Cabaret Voltaire (Zürich)
Encyclopedia
Cabaret Voltaire was the name of a nightclub in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. It was founded by Hugo Ball
Hugo Ball
Hugo Ball was a German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists.Hugo Ball was born in Pirmasens, Germany and was raised in a middle-class Catholic family. He studied sociology and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg...

, with his companion Emmy Hennings
Emmy Hennings
Emmy Hennings was a performer and poet. She was also the wife of celebrated Dadaist Hugo Ball. Despite her own achievements, it is difficult to come by information about Hennings that is not directly related to her relationship with Hugo Ball.-Life and work:Hennings was born in Flensburg, Germany...

 on February 5, 1916 as a cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 for artistic and political purposes. Other founding members were Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...

, Richard Huelsenbeck
Richard Huelsenbeck
Richard Huelsenbeck was a poet, writer and drummer born in Frankenau, Hessen-Nassau.Carl Wilhelm Richard Hülsenbeck was a medical student on the eve of World War I. He was invalided out of the army and emigrated to Zürich, Switzerland in February 1916, where he fell in with the Cabaret Voltaire...

, Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...

, and Jean Arp
Jean Arp
Jean Arp / Hans Arp was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper....

. Events at the cabaret proved pivotal in the founding of the anarchic art movement known as Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

.

History

Switzerland was a neutral country
Neutral country
A neutral power in a particular war is a sovereign state which declares itself to be neutral towards the belligerents. A non-belligerent state does not need to be neutral. The rights and duties of a neutral power are defined in Sections 5 and 13 of the Hague Convention of 1907...

 during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and among the many refugees coming to Zurich were artists from all over Europe. Ball and Hennings approached Ephraim Jan, patron of the Holländische Meierei at Spiegelgasse 1, which had already hosted Zurich's first literary Cabaret, the Pantagruel in 1915. Jan permitted them to use the back room for events. The press release which accompanied the opening of the nightclub reads:


Cabaret Voltaire. Under this name a group of young artists and writers has been formed whose aim is to create a centre for artistic entertainment. The idea of the cabaret will be that guest artists will come and give musical performances and readings at the daily meetings. The young artists of Zurich, whatever their orientation, are invited to come along with suggestions and contributions of all kinds. -Zurich, February 2, 1916


The cabaret featured spoken word
Spoken word
Spoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....

, dance and music. The soirees were often raucous events with artists experimenting with new forms of performance, such as sound poetry
Sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...

 and simultaneous poetry. Mirroring the maelstrom of World War I raging around it, the art it exhibited was often chaotic and brutal. On at least one occasion, the audience attacked the Cabaret's stage. Though the Cabaret was to be the birthplace of the Dadaist movement, it featured artists from every sector of the avant-garde, including Futurism's Marinetti. The Cabaret exhibited radically experimental artists, many of whom went on to change the face of their artistic disciplines; featured artists included Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...

, Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

, Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement...

, and Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

.

On July 28, 1916, Ball read out the Dada Manifesto. In June, Ball had also published a journal with the same name. It featured work from artists such as the poet Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

 and had a cover designed by Arp.

Whilst the Dada movement was just beginning, by 1917 the excitement generated by the Cabaret Voltaire had fizzled out and the artists moved on to other places in Zurich such as the Galerie Dada at Bahnhofstrasse 19, then later Paris and Berlin.

Recent events

In recent years, the building which housed Cabaret Voltaire fell into disrepair, and in the winter of 2001/2002 a group of artists describing themselves as neo-Dadaists, organised by Mark Divo
Mark Divo
Mark Divo is a Luxembourgeois conceptual artist and curator who organises large scale interactive art projects incorporating the work of a number of well-known underground artists. His own work involves performance, photography, installation, often using found material.-Career:Between 1988 and...

, illegally occupied the cabaret to protest its planned closure. They declared that it was a signal for a new generation of artists to align themselves with a revival of Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

.

Over a period of three months there were a number of performances, parties, poetry evenings and film nights. Among the participating artists were Ingo Giezendanner
Ingo Giezendanner
Ingo Giezendanner is a painter and installation artist and member of the Kroesos Foundation. He lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.Since 1998, Ingo Giezendanner, alias GRRRR, has been documenting the urban...

, Lennie Lee
Lennie Lee
Lennie Lee is a South African conceptual artist who lives and works in London.-Life and career:Lennie Lee is a British artist born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He moved to the UK in 1960. He was educated at Dulwich college in London before winning a scholarship to study philosophy at Christ...

, Leumund Cult
Leumund Cult
Jan Theiler, alias Pastor Leumund, born 1967, Germany. In the 1990s he was an influential curator, performance artist and musician on the underground scene organising large-scale music and performance events at various venues in East-Berlin including the Duncker14, K77, Prater, Kule, Tacheles and...

, Mikry Drei, xeno volcano, elektra sturmschnell, Aiana Calugar, and Dan Jones. The building was decorated on the outside as well as the inside. Thousands of people from around Zurich took part in the experiment. On April 2, 2002 police evicted the occupants.

The building has since reopened as a cabaret with an extensive programme of events and exhibitions.

External links

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