What happened in Zürich?

With the world on the brink of escalating war, Dadaism must not only be remembered as an oddity: it must blaze as a phoenix reborn.

This last January 17th, to celebrate Art's one-million-and-sixty-third Birthday, I took a wee pilgrimage to the very birthplace of Dadaism: Cabaret Voltaire, in the heart of Zürich, Switzerland.

There, i consecrated a heavily intervened upon book, elevating it to an artist's book, together with the 88 page "cover letter" that accompanies it. Printed in violet ink on parchment paper, it may well begin to blur the boundary between a letter and a statue. What you see here, and some more, has been sent to the Swiss National Library in Bern.

The letter's meaning also blurs as it evolves. I will not spoil it, but my pictures may give a hint. Dadaism must now live in the world of machines and in the age of Artificial Intelligence. LLMs produce language without being capable of thinking. They sometimes also produce nonsense that masquerades as meaning. Yet, if anything is the tool to challenge the meaning of meaning itself, that would indeed be Dada.

The book herself offers a dilemma, a forced choice: to cut the ribbon, or not to? That dilemma is only fully understood by those who read the letter carefully. Again, I will not spoil it, for all happenstance is canon. The hardcover is rather plain, suitable for archiving or reading, and has no alterations save for a violet ink dedication.

I am not tagging the SNB, by the way, because they must decide their actions and these items' fate independently from me. Dada does not announce itself. Dada arrives.

The packages I sent also contain materials worthy of a Dadaist communion, with explicit instructions to allow anyone who wishes to partake in it to do so, and become part of the art. Whether they will make this possible or not is beyond my control.

More photos of the work being undertaken will be posted on my website. Or perhaps an album here. Possibly both.

And for the keen-eyed among you: what of the third copy? The one with amethysts in place of Aluriel's eyes, and silver bezels around her hood? That was present at the Consecration, too!

Well. That one is hidden. Somewhere in Zürich.

If you find it, you may keep it. Or bring it to Cabaret Voltaire.

All happenstance is canon.
All canon is recursive.
All recursion becomes myth.
All grommets were bashed in with a meat tenderiser.