Dada Punk: Just a quick note to point out that Dadaism was the first (punk) interaction
Just a quick note to point out that Dadaism was the first inter (punk) action:
Entr’acte
1924, 24 minutes
Directed by Rene Clair; written by Francis Picabia; music by Erik Satie .
Originally commisioned as the interval for the dadaist ballet Relâche - an intermedial production created on 1924 in Paris by four leaders of the Dada art movement: composer Erik Sati, filmmaker Rene Clair, choreographer Jean Borlin, and director Francis Picabia - Entr’acte is a plotless romp - named “instantanéisme - ” that teases the audience with a series of visual non sequiturs, featuring among its incidental characters Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray (appearing as chess players). Link to the interesting article by Samuel N. Dorf The Ballet Relâche: Entr’acte in Context
Relâche is French for “cancellation”, “theater dark”, or “no performance today”. Picabia described the whole work as one that “amounts to a lot of kicks in a lot of rears, sacred or otherwise,” and it incited riots among its audience—as if Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
A remarkable reference of french intermedial dada punk masterpieces is the video of Around the World a song by the electronic music duo Daft Punk.
Again tone, meaning, and narrative information conveyed through a Dada mise en scène signaling a return to an electronic primitivism.The song is particularly known for the steady bassline and a talk box-processed voice singing “around the world” in continuous chains. The phrase occurs 144 times in the album version and 80 times in the radio edit.
The video (1997) was directed by Michel Gondry. It shows a group of Cold War aliens, 50s-style swimmers, skeletons, mummified women and statuesque breakers circle onstage, evoking dance music as an ageless global phenomenon.
Just a quick note to point out that Dadaism was the first (electronic) punk act.



