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Dada Data

i
ii
 Dada Data
Contemporary Art Practice in the
Era of Post-Truth Politics

Edited by
SARAH HEGENBART AND
MARA-JOHANNA K Ö LMEL

iii
 BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2023

Selection and editorial material © Sarah Hegenbart and Mara-Johanna Kölmel, 2023
Individual chapters © their authors, 2023

Sarah Hegenbart and Mara-Johanna Kölmel have asserted their rights under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xviii constitute an extension of

this copyright page.

Cover design: montage mädels and Tjaša Krivec

Cover image: montage mädels, ‘mine human ores’, 2021 © montage mädels

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for,
any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in
this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret
any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist,
but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-2761-3

ePDF: 978-1-3502-2762-0
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To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters

iv
 CONTENTS

Note on Cover Design vii

Illustrations viii
Notes on Contributors xiii
Acknowledgements xviii
Introduction: From Dada Tricks to Post-Truth Politics
Sarah Hegenbart and Mara-Johanna Kölmel 1

PART ONE From Dada to Data 21

1 Dadadatadada: From Dada to Data and Back

Again Mara-Johanna Kölmel 23
2 Clouds, Critique & Contradiction: Programming
Dissent in Dada and Data Art Meredith Hoy 41
3 The Legacy of the Berlin Dada Media Hoaxes in
Contemporary Parafictive Acts Rebecca Smith 55

Visual Essay by montage m ä dels 69

PART TWO Global Dada 73

4 Sheida Soleimani, Cyborg: Photomontage in an

Expanding Network Matthew Biro 75
5 Black Dada Data: Collage as a Tool of Resistance
against White Supremacy Thinking in the Digital
Age Sarah Hegenbart 105
6 Dada’s African South Roger van Wyk 125
7 Paula Rego: A Dada Attitude against Authority in
the Post-War Period Leonor de Oliveira 143

v
vi CONTENTS

Visual Essay by donna Kukama 159

PART THREE Big Dada Data 163

8 Big Dada, Big Data: Schwitters’s Merzbau, the Private

and the Trash Natalie P. Koerner 165
9 Identity, Ecology and the Arts in the Age of Big Data
Mining Roberto Simanowski 183
10 The Digital Revolution as Counter-Revolution
Joshua Simon 197

Visual Essay by Kemang Wa Lehulere 213

PART FOUR Dada x Alt-Right. Faking the Truth 215

11 Down the Rabbit Hole of the Alt-Right Complex:

Artists Exploring Far-Right Online Culture Inke
Arns 217
12 Fashwave: The Alt-Right’s Aestheticization of Politics
and Violence Lisa Bogerts and Maik Fielitz 230
13 Post-Internet Art and the Alt-Right Visual Culture
Vid Simoniti 246

Visual Essay by IOCOSE 261

PART FIVE Dada Data Tactics 263

14 Pixel Pirates: Theft as Strategy in the Art of

Joan Ross and Soda Jerk Jaime Tsai 265
15 Precarious Data Aesthetics: An Exploration of Tactics,
Tricksters and Idiocy in Data Annet Dekker 280
16 The Multiple Narratives of Post-Truth Politics,
Told Through Pictures Jack Southern 292

Index 309
 NOTE ON COVER
DESIGN – MONTAGE
MÄDELS
‘mine human ores’

every time we scroll – when we are at our most tired, our lowest ebb – you
and i consume.
we are ‘consumers’.
we consume a ready-meal discourse.
we are also rebuilt, slowly.
psychometric components, in 2016 we permanently recalibrated our systems
of rule.
but we have already forgotten.
now we are mainly picked open & drained.
you and i are mined.
they mine our human ores.
ores in the shape of our fears; aspirations; our political dreams for the future.
time to choose: swap out phone for megaphone, or keep on scrolling

vii
 ILLUSTRATIONS

Plates
1 Hannah Höch, Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser durch die letzte
Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands, 1919. Collage,
114 × 90 cm. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021 / Photo: © bpk / Nationalgalerie,
SMB / Jörg P. Anders.
2 Casey Reas, All Your Face Are Belong To Us (Followers 1K),
2015. Code, digital images, computer, screen, 1080 × 1920
pixels. © Casey Reas.
3 Sheida Soleimani, Minister of Petroleum (Angola), Secretary
of State (United States, 1973–77), 2017. Archival pigment print,
40 × 60 in. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani.
4 Tschabalala Self, Pocket Rocket, 2020. Digital print on canvas,
denim, fabric, thread, painted canvas, dyed canvas, acrylic and
hand mixed pigments on dyed canvas, 244 × 244 × 4 cm /
96 × 96 × 1 1/2 in. © Tschabalala Self. Courtesy Galerie Eva
Presenhuber, Zurich / New York. Photo: Matt Grubb.
5 Adam Pendleton, Black Dada (A/A), 2019. Silkscreen ink on
canvas, in two panels, overall: 243.8 × 192.7 cm; 96 × 75 7/8 in,
each panel: 121.9 × 192.7 cm.; 48 × 75 7/8 in. © Adam
Pendleton. Photo: Andy Romer. Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler.
6 Buyani Duma and Thato Ramaisa perform as Desire Marea
and Fela Gucci as the performance art duo FAKA.
Photographed by Viviane Sassen, 2015. © Viviane Sassen.
7 Still image from Swarm Theory V1.0 directed by Kyla Davis
and Daniel Buckland at the National Arts Festival, Makhanda,
2019. Copyright: Kyla Davis, Photo Credit: Daylin Paul.
8 Paula Rego, Salazar vomiting the homeland, 1960. Oil on
canvas, 94 × 120 cm. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum – Modern
Collection, Lisbon, Portugal. © Paula Rego. Courtesy of the
artist and Marlborough, New York and London.
9 Jennifer Chan, Boyfriend, 2014. Video artwork (6:26), video
still (at 1:24). © Jennifer Chan.
10 IOCOSE, Dadasourcing (Dada means nothing), 2018.
Crowdsourced image. Printed with permission of the artists.
viii
 ILLUSTRATIONS ix

11 IOCOSE, Dadasourcing (Boom boom), 2018. Crowdsourced image.

Printed with permission of the artists.
12 IOCOSE, Dadasourcing (Abolition of the future), 2018.
Crowdsourced image. Printed with permission of the artists.
13 IOCOSE, Dadasourcing (Everything we look at is false),
2018. Crowdsourced image. Printed with permission of the
artists.
14 Joan Ross, ‘The naming of things’, The claiming of things,
2012. Digital video, 7:36 minutes. Courtesy the artist and
Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney.
15 Erica Scourti, Difficult to Find the Lost Things, 2019, detail.
Printed with permission of the artist.
16 Flatness screengrab Feb 2019, showing artwork by Nikhil
Vettukattil. © Shama Khanna, 2021. Image courtesy of
flatness.eu, and reproduced with the permission of
Shama Khanna.

Figures
1.1 Tristan Tzara, DADA soulève tout, 1921. Text by the artist
(recto). Letterpress, sheet: 10 13/16 × 8 1/4’ (27.4 × 21 cm).
The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift. Acc.
no.: 3216.2008, © 2022. Digital image, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence, Christophe Tzara. 24
1.2 Raoul Hausmann, Sound-Rel, 1919. Sound poem, coll.
Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, château de
Rochechouart. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021. 25
1.3 Grayson Earle, Binary view of the Bail Bloc mining
algorithm – a software that mines cryptocurrency which is
then traded for US dollars to bail low income people out of
US jails, 2021. © Grayson Earle. 27
1.4 Hannah Höch, Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser durch die letzte
Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands, 1919. Collage,
114 × 90 cm. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021 / Photo: © bpk / Nationalgalerie,
SMB / Jörg P. Anders. 29
1.5 Anonymous, George Soros Meme, 2016. shorturl.at/eistQ,
accessed 18 January 2022. 33
2.1 Casey Reas, All Your Face Are Belong to Us (Followers 1K),
2015. Code, digital images, computer, screen, 1080 ×
1920 pixels. © Casey Reas. 50
4.1 Sheida Soleimani, Lachrymatory Agent, 2014. Archival
pigment print, 24 × 17 in. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani. 77
x ILLUSTRATIONS

4.2 Sheida Soleimani, Nedā, 2014. Archival pigment print,

24 × 17 in. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani. 79
4.3 Sheida Soleimani, Vitriolic Acid: An Eye for an Eye, 2015.
Archival pigment print, 24 × 17 in. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani. 81
4.4 Sheida Soleimani, Atefeh, 2016. Archival pigment print on
cotton, paracord, dimensions variable. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani.
Photograph by Will Amlot. Courtesy Edel Assanti. 83
4.5 Sheida Soleimani, Raheleh, 2016. Archival pigment print,
40 × 27 in. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani. 85
4.6 Hannah Höch, Russische Tänzerin (MeinDouble) [Russian
Dancer (My Double)]. Photomontage. 12 × 8 7/8 in.
Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick, Germany
(joint property of Braunschweigischer Vereinigter Kloster-
und Studienfonds). © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. 88
4.7 John Heartfield, “Die Nation steht geschlossen hinter mir”
(The Nation stands united behind me), from AIZ, Vol. 12,
No. 27, July 13, 1933, Page 467, 1933. Photogravure 14
3/4 in × 10 3/8 in (37.47 cm × 26.35 cm). © 2021 The
Heartfield Community of Heirs / Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. 89
4.8 Installation view of Sheida Soleimani: Medium of Exchange,
Atlanta Contemporary, 2018. Courtesy Atlanta Contemporary. 92
4.9 Sheida Soleimani, Vice President and Secretary of Defense
(United States), Halliburton CEOs, 2017. Archival pigment
print, 60 × 40 in. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani. 94
4.10 Sheida Soleimani, Minister of Petroleum (Angola), Secretary
of State (United States, 1973–77), 2017. Archival pigment
print, 40 × 60 in. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani. 95
4.11 Sheida Soleimani, Inauguration (United States, Iraq), 2017.
Archival pigment print, 18 × 24 in. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani. 96
4.12 Sheida Soleimani, Medium of Exchange, 2018. 32-minute
digital video, screen grab. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani. 97
4.13 Sheida Soleimani, Medium of Exchange, 2018. 32-minute
digital video, screen grab. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani. 97
4.14 Sheida Soleimani, A Whole New World, 2014. Archival
pigment print, 24 × 30 in. © 2021 Sheida Soleimani. 99
4.15 Unknown Photographer, Claude McRay (i.e., McKay) and
Baroness v. Freytag (i.e., Von Freytag-Loringhoven, n.d.
(before 1924). Digital file from glass negative, 5 × 7 inches
or smaller. Library of Congress, Bain News Service, LC-B2-
5677-3 [P&P], LC-DIG-ggbain-33941. 100
5.1 Tschabalala Self, Pocket Rocket, 2020. Digital print on canvas,
denim, fabric, thread, painted canvas, dyed canvas, acrylic and
hand mixed pigments on dyed canvas, 244 × 244 × 4 cm /
 ILLUSTRATIONS xi

96 × 96 × 1 1/2 in. © Tschabalala Self. Courtesy Galerie Eva

Presenhuber, Zurich / New York. Photo: Matt Grubb. 106
5.2 Hannah Höch, Die Süsse (Aus einem ethnographischen
Museum) (The Sweet One [From an Ethnographic Museum]),
1926. Collage with watercolour © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021. 111
5.3 Romare H. Bearden, The Prevalence of Ritual: Baptism, 1964.
Collage; Photomechanical reproductions, paint, and graphite
on board, 23.2 × 30.5 cm. © Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Gift of
Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966 (and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021). 113
5.4 Adam Pendleton, Black Dada (A/A), 2019. Silkscreen ink on
canvas, in two panels, overall: 243.8 × 192.7 cm; 96 × 75 7/8 in,
each panel: 121.9 × 192.7 cm; 48 × 75 7/8 in. © Adam
Pendleton. Photo: Andy Romer. Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler. 115
6.1 Kemang Wa Lehulere performance during the opening of
Dada South? outside the Iziko South African National
Gallery, 2009. © Photo credit: Alexia Webster. 130
6.2 donna Kukama performs The Great South African Queue,
Iziko South African National Gallery, 2009. © Photo credit:
Alexia Webster. 131
6.3 Protestors carry paintings from the surrounding student
residences to be burnt during the ‘Shackville’ protest at the
University of Cape Town, 16 February 2016. © Photo:
Ashleigh Furlong, for GroundUp. 133
6.4 Buyani Duma and Thato Ramaisa perform as Desire Marea
and Fela Gucci as the performance art duo FAKA.
Photographed by Viviane Sassen, 2015. © Viviane Sassen. 134
6.5 Brett Murray, Triumph, 2015. Two-screen video, 6 min. 48 sec.
© Image courtesy of Brett Murray. 137
6.6 Still image from Swarm Theory V1.0 directed by Kyla Davis
and Daniel Buckland at the National Arts Festival, Makhanda,
2019. © Copyright: Kyla Davis. Photo Credit: Daylin Paul. 138
7.1 Paula Rego, Salazar vomiting the homeland, 1960. Oil on
canvas, 94 × 120 cm. Calouste Gulbenkian Museum – Modern
Collection, Lisbon, Portugal. © Paula Rego. Courtesy of the
artist and Marlborough, New York and London. 145
7.2 Paula Rego, Trilogy of fear or The three faces of fear, c. 1964.
Acrylic, oil, crayon, graphite and paper glued on canvas,
86 × 138 cm. Private collection. © Paula Rego. Courtesy of
the artist and Marlborough, New York and London. 151
7.3 Paula Rego, Iberian dawn, 1962. Acrylic, graphite and paper
glued on canvas, 72.5 × 92 cm. Private collection. © Paula
Rego. Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough, New York
and London. 152
xii ILLUSTRATIONS

7.4 Paula Rego, The dogs of Barcelona, 1965. Oil, crayon and paper
glued on canvas, 160 × 185 cm. Private collection. © Paula Rego.
Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough, New York and London. 153
8.1 Kurt Schwitters, Merzbau, 1933. © bpk / Sprengel Museum
Hannover. Photo: Wilhelm Redemann. 166
8.2 Kurt Schwitters, Merzbau, 1933. © bpk / Sprengel
Museum Hannover. Photo: Wilhelm Redemann. 167
8.3 Kurt Schwitters, Merzbau, 1933. © bpk / Sprengel Museum
Hannover. Photo: Wilhelm Redemann. 168
12.1 Unknown. Internet meme from the Telegram channel
Fashwave Images. Posted on 9 September 2019. 236
12.2 Unknown. Internet meme from the Telegram channel
Fashwave Images. Posted on 1 October 2019. 239
12.3 Unknown. Internet meme from the Telegram channel
Fashwave Images. Posted on 14 June 2019. 241
13.1 Jennifer Chan, Boyfriend, 2014. Video artwork (6:26),
video still (at 1:24). © Jennifer Chan. 247
14.1 Soda Jerk with Sam Smith, Hollywood Burn, 2006. Digital
video, 52 minutes. Courtesy the artists. 271
14.2 Joan Ross, ‘The naming of things’, The claiming of things,
2012. Digital video, 7:36 minutes. Courtesy the artist and
Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney. 273
14.3 Soda Jerk & The Avalanches, The Was, 2016. Digital video,
13:40 minutes. Courtesy the artists. 275
14.4 Soda Jerk & The Avalanches, The Was, 2016. Digital video,
13:40 minutes. Courtesy the artists. 275
15.1 Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, A Dozen Cocktails – Please,
1920. Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven papers. Special
Collections and University Archives. University of
Maryland Libraries. 282–83
15.2 Constant Dullaart, Phantom Love – Institutions Based on
Lore, 2017. Screenshot. 286
15.3 Erica Scourti, Difficult to Find the Lost Things, 2019, detail.
Printed with permission of the artist. 288
16.1 Flatness screengrab Feb 2019, showing artwork by Nikhil
Vettukattil. © Shama Khanna, 2021. Image courtesy of
flatness.eu, and reproduced with the permission of
Shama Khanna. 302
 NOTES ON
CONTRIBUTORS

Inke Arns is Director of HMKV – Hartware MedienKunstVerein – in

Dortmund, Germany. Since 1993, she is an independent curator and author
specializing in media art, net cultures and Eastern Europe. She studied
Russian literature, Eastern European studies, political science and art history
in Berlin and Amsterdam (1988–96) and in 2004 received her PhD from the
Humboldt University in Berlin. She curated award-winning exhibitions at
home and abroad, and is the author/editor of numerous articles/books on
media art and net culture.

