Dadachat
Lauren Cochrane interviews Dadadandy for i-D Magazine
Why are you so inspired by Surrealism?
We started as a Dada inspired project so it was a natural progression for Dadadandy to adopt attitudes and strategies from Surrealist thinking, Dada being a precursor in many ways to Surrealism.
How did you use that inspiration for your installation?
For the Ultralounge installation, The Fountain Of Innocence, we used as a starting point the set designs of movies by Jean Cocteau such as ‘La Belle et La Bête’ and ‘Orphée’ It was very important for us to translate the mood of these movies and give the viewer a space they could experience first hand, and be part of, a sort of ready made fantasy world that the shopper/audience could suddenly became involved with, a bit like a character in a movie. Other inspirations for the installation have included Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, Federico Fellini’s ‘Casanova’, the films of Kenneth Anger and the 1938 International Surrealists Exposition in Paris in which major players of the Surrealist movement, including Marcel Duchamp, Dali, Max Ernst and Man Ray made customised mannequins.
The installation’s soundtrack is a combination of sound effects from thunderstorms to the chattering of monkeys juxtaposed with the music of composer Erik Satie’s ballet Parade, for which French poet, writer and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire wrote the programme notes, and coined the word ‘Surrealism’.
We also have been interested for some time in the idea of the exhibition setting becoming not just a device but an intrinsic part of the work, so that the palace is as much a sculptural intervention as well as the individual sculptural works placed within it. The use of optical devices, distorted rooms and mirrors, peepholes etc. was also very much inspired by the movies we mentioned above, where multiple dimensions exist simultaneously and are accessed through thresholds, mirrors, doors etc..
Is your name a reflection of your love of Surrealism and Dada?
Our name is an homage to Hannah Hoch who in 1919 made a collage titled Da-Dandy, which shows a cluster of female bodies in stylish attire. The bust of a man is described in profile by the overlapping heads and upper bodies of the women modelling the latest fashions taken from glamour magazines of the time. This is a favorite Dada work of ours, we saw it in Paris in the Pompidou Centre in the incredible Dada retrospective they held recently and just fell in love. We really liked the combination of Dada and Dandyism, it seemed to fit our attitude and the attitude of our new collaborative venture/art brand.
Would you call your art a kind of modern Surrealism?
We see ourselves as contemporary artists that are inspired by a number of moments in the avant-garde, Surrealism, Dada and Fluxus, for example. These are groundbreaking moments in art history of the past 100 years and they all suggested new visions, and pushed the envelope in many ways, for what Art is and can be. We like to reference the past, being born out of a “Remix” generation we have always been interested in the appropriation and sampling of images and ideas by other artists from the past, we like to re-enact these in the present, a bit like a shamanistic ritual of rebirth.
Why is Surrealism still relevant to 2007?
The influence of Surrealism today is tangible everywhere, it has become such a strong part of our visual world, threaded within it’s fabric, we can’t imagine the world without it; from advertising, fashion, architecture, literature and filmmaking, Surrealism’s influence will never stop being relevant, and it will always be present like a constantly breathing eye.
