The wind with the red hair
Dada action from April 23, 2022

The wind with the red hair
Dada action from April 23, 2022

The wind with the red hair
Dada action from April 23, 2022

Dadaistic-dialogical big bang by Wolfgang Nestler

The wind with the red hair

Video recording of the Dada action from April 23, 2022

How a room becomes a dance of things

In 1917, the Galerie Dada in Zurich became the center of the new art movement Dada. Exhibitions and soirées were held – with recitations, performances, dance and avant-garde sounds. In view of the “slaughter of the world war” (Hans Arp), the values of bourgeois society were to be exposed and national striving overcome. Sophie Taeuber, after her marriage to Hans Arp Sophie Taeuber-Arp, also performed at the Galerie Dada in 1917 as an expressive dancer. The Swiss painter and sculptor, who combined elementary forms such as the circle and rectangle with choreographic clarity and subtlety, is considered a pioneer of Concrete Art. Two-time Documenta participant Wolfgang Nestler dedicated his Dada action “The Wind with the Red Hair” to her, which was realized on April 23, 2022 in his installation “Wolfgang Sophie – Hommage à Sophie Taeuber-Arp” at Kunstraum Krüger | Berlin. To set a sign for a peaceful alignment of the world and to revive the performative approach in Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s work.

In his “dadaist-dialogic big bang,” Nestler recited texts by Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Ernst Jandl, and Johannes Kühn entering into a dialogue with bass, saxophone, and typewriter sounds and a play of movement in art costumes specially tailored for the action. On a blue-angled catwalk, the black Wisdom, the Wind with the red hair and bull-tipped horns that repeatedly attacked Wisdom, and a dancer in Hopi costume circled each other. With this figure, Nestler drew a connection to the costumes Sophie Taeuber-Arp had tailored for herself and her sister in the 1920s based on two Hopi spirit figures. During the process of the Dada action in Kunstraum Krüger, which also included the street space, Nestler drew squares, circles and crosses on paper cards, which he stamped and passed on to the audience. His grandfather was a regimental clerk in World War I.

Ton Steine Scherben bassist Kai Sichtermann laid down the deep keynotes and sound lines of the Dada action. And Conny Ottinger, with sopranino and bass saxophone, created both, luminous sound and sonic roar, shaking the vibrating membrane of the soul with beats of sound. With clarity, power and spatial-rhythmic intensity, actor Michael Gerlinger portrayed the texts of Arp, Ball, Jandl and Kühn come alive, interacting with the audience, made the red thread of energy of the evening glow with speech music and scenic action. He conjured and lamented. In between, again and again explosions, fractures. With needles, the Wind with the red hair made belly balloons burst under the costume. Tension and relaxation, reacting to each other and isolation. Everything was spinning, in motion. And the cheerful, rolling invitation to war with which the performance ended became a dance of death.

The result was a total work of art in which Wolfgang Nestler brought together all the pictorial components of his installation “Wolfgang Sophie – Hommage à Sophie Taeuber-Arp”. “The world of dimensional and formal decisions in the plastic-architectural structure”, which one entered in the installation, Nestler turned into a “dance of spiritual and real objects” during his Dada action. To a dance “with which the viewer merges into a unity” (Nestler).

Regina Thelen

Video recording of the Dada action from April 23, 2022

How a room becomes a dance of things

In 1917, the Galerie Dada in Zurich became the center of the new art movement Dada. Exhibitions and soirées were held – with recitations, performances, dance and avant-garde sounds. In view of the “slaughter of the world war” (Hans Arp), the values of bourgeois society were to be exposed and national striving overcome. Sophie Taeuber, after her marriage to Hans Arp Sophie Taeuber-Arp, also performed at the Galerie Dada in 1917 as an expressive dancer. The Swiss painter and sculptor, who combined elementary forms such as the circle and rectangle with choreographic clarity and subtlety, is considered a pioneer of Concrete Art. Two-time Documenta participant Wolfgang Nestler dedicated his Dada action “The Wind with the Red Hair” to her, which was realized on April 23, 2022 in his installation “Wolfgang Sophie – Hommage à Sophie Taeuber-Arp” at Kunstraum Krüger | Berlin. To set a sign for a peaceful alignment of the world and to revive the performative approach in Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s work.