Matthew Biro is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the

Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan, where he
also served as department chair between 2010 and 2016. He is the author of
Anselm Kiefer and the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1998), The Dada
Cyborg: Visions of the New Human in Weimar Berlin (2009), Anselm Kiefer
(2013), and Robert Heinecken and the Art of Appropriation (2022).

Lisa Bogerts is a Berlin-based researcher focusing on political protest,

power relations, visual analysis and art activism. She wrote her PhD at
Goethe University Frankfurt and the New School for Social Research, New
York.

Annet Dekker is Assistant Professor Cultural Analysis and Archival &

Information Studies, University of Amsterdam, and Visiting Professor and
co-director of the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, London
South Bank University. She has published in numerous journals and
magazines and is editor of several volumes, including, among others, her
recent publication Curating Digital Art (2021). Her monograph, Collecting
and Conserving Net Art (2018) is a seminal work in the field of digital art
conservation.

Maik Fielitz is Researcher at the Jena Institute for Democracy and Civil
Society and Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.
His work focuses on far-right activism in Europe. Together with Nick
Thurston he co-edited the volume Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right
(2019).

xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Sarah Hegenbart works as Lecturer in Art History at Technical University in

Munich and is currently acting as a substitute for the professorship in art research
with a focus on contemporary art at the Braunschweig University of Art. She is
a member of Die Junge Akademie Mainz and member of the consortium of the
Horizon 2020 research project Art and Research on Transformations of
Individuals and Societies. Prior to her current position, Sarah completed a PhD
on Christoph Schlingensief’s Opera Village Africa in Burkina Faso at the
Courtauld Institute of Art in London, an MSt in Ancient Philosophy at
the University of Oxford, and a Magister in Philosophy and History of Art at the
Humboldt University of Berlin.

Meredith Hoy is Associate Professor of Art Theory and Intermedia in the

Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Her
first monograph was From Point to Pixel: A Genealogy of Digital Aesthetics
(2017). Hoy’s interdisciplinary research examines frictions, intersections
and contiguities between technological, ecological, scientific and social
systems. Her most current research projects address animality, biophilia and
the relationship between human and non-human entities.

IOCOSE investigate how the narratives surrounding the future of

technology leave traces on the present. They have been working with visual
media, video installations and prints. Founded in 2006 by Matteo Cremonesi,
Filippo Cuttica, Davide Prati and Paolo Ruffino, IOCOSE have been
exhibiting at major institutions including MLZ Art Dep (2021), MAMbo
(2018), Fotomuseum Winterthur (2017), The Photographers Gallery (2018,
2016), Tate Modern (2011), Science Gallery (2012), Jeu de Paume (2011)
and Transmediale (2013, 2015). http://iocose.org.

Mara-Johanna Kölmel is a curator, lecturer and art historian with a special

interest in (post-)digital art and culture. She obtained her MA in Art History
at the Courtauld Institute of Art and holds a BA in Cultural Studies from
Leuphana University Lüneburg where she has also completed her PhD on
Sculpture in the Augmented Sphere. Mara has performed international
curatorial roles for the Biennale of Sydney, Kunsthalle Hamburg & Akademie
Schloss Solitude, also realizing exhibitions with Approved by Pablo in
London and peer to space in Berlin. She has presented her research at
conferences internationally and published among others in Texte zur Kunst
and Die Nadel. Mara is the co-founder of SALOON London, a network
for women in the London art world.

Natalie P. Koerner is Assistant Professor in Architecture at the Royal Danish

Academy and at the Centre for Privacy Studies at the University of
Copenhagen. Her research spans contemporary and early modern notions
of privacy, (digital) archives and climatic spatial imaginaries. Combining
theory with practice, her studio work comprises architectural projects and
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv

artistic research. Koerner studied at Cambridge University and at the ETH,

Zurich, and has collaborated with architectural and artistic practices such
as Studio Olafur Eliasson.

donna Kukama is a transdisciplinary artist and creative researcher whose

approach to epistemic disobedience informs her ‘writing’ of histories through
performance. She has exhibited and presented work at several major
international institutions, biennales and museums. Kukama is a research
associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre at the
University of Johannesburg. She was previously a lecturer at the Wits School
of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (2011–2021),
a guest professor at HBK Braunschweig University, Germany (2019–2020),
and is a visiting artist at HEAD Genève (2021–2023). She is a PhD candidate
at the University of Plymouth and currently lives and works in Cologne,
Germany, where she is a professor of Contemporary Art with a focus on the
Global South at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM).

Kemang Wa Lehulere was born in 1984 in Cape Town, and lives there. He
has a BA Fine Arts degree from the University of the Witwatersrand (2011).
A presentation of Kemang Wa Lehulere’s installation ‘I cut my skin to liberate
the splinter’ was shown at the Tate Modern, London (2019). Previous solo
exhibitions have taken place at Pasquart Art Centre in Biel, Switzerland
(2018); MAXXI, Rome (2017); the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle (2017); the
Art Institute of Chicago (2016); Gasworks, London (2015); Lombard Freid
Projects, New York (2013); the Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg (2011); and
the Association of Visual Arts in Cape Town (2009), in addition to Stevenson
(2018; 2016; 2015; 2012) and Marian Goodman Gallery (2018).

montage mädels are a five-woman artists’ collective from the US and UK,
founded the morning after Donald Trump’s election as US president in
2016. Their net-art photomontages denounce contemporary mass media’s
hate-driven ideologies and probe the conditions of our Late Capitalist
moment. Exhibitions: ‘Landscape: A Reconstruction’, Rutland House (New
York, 2019); East Wing Biennial, Somerset House (London, 2018); ‘Nice
Sky’, Galerie 102 (Berlin, 2017); Brick Lane Gallery (London, 2017).
Features: Abstract Mag TV; The Courtauldian.

Leonor de Oliveira is an integrated researcher from the Institute of Art

History, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. Her recent publications include the
monograph Portuguese Artists in London: Shaping Identities in Post-War
Europe (2020). She has been conducting original research on Paula Rego’s
early production that resulted in exhibitions that she co-curated at the Casa
das Histórias Paula Rego (Portugal). Other topics of research include Iberian
post-war context and creative agency; women’s creativity, citizenship and
democratization.
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Roberto Simanowski is a scholar of media and cultural studies and holds a

PhD in literary studies and a Venia Legendi in media studies. He is the
founder and editor of the journal on digital culture and aesthetics, dichtung-
digital.org (1999–2014) and the author of several books on digital culture
and politics, including Digital Art and Meaning (2011), Data Love and
Facebook Society (2016 and 2018), as well as The Death Algorithm and
Other Digital Dilemmas (2018; CHOICE award for Outstanding Academic
Titles for 2019) and Waste: A New Media Primer (2018). Simanowski
worked as professor of German Studies at Brown University and as professor
of Digital Media Studies and Digital Humanities at the University of Basel
and at City University of Hong Kong.

Joshua Simon is a curator and author based in Philadelphia, and the former
director and chief curator at MoBY-Museums of Bat Yam, Tel Aviv (2012–17).
Simon is visiting critic at the Fine Arts program at the University of Pennsylvania,
and teaches at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and at Leuphana University,
Germany. He is the author of Neomaterialism (2013), and editor of Being
Together Precedes Being: A Textbook for The Kids Want Communism (2019).

Vid Simoniti is lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, where

he also runs MA Art, Philosophy and Cultural Institutions. His research
focuses on the intersection of aesthetics and politics; recent publications
include a contribution to Adrian Piper: A Reader (Museum of Modern Art,
New York), ‘Living Images in Bio-Art’ (Oxford Art Journal) and ‘Assessing
Socially Engaged Art’ (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism). Before
joining Liverpool in 2018, he was a research fellow and lecturer in History
of Art at the University of Cambridge, and he obtained his doctorate from
the University of Oxford. His book Art Against the World, which investigates
the place of contemporary art within the democratic public sphere, is
forthcoming with Yale University Press in 2023.

Rebecca Smith is a lecturer and researcher at the Liverpool School of Art

and Design, Liverpool John Moores University. Rebecca completed her PhD
Parafiction as Matter and Method in 2020. Her research interests include art
history, contemporary art, digital cultures, performance, politics, technological
infrastructures and truth discourses. She has published in peer-reviewed
journals, written for transmediale 2021 and presented at international
conferences including Visible Evidence 2022, Gdansk, RE:SOUND 2019,
Aalborg, RESAW 2019, Amsterdam, and the Association for Art History
Annual Conference 2018, London.

Jack Southern is an artist, researcher and senior lecturer, currently working

at the University of Gloucestershire and at City and Guilds of London Art
School. His research into the social, cultural and political implications of
our increasingly mediated contemporary experience has been disseminated
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii

widely through symposium and conference contributions, as well as

published writing. Current work specifically focuses on exploring creative
modes of digital intervention and resistance in response to the exploitative
nature of financialized models of digital/data technologies.

Jaime Tsai is lecturer in Art History and Theory at the National Art School,
Sydney. Her research explores how the strategies of Dada and Surrealism
inform alternative knowledge practices in contemporary Australian art.
Recent publications include ‘Equivocal Taxonomies: Fiona Hall and the Logic
of Display’ (Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art), and ‘Jane Graverol’
(International Encyclopedia of Surrealism). Her recent curatorial project
CAUGHT STEALING (The National Art School Gallery, Sydney) explored
Surrealist inspired theft as a tactic in the work of Australian artists such as
Daniel Boyd, Destiny Deacon, and Fiona Hall.

Roger van Wyk is an independent curator, artist and writer based in

Cape Town, South Africa. His critically acclaimed exhibition Dada South?
Experimentation, Radicalism and Resistance at the South African National
Gallery in Cape Town in 2010 explored the legacies of Dada in South
African art, and has spurred ongoing research and discourse. He coauthored
an essay for the exhibition Dada Africa: Dialogue with the Other (Zurich’s
Museum Rietberg and Berlinische Galerie, 2016) that drew attention to the
role of the avant-garde in South Africa. His training as a sculptor and urban
planner combines in his critical contributions to public art in South Africa.
He consults to the City of Cape Town on public arts development, and flies
the flag for Situationism, and art as a catalyst for social change, through his
involvement with the South African chapter of Burning Man, AfrikaBurn.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book emerged out of the political climate the editors experienced in
2016 while undertaking research at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
For many, 2016 was a shell shock that began with the UK voting to leave
the EU and was further amplified by the presidential election in the US.
A decade of financial crisis and social insecurity had resulted in a political
surge to the far-right in Europe and the US. The outdated ideologies back on
the political agenda, however, came in the form of progressive-looking social
media campaigns commingling seemingly humorous memes and videos with
hipster aesthetics. Observing how central aesthetic and cultural means
featured in this resurgence of the right and blurred the boundaries between
fact and fiction, we asked ourselves as art historians how we ought to
respond. Could the use of images in the twentieth-century avant-gardes –
and in particular Dada’s visual concepts, such as montage, collage, the play
with mimicry, acts of provocation and irony as well as the ready-made –
perhaps even have contributed to the present moment? What is the difference
between Dadaist sabotaging the ‘truth’ in their work and a political
communicator intentionally misleading the public? These questions are also
linked to a view which had become increasingly popular around this time:
holding postmodernist thinkers responsible for the dissolution of truth in
the era of post-truth.
While we found these attacks too simplistic and untenable, we were keen
to dig deeper into questions related to the responsibility of the historical
avant-gardes, visual cultures and postmodernist thinkers. In addition, we
wanted to understand better how the increase of digital (visual)
communication impacts on our capacities to differentiate between fact and
fiction. This initially led to a panel we organized for the Association for Art
History Annual Conference, which took place at the Courtauld Institute of
Art in London in Spring 2018. We thank all our participants on this panel,
whose contributions form the core of this volume. The scope of the book
was further expanded and refined by contributors including artists, scholars
and curators whom we approached after the conference. We were thrilled
that our array of contributors were as excited as we were about the project
and generously wrote new texts, accepting the constraints of not being paid
an honorarium. Equally, numerous artists whose work is featured and
discussed in this book generously granted us permission to use their artwork.
In the process of refining this volume, we benefited enormously from the

xviii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xix

feedback of two anonymous peer reviewers whom we would like to thank

very warmly. We also would like to thank the fantastic team at Bloomsbury,
in particular Ross Fraser-Smith, April Peake and Yvonne Thouroude.
Without Professor Sarah Wilson who introduced the editors to each other
this book would not have come about. The generous support of the Dr
Marschall Foundation at the Technical University of Munich helped us to
finalize the index of this book. A big thank you to Karl Hughes for thoughts
and comments that went beyond editing. Our academic affiliations with the
Leuphana University in Lüneburg and the Technical University of Munich
enabled us to develop this project further, for which we are very grateful.
Fellowships at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and the
Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald provided the perfect framework for
putting the finishing touches to this project.
Last but not least, we would like to say a massive thank you to our family
and friends who had to bear numerous weekends and weekdays without us
while we were working on Dada Data. Thank you, George, Leander, Malia
and Philip for your love, encouragement and infinite support.
xx
 Introduction:
From Dada Tricks
to Post-Truth Politics
Sarah Hegenbart and
Mara-Johanna Kölmel

The era of post-truth politics poses a new challenge for contemporary art
practice. In 2016, Brexit and the election of Donald Trump gave rise to the
term ‘post-truth politics’ – a type of politics that ignores accepted standards
of truths, objective facts and critical thinking, and appeals instead to people’s
emotions and personal beliefs.1 Misinformation, alternative facts, fake news,
hoaxes and parafictions mark the discursive currency of the post-truth age.
But is this really a description of ‘post-truth’? Does it not in fact hark back to
an earlier period? Loving ‘the absurd’, knowing that ‘life asserts itself in
contradictions’, and enjoying ‘every play at hide and seek in which there is an
inherent power of deception’ is not how Hugo Ball describes post-truth
politics.2 Rather, he references a much earlier time: the emergence of the Dada
movement in diverse centres from 1916 on. Ball’s Dada colleague Hans Arp
summarizes the aim of Dada in his ‘Notes from a Dada Diary’ as transforming
‘the perceptible world of man today into a pious senseless world without
reason’.3 Parallels between Dada’s decentring of a world order structured by
reason and oriented towards truth and the attack on truth by post-truth
politicians spring to mind.4 To take into account how characteristic the appeal
to emotions is for post-truth politics, Jayson Harsin introduced the concept of
‘emo-truth’: ‘Emo-truth is truth where emotion serves as inference ... It is felt

