Dada Presentism: An Essay on Art and History is an exposé of the conflict between conscious and unconscious forces. The slim book contains a short but dense text that sketches out Dada’s preoccupation with the present, during a period when Europe was being buffeted between regrets for the nasty past and appeals to a revolutionary utopian future. Both these sentiments are problematized here through the Dada insistence on the “continuous now.” As the author Maria Stavrinaki, Associate Professor of Art History and Theory at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, says: “Dadaist presentism revolted against any commemorative appropriation of a flawlessly coherent history.”
Still, Stavrinaki presents a rather lucid reflection on Dada history and the role of art within it via the Berlin-based Dadaists’ acute historical consciousness and their early modern experience of time. Mostly she explores Dada temporalities through the photographs of the Berlin Dada movement, including the famous one of the First International Dada Fair that was organized by George Grosz, John Heartfield, and Raoul Hausmann. The fair would become the most well-known of all the Berlin Dada’s exploits, featuring almost 200 works by artists including Francis Picabia, Hans Arp, Max Ernst, and Rudolf Schlichter, as well as Grosz, Hausmann, and Hannah Höch. Indeed, one of the best images in the book is Höch’s incredibly dense collage “Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Beer-Belly of the Weimar Republic” (1919), which is now at the Staatliche Museen in Berlin. In this work, Höch presents the viewer with a rush of intermingled visual fragments that exceeds any attempt at a clear understanding. This form of visual noise and presentational excess offers up the possibility of multiple interpreations that may be in conflict with each other. Thus the interpretative act seems to have no end but always a present. Insofar as the deliberate obtuseness of “the present” is the whole point of the book, I was delighted to have uncovered some germane connective material here applicable to our present, our own now.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Select Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: PyCon AU 2024 Talks, New Raspberry Pi Gear Available and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