In his “dadaist-dialogic big bang,” Nestler recited texts by Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Ernst Jandl, and Johannes Kühn entering into a dialogue with bass, saxophone, and typewriter sounds and a play of movement in art costumes specially tailored for the action. On a blue-angled catwalk, the black Wisdom, the Wind with the red hair and bull-tipped horns that repeatedly attacked Wisdom, and a dancer in Hopi costume circled each other. With this figure, Nestler drew a connection to the costumes Sophie Taeuber-Arp had tailored for herself and her sister in the 1920s based on two Hopi spirit figures. During the process of the Dada action in Kunstraum Krüger, which also included the street space, Nestler drew squares, circles and crosses on paper cards, which he stamped and passed on to the audience. His grandfather was a regimental clerk in World War I.

Ton Steine Scherben bassist Kai Sichtermann laid down the deep keynotes and sound lines of the Dada action. And Conny Ottinger, with sopranino and bass saxophone, created both, luminous sound and sonic roar, shaking the vibrating membrane of the soul with beats of sound. With clarity, power and spatial-rhythmic intensity, actor Michael Gerlinger portrayed the texts of Arp, Ball, Jandl and Kühn come alive, interacting with the audience, made the red thread of energy of the evening glow with speech music and scenic action. He conjured and lamented. In between, again and again explosions, fractures. With needles, the Wind with the red hair made belly balloons burst under the costume. Tension and relaxation, reacting to each other and isolation. Everything was spinning, in motion. And the cheerful, rolling invitation to war with which the performance ended became a dance of death.

The result was a total work of art in which Wolfgang Nestler brought together all the pictorial components of his installation “Wolfgang Sophie – Hommage à Sophie Taeuber-Arp”. “The world of dimensional and formal decisions in the plastic-architectural structure”, which one entered in the installation, Nestler turned into a “dance of spiritual and real objects” during his Dada action. To a dance “with which the viewer merges into a unity” (Nestler).

Regina Thelen

Comment

… and in the background the nitpicking, pettifogging shyster ceaselessly dispenses his opinions, his laws, his orders, his spiritual emptiness, while the world, headless and self-absorbed, produces its waltzes … Dada in its original form, in times running out…. 
Ieu sui Brigitte “qu’amas l’aura E chatz le lebre ab lo bou E nadi contra suberna!” (Old Occitane quote by Arnaut Daniel, Troubadour 12th c: I am Arnaut who loves the wind, who chases hare and runs with bull and swims against the current) …

Brigitte Pichon Kalau v. Hofe

Actors and actresses

Michael Gerlinger, actor
Kai Sichtermann, bassist of Ton Steine Scherben
Conny Ottinger, saxophonist
Sema Binia, Dada historian (as Wisdom)
Lujain Mustafa, dancer (in Hopi costume)
Steffen Krüger, district worker
Christel Blömeke, action artist (as Wind with the red hair)
Wolfgang Nestler as administrator (concept, direction)

Other contributors were Sofia Vinnichenko (photos) and Solveig Thelen.
The art costumes for the Dada action had been designed and tailored by Hasti Danesh.

Photos: Sofia Vinnichenko
Video stills: Christel Blömeke

Video recording of the Dada action from April 23, 2022

Actors and actresses

Michael Gerlinger, actor
Kai Sichtermann, bassist of Ton Steine Scherben
Conny Ottinger, saxophonist
Sema Binia, Dada historian (as Wisdom)
Lujain Mustafa, dancer (in Hopi costume)
Steffen Krüger, district worker
Christel Blömeke, action artist (as Wind with the red hair)
Wolfgang Nestler as administrator (concept, direction)

Other contributors were Sofia Vinnichenko (photos) and Solveig Thelen.
The art costumes for the Dada action had been designed and tailored by Hasti Danesh.

Photos: Sofia Vinnichenko
Video stills: Christel Blömeke

Video recording of the Dada action from April 23, 2022

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