DadaZwischenSprachen

Nobody recorded the sound poems, simultaneous poems and imitated animal voices performed at Spiegelgasse 1 in spring 1916. Every recording that exists was made later, some by the Dadaists themselves in old age.

So the show works with what survived on paper: prints, reports, drafts, scores and sketches from 1916, among them Emmy Hennings's song booklet and Hugo Ball's Karawane as printed in the Dada Almanach. It also asks what got lost, namely the women's voices and the non-Western sources the Dadaists borrowed. Later work carries the thread on, from Katalin Ladik, Ladislav Novák and Ewa Partum to Christine Sun Kim, Yello and Talking Heads.

You are standing in the house where the word "Dada" was adopted, and the show is a University of Zurich research project, so expect documents rather than spectacle. It fills the vaulted cellar: CHF 8, reduced CHF 5, while the house itself is free. Exhibition hours are Tuesday to Thursday 17:00 to 20:00 and Friday to Sunday 13:30 to 18:00.