WHAT THE HELL:(IS HAPPENING)(ARE WE LOOKING AT)(ARE WE DOING)(ARE ARTISTS DOING)(ARE WE CREATING)(ARE WE CONSUMING)

ZANG TUMB TUUUM

Was the name of a sound poem published by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1912. ZANG TUMB TUUM in an onomatopoeia for the sound a howitzer makes. Artists like Filippo from the Dada (1915-1920) period were exploring the usage of the word as symbol, as image. The written word had previously retained its transcendental nature from its ability to free man from tyranny using logic and rationalism. It was associated with truth, news, religion, progress, science, and the soul of man. Dada artists sought to appropriate that seriousness found in type and literature to communicate an “understanding of the vulgar”.

“The new painter creates a world, the elements of which are also its implements, a sober, definite work without argument. The new artist protests: he no longer paints (symbolic and illusionist reproduction) but creates directly in stone, wood, iron, tin, boulders-locomotive organisms capable of being turned in all directions by the limpid wind of momentary sensation.”
-Tristan Tzara, 1918

Dada artists were making art based on what they actually saw, actually heard, and actually read.

“Instead we use all the brutal sounds, all the expressive cries of the violent life that surrounds us. Let us boldly create the ‘ugly’ in literature and kill solemnity wherever it may be.”
-Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Garbage, pollution, contradiction, propaganda, destruction and war—are these things I see on a daily basis?

What the hell have I been looking at?