply: Dada is rebellious and playful, mysterious and chaotic, witty and absurd – a perfect guide for youngsters.

How is your life after Cabaret Voltaire? And how is the life of a swiss curator in this pandemic world?

Good. Besides hiking and snowboarding the Swiss Alps, one of my best experiences during the pandemic was being «course leader» of the ECCA Autumn School of Curating organized by the Art Encounters Foundation in Timisoara and the Cluj Cultural Center. I still don’t exactly know what happened there, but it was a great collective unlearning process and creation with bright and engaged minds from around the globe. And even now, I have the honor of being «Mentor of Creative Strategy and Vision» for ECCA (European Center of Contemporary Art). So, for me personally, life a swiss curator in this pandemic world, is very inspiring, thanks to Tzara’s Dada spirit still lingering around the swamps of the Banat Republic and the Carpathian mountain vortex.