Students love breaking the rules, but trying to break every rule is difficult. Students will learn about the events that caused WW1 and the Dada Art Movement that followed. They will see appropriate images from the Dada Movement as well as some images of Italian Futurism for context.
Students will analyze how the imagery is chopped, loud, disassembled, illogical, and not 'pretty'. They will make connections between those visual elements and the cultural associations the images had at the time. They will talk about their ideas and emotions about conflict and try to make connection to the Dada Art of WWI.
PART 1 : Through historical dramatization students will become Dada artists making DADA collage inspired by Hans Arp's piece 'According to the Laws of Chance'.
After the Hans Arp inspired collage is done, students will engage in debate and discussion over the controversy- of ownership and is DADA art? Pretending to be artists during the time, they will consider their emotions around the war and their options as art makers.
They will then make a DADA Poem. They will cut up a newspaper article (or preferably an article or photocopied text from class, connecting the assignment to another subject) and make a nonsense DADA Poem following the instructions spelt out by Dadaist Tristan Tzara.
Teachers are encouraged to allow their students to perform their DADA poem for the class, directly after the program. When times allows we will read them out loud during the program.
Part 2: Students will make an illogical DADA collage from magazines. Students will review the perspectives of the Dada Artists and make criteria for colleges based on their feelings. These collages should reflect the chopped and disjointed illogical chaotic visual components of early German Dada Collages. The collage will contain themes of protest, current events, and nonsense to reflect the Dada movements sentiment of the changing times.
After the program, students will use their collages as a narrative story prompter, as per instructions left with the teacher by the visiting artist. A example of this type of story prompter will also be given to the class before the end of it.
The teacher is welcome to participate and make his/her own collages and poems. The teacher is only obligated to help with disciplinary issues. The teacher is encouraged to allow time after the program form students to read their DADA poetry as well as use their collages as fiction story promoters, character development prompters or poetry prompters.
