{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "tumblr meme culture is really just a form of neo dadaism", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/138534419018/", "html": "

bgaesop:

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play-dolls:

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we-all-eat-death:

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mizuki-takashima:

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stormingtheivory:

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leftclausewitz:

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anarchamarxistdrowfeminism:

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inrealityadream:

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inrealityadream:

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inrealityadream:

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tumblr meme culture is really just a form of neo dadaism

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I\u2019d like to clarify:

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dada was a largely european art movement that took place after wwi. this time and place is not a coincidence. let me explain.\u00a0

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dada art made no sense. the artists who made dada lived in a world in which nothing made sense - in which conventional logic led to the senselessness of a world war. so, making art that made no sense, making - well, you can\u2019t really call it art, so making ANTI-art that rejected the conventions that brought about that atrocity in the first place - it made total sense. (if that makes any sense.)

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so the artists did weird things. new things! putting things that were already made together and calling it sculpture, cutting up bits of pictures and putting them together and calling that something to frame - this site has some nice examples.

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but from my perspective - there\u2019s serious intellectual continuity between the absurdity of attaching a bunch of tacks to the bottom of an iron, rendering it useless, and say\u2026. bath bomb posts. Put a fucking macbook in a bath. it\u2019s useless now. Nobody fucking cares anymore. you want something funny? you want a punchline? gun. that\u2019s your punchline. Take it. I am laughing

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in a way it could be a method of venting some of the frustration and hopelessness and dissatisfaction that tumblr\u2019s userbase (largely, disenfranchised millennials) feels in the modern day. I can\u2019t really speak for anyone else, but\u2026 at least from a US perspective, there\u2019s plenty to be disillusioned about. growing up in a constant state of questionably justified war, income inequality, an economic recession caused by the actions of a handful of wealthy fucks who didn\u2019t even get properly punished, growing awareness of police brutality, being called lazy and self-absorbed by the generations that gave us these problems in the first place\u2026 I can\u2019t help but think that these factors (and more) could produce a similar mindset to the one that precipitated the first dada movement.\u00a0

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so of COURSE we make nonsense jokes. it\u2019s a coping mechanism for a world which doesn\u2019t make any sense.

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related: this isn\u2019t by tumblr but I have to plug UCLA\u2019s atrocity of a virtual gallery\u00a0once more. it really needs to be experienced, but\u2026 it\u2019s definitely also millennial neo dada. from the presentation (like an unplayable video game) to the content (THE DOGS HAVE ARRIVED), it is exactly what I am talking about. it is a fucking shitpost. and it\u2019s high art, too! I love this

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tl;dr: my generation is fed up with this bullshit, and the best way that we can express that is by shitposting. alternatively, dada was an early precursor to modern shitposting and we should all thank duchamp for signing a fucking urinal

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a dear friend has given a perfect update to some of my phrasing, courtesy of their word replace extension:

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you see this? this is exactly what I\u2019m fucking talking about. the thing that I\u2019m talking about is:

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shitposting is the deconstruction of hegemonic discourse through the use of the absurd and surrealism.

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I\u2019d also say that while Dadaism was obsessed with the technological aspects of Modernity, of newspapers, of industrial mechanics and factory made clocks, neo-dadaism (of which shitposting but also the increasingly broad reach of the New Aesthetic and net aesthetics) is obsessed with the technological aspects of our time, or at the beginning of our time.

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As just a comparison, the Clock in Absurdist and Dadaist art is both a symbol of the uplifting beginning of industrial relations (as one of the first complicated machines made by manufacturers, as the symbol of mankind\u2019s ability to triumph and analyze nature and better ourselves) and as the deified symbol of horrific modernity (of demarcated time, labor hours, the oppression of the working class via managerial time), Neo-Dadaism/Absurdism has a similar relationship with early computers, which both symbolizes the utopian attitudes which we entered the digital age with, and the horrifying period we live in now, where the Digital is ever present and semi-deified.

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My favorite dada satire is probably from Georges Grosz who takes the kind of robotic modernist tube people of folks like Leger:

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and turns them into these mindlessly patriotic broken automatons chanting rote phrases:

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And it\u2019s so so funny to me that there\u2019s all kinds of Gen X artists out there creating art about the millennials on their damn cellumar phones who think they\u2019re the inheritors of this aesthetic but really it\u2019s people who use the Madden gif generator to shitpost because they\u2019re taking the technology meant for a coherent purpose for a particular narrative and they\u2019re breaking it and turning it back on itself.

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I think you might be onto something\u2026

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x

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Aside from color palettes and materials used, I see literally zero difference.

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This is one of the top 3 best posts I\u2019ve ever seen on tumblr and I\u2019ve been here for years.

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Love

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This post got even better since I last saw it

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