Dada changed and continues to change the role of art in the world. Begun in 1916 in a cafe in neutral Switzerland by pacifist emigre artists trying to escape the draft into WWI in their own countries, Dada spread like a plague through Europe, the U.S., Japan, and other parts of the globe. This highly political "anti-movement" art movement challenged convention, disrupted the status quo, and questioned the border between art and "the rest of the world." This course focuses on the subversive strategies of Dada artists, performers, philosophers, and social activists. Students will examine not only the Dada origins of the strategies of subversion in a wide array of media, they will also explore the continued and varied use of Dada's strategies by later twentieth and twenty-first century artists, thinkers, and world-changers like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, to name a few. The class will be much enriched by the various events organized in November by San Francisco's famed City Lights Bookstore to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Dada. Featuring some of the leading scholars on the movement, the lectures, multi-media performances, and poetry readings will be an essential component of the class.

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