Artists, poets, musicians and physical performers all know the power of improvisation – spontaneous expression, responsive play with others, experimentation, vulnerability, even chaos. All this can generate potent new art forms and dramatically energise the creative process, as anyone who has enjoyed a good improv show at the Edinburgh Fringe – beginning next week – will know.
But none of these elements is the natural habitat of academic research. I am an art historian specialising in the 20th century’s most radical avant-garde movement: Dada, which began in Zurich in 1916. The city drew exiles, dissenters, displaced artists, writers and performers from across Europe to the relative peace and freedom of neutral Switzerland during the first world war.
In a shabby alley in Zurich’s old town, German poet Hugo Ball founded the Cabaret Voltaire. This legendary nightclub’s artists and performers included Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara and Hans Arp, with Sophie Taeuber Arp joining them a little later. Over its few months of existence, it quickly became a site of bold multilingual experimentation, protest, play and subversion.