1
2 DADA DATA

(though not necessarily consciously), and not accompanied by long temporal

reasoning.’5 Needless to say, this description could also be applied to the arts
which operate on an aesthetic, hence affective, emotive level.
Might this mean that a liberal and left avant-garde movement paved the
way for a novel type of politics, which is exercised by rather conservative
politicians with an alt-right mindset? Are post-truth politicians perverting
artistic ideas of the twentieth-century avant-gardes? Or are the Dadaists and
their artistic attacks on truth even partly to blame for the times we live in?
How can art foster critical discourse that is often abandoned when
subscribing to simplified notions of reality? These and related questions
have inspired this anthology, which touches on the relation between the art
and tactics of the avant-gardes and the perversion of truth in contemporary
politics. In considering an array of cultural and artistic representations, this
edited volume seeks to offer new insights into the artistic modes of persuasion
and resistance marking our post-truth era. The goal is to generate new ideas
about the reading of our contemporary moment through the lens of artistic
production from Dada to data-driven, post-truth politics.
We believe that an analysis of the recent phenomenon against the
backdrop of the Dada movement is fruitful for numerous reasons. First, this
comparison will illustrate that the attack on truth is actually not a novel
phenomenon, but has a much longer history. Dada, however, as we will
argue, is not to be blamed for the current distortion of ‘truth(s)’. Rather the
early Dadaists’ attack on ‘truth’ actually has little to do with the norms,
values and beliefs of the post-truth society. Taking the Dada perspective on
board will, secondly, enable us to counter an argument that has recently
become very popular. Researchers have attacked the scholarship of left-
liberal postmodernism, to some extent adumbrated by the subversions of
Dada, arguing that postmodernism enabled the discursive climate of ‘post-
truth’ in the first place.6
Such observations bring up the two main queries implicitly inspiring this
volume:

1 How do Dada strategies pertain to our current moment marked

by post-truth politics, information floods and big data?
2 If populist politicians persuade the masses by tailored data
strategies that have Dada analogies, how can contemporary art
highlight the neglected nuances of our post-truth moment and
especially its cultural representation?

Before diving into the argument in more detail, there are a number of
concepts structuring this book which require elaboration. While these will
be further discussed and refined by the individual contributions to this
volume, the following provides a short overview of the notions of Dada,
post-truth, the digital and the alt-right.
 INTRODUCTION 3

Dada
‘What is Dada? An Art? A Philosophy? A Politics? A Fire Insurance? Or:
State Religion? is Dada really Energy? or is it Nothing at all, i.e., everything?’
Written out in bold lettering, Berlin Dadaist Raoul Hausmann pondered the
meaning of Dada in his mock advertisement for his journal Der Dada 2.7 By
overtly seeming to simultaneously announce and deny the meaning of Dada,
Hausmann was deliberately treading the fine line between fact and fiction.
Working in the aftermath of the atrocities of World War I and a climate
of rising nationalism, the Dadaists were quick to understand that a long-
enduring balance between the ‘fictional in language and the concreteness of
experience’ had been shattered.8 Dada’s protagonists, based in Berlin, Paris,
New York, Cologne, Hanover and Zurich, investigated the mechanisms of
behaviours, words, symbols and objects, and how they provided working
‘fictions’ in their immediate surroundings.9 Their interest was further
catalysed by the rise of a modern media landscape. Propaganda poster
campaigns, the development of communication technologies (radio, cinema,
newsreel), wireless telegraphy, innovation in printing technologies, and the
circulation of massive quantities of photographic images triggered a post-
war mass-media explosion.10 The development engendered a palpable shift
from what Dada expert Hanne Bergius has called ‘the bourgeois function of
explication and enlightenment in the press to that of manipulation through
sensational reporting’.11
Satire, transgressive humour and parafictions were important tools for
Dadaists in reflecting such change. They exploited the press as a testing
ground for alternative fictions allowing them to gain attention and reach. In
Berlin, Johannes Baader together with Raoul Hausmann used the local press
ecology to declare the formation of the Dada Republic of Berlin-Nikolassee.12
In Paris, Picabia and Tzara convinced a newspaper to report a fictitious
quarrel between poets.13 In Zurich, reports of fictive events in the Dada
Soiree were planted in the press.14 The name ‘Dada’ was chosen by a random
dictionary search. The historical meaning of the word is, among other things,
‘hobby horse’, as Tristan Tzara mentions in his ‘Dada Manifesto’ (1918).15
The choice of the name indicates that the Dada artists wanted to move away
from a solemn understanding of art defined by the beauty it possesses.
Rather they sought to form a transnational movement, which dissolved the
artistic genres, rejected an elitist conception of art as high culture, which
integrated everyday material and popular culture. The transnational
openness of Dada invites a translocation of Dada to other regions, e.g. the
Global South, as exhibitions such as Dada South? Experimentation,
Radicalism and Resistance (2009–10 at the South African National Gallery
in Cape Town) and Dada Africa (2016–18 at Rietberg Museum Zurich, the
Berlinische Galerie Berlin, in conjunction with the Musée d’Orsay and the
Musée de l’Orangerie) have brought out.
4 DADA DATA

Dada’s diverse artistic strategies – never unified by one particular artistic

style – aimed to arouse emotions and stimulate reactions in their audience.
This, in turn, enabled them to approach and disclose the underlying
mechanism of their surrounding cultural life, to render them visible and
perhaps even more concrete. By means of scandal and shock their
interventions sought to reveal ‘the whole of brutal reality’.16 The Dadaists
targeted and parodied the prevalent structures, rhetoric and beliefs of their
times, embedding their critique of society in the very communicative means
of that society. Dada thereby proceeded from a self-elevating concept
involving many truths, in whose production and manipulation the media
could be co-opted.

Dada and conceptions of (post-)truth

The label ‘post-truth’ is a problematic one as the prefix suggests that there
was once a time in which the truth existed. The distortion of truth in politics,
however, started long before ‘post-truth’ was named the 2016 word of the
year by Oxford Dictionaries. The tactic of dismissing those facts conflicting
with one’s own political views as ‘fake news’ is not in principle new. It has
its roots in a long history of suppression and oppression of anything not
recognized as desirable or legitimate.
Robert Mejia, Kay Beckermann and Curtis Sullivan hence describe ‘post-
truth’ as tainted by ‘racial amnesia’, which has led to the misinformed belief
that an agreement on what counts as truth once existed within a society.17
There is an analogy to be drawn here with European colonization and white
settler colonialism, which simply ignored the epistemic systems of Indigenous
people. As the truth or ‘the idea of any transcendental universal Truth
(capital T)’ requires a normative principle, scholars such as Johan Farkas
and Jannick Schou suggested that the origins of post-truth can be traced
back to Enlightenment thinking.18 Most famously, Jean-François Lyotard
emphasized that multiple narratives have replaced a singular meta-narrative
embedded in the belief that a singular truth exists.19 The publication in 1979
of Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition clearly marked that perspectival
approaches to truths in the plural have replaced the belief into a universal
truth. Farkas and Schou emphasize that there have ‘historically been different
truths (small t) that have been the product of social and political struggles’.20
Laying the blame for the perversion of our political climate in the ‘post-
truth era’ at the door of postmodernism – and avant-garde art movements
such as Dada – ignores the fact that Dada artists as well as postmodernist
thinkers were concerned with demolishing existing power structures. ‘Post-
truth’ politicians, by contrast, are often driven by the desire to sustain
precisely those power structures which maintain their often white and male
privilege.21 How ‘successful’ post-truth politicians were in implementing
these structures that will continue to shape the landscape even after their time
 INTRODUCTION 5

in office is exemplified by the appointment of three supreme court justices

during the presidency of Trump. When the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
died on 18 September 2020, she was quickly replaced with the conservative
law professor Amy Coney Barrett – a decision that led to a conservative
majority in the supreme court and created ‘a new legal landscape that could
last at least 30 years’.22 The attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 by
Trump supporters who did not want to accept the election of Joe Biden
revealed how falsehoods and lies about the 2020 US presidential elections
turned into violence. Conspiracy ideologies disseminated by pro-Trump
supporters and QAnon further claimed that Trump would be reinstated on
13 August 2021.23 As Sam Levine argues, ‘2021 was the year that America’s
democracy came under attack from within’, as Republicans used numerous
strategies, among them gerrymandering, to limit the political influence of
people of colour and the continuous dissemination of falsehoods about the
election.24 This is mirrored in the CNN poll which led to the outcome that
78 per cent of Republicans claim that ‘Biden did not win’.25
The disproportionally high murder rate of Black people through the
police, e.g. in the case of George Floyd on 25 May 2020 in Minneapolis,
based on racist stereotypes, highlights another problematic failure of
democratic institutions within the US, but also globally, as the worldwide
Black Lives Matter protests highlighted. The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse,
who shot two people during Black Lives Matter protests and subsequently
turned into a ‘hero’ of the alt-right, proved again how these oppressive
structures persevere in the post-Trump era in the US.26
Alt-right ideologues have familiarized themselves with theoretical
approaches from the left in order to invert them.27 Cambridge Analytica
whistleblower Christopher Wylie described this quite memorably when
remembering his first encounter with Steve Bannon. In 2013, Wylie was
instructed to meet ‘Steve from America’ in Cambridge.28 In an interview
with journalist Carole Cadwalladr, Wylie described Bannon as:

Interesting. Really interested in ideas. He’s the only straight man I’ve ever
talked to about intersectional feminist theory. He saw its relevance
straightaway to the oppressions that conservative, young white men
feel.29

This example illustrates how such prominent alt-right figures conspire to

maintain a ‘political ideology that has as its core myth the homogeneous
nation—a romantic and gendered version of the homeland and homeland
culture, both of which act as emotional resources in the appeal to ontological
security’.30 Since avant-garde art movements beginning with Dada and
streams of cultural theory rooted in postmodernism have ‘endangered’ this
myth, it is not surprising that culture wars feature centrally in the post-truth
age to protect it. Interestingly, these culture wars have led to an ‘appropriation’
of left-wing liberal strategies by right-wing thinkers that appear to use
6 DADA DATA

Dadaist tactics for their own political ends. In order to understand how
culture is exploited in the current post-truth climate, this volume views our
post-truth predicament against the backdrop of the Dada movement in
order to arrive at a better understanding of current phenomena. Post-truth
has frequently been linked to the argument that the crisis of democracy is
expressing itself in an increase of populism.31 Even before the emergence of
post-truth, Colin Crouch announced the era of post-politics.32 According to
Farkas and Schou, the ‘problem is not that truth is disappearing, but that
democracy is’.33 Felix Stalder, professor of digital culture, suggests that the
experience of a loss of democracy is linked with the increase of a society’s
capacity to communicate, which is decoupled from opportunities to
participate and decide.34 Stalder relates this to an ‘enormous amplification
of cultural opportunities – an expression of the culture of digitality’.35
While the digitization of society throughout the 1990s was initially
celebrated as an opportunity to increase democratization and freedom of
speech through enhanced participation of citizens and a widening of
discourse to regions beyond the mainstream centres of exchange in the
Global South, it appears today that the opposite has transpired. Stalder
emphasizes how the Dada strategy of montage might indicate a way out:
‘The montage deals with assembling disparate precast elements ... This gave
the experience of multiple ruptures within modernity – the fragmentation
and disruption a new aesthetic form.’36
Indeed, as a culturally critical phenomenon, Dada can be freed from its
direct context and be seen as having a direct relevance to the twenty-first
century.37 However, the Dada aesthetics of montage is now frequently seized
by alt-right ideologues in their visual culture, and features in memes driving
conspiracy theories such as QAnon.

From Dada tricks to data-driven politics

One of the many differences between our post-truth environment and the
Dada movement era is, of course, the prevalence of digital infrastructures
and the internet. Today, most aspects of the everyday are digitally mediated.
Digital technologies have inscribed themselves in our lives. ‘Being digital’
as much as ‘being online’ has become the default condition. While this
development can be traced within the scientific and technological
developments of our information age, it is only in recent years that the
focus of artistic and critical discourse has distanced itself from notions
such as New Media as a discrete entity of culture. Rather, a discussion
has evolved about a conscious reconfiguration of all culture through the
digital, a post-digital condition.38 In this sense, the digital is not to be
understood as a medium, but as a mode of configuration, which consequently
does not lead to a subordination of existing media, but to their hybrid
transformation.
 INTRODUCTION 7

In her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff

carefully maps out the shift from industrial capitalism based on the
exploitation of resources and labour to surveillance capitalism.39 This form
of capitalism profits from the capture, rendering and analysis of behavioural
data. Surveillance capitalists have commodified information to the point
that people’s behaviour data points have become more valuable than their
actual existence.40 Hidden behind a smoke mirror of ethics, accountability
and free choice architectures, Zuboff makes explicit how surveillance
companies such as Google and Facebook quash and harness free will as a
means to profit.41 Without abiding by the standard research ethics of consent
framework, they have significant social and political influence, thus
endangering the project of liberalism and our individual sovereignty. Such
systematic ‘digital dispossession’ has played into the hands of data-driven
politics by post-truth politicians.42 In the case of Donald Trump, employees
of Google, Twitter and Facebook were actively embedded in his election
campaign and shaped its communication strategies.43 In countries such as
Germany, Facebook’s global government and political team provided their
services to the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland to help them
enter the Bundestag.44 Furthermore, behavioural micro-targeting and
psycho-graphics as used by Cambridge Analytica have allowed political
actors to model political campaigns to individuals and actively influence
voter behaviours. The commodification of personal data through ‘surveillance
capitalism’ has thereby made the spreading of lies and sensational
misinformation easier and more persuasive.45
The Covid-19 pandemic labelled by the World Health Organization as
‘infodemic’ is another good example of the impact of misleading and false
information spread through on- and offline networks.46 It has fuelled anti-
vaccine narratives and the distrust in health authorities and public health
response.47 Research data confirms a clear connection between ‘anti-vaccine
conspiracy theorists, anti-government actors, and extreme right-wing
movements’.48 This intersection becomes particularly evident in the overlap
of Covid-19 misinformation and QAnon conspiracies, for example, at anti-
mask or anti-lockdown demonstrations.49
The QAnon movement started forming in 2017 on the online imageboard
4-chan.50 An anonymous user called Q, who claimed to have high-level
security clearance, started posting cryptic messages about Trump’s supposed
battle against child-trafficking corrupt elites and a ‘deep state’.51 QAnon
quickly started spreading from a fringe movement to platforms including
Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, evolving into a cult-like movement with
millions of followers.52 With the conspiracy theory becoming mainstream, it
has been linked to a number of brutal offline incidents such as a series of
mass shootings in the US and the attack on the US Capitol in January
2021.53 As misinformation about the pandemic converges with falsehoods
related to QAnon, a hybrid threat landscape emerges that blurs ‘boundaries
between disinformation, hate speech and harassment, conspiracy theories
8 DADA DATA

and extremist mobilisation’.54 QAnon, whose origin can be linked to live-

action role-playing (LARP), Cicada online puzzles and ‘shit-posting’ – the
deliberately provocative and off-topic spreading of fictitious content – has
become an epitome of a post-truth predicament.55

Dada and the alt-right

Digital platforms have empowered individuals and organizations from
across the political spectrum to spread misinformation to audiences
globally.56 They have increasingly given rise to a culture of hate, deception
and extremism.57 According to recent studies, however, fake news and
misinformation linked to extremist, conspiratorial or racist content is
proportionally more consumed and shared by social media network users
on the (far)-right wing of the political landscape.58 In this context, the ‘far-
right’ has become an umbrella term for actors on the far end of the political
spectrum. According to Cas Mudde’s definition, right-wing extremist
movements are characterized by a combination of at least three of the
following five features: nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy
and strong state advocacy.59 Other terms used in relation to groups on the
right of the political spectrum are ‘alt-lite’ or ‘new right’, a term for far-right
groups and individuals who oppose globalism and social progressivism.
While the ‘alt-right’ (abbreviation for ‘alternative right’) intersects with
these groups, it has mainly become ‘a catchall phrase for a loose group
of extreme-right individuals and organisations who promote white
nationalism’.60 Needless to say, the alt-right is far from alternative but is
inextricably linked to historical fascism, Nazism and white supremacist
thinking.61 It uses distinct vocabulary and ideological reference points
linking back to its origins in US online communities leading up to Trump’s
election. Since then, however, it has become increasingly transnational.
Since the 1990s, the internet and later social media have become important
breeding grounds for the dissemination of far-right ideologies.62 Alongside
strategic alliances between differing but globally interconnected right-wing
groups, their early adoption of digital technology and at times coordinated,
data-driven online strategies has led to the mainstreaming of extremist, far-
right ideas.63 Nationalist, racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-democratic
or fascist ideas have migrated from the fringe of society into the centre
ground, asserting significant political pressure on the neoliberal democracies
of Europe and the US.64 This attack on the values of an open and free society,
as research has argued, is predominantly driven by aesthetic and cultural
means targeted at influencing media and culture.65 Angela Nagle’s book Kill
All Normies is one of the first studies into the role that online sub- or net-
cultures played in the emergence of an organized and globally connected
alt-right movement. According to the author, the non-conformist aesthetic
of the right-wing online cultures shares more similarities with the left-wing,
 INTRODUCTION 9

1960s counterculture movements and certain artistic historical avant-gardes

than with a more traditional right wing.66 Other publications have come to
similar conclusions by tracing the adaptation of left-wing intellectual
attitudes, aesthetic and performative protest strategies by populist politicians
and members of the new right.67 Indeed, strategies such as transgression,
exploded mimicry, acts of provocation, humour, the distortion of reality, as
well as attacks on elites and rationality, have for a long time been endorsed
by artistic avant-gardes and left subcultures and, in particular, the Dada
movement.

The structure of this book

Dada’s artistic response to the aggression, nationalism and rising fascism
defining its time thereby offers a fruitful backdrop and analogy to our
contemporary situation. This book analyses diverse cultural and artistic
representations spanning from Dada collage to data montage under
categories foregrounding their thematic and conceptual affinity. Such
synchronic presentation promises to reveal new cross-historical connections
between Dada strategies and their resurfacing in data-infused environments.
We also hope to suggest the importance of discontinuity in constructing a
history of the relation between the Dada movement and our present moment
and to draw attention to the significance of ruptures and misalignments in
this relation. Bringing together visual and textual contributions by artists
and theorists, the book thereby functions like a Dada-data montage.
Based on a panel that we organized at the Courtauld Institute of
Art during the AAH conference in London, our volume gathers contributions
from an international group of emerging and established scholars and
practitioners. Representing different disciplines and specializations, some
texts are written in an academic, others more in an essayistic and playful,
style. The title we have adopted to present this material reflects the shared
intellectual and methodological concerns of this diverse group of
contributors.68 Their contributions are dedicated to carefully unpacking
these questions to further explore the complex ways Dadaesque strategies,
data power and post-truth political discourse intertwine. The international
and trans-disciplinary list of contributors thus significantly expand the
horizons and sociocultural perspectives of such a relation. The publication
is rounded off by artistic contributions which have been developed in
dialogue with its theoretical contributions. In Our Collective Practice:
A Visual Essay, the montage mädels have resurrected the Dadaist
photomontage to reflect on the maelstrom of data consumed online on a
daily basis. Their work denounces hate-riven online cultures, resisting their
toxicity with creativity and sisterly communality. In Dog of Orion, Kemang
Wa Lehulere highlights how Dada inspired the liberation struggle in South
Africa when suggesting to interpret his Dada sculpture against the backdrop
10 DADA DATA

of Sandile Dikeni’s poem ‘Guava Juice’. The artist researcher donna Kukama
designed an artistic intervention specifically for our volume that opens up
the Dada archive and sneaks Dada Data into it. IOCOSE’s work
Dadasourcing appropriates the exploitative and colonialist dynamics of
crowdsourcing. The collective experiments ways of undoing them as part of
the same gesture, and explores their potential for creative, critical and
surrealist acts.

The chapters
‘Part One: From Dada to Data’ begins with a historical survey of the Dada
movement and its legacy. Mara-Johanna Kölmel’s text, ‘Dadadatadada:
From Dada to Data and Back Again’, investigates whether Dadaist strategies
of abstraction, hacking and photomontage still bear relevance in our big
data economies. The chapter turns its focus onto data-driven strategies of
persuasion on the far-right political spectrum appearing to have Dadaist
analogies. It concludes by speculating how an engagement with the tactics
of Dada can help foster critical vocabularies for confronting the complexities
posed by our age of algorithmic power and big data. Meredith Hoy’s
contribution, ‘Clouds, Critique & Contradiction: Programming Dissent in
Dada and Data Art’, continues such reflections by tracing critical notions of
resistance and dissent from Dada to data art. Dadaist tactics, Hoy argues,
resurface in the works of data artists to reveal the contingency and instability
of code, software, interfaces and the ubiquitous computing devices that
shape contemporary techno-cultural landscapes. The speculative dialogue
traces the asynchronously shared goal of Dada and data artists to launch
campaigns against cultural complacency and political complicity. Berlin
Dada’s performative actions in the public sphere becomes the departure
point of Rebecca Smith’s essay, ‘The Legacy of the Berlin Dada Media
Hoaxes in Contemporary Parafictive Acts’. Smith contrasts the performative
actions by Berlin Dada members Johannes Baader and Raoul Hausmann
with contemporary parafictive acts conducted by UBERMORGEN and
The Yes Men to demonstrate the legacy of Dada’s media hoaxes in
contemporary artistic modes of intervention. Her text probes the importance
of effective artistic strategies as a means to alter perceptions and,
consequently, comment upon and challenge the era of post-truth politics. By
exploring Dada’s historical motives and strategies and how they resonate in
contemporary artistic practices, Part One thus carefully unpacks Dada’s
motives for attacking institutions and the ways in which they differ from
post-truth politics.
‘Part Two: Global Dada’ focuses on the reception of Dada strategies in a
global context. In ‘Sheida Soleimani, Cyborg: Photomontage in an Expanding
Network’, Matthew Biro analyses how Soleimani employs the digital to
develop Dadaist photomontage further. The American artist of Iranian
 INTRODUCTION 11

descent operates like a ‘social critic’ and a ‘subaltern cyborg’, as she employs
contemporary technologies to negotiate between a broad range of global
themes, such as colonialism, gender violence, and Iranian history and
perception. In ‘Black Dada Data: Collage as a Tool of Resistance against
White Supremacy Thinking in the Digital Age’, Sarah Hegenbart traces the
history of so-called ‘post-truth politics’ back to settler colonialism and white
supremacist thinking. She explores how collage in the digital age provides a
platform of resistance for Black artists to invert the canon established by
structures of white supremacy. The South African curator Roger van Wyk
explores in ‘Dada’s African South’ how Dada’s rejection of Eurocentric
Enlightenment thinking resonates in the artistic practice of South African
artists who challenged apartheid thinking and the ways in which its racist
ideologies still impact on contemporary South African society. His essay also
interrogates the colonial and neocolonial aspects of post-truth politics,
which is mirrored in the centralized collection of data and the control
through artificial intelligence systems. Relegating to the political agency of
images within the Dada movement, Leonor de Oliveira’s essay, ‘Paula Rego:
A Dada Attitude against Authority in the Post-War Period’ on the Portuguese
artist, restores art as the horizon of political possibility, arguing for
iconographies of resistance.
‘Part Three: Big Dada Data’ examines the systems and operations that
make up the assemblages of Dada and data. It contrasts the role big data
plays in steering our patterns of behaviour with Dada strategies to influence
our unconscious. In ‘Big Dada, Big Data: Schwitters’s Merzbau, the Private
and the Trash’, Natalie P. Koerner examines Kurt Schwitters’s Merzbau as a
precursor of digital archives. Understanding social media as a type of
Merzbau, she interrogates how data trash, the vast material of data produced,
impacts on the structures of our personal memory and the archives of
cultural memory more broadly. Exploring the phenomenon of Big Data
Mining, Roberto Simanowski analyses how digital technologies impact on
our conception of the public sphere. In ‘Identity, Ecology, and the Arts in the
Age of Big Data Mining’, he introduces ‘data love’ and dismantles the
economic interests behind data collection. The implication of data love is
the creation of artworks that only aim to please – e.g. to achieve the goal of
attention-seeking in terms of numerous ‘likes’ – are opposed to the form of
resistance targeted by Dada avant-gardes. Joshua Simon’s ‘The Digital
Revolution as Counter-Revolution’ carefully examines assemblages of
technology and labour in order to assess our neocolonial digital frontiers
linking back to a time of racialization and colonization. By drawing parallels
between the archaeology of various media and art history, Simon traces a
lineage of machinic, image-making technologies that reaches from artistic
advances in the early modern period to extractive and oppressive forms of
automation such as machine vision. This part thus traces genealogies of the
digital and relates them to the artistic sphere providing a nuanced account
of data aesthetics.
12 DADA DATA

‘Part Four: Dada x Alt-Right. Faking the Truth’ critically interrogates

whether artistic avant-gardes, such as Dada, potentially paved the way for
the era of post-truth politics and the rhetorical strategies of the alt-right.
Inke Arns, curator of the The Alt-Right Complex at the Hartware
MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund, shows how contemporary artists shed
light on hidden networks of the alt-right by employing visual tactics, which
resemble the aesthetic strategies of the Dada avant-garde. Her contribution,
‘Down the Rabbit Hole of the Alt-Right Complex: Artists Exploring Far-
Right Online Culture’, persuasively argues that not only have the alt-right
appropriated Dada tactics, such as transgression or a distortion of reality,
but also the very artists who debunk how the alt-right sabotages the truth.
In ‘Fashwave: The Alt-Right’s Aestheticization of Politics and Violence’, Lisa
Bogerts and Maik Fielitz analyse the aesthetics of the alt-right against the
backdrop of white supremacist thinking. They argue that the production of
fascist art possesses a strategic value in the process of radicalizing online
communities. Vid Simoniti focuses in his ‘Post-Internet Art and the Alt-Right
Visual Culture’ on two phenomena of digital collage, which can both be
traced back to Dada principles. While post-internet art, the first phenomenon,
critiques the capitalist modes of the art world, neofascist visual culture
utilizes Dada tactics to attack ‘mainstream society’ more broadly. While
pursuing entirely different aims, both forms of digital imagery employ Dada
humour.
If democratic institutions coined by liberalism facilitate the rise of the
alt-right and threaten the very foundations of freedom of thought and
expression, how does genuine artistic resistance need to be rethought in the
era of post-truth? ‘Part Five: Dada Data Tactics’ contrasts the demagogic
rhetorics discussed in the previous section with affirmative artistic
approaches. Jaime Tsai’s contribution, ‘Pixel Pirates: Theft as Strategy in the
Art of Joan Ross and Soda Jerk’, turns its critical eye on the artistic strategies
of theft and remix as means of resistance. Berlin Dada challenged the
ownership of language and campaigned for social justice during a period
marked by political ferment and the rise of fascism. Tsai sees their strategies
of theft resuscitated in the Australian video artists Soda Jerk and Joan Ross’s
use of critical remix practices. Re-emerging in a different context, Dadaist
tactics are here employed to contest the corporate control of the cultural
sphere, its form of knowledge production and cultural memory linked to the
colonial mythologies that underpin Australian national identity. Annet
Dekker’s essay, ‘Precarious Data Aesthetics. An Exploration of Tactics,
Tricksters and Idiocy in Data’, interrogates how the notion of tactics as a
mode of intervention into the existing status quo has changed over the
decades from Dada to data. By comparing the performative and linguistic
interventions of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven to contemporary tactical
media artists, Constant Dullaart and Erica Scourti, Dekker’s essay carefully
examines Dadaist tactics of defamiliarization, destabilization and disruption,
and how they pertain to artistic work critically reflecting contemporary
 INTRODUCTION 13

digital infrastructures. Jack Southern rounds off the section with a reflection
on aesthetic and activist strategies as a means to create forms of digital
resistance and facilitate new ways of developing communities both on- and
offline. His contribution, ‘The Multiple Narratives of Post-Truth Politics,
Told through Pictures’, draws parallels between financialized digital
architectures, the precarity of our Western democratic systems, and the
ascendency of populist narrators emboldened by the collective coherence of
the far-right. Southern calls for a re-evaluation of our relationship to the
digital ecosystem and advocates for approaches led by digital equality,
cultural consciousness and social justice.
In the sum of theoretical and visual approaches to the topic, this volume
attempts to overcome the mono-perspectival approach endorsed by the era
of post-truth politics. Finally, we hope to have mapped out various facets
that motivate a reading of Dada and data as interrelated. Dada thereby also
exemplifies a model of resistance that is needed to respond to the authoritarian
but anonymous heteronomy pervading societies in the age of big data. The
title Dada Data foreshadows such complex trajectories and ruptures
examined throughout this book from the early Dada avant-gardes to our
data-driven contemporaneity. We envision that the speculative cross-reading
of Dada and data will generate many productive openings for thinking about
the challenges of our contemporary moment. It will also bring out quite
clearly that it is no longer a liberal avant-garde that revises Dada strategies
for contemporary times. We are hoping that this book will stimulate further
reflection on these issues. It is time to sharpen our digital tools, inventing
tactics and strategies worthy of the complexity of our big data times!

Notes
1 Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2018). Numerous
academic and non-academic publications have appeared on the question of
‘post-truth’, such as Julian Baggini, A Short History of Truth: Consolations for
a Post-Truth World (London: Quercus, 2017); James Ball, Post-Truth: How
Bullshit Conquered the World (London: Biteback Publishing, 2017); Ilan Zvi
Baron, How to Save Politics in a Post-Truth Era: Thinking through Difficult
Times (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018); Matthew D’Ancona,
Post Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back (London: Ebury
Press, 2017); Evan Davis, Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit
and What We Can Do About It (London: Little, Brown, 2017); Johan Farkas
and Jannick Schou, Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy: Mapping the
Politics of Falsehood (New York/London: Routledge, 2020).
2 Hugo Ball, ‘Dada Fragments (1916–17)’, in Robert Motherwell, ed., The Dada
Painters and Poets. An Anthology (Cambridge, MA : The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1981), 51–4, here p. 51.
3 Hans Arp, ‘Notes from a Dada Diary (1932)’, in Motherwell (ed.), The Dada
Painters and Poets, 221–5, here p. 222.
14 DADA DATA

4 Arp, ‘Notes from a Dada Diary’, 222.

5 Jayson Harsin, ‘Post-truth populism: The French Anti-Gender Theory
Movement and Cross-Cultural Similarities’, Communication, Culture and
Critique 11:1 (2018): 35–52, here p. 45.
6 Lee McIntyre dedicates a full chapter in his book to the question, ‘Did
postmodernism lead to post-truth?’, and mentions a wide range of literature
on this topic (p. 192, nn. 35 and 36), e.g. Conor Lynch, ‘Trump’s War on
Environment and Science Are Rooted in His Post-Truth Politics,’ Salon, 1 April
2017, https://www.salon.com/2017/04/01/trumps-war-on-environment-and-
science-are-rooted-in-his-post-truth-politics-and-maybe-in-postmodern-
philosophy/; Andrew Calcutt, ‘The Truth about Post-Truth Politics,’
Newsweek, 21 November 2016, http://www.newsweek.com/truth-post-truth-
politics-donald-trump-liberals-tony -blair-523198; Andrew Jones, ‘Want to
Better Understand “Post-Truth” Politics? Then Study Postmodernism’,
Huffington Post, 11 November 2016,
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/andrew-jones/want-to-better-understand
_b_13079632.html. In addition, McIntyre recommends the following blog
posts: ‘Donald Trump and the Triumph of Right-Wing Postmodernism’,
Stewedrabbit (blog), 12 December 2016, http://stewedrabbit.blogspot.
com/2016/12/donald-trump-and -triumph-of-right-wing.html, and
Charles Kurzman, ‘Rightwing Postmodernists’, 30 November 2014, http://
kurzman.unc.edu/rightwing-postmodernists/. 36; and Truman Chen,
‘Is Postmodernism to Blame for Post-Truth?’, Philosophytalk (blog),
17 February 2017, https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/postmo dernism-
blame-post-truth.
7 Raoul Hausmann, ‘Was ist Dada (1919)’, translated by Timothy O. Benson,
Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987),
168.
8 Benson, Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada, 5.
9 Benson, Raoul Hausmann and Berlin Dada, 3.
10 See Leah Dickermann, ‘Introduction’, in Leah Dickerman et al., Dada: Zurich,
Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris (Washington, DC : DAP/The
National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2005), 1–15, here p. 7.
11 Hanne Bergius, ‘Dada Berlin and its Aesthetic of Effect: Playing the Press’, in
Harriett Watts and Stephen C. Foster, eds, Dada and the Press (New Haven:
G. K. Hall, 2004), 67–91, here p. 67.
12 See Adrian Sudhalter, ‘Johannes Baader and the demise of Wilhelmine culture:
architecture, Dada and social critique 1875–1920’, PhD thesis (New York
Institute: New York, 2005), 238–9.
13 See Harriett Watts, ‘Dada and the Press: An Introduction’, in Watts and Foster,
eds, Dada and the Press, 1–9, here p. 4.
14 See Watts, ‘Dada and the Press: An Introduction,’ 4.
15 Tristan Tzara, ‘Dada Manifesto (1918)’, in Motherwell, ed., The Dada Painters
and Poets, 76–82, here p. 77.
16 Richard Huelsenbeck, ‘Was wollte der Expressionismus’, in Richard
Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada Almanach (Berlin: Erich Reiss, 1920), 38.
 INTRODUCTION 15

17 Robert Mejia, Kay Beckermann and Curtis Sullivan, ‘White lies: a racial
history of the (post)truth’, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15:2
(2018): 109–26, here p. 111.
18 Frakas and Schou, Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy, 9.
19 See Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition. A Report on
Knowledge, translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1999).
20 Farkas and Schou, Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy, 9
21 See, e.g., Jayson Harsin, ‘Post-Truth and Critical Communication Studies’, in
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, published online https://
doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.757 (25.03.2021), here p. 13.
Mejia et al., ‘White lies’, 114; and Christine Agius, Annika Bergman
Rosamond and Catarina Kinnvall, ‘Populism, Ontological Insecurity and
Gendered Nationalism: Masculinity, Climate Denial and Covid-19’, Politics,
Religion & Ideology 21:4 (2020): 432–50, here p. 433.
22 Tom McCarthy, ‘What does Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death mean for the
supreme court’, The Guardian, 19 September 2020, https://www.theguardian.
com/us-news/2020/sep/18/ruth-bader-ginsburg-supreme-court-faq-explainer
(10.01.2022).
23 See Reuters Fact Check, ‘Fact Check-Claims Trump will be reinstated on
August 13 stem from debunked conspiracy theories’, Reuters, 19 July 2021,
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-trump-reinstated-
idUSL1N2OV1W3 (10.01.2022).
24 Sam Levine, ‘Democracy under attack: how Republicans led the effort to make
it harder to vote’, The Guardian, 27 December 2021, https://www.
theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/27/democracy-under-attack-trump-
republicans (10.01.2022).
25 Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy, ‘CNN Poll: Most Americans feel
democracy is under attack in the US ’, CNN , 15 September 2021, https://
edition.cnn.com/2021/09/15/politics/cnn-poll-most-americans-democracy-
under-attack/index.html (10.01.2022).
26 Cas Mudde, ‘Kyle Rittenhouse has walked free. Now it’s open season on
protesters’, The Guardian, 19 November 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/
us-news/commentisfree/2021/nov/19/kyle-rittenhouse-verdict-acquitted-protest
(7.1.2022).
27 See, e.g., Ana Teixeira Pinto, ‘Artwashing – on NRx and the Alt-right’, Texte
zur Kunst, 4 July 2017, https://www.textezurkunst.de/articles/artwashing-web-
de/ (29.03.2021); Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies. The Online Culture Wars
from Tumblr and 4chan to the Alt-Right and Trump (Winchester/Washington,
DC : zero books, 2018).
28 See Christopher Wylie, MINDF*CK. Inside Cambridge Analytica’s Plot to
Break the World (London: Profile Books, 2020), 59.
29 Carole Cadwalladr, ‘ “I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool”: meet
the data war whistleblower’, The Guardian, 18 March 2018 https://www.
theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-
wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump (29.03.2021).
16 DADA DATA

30 Agius et al., ‘Populism, Ontological Insecurity and Gendered Nationalism’,

440.
31 See Philip Manow, (Ent-)Demokratisierung der Demokratie. Ein Essay (Berlin:
Suhrkamp, 2020); Chantal Mouffe, For a Left Populism (London/New York:
Verso, 2018); Cas Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short
Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017); Jan-Werner Müller, What Is
Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
32 Colin Crouch, Post-democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004).
33 Farkas and Schou, Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy, 126.
34 See Felix Stalder, Kultur der Digitalität (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016), 14.
35 Stalder, Kultur der Digitalität, 10. The authors’ translation.
36 Stalder, Kultur der Digitalität, 98. The authors’ translation.
37 See, in this context, Elza Adamowicz and Eric Robertson, eds, Dada and
Beyond, Volume 2: Dada and Its Legacies (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
38 For an overview on post-digital discourse, see Kim Cascone, ‘The Aesthetics of
Failure: “Post-Digital” Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music’,
Computer Music Journal 24:4 (2000): 12–18; Alessandro Ludovico, Post-
Digital Print: The Mutation of Publishing Since 1894, 2nd ed. (Eindhoven:
Onomatopee, 2013); Florian Cramer, ‘What Is “Post-Digital”? in David M.
Berry and Michael Dieter, eds, Postdigital Aesthetics (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015), 12–26.
39 See Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the
Future at the New Frontier of Power (London: Profile Books, 2019).
40 See Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 9.
41 See Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 17 ff.
42 Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 94.
43 See Daniel Kreiss and Shannon C. McGregor, ‘Technology Firms Shape Political
Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google With
Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle’, Political Communication
35:2 (3 April 2018): 155–77, https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814.
44 See Lauren Etter, Vernon Silver and Sarah Frier, ‘How Facebook’s Political Unit
Enables the Dark Art of Digital Propaganda: Some of unit’s clients stifle
opposition, stoke extremism’, Bloomberg.Com, 21 December 2017, https://
www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-21/inside-the-facebook-team-
helping-regimes-that-reach-out-and-crack-down (04.03.2021).
45 Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 677.
46 World Health Organization, ‘Infodemic’, blog, https://www.who.int/health-
topics/infodemic#tab=tab_1 (06.01.2022).
47 See, in this context, for example, Aoife Gallagher, Mackenzie Hart and Ciarán
O’Conner, ‘III Advice: A Case Study in Facebook’s Failure to Tackle
COVID-19 Disinformation’, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2021, https://
www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Ill-Advice_v3.pdf.
48 ISD, ‘Between Conspiracy and Extremism: A Long Covid Threat? Introductory
Paper’, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2021, 4, https://www.isdglobal.org/
 INTRODUCTION 17

wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Between-Conspiracy-and-Extremism_A-long-
COVID-threat_Introductory-Paper.pdf.
49 See Marianna Spring and Mike Wendling, ‘How Covid-19 myths are merging
with the QAnon conspiracy theory’, BBC News, 3 September 2020, https://
www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-53997203 (20.01.2022).
50 Chans first started to emerge in Asia, alongside other image boards such as
2chan, 4chan and 8chan. While the first boards were created for posting
images and discussion related to anime, they quickly evolved to become hubs
for the formation of internet memes and subcultures including hackers and
political movements, such as Anonymous and the alt-right. For further
reading, see, for example, Stephane J. Baele, Lewys Brace and Travis G. Coan,
‘Variations on a Theme? Comparing 4chan, 8kun, and Other chans’ Far-Right
“/pol” Boards’, Perspectives on Terrorism 15:1 (2021): 65–80, https://www.
jstor.org/stable/26984798.
51 See Kevin Roose, ‘What is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trumo Conspiracy Theory’, in
The New York Times, 4 March 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/article/
what-is-qanon.html (20.01.2022).
52 In 2021, statistics showed that more than 1 in 3 Americans believed in QAnon
content. See Mallory Newall, ‘More than 1 in 3 Americans believe a “deep state”
is working to undermine Trump’, Ipsos, 30 December 2020, https://www.ipsos.
com/en-us/news-polls/npr-misinformation-123020 (20.01.2022).
53 See Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko, Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the
Mind of QAnon (Stanford: Redwood Press, 2021), 38–78.
54 ISD, ‘Between Conspiracy and Extremism: A Long Covid Threat? Introductory
Paper’, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2021, 5, https://www.isdglobal.org/
wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Between-Conspiracy-and-Extremism_A-long-
COVID-threat_Introductory-Paper.pdf.
55 See Reed Berkowitz, ‘QAnon resembles the games I design. But for believers,
there is no winning’, The Washington Post, 10 May 2021, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/outlook/qanon-game-plays-
believers/2021/05/10/31d8ea46-928b-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html
(20.01.2022).
56 See Chloe Colliver, MacKenzie Hart, Eisha Maharasingam-Shah and Daniel
Maki, ‘Spin Cycle: Information Laundering on Facebook’, Institute for
Strategic Dialogue, 2020, https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/
uploads/2020/12/spin-cycle_FINAL-1.pdf; Maik Fielitz and Nick Thurston,
Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right: Online Actions and Offline
Consequences in Europe and the US (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2019), 7.
57 For further reading, see, for example, Mark Littler und Benjamin Lee, Digital
Extremisms: Readings in Violence, Radicalisation and Extremism in the
Online Space (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); Julia Ebner, Going Dark:
The Secret Social Lives of Extremists (London: Bloomsbury, 2020); Anne Aly
et al., Violent Extremism Online: New Perspectives on Terrorism and the
Internet (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).
58 See Nahema Marchal, Lisa-Maria Neudert, Bence Kollanyi, Philip N. Howard
and John Kelly, ‘Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption on
18 DADA DATA

Social Media During the 2018 US Midterm Elections’, Data Memo 2018, 5
(Oxford: Project on Computational Propaganda. comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk), 1–7,
here p. 6. See Jakob Guhl, Julia Ebner and Jan Rau ‘The Online Ecosystem of
the German Far-Right’, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2020, https://www.
isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ISD-The-Online-Ecosystem-of-the-
German-Far-Right-English-Draft-11.pdf;
59 See Cas Mudde, The Ideology of the Extreme Right (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2002), 178.
60 ISD, ‘Trans-Atlantic Journeys of Far-Right Narratives Through Online-Media
Ecosystems’, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2020, 7, https://www.isdglobal.org/
wp-content/uploads/2020/12/TransAtlanticJourneysofFar-RightNarratives_
v4.pdf;
61 See, e.g., Ashley W. Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, White out: The
Continuing Significance of Racism (New York/London: Routledge, 2003);
Howard-Woods, Christopher, Colin Laidley and Maryam Omidi, eds,
#Charlottesville. White Supremacy, Populism, and Resistance (New York:
Public Seminar Books, 2019); Carol Mason and Chip Berlet, ‘Swastikas in
Cyberspace: How Hate Went Online’, in Chip Berlet, ed., Trumping
Democracy in the United States: From Ronald Reagan to the Alt-Right
(London: Routledge, 2018), 21–36; David A. Neiwert, Alt-America: The rise
of the radical right in the age of Trump (London: Verso, 2017).
62 Dating back to the 1990s, research has been investigating the rise of far-right
ideas online: see Maik Fielitz und Holger Marcks, Digitaler Faschismus: Die
sozialen Medien als Motor des Rechtsextremismus (Berlin: Dudenverlag, 2020);
Ralf Wiederer, Die virtuelle Vernetzung des internationalen Rechtsextremismus
(Herbolzheim: Centaurus Verlag & Media, 2016); Kai Brinckmeier, Bewegung im
Weltnetz: Rechtsextreme Kommunikation im Internet, new ed. (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 2012); Andreas Bösche, Rechtsextremismus im Internet.
Schattenseiten des www. (Hall: Berenkamp Verlag, 2001); Das Netz des Hasses:
Rassistische, rechtsextreme und neonazistische Propaganda im Internet, (Vienna:
Stiftung Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, 1997);
Burkhard Schröder, Neonazis und Computernetze: wie Rechtsradikale neue
Kommunikationsformen nutzen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1995).
63 See Jacob Davey and Julia Ebner, ‘The Fringe Insurgency. Connectivity,
Convergence and Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right’, Institute for Strategic
Dialogue, 2017, https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/
The-Fringe-Insurgency-221017_2.pdf.
64 For an overview on the encroachment of far-right ideas into the mainstream
across Europe, see, for example, Karolin Schwarz, Hasskrieger: Der neue
globale Rechtsextremismus (Freiburg: Verlag Herder GmbH, 2020); Maik
Fielitz and Laura Lotte Laloire, eds, Trouble on the Far Right: National
Strategies and Local Practices Challenging Europe (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag,
2017); Rainer Benthin, Auf dem Weg in die Mitte: Öffentlichkeitsstrategien
der neuen Rechten (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2004).
65 See, for exemple, Heather Suzanne Woods, Make America meme again : the
rhetoric of the alt-right, Bd. 45, Frontiers in political communication (New
York: Peter Lang, 2019); Daniel Hornuff, Die Neue Rechte und ihr Design:
 INTRODUCTION 19

Vom ästhetischen Angriff auf die offene Gesellschaft (Bielefeld: transcript

Verlag, 2019); Nagle, Kill All Normies.
66 See Nagle, Kill All Normies, 57.
67 See Thomas Wagner, Die Angstmacher: 1968 und die Neuen Rechten, 2nd ed.
(Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2017), especially 128ff.; Manuel Seitenbecher, Mahler,
Maschke & Co.: Rechtes Denken in der 68er-Bewegung? (Paderborn:
Schoeningh Ferdinand GmbH, 2013).
68 The title for this volume was inspired by the Athenian band Dada Data.
According to our correspondence with one of the founding members, the
group was founded in 1989 when the meaning of ‘data was still more vague’
(email exchange from 20 April 2017). Other projects to name in this context
are the online platform http://www.dada-data.net/de/ and the self-published
Dada Data by poet Jeff Bender (2012).
20
 PART ONE

From Dada to Data

21
22
 CHAPTER ONE

Dadadatadada:
From Dada to Data and
Back Again
Mara-Johanna Kölmel

‘Data excites everything. Data knows everything. Data spits everything

out . . . The ministry is overturned. By whom? By Data.’1 (Figure 1.1)
Even among our data-driven surroundings, the 1921 ‘Dada Manifesto’,
written by Tristan Tzara, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, André Breton
and others, appears far ahead of its time. In our contemporary context,
‘Dada’ could be replaced with the word ‘data’. Did the Dadaists anticipate
the first dataists? This speculative question guides this study of Dada data
assemblages, investigating whether Dadaist abstraction, hacking and
photomontage bear relevance in our big data economies and where these
strategies are employed today. Exploring overlapping and decisively different
territories of Dada poems and data poems (algorithms), this chapter focuses
on algorithmically driven persuasion strategies on the far-right political
spectrum that appear analogous to Dada’s own. It concludes by speculating
how engaging Dadaist tactics can help foster critical vocabularies for
confronting algorithmic power and big data.
A cross-reading of Dadaist tactics and data-related thematics may then
guide ‘our vulgar minds to ideas and things which none of the originators had
thought of’, in the words of Dadaist Richard Huelsenbeck.2 The approach
certainly necessitates moments of abstraction but, per theorist McKenzie
Wark, this may also entail a revelatory potential: ‘To abstract is to construct
a plane upon which otherwise different and unrelated matters may be brought
into many possible relations.’3 Do the terrains of Dada and data entwine?

23
24 DADA DATA

FIGURE 1.1 Tristan Tzara, DADA soulève tout, 1921. Text by the artist (recto).
Letterpress, sheet: 10 13/16 × 8 1/4’ (27.4 × 21 cm). The Gilbert and Lila Silverman
Fluxus Collection Gift. Acc. no.: 3216.2008, © 2022. Digital image, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence, Christophe Tzara.

What might they learn from each other? By aligning Dada and data-driven
politics, the goal is to generate openings for thinking about this present
moment and the challenges it poses in imaginative and unprecedented ways.
Raoul Hausmann’s sound poem, Sound-Rel, 1919 (Figure 1.2), is assembled
from syllabic or pre-linguistic fragments, numbers and signs whose semantic
content moves towards pure sound. Letters are playfully arranged across the
page form curious structures and units. The poem reads in different directions
like its stanzas were spilled, inviting readers to engage with its characters’
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de hauteur, permettent de se rendre sur le versant nord de l’île. C’est
la promenade obligée des nouveaux arrivants.
De telles excursions, faites en groupe, gaiement, par un jour clair
et un temps sûr, avec quelque bonne cantine, pourvue des éléments
d’un pique-nique sagement ordonné, sont charmantes, mais
indescriptibles. On admire, on s’exclame à chaque tournant de route,
à chaque point de vue nouveau ; on plaisante les cavaliers novices ;
dans les haltes, chacun suit son penchant ou sa fantaisie ; les
chasseurs s’enfoncent dans les fourrés, les botanistes butinent çà et
là ; l’un prend un croquis ; l’autre, armé du petit marteau, se charge
d’échantillons géologiques. Si on se fatigue, on ne s’en aperçoit
qu’après, et d’ailleurs un bon souvenir ne passe pas si vite qu’une
courbature.
A la tombée de la nuit, quelques-uns d’entre nous sont allés
rendre visite à l’hospitalier compatriote qui nous avait, l’avant-veille,
transmis une si aimable invitation. Ils furent, bon gré mal gré,
retenus à dîner et, après quelques heures de cordiale causerie, s’en
revinrent à bord. Nous partions le soir même à dix heures, malgré
tous les efforts du gouverneur pour nous garder un jour ou deux de
plus.

Ainsi se passa notre relâche à Madère. De ce coin du monde,

enchanteur, exceptionnel, on ne connaît que la douceur de son
climat et la bonté de son vin. Encore ne connaissons-nous guère l’un
et l’autre que par ouï-dire. Le séjour de Madère est très
recommandé aux phtisiques ; mais, jusqu’à présent, les Anglais et
les Allemands ont presque seuls utilisé les admirables ressources
hygiéniques de cette île. Cela est fâcheux, et pour nous, qui
sommes bien loin de trouver à Nice, voire même en Algérie, des
conditions aussi favorables, et pour Madère, où, malgré les
splendeurs d’un paysage unique au monde, on s’ennuie comme
dans un désert.
Il est curieux de remarquer que les gens du pays gagnent la
phtisie à Madère au moins aussi facilement que les étrangers s’en
guérissent. Il y a là un mystère dont l’éclaircissement n’est pas de
notre compétence et ne nous a pas été donné.
Mais parlons un peu du vin. On croit généralement que Madère
n’en produit plus, que les vignes sont arrachées et qu’il n’existe plus
d’autre vin de Madère que celui que l’on confectionne si habilement
à Cette et dans d’autres endroits. Moitié vérité, moitié erreur, comme
dans la plupart des « on dit ». Madère a vu ses vignes détruites par
l’oïdium de 1852 à 1854 ; elle les a replantées en partie vers 1864,
et, depuis cette époque, le phylloxera, gagnant de plus en plus, a,
chaque année, réduit les récoltes. On a recommencé l’arrachement,
et on cherche là, comme partout, un remède à ce fléau dont souffre
le monde entier depuis quelque dix ans.
Cela étant, y a-t-il du vin à Madère ? Et des touristes comme
nous peuvent-ils avec certitude emporter un échantillon bien
authentique de ce vin dont bientôt on niera l’existence ? — Je vous
dirai d’abord que nous en avons bu d’excellent, et les pauvres
vignerons se plaignent de ce qu’il n’y a que trop de vin à Madère.
Depuis celui de l’an dernier, qui vaut 25 sous la bouteille, jusqu’à
celui de l’année 1842, qui vaut 25 francs, c’est par quarante et
cinquante mille litres qu’il faut compter le stock en magasin. C’est
l’acheteur qui fait défaut, et une légère baisse de prix ne suffirait pas
à le ramener. Le madère, en effet, n’est guère buvable qu’après
quatre ans ; il n’est bon qu’après huit ou dix ans, et n’a tout son
parfum qu’à sa majorité.
On ne peut avoir une bouteille de madère de dix ans à moins de
8 francs ; sa valeur augmente de près de 1 franc par année.
Comment lutterait-il avec les savantes combinaisons de nos
chimistes modernes ? La différence est trop grande. Il n’y a donc
qu’à s’incliner devant la puissance industrielle de notre époque,
cultiver l’orge, la canne et le blé, laisser les vieux fûts de Funchal
vieillir dignement dans leurs caves, et piocher la chimie organique et
alimentaire, qui nous réserve bien d’autres perfectionnements.
 DE MADÈRE A RIO-DE-JANEIRO

Embarras du choix. — Aspect de l’île Saint-Vincent. — Excursion à terre. —

Les costumes et les mœurs. — L’archipel des îles du Cap-Vert. —
Enthousiasme des collectionneurs. — La Tactique. — En mer. — Le postillon
du Père Tropique. — Baptême de la ligne. — Le matelot d’aujourd’hui. —
Récréations astronomiques. — Une soirée intime. — Brumes et courants. —
Arrivée à Rio-de-Janeiro.

En mer, 17 août.

Nous avions reçu à Madère une dépêche annonçant que la fièvre

jaune venait de se déclarer à Dakar, notre prochaine relâche.
Impossible donc d’y aller ; et nous voilà comme des gens qui,
n’ayant pas trouvé de place au Théâtre-Français, cherchent à se
rabattre sur le Gymnase, le Vaudeville ou l’Odéon.
Le commandant fit en cette occasion une petite expérience qui
ne réussit point. Il s’y attendait, je suppose. La Junon pouvait choisir
entre les îles Canaries (Ténériffe) et les îles du Cap-Vert (Saint-
Vincent ou la Praïa). Ténériffe était plus séduisant ; mais de là à Rio-
de-Janeiro, il faut compter quinze à seize jours de mer, tandis que,
des îles du Cap-Vert, c’est environ trois jours en moins. Les avis
étaient fort partagés ; les Capulets Ténériffe et les Montaigus Saint-
Vincent ne semblaient pas disposés aux concessions, et, comme il
arrive en bien d’autres controverses, ils paraissaient d’autant mieux
affermis dans leurs opinions, qu’aucun d’eux ne connaissait le pays
qu’il honorait de ses préférences.
 M. Biard, tout en maintenant son droit indiscuté de relâcher au
point qui lui conviendrait le mieux, nous fit savoir que, si nous nous
mettions d’accord, la Junon se rendrait au point que désignerait
l’unanimité des suffrages.
L’entente n’ayant pu se faire, le commandant trancha cette
minime difficulté, et nous sommes en route pour Saint-Vincent, que
sans doute nous atteindrons demain vers midi.
Le temps est magnifique ; les vents alizés nous ont poussés
rondement. Dans la nuit du 14 au 15, nous avons passé au milieu de
l’archipel des îles Canaries, les sept îles Fortunées des anciens. A
peine avons-nous entrevu, par tribord, le phare de Palma et
« deviné » de l’autre côté le fameux pic de Teyde. Je me console de
ne pas le voir en songeant qu’il y a quelques mois à peine il m’était
donné de contempler longuement le superbe Ararat…, et je me
console encore davantage en relisant l’admirable description qu’a
faite M. de Humboldt du pic et de son cratère.
Hier, nous sommes entrés dans la zone tropicale ; la brise mollit
un peu, et la température s’élève assez vite. A Funchal, nous avions
de 18° à 22° centigrades ; la moyenne maintenant est de 27°.

22 août.

Enfin, lecteur, qui m’avez si obligeamment suivi jusqu’aux confins

de l’hémisphère boréal, je puis donc vous remercier de votre
patience en vous rendant un signalé service ; je vais vous donner un
conseil, non pas de ces conseils qu’on appelle banalement un
conseil d’ami, mais un vrai, un bon, un excellent conseil : N’allez
jamais à Saint-Vincent !
Nous avons quitté ce rocher tondu et pelé, il y a plus de trente
heures, et nous en sommes encore ennuyés, presque grincheux.
Viennent bien vite les horizons grandioses de la baie de Rio-de-
Janeiro, les ombres magnifiques des forêts brésiliennes, pour nous
faire perdre le souvenir de ce paysage terne, sec et roussâtre, qu’il
nous a fallu supporter pendant deux jours.
 Entendre parler d’un pareil endroit n’est peut-être pas aussi
désagréable que d’y être, et puis, je voudrais justifier à vos yeux ma
sévérité. L’enthousiasme seul a droit à l’indulgence.
J’en dirai donc quelques mots.
Le 18, à dix heures du matin, nous avons aperçu les îles du Cap-
Vert, San-Antonio à droite et Saint-Vincent à gauche. Elles sont fort
élevées et le paraissaient d’autant plus que toute leur partie
supérieure nous était cachée par les nuages. Point de végétation,
quelques formes bizarres, des tons durs et comme plaqués sur le
flanc des montagnes.
A deux heures, nous entrons dans la baie « Porto-Grande », et
bientôt nous sommes mouillés en face de la petite ville de Mindello,
à côté d’un paquebot anglais qui va partir pour l’Europe. Devant
nous s’étalent des collines rocheuses, sans grâce, sans grandeur et
sans caractère ; au-dessus ondulent quelques montagnes, dont les
teintes grises se détachent d’une façon triste sur le ciel pur.
La ville est située tout au fond de la baie ; une assez grande
construction, la maison du gouverneur, et, à côté, l’église, émergent
parmi des lignes de toitures sombres recouvrant des murs blancs.
Au bord de la plage, on remarque les longs toits noirs des dépôts de
charbon des compagnies anglaises. Mindello ne doit son existence
qu’à sa baie, la seule sûre de tout l’archipel, et qui sert de point de
relâche et de ravitaillement aux vapeurs qui font le service du Brésil
et celui du Cap de Bonne-Espérance. Nos paquebots des
messageries cependant n’y touchent pas et ont, jusqu’à présent,
conservé Dakar, sur la côte africaine, comme point d’escale
régulière.
Ce petit port de Saint-Vincent ne vit donc que du charbon et par
lui seul ; aussi le pavillon portugais, qui flotte au sommet d’un poste
d’observation dominant la ville, est-il moins remarqué que les
pavillons tricolores — rouge, bleu, blanc — des charbonniers
anglais. Là, comme à Gibraltar, comme à Madère et à Ténériffe,
l’Angleterre, grâce à ses « Indes noires », semble régner ; le
commerce est entièrement entre les mains des Anglais ; un voile de
poussière salissante s’étend le long de la plage et sur la rade elle-
même, et en partant on éprouve le besoin de se débarrasser bien
vite de la houille qui a envahi votre visage et vos vêtements.
Le siège du gouvernement des îles du Cap-Vert est à La Praïa,
dans l’île Santiago ; mais le climat en est malsain et l’ancrage assez
dangereux pendant l’été ; aussi est-il question d’ériger Mindello en
capitale du groupe, malgré la stérilité presque complète de toute l’île
Saint-Vincent, encore inhabitée il y a seulement une vingtaine
d’années. On m’a montré à Mindello le premier habitant de l’île, un
nègre de soixante-dix ans.
Autour de nous sont mouillés plusieurs navires, dont la présence
donne un peu d’animation à un tableau dont l’ensemble est assez
décourageant. Depuis notre départ de Madère, nous n’avons
rencontré que des oiseaux de mer, et une pauvre hirondelle qui
après nous avoir suivis pendant deux jours a pris son vol en avant
en apercevant la terre. Aussi, malgré le triste horizon des montagnes
arides, la vue de tous ces bateaux et des maisons blanches du
rivage a-t-elle le pouvoir de nous distraire énormément ; la
découverte de deux ou trois palmiers rabougris et de quelques
touffes de tamarins nous fait espérer la rencontre d’une oasis, et
nous nous précipitons dans les canots des indigènes avec un
empressement et une ardeur tout à fait juvéniles.
Nous sommes assaillis à terre par une nuée de petits mendiants
noirs et nus ; quelques-uns nous sont présentés par leurs mères, qui
paraissent enchantées quand nous leur offrons du tabac pour
« charger » les affreux brûle-gueule qui pendent à leurs lèvres.
Est-ce bien une colonie portugaise, une île de l’océan
Atlantique ? Non, c’est la côte africaine assurément. Les pauvres
indigènes ! Tous nous demandent l’aumône pendant que nous
parcourons la ville, en dépit d’une chaleur accablante. Et quelle ville !
Une demi-douzaine de rues toutes parallèles et tirées au cordeau,
bordées de longs rez-de-chaussée uniformes, divisés en un certain
nombre de cases malpropres, dont les quatre murs abritent parfois
toute une famille… Rentrons vite nous reposer à « l’hôtel de France
et d’Italie », l’unique refuge des voyageurs, misérable auberge,
située au bord de la mer, sur une plage ombragée d’un seul et
unique cocotier maladif.
Cette lande brûlée est ce qu’on nomme pompeusement la
promenade.
Mindello compte environ 1,200 nègres et 150 blancs, Portugais
et Anglais. La population de l’île est évaluée à 3,000 âmes. Jusqu’à
l’âge de dix à douze ans, les enfants sortent nus ; les femmes sont à
peine vêtues d’une simple jupe et d’une camisole plus que
décolletée. Leur coiffure est formée d’un morceau d’étoffe qu’elles
ramènent souvent en écharpe autour de la taille. La misère leur fait
ignorer le sens des mots pudeur et modestie. Nous avons pu nous
en assurer en assistant à un divertissement chorégraphique
organisé par notre hôtelier, auquel ont pris part une quarantaine de
ces indigènes. Mais, au lieu des danses nationales, sur lesquelles
nous comptions, il nous fallut nous contenter d’une sauterie vulgaire
et ridicule dans le genre de celles des plus gais…, ou, si vous aimez
mieux, des plus tristes établissements publics de la vieille Europe.
Le lendemain, nous allons explorer les alentours de la baie.
Maigre exploration ! Le poste sémaphorique, élevé au sommet d’un
rocher, et qui a peut-être encore la prétention de défendre la ville,
est armé de quatre vieux canons rouillés, mollement étendus sur le
sable. Un être, un seul, au teint bronzé, fait bonne garde auprès de
cette inoffensive artillerie. En bas, au bord de la mer, une petite
construction abrite les appareils du câble sous-marin transatlantique
qui relie l’Europe avec l’Amérique du Sud. Quel étrange contraste ! A
deux pas de cette nudité sauvage, de cette corruption, de cet
abrutissement, le plus surprenant triomphe de l’intelligence
humaine ; la pensée franchissant en une seconde les abîmes de
l’Océan, s’arrêtant là où elle est attendue, sans un effort, sans un
doute, sans un retard ! Dans ce contraste choquant entre
l’asservissement de la matière et l’asservissement de l’homme pour
le même but, dans cette comparaison, qui s’impose brutalement,
entre le nègre déguenillé qui embarque le charbon et la brillante
mécanique qui en prévient l’armateur à mille lieues de distance, n’y
a-t-il pas le germe d’un doute sur le véritable sens de ce mot :
Progrès, qui est devenu la raison d’État de tous les peuples et le
prétexte respecté de tous les individus ?
Nous continuons notre excursion, et bientôt nous rencontrons
une des rares sources qui alimentent la ville ; à côté, près des
citernes, des négresses, vêtues (je ne trouve pas d’autre mot) d’un
foulard sur la tête et d’un simple mouchoir sur le dos, lavent du linge
et ne semblent pas s’effaroucher de notre présence ; les plus jeunes
se contentent de retirer le tissu qui recouvre leurs épaules pour se
l’enrouler autour de la taille en guise de pagne, pendant que leurs
aînées, sans rien déranger de leur « costume », viennent nous
demander des cigares et du tabac. Nous bourrons gravement les
pipes de ces dames, très galamment nous leur offrons du feu, et
nous nous remettons en route pour atteindre l’extrémité de la baie.
En face de nous, à quelques kilomètres seulement, se dressent
les hautes montagnes de l’île San-Antonio, séparée de Saint-Vincent
par un bras de mer de sept à huit milles (13 kilom.) de large. Elles
semblent aussi dénudées que celles que nous parcourons en ce
moment ; cependant l’île San-Antonio est de beaucoup la plus petite
de l’archipel ; elle produit du café, du vin, du sucre, enfin des fruits et
des légumes, que chaque jour les bateaux du pays apportent à
Mindello pour le ravitaillement des navires. La population est
d’environ 25,000 habitants, mais, comme celle de Saint-Vincent,
vivant presque à l’état sauvage, sans instruction et, pour ainsi dire,
sans religion.
Les îles de San-Antonio et de Saint-Vincent forment, avec six
autres îlots moins importants, un groupe connu sous le nom de
« Barlavento », ou îles du Vent. Un autre groupe, dont fait partie l’île
de Santiago, où réside le gouverneur, est nommée « Sotavento », ou
îles sous le Vent. Cette désignation est la conséquence de la
position des deux groupes par rapport aux vents alizés qui soufflent
constamment du nord-est et atteignent d’abord les îles dont la
latitude est la plus élevée.
Quelques-unes des îles du Cap-Vert, et particulièrement l’île de
Santiago, sont infestées par des singes de grande taille et très
sauvages, qui dévastent les plantations.
 Les invasions de sauterelles y sont fréquentes et concourent,
avec les pluies torrentielles, qui durent de septembre à novembre, à
occasionner d’horribles famines. On cite celle de 1831, qui causa la
mort de 12,000 personnes dans l’archipel, qui ne comptait alors
guère plus de 50,000 habitants. Dans cette même saison des pluies,
le climat est très malsain ; les fièvres pernicieuses, parfois la fièvre
jaune, y causent de grands ravages, et des épidémies de petite
vérole déciment en quelques semaines la population noire.
Seuls, les amateurs d’histoire naturelle ou de géologie ont pu
trouver quelque intérêt en explorant les côtes de ces îles désolées.
Sans parler de notre savant compagnon, M. Collot, dont les courses
interminables n’altéraient ni la santé ni la bonne humeur, quelques-
uns d’entre nous, parmi lesquels M. A. A… et M. E. B… étaient les
plus ardents, s’étaient épris déjà de l’intelligente manie des
collections. Le soulèvement volcanique qui a donné naissance aux
îles du Cap-Vert et l’incroyable richesse de la flore sous-marine de
ces parages étaient pour eux l’objet d’intéressantes recherches.
A l’heure de la marée basse, pendant que nous, profanes, allions
en quête de quelque point de vue, nos jeunes naturalistes, les pieds
dans l’eau, la tête à peine couverte, malgré les prudentes
recommandations du docteur, allaient à la recherche des algues, des
mollusques, des zoophytes, des coquilles de toute espèce et nous
revenaient à la tombée de la nuit, harassés, affamés, mais
enchantés, montrant avec orgueil leurs découvertes. Peut-être
eussent-ils profondément dormi en assistant dans un amphithéâtre
au cours de quelque éminent professeur ?
Nous eûmes, avant de quitter cette relâche peu divertissante,
une surprise agréable. Le 20, jour de notre départ, on signale vers
quatre heures de l’après-midi un petit vapeur portant pavillon
français. C’était la canonnière la Tactique, qui bientôt arriva au
mouillage et prit place à une encâblure de la Junon. Nous la saluons
de notre pavillon, élevant nos chapeaux et agitant nos mouchoirs.
Notre chef retrouve dans le commandant du navire de guerre une
vieille connaissance, lieutenant de vaisseau comme lui. Une heure
après, le commandant La Bédollière et deux de ses officiers
venaient dîner à bord. C’était la première fois que nous voyions les
couleurs françaises depuis notre départ ; cette rencontre fut une
véritable fête pour nous, d’autant plus gaie que ces messieurs de la
Tactique se montrèrent pleins de cordialité et d’entrain. On but à la
France, à nos voyages et à l’espoir de se revoir bientôt, car la
canonnière se rendait à la station de La Plata, où elle pouvait arriver
presque en même temps que nous.
A neuf heures du soir, il fallut se séparer ; mais ce ne fut qu’au
dernier moment, et déjà l’hélice ébranlait l’arrière de la Junon de ses
premiers coups d’aile, que nous échangions encore avec nos
compatriotes, devenus des amis, nos meilleurs souhaits de bonne
santé et d’heureuse navigation.

2 septembre.

Nous sommes en mer depuis treize jours. Demain soir, nous

serons à Rio-de-Janeiro. Reviendrai-je sur ces deux semaines
passées entre le ciel et l’eau, et ne ferais-je pas mieux de vous dire
que, n’ayant pas fait naufrage, n’ayant été ni capturés par des
pirates, ni incendiés en pleine mer, ni désemparés par quelque
horrible tempête, je n’ai rien à vous raconter ? Ce serait mentir, et je
ne veux pas fermer mon journal de bord sans que vous ayez, en mer
comme à terre, vécu avec nous et vu ce que nous avons vu. Mes
récits vous ennuieront-ils ? Peut-être. Mais vous êtes parti avec moi,
il faut donc, de toute nécessité, que nous nous ennuyions ensemble.
Et d’abord, croyez que nous n’avons fait à l’ennui qu’une part
modeste. Pendant les deux jours qui ont suivi notre appareillage de
Saint-Vincent, nous avons joui du plus beau temps du monde, et
c’est là une douceur à laquelle le passager n’est jamais insensible.
Moins insensibles, hélas ! avons-nous été aux orages, tourbillons,
pluies, grosses mers et vents de bout qui sont venus après.
Assez amariné cependant pour lutter contre les tendances
somnolentes que m’inspiraient les mouvements trop accentués de la
Junon, je pus trouver le courage d’admirer la colère de l’Océan, que,
jusqu’alors, je m’étais contenté de maudire. Je regardais venir les
grains sombres et violents avec un mélange de crainte et de plaisir,
et chaque fois que l’avant plongeant dans la lame se relevait couvert
d’une nappe d’eau écumante, ruisselant joyeusement sur le pont et
se déversant traîtreusement jusque dans les salons, je ne pouvais
m’empêcher de trouver ce spectacle plein d’imprévu et d’originalité.
Un matin, après deux ou trois coups de tangage plus rudes que
les précédents, et comme notre arrière, brutalement secoué par la
trépidation folle de l’hélice sortant de l’eau, semblait devoir se
disloquer, j’avisai notre chef descendant tranquillement de la
passerelle :
— Eh bien ! commandant, voilà un assez mauvais temps.
— Comment, mauvais temps ? Mais pas du tout. C’est la
mousson. Elle n’est pas très forte cette année.
— La mousson ?
— Sans doute. De juin à septembre, ces vents de sud-ouest
règnent sans discontinuer. Mais nous n’en avons pas pour
longtemps. Nous les trouverons, sans doute, jusqu’à la ligne, et
après cela…
— Après cela, nous aurons beau temps ?
— Beau temps, probablement. Mauvais temps, peut-être.
Je rentrai dans ma cabine, parfaitement renseigné. Soyons
philosophes.
Dans la soirée de ce même jour, nous avons remarqué un va-et-
vient inaccoutumé dans l’entrepont occupé par l’équipage. Les
matelots nous ont paru distraits et affairés. Que se passe-t-il ?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
La mer s’était un peu apaisée, le vent avait tourné au sud-est en
mollissant ; quelques voiles dehors nous appuyaient au roulis, et
nous étions tranquillement à table, lorsque tout à coup un son
prolongé de cornet à bouquin nous fait dresser les oreilles :
— Un tramway ! s’écrie mon joyeux ami, J. C…
 Soudain, la porte du salon s’ouvre, et un postillon joufflu, haut
botté, la veste chamarrée, le chapeau à rubans sur l’oreille, le fouet
en main, remorquant un objet à quatre pattes, roulé dans deux
peaux de mouton, un énorme faubert en guise de queue, fait
irruption parmi nous :
— Ous’ qu’est le commandant ? J’ai une lettre pour lui de la part
du Père Tropique.
Et il s’avance gravement.
— Le commandant ? Voici. Qu’y a-t-il pour toi, mon garçon ? Ah !
de cet excellent M. Tropique. Très bien. Veuillez vous asseoir,
postillon. Mais quel est cet animal que vous nous avez amené ?
— C’est mon ours, commandant.
— Il doit avoir bien chaud… Je pense qu’il vous sera agréable à
tous deux de vous rafraîchir… Pendant ce temps, je vais prendre
connaissance de la lettre de votre maître. Lisons :

Royaume de Neptune, département du Père la Ligne, au

fond de la mer, 4e jour du Ve cycle de la gestation de
la baleine franche, an 4878, ère vraie.

« Illustre nautonier,

» Ma vigie vient de me signaler qu’une nef à plumet noir, se

mouvant sans ailes et portant pour enseignes les couleurs azurées,
blanches et vermeilles, se présentait dans les eaux de mon
royaume.
» Après compulsion faite de nos registres de l’état civil, nous
n’avons trouvé aucune trace du passage d’une nef à plumet noir de
ce gabarit [1] . Avons constaté de plus qu’il se mouvait à bord une
quantité de profanes, n’ayant pas été baptisés et, par conséquent,
n’ayant pas prêté le serment d’usage.
[1] Gabarit signifie ici patron, échantillon. Le gabarit
est une forme en bois, qui sert à façonner la courbure
exacte des pièces de construction.
 » En votre qualité de vieux loup de mer, vous n’ignorez pas qu’il
faut que chacun paye son tribut, lors de son passage dans nos
États.
» Avons, en conséquence, décrété et décrétons ce qui suit :

» Article premier. Ce jour, notre envoyé diplomatique et

plénipotentiaire, le Père Tropique, après avoir éteint son fanal de
jour, vous informera de l’entrée de votre nef dans nos eaux.
» Art. 2. Il vous hélera, demandera le nom de la nef profane,
ainsi que les noms des passagers à bord.
» Art. 3. Les grands dignitaires de notre cour prendront ensuite
telles dispositions qu’ils jugeront nécessaires pour que la cérémonie
soit à la hauteur des circonstances.
» Art. 4. La force publique sera sur pied pour empêcher toute
infraction à nos lois et coutumes.
» Art. 5. Les punitions seront levées, à cause qu’il n’y en a pas
beaucoup qui soient punis.
» Art. 6. L’illustre Père Tropique et sa suite, l’ours compris, sont
spécialement chargés de l’exécution du présent décret.
» Fait et scellé du sceau de nos armes, en notre palais de
verdure, au fond de la mer.

» Signé : Neptune. »

Et plus bas :

» Le secrétaire aux affaires humides,

» Baron de l’Amure de Bonnette. »

Lecture faite de cette bizarre épître, l’envoyé, toujours grave, se

retire en emportant la soumission complète du commandant aux
volontés de son maître et suivi de son ours, tous deux lestés d’une
bouteille aussitôt bue que versée.
 Un tapage infernal accompagne leur sortie et nous amène tous
sur la dunette. Une voix de Stentor part de la grande hune ; nous
levons les yeux, et nous apercevons un respectable vieillard à barbe
blanche, qui hurle dans le grand porte-voix :
— Oh ! De la nef blanche ! Oh !…
Le second, M. Mollat, alors de quart, répond :
— Oh !
— Votre nom ?
— La Junon.
— Bien. Le nom du commandant ? D’où venez-vous ? Où allez-
vous ? Combien de passagers ?
On répond à toutes ces questions.
— Y en a-t-il beaucoup qui n’ont pas passé par ici ?
— Une trentaine.
— Ah ! ah ! Dis-leur que demain je les induirai aux mystères, et
qu’ils soient bien sages, ou bien il pleuvra tempêtes, vents
contraires, avaries et tout le tremblement. En attendant, je vas leur
rendre mes devoirs. Attention !
Nous avions tous le nez en l’air. Le cornet du tramway résonne
de plus belle, et nous sommes assaillis par une grêle de pois secs et
de haricots. Un matelot, déguisé en meunier, saute sur la dunette et
en un instant nous couvre de farine à pleines poignées, pendant que
ses deux aides, faisant mine de nous faire échapper, nous cernent
fort adroitement, jusqu’à ce que nous soyons transformés en pierrots
de carnaval.
Un signe de l’officier de quart fait alors disparaître le meunier, et
nous allons incontinent nous donner un sérieux coup de brosse,
prévoyant pour le lendemain un lessivage dans toutes les règles.
Le commencement de la burlesque cérémonie fut annoncé, le 25
août, à midi, par une clameur formidable, accompagnée de coups de
sifflet, de trompe et de cloche. Je n’assurerai pas que bon nombre
des casseroles du maître coq n’aient été réquisitionnées pour
donner plus de « solennité » à la fête. Le charivari est assourdissant.
Nous voyons alors un étrange cortège se diriger de l’avant à
l’arrière : en tête se présente le postillon, dont le fouet claque avec
tout le retentissement possible, accompagné de l’ours, son
inséparable ami ; viennent ensuite le meunier et le notaire, l’un de
nos garçons de service, correctement vêtu d’un habit noir, gilet en
cœur et cravate blanche, coiffé d’un gibus à larges ailes, au-dessous
duquel on n’aperçoit qu’une énorme paire de lunettes et de longs
cheveux blancs ébouriffés ! Il tient à la main le registre de l’état civil,
et est chargé d’appeler les profanes à tour de rôle.
Puis, monté sur Ernest, — mais, pardon, vous ne connaissez pas
Ernest ; — j’ouvre donc une parenthèse pour vous le présenter :
Ernest est un de nos compagnons de voyage, d’un caractère doux et
pacifique, vigoureux cependant. Ernest se tient toujours à sa place,
tranquille et discret, ne faisant jamais une réclamation quoique étant
le plus mal logé du bord ; il a su conquérir toutes les sympathies. On
sait, ou plutôt on craint qu’il n’achève pas le voyage, et lui-même
semble en avoir quelque pressentiment. Nous ne connaissons à
Ernest qu’un seul défaut : il a l’air bête ; mais sa qualité de bœuf en
est une suffisante excuse, et nul n’a songé à lui faire un reproche de
cette infirmité, sans doute héréditaire.
Donc, monté sur Ernest, un majestueux personnage s’avance,
enveloppé dans une longue robe bleu de ciel semée d’étoiles, le
front paré d’une couronne, la barbe et les cheveux complètement
blancs, tenant d’une main une fouine en guise de trident, de l’autre
une corne d’abondance figurée par un vase d’une forme bien
connue. C’est monsieur Tropique, que les matelots appellent
irrévérencieusement le Père Tropique. Son chapelain est à sa droite,
son astrologue à sa gauche ; tous deux portent le costume de leur
emploi ; le second est chargé d’un sextant monumental, dont la
lunette est remplacée par une bouteille vide. Mme Tropique les suit,
nonchalamment étendue dans un char traîné par deux ânes, ou,
plus exactement, par deux jeunes marins encapuchonnés dans des
couvertures grises. L’opulente chevelure de cette dame est figurée
par plusieurs fauberts soigneusement nattés ; son vaste corsage,
témoignage de fécondité, abrite deux pastèques inégales,
convoitées par quelques spectateurs ; les autres « appas » se
dessinent sous un assemblage de mouchoirs de diverses couleurs.
Elle joue de l’éventail et de la prunelle avec une grâce toute
particulière. Les deux plus beaux gabiers du bord, déguisés en
gendarmes, accompagnent la calèche de la princesse, le sabre au
poing.
Voici le barbier, personnage influent, portant sur son épaule un
gigantesque rasoir en bois ; son aide, muni de deux seaux, l’un plein
de farine et l’autre de charbon, le suit de près. Une bande de sept ou
huit diables et diablotins, tous enduits de goudron, roulés dans la
suie ou dans le duvet des poules défuntes depuis le départ,
brandissant les outils de la chaufferie, conduisent, enchaîné au
milieu d’eux, un individu maigre et malpropre, qui n’est autre que
Lucifer en personne ; puis une demi-douzaine de sauvages, aux
costumes fantaisistes, se livrant à des danses de caractère ; enfin,
un certain nombre de ces « bons à riens » des cours, ministres sans
portefeuille ou fonctionnaires sans fonctions, ferment la marche.
Le cortège se groupe sur l’arrière. Le Père Tropique et son
astrologue montent sur la dunette ; pendant que ce dernier mesure
avec son sextant la hauteur du soleil, pour déterminer l’instant précis
où le navire passera la ligne, la Cour s’installe sur une sorte
d’estrade ornée de quelques toiles et de pavillons de signaux, qui ne
cachent qu’imparfaitement un canot placé en travers sur le pont.
Mme Tropique se fait apporter des rafraîchissements ; le notaire
prend ses aises pour appeler commodément les profanes ; les
gendarmes se tiennent prêts à courir sus aux délinquants, et les
anciens, accoudés sur les bastingages, s’apprêtent à rire à nos
dépens.
Je ne vous redirai pas le sermon du chapelain, dont le seul
mérite fut d’être court, ni les commandements grotesques du Père
Tropique, nous n’en avons pas saisi la drôlerie, mais ils furent
trouvés du plus haut comique par l’équipage.
 Il vous suffira de savoir que, du premier jusqu’au dernier, nous
avons été bel et bien blanchis, noircis, rasés et saucés. Que de cris,
de contorsions, de grimaces ; mais aussi, que de rires ! Bon gré mal
gré, il nous a fallu, levant la main gauche et le pied droit, prêter le
serment traditionnel : « Je jure de ne jamais dire du mal d’un matelot
et de ne pas faire la cour à sa femme ! » Après quoi, chacun de nous
fut traîtreusement plongé dans le canot rempli d’eau, dernière et
principale formalité de cette originale pasquinade.
Notre maître d’hôtel, caché dans une soute où il se croyait
introuvable, s’est vu appréhendé au corps par tous les diables du
cortège. Quelle barbe et quelle noyade ? Barbouillé de farine et de
poussière de charbon sur la figure, avec un complément de goudron
sur diverses parties du corps, il n’en fut quitte qu’après trois
plongeons dans le canot !
Au dénouement, un baptême général, où figuraient officiers et
matelots, passagers et serviteurs, dieux et diables, ours et
sauvages, tous se bousculant et s’inondant à l’envi. L’eau pleuvait
même de la grande hune. J’eus pendant un moment le bonheur de
saisir le manche de la pompe à incendie et d’accomplir des prodiges
de valeur.
A deux heures et demie, le coup de sifflet : « Bas les jeux !
L’équipage à prendre la tenue de jour ! » — mit un terme à cette
bataille aquatique, et quelques minutes après la Junon avait repris
sa physionomie habituelle.
Cette fête du baptême de la ligne, dont l’usage se perd, et qui,
sans doute, disparaîtra tout à fait comme tant d’autres coutumes du
vieux temps, m’a donné l’occasion d’étudier un peu le matelot actuel,
qui est déjà bien loin du matelot légendaire, dont mes lectures de la
France maritime m’avaient laissé le souvenir.
Le jour du baptême, cependant, la marine revient un peu aux
traditions d’autrefois. Ce sont les vieux baleiniers, les anciens du
commerce ou de l’État, les gabiers, qui ont le pas ce jour-là et qui
sont les arrangeurs de la fête. Ceux qui ont vu le plus de baptêmes
sont les moins blasés, ils soignent les détails et prennent au sérieux
ce que les jeunes marins et les mécaniciens paraissent considérer
comme une plaisanterie d’un goût douteux. Ainsi qu’il arrive souvent
ailleurs, ce sont les expérimentés qui semblent les naïfs ; ils sont là
dans leur élément, et ne renonceraient qu’avec peine à cette farce
qui les fait maîtres du bord pendant quelques heures.
La faculté de se venger, si peu que ce soit, de ceux qui ont eu le
tort de lui déplaire entre pour quelque chose dans la satisfaction
qu’éprouve le matelot en cette circonstance. Il barbouille de suie ou
de goudron la figure de sa victime, avec une bonhomie ricanante ; il
lui tient pendant ce temps des discours pleins de politesse, et sans
brusquerie, mais non sans vigueur, il la pousse dans la baille, l’y
maintient quelques instants, comme sans faire exprès ; elle en sort, il
l’y laisse retomber maladroitement et puis feint de ne plus s’en
occuper, tandis que, toussant, crachant, essoufflé, demandant
grâce, le nez, les oreilles, la bouche et les yeux pleins d’eau salée,
le patient s’éloigne aussi vite qu’il le peut.
Il est rare que les officiers ou les passagers de l’arrière soient
l’objet de semblables rigueurs ; elles sont généralement réservées
aux maîtres commis, cambusiers, agents de service, capitaines
d’armes, tous gens pour lesquels le matelot a peu de considération,
ou dont les fonctions ne contribuent pas toujours à son bonheur, du
moins tel qu’il le comprend.
S’il a ses petites haines, il a aussi ses préférences, et sa brutalité
n’est pas involontaire. Il sait fort bien abréger les formalités en faveur
d’un officier qui lui plaît ou d’un passager bon garçon ; s’il s’agit
d’une dame, il saura aussi, sans qu’on le lui dise, substituer au
plongeon réglementaire quelques gouttes d’eau de Cologne dans la
manche et remplacer les poignées de farine en pleine figure par un
léger nuage de poudre de riz.
L’un d’entre nous, cependant, était allé la veille trouver le Père
Tropique, organisateur de la fête, et, moyennant un louis, avait
obtenu la promesse d’être épargné. Le louis fut empoché de bonne
grâce ; mais notre camarade fut si vigoureusement saucé, qu’il fallut
l’intervention d’un officier pour le tirer des fonts baptismaux, où une
main peu légère le roulait consciencieusement.
 J’ai dit que la coutume de cette fête s’en allait. Est-ce un bien ?
Est-ce un mal ? La chose est de peu d’importance en elle-même, et
si je suis tenté de lui en accorder un peu, c’est que je vois là un
symptôme, une conséquence du changement d’esprit et de mœurs
de nos marins. Avec ces vieux débris d’habitudes dont la
signification nous échappe s’en vont aussi la naïveté, l’insouciance,
le don de s’amuser avec rien et d’une manière originale que
possédaient les hommes de mer d’autrefois. N’est-ce que cela ? Peu
de chose, en vérité. Oui, peu de chose ; mais n’est-ce bien que
cela ? — Dans la manière d’être de l’homme, dans l’esprit d’une
profession, les travers, les tendances, les idées, les qualités se
touchent et se tiennent, et s’il était vrai que les sentiments de
dévouement et de désintéressement, la franchise, la hardiesse,
l’amour du métier et l’amour-propre du bateau, l’idée de l’honneur
national, s’en allaient aussi, si peu que ce soit, cela ne serait-il pas
grave et dangereux ?
Cela est malheureusement vrai. — Vous entendez bien que je ne
parle plus du baptême de la ligne, et vous ne supposez pas que je
m’appuie sur mon expérience personnelle pour apprécier l’esprit de
nos matelots. J’ai beaucoup causé de cette question avec les
officiers du bord, auxquels leurs longs services donnent une réelle
compétence, et mes remarques ont confirmé leurs observations. Le
marin d’aujourd’hui a perdu beaucoup des qualités et aussi des
défauts du marin d’autrefois. Il a cessé ou cessera bientôt d’être un
type à part, pour devenir un ouvrier spécialiste, comme les autres
ouvriers. Il continuera d’avoir des talents, parce que les talents
rapportent ; mais comme matelot, sinon comme homme, il cessera
d’avoir des sentiments et des idées, parce que cela n’est pas d’un
bon placement. Il a jeté par-dessus le bord ses préjugés et ses
coutumes ; il fait, aussi avantageusement qu’il le peut, une balance
entre ses droits et ses devoirs, tâchant de grossir les uns et de
diminuer les autres ; c’est là sa grande préoccupation.
Le voilà donc commerçant, comme le marin mécanicien, qui lui a
montré la voie, d’ailleurs, et l’y précédera encore longtemps. Le pays
y a-t-il gagné ? Assurément non. Quoique la marine militaire ait de
moins en moins besoin du personnel formé au commerce, elle est
bien loin de pouvoir s’en passer et ne le pourra peut-être jamais. La
marine marchande et le matelot lui-même y ont beaucoup perdu, car
cette fâcheuse transformation les ont atteints profondément. Le
matelot ne s’est pas aperçu qu’en se débarrassant d’un bagage
d’idées qui lui paraissaient surannées et inutiles, il perdait cette
solidité, cette vigueur, cette ardeur au travail qui inspiraient la
confiance et lui donnaient une valeur réelle, qui s’en va décroissant,
à mesure qu’il se civilise à sa manière. Il a oublié qu’un marin n’est
pas seulement un homme adroit, comme un serrurier, un tisserand
ou un sellier, et qu’en certaines circonstances, fréquentes dans la
navigation, dans les tempêtes, les abordages, les incendies, les
naufrages, il n’y a que les hommes de cœur qui comptent, et que les
armateurs le savent bien. En passant d’un navire à un autre navire,
d’une compagnie à une autre compagnie, suivant qu’ils trouvent une
différence de cinq francs par mois en plus ou en moins sur leur
solde, les matelots d’aujourd’hui perdent le véritable fruit de leurs
services antérieurs ; ils deviennent des journaliers ; après avoir
cherché qui achètera le plus cher leur dévouement, ils se laissent
aller à croire qu’ils ne le doivent pas, pour que le marché soit
meilleur encore. La vieille habitude de donner au navire tout son
temps, toute sa force se perd, et quand l’heure critique arrive, la
volonté de bien faire, si elle existe, ne suffit plus.
Qu’arrive-t-il ? A mesure que l’industrie perfectionne les
constructions, que l’hydrographie corrige les cartes, que les côtes
s’éclairent, que les procédés de navigation s’améliorent, les
accidents ne diminuent pas en nombre et augmentent en gravité.
C’est que l’homme de mer a oublié aussi que presque tous les
accidents proviennent d’une négligence, et qu’un service correct,
ayant pour résultats un matériel bien entretenu et une surveillance
parfaite, en éviterait plus de la moitié.
Les voyages restent donc dangereux ; le matériel des navires et
les navires eux-mêmes ne durent pas ce qu’ils devraient durer, ou,
ce qui est pis encore, même hors d’état de servir, on les fait naviguer
quand même ; les armateurs dépensent davantage, le taux des