Dutch Futurismo’s Festival of Misfits is a welcome addition to Ektro Records’ series of releases by Hungarian-born artists and musicians Éva Polgár and Sándor Vály. Working with Nea Lindgren and Mikael Jurmu, Polgár and Vály enter the soundscapes of Spanish seashores, streets, flats and ateliers, where their music takes an unpredictable course. The procession of whimsical improvisations, peculiar solutions and impossible circumstances was recorded with a single microphone. Performed on instruments built from scrap materials from streets and dumpsters, Dutch Futurismo brings together Arte Povera and Dada. While impinging the obvious conventions of making music, Dutch Futurismo’s unruly approach also taps into the Cagean tradition of widening the horizons of what is perceived as music in the first place, as each sound on the album lives and breathes according to its own unapologetic logic.
Dutch Futurismo’s Festival of Misfits celebrates the 100th Anniversary of Dada by reciting poems and proclamations of Dadaists Kurt Schwitters, Hugo Ball, Hans Arp and Francis Picabia.
lyrics
Huelsendada
So, Huelsenbeck has put our feud in print -- HA HA
So he sneers at my bourgeois home -- my child
who cries, who has to be changed and fed
So he laughs at my solid wife -- that she's no Anna Bloom
So families are not dada -- HA -- neither is the future then
So an artisr has nothing to do with kids,
with homes, with Christmas trees
And this is commitment -- HA -- this is communist art
Well, art is not communist -- not bourgeois either
It's no club and has no party line
Not wild nights make an artist -- not drugs or manifestos
It's art -- HA HA -- that's no secret
The one who makes art -- he's the artist
His one duty-to shape the stuff that comes to hand
So he can't serve two masters --
Not art in the service of revolution
Not revolution at all -- if it fetters art
These Huelsendadas -- husks of artists --
have winnowed out the kernel
So I spit back at you, Huelsenbeck
But where you spit venom, I spit art
I laugh at you -- HA HA --
I laugh at you
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
ha ha ha ho ho ho
HA HO HO HA HO HA HA HO
ho ha ha ho ha ha
HO HO HO HO HO HO
ha ho ha ha ho
HA HA HA HA
Critics
Critics are a special kind of human being.
To be a critic one has to be born to it.
The born critic, thanks to the exceptional
sheeepness of his wits, finds out exactly
what it is not all about.
He invariably sees,
not the faults of the work of art,
not those of the artist, but his own.
The critic, thanks to the natural shee-
eepness of his wits,
becomes aware of his own deficiencies
through the medium of the work of art.
Critics resemble those well-loved men,
the schoolmasters, although it is true
the critic needs to pass no exams:
critics are born not made.
Critics do not have to give up their umbrellas
when they go to an art exhibition.
The umbrellas do, however, have to take an exam.
Only umbrellas with holes are admitted to art criticism.
The difference between artist and critic is this:
the artist creates, the critic bleates.
Sándor Vály (1968) is an audiovisual artist born in Hungary and currently living in Finland and Italy. Vály’s art is
characterised by conceptual and philosophical dimension, which he uses to operate in the field of contemporary art. His work ranges from music to cinema, performance art and literature. Vály creates holistic works of art that form extensive entities...more
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