DADA’S WOMEN

THEATER-INSTALLATION

This year and the last mark the 100th anniversary of the artistic, anti-war, avant-garde movement known as Dadaism. All over the world, artists have paid homage to this important artistic movement through various types of performances, exhibitions, educational and interactive events. However, some artists who were very important in the DADA movement are conspicuously absent from these retrospective celebrations and remembraces, and were marginalized within the living movement itself. [2017]

Dadaism was conceived in light of the First World War, from the need of artists to oppose war and violence. This critical mass of creative people became an explosive movement in total opposition to the structure and form of their society.

Dadaism as an artistic movement addresses us today with especial importance in the unfortunate similarity between our respective times: armed conflicts across the world, the refugee crisis, terrible poverty. In today’s political climate, artists must find a way to creatively arrange a movement opposing a violent system that profits from misogyny, terror, and war. The one program of Dadaism was that there was no program. It was precisely this ‘program of absolutely no program’ which enabled the movement to spread in all directions, freed from aesthetic and social constraints. On the other hand, it is possible that this rejection of any set program by the Dadaists is responsible for the fact that the movement never faced such basic questions about itself such as that of patriarchy.

The DADA artists created collaboratively with their colleagues in establishing for the first time new artistic concepts. It is necessary to find different interpretations that secure a more complete picture of the DADA movement, a new, more relevant history based on the idea that all artists in the movement deserve equal recognition, as artists, first and foremost.

Concept and direction: Dijana Milošević
Performers: Evgenija Eškina Kovačević, Aleksandra Jelić, Ivana Milenović Popović, Ivana Milovanović, Ivan Nikolić
Musicians: Ljubica Damčević, Uglješa Majdevac
Scenography: Neša Paripović
Costumes and make-up: Snežana Arnautović, DAH Theater
“Ready-made” suitcases: Evgenija Eškina Kovačević, Aleksandra Jelić, Ivana Milenović Popović, Ivana Milovanović, Ivan Nikolić
Lights: Milomir Dimitrijević
Organization and Public Relations: Nataša Novaković
Photography: Una Škandro

DAH Theater thanks: Belgrade Cultural Center, Snežana Arnautović, Neša Paripović, Shira Wolfe

Realization supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia