The first issue of MetaDada: The International Journal Of Dada Mining will be published on May 15, 2016 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the of the very first Dada publication, Cabaret Voltaire. The itching intent of MetaDada is to diligently excavate the vast seams of human idiocy so that you don’t have to, and subsequently presenting the resulting Dada in all of it’s discombobulating charm and glory.
MetaDada No. 1 will be a 40-page, 8.5” x 11” full-color print journal, in an edition of 500 copies. In an effort to encourage advance subscriptions to help pay for this monstrous folly, you can subscribe to MetaDada for the incredible prepublication price of only $30 per issue postpaid (US only; inquire about postal fees for international orders). Simply send your check or money order to Elena Press, PO Box 429201, Cincinnati, OH 45242 USA. You may also submit funds via PayPal by emailing your subscription order to metadadajournal@gmail.com. We will respond with a PayPal invoice to facilitate payment. Please remember to provide your physical mailing address to ensure successful delivery of your personal dadafication device (paper seems to consistently clog the wires).
Prepublication Premium
All prepublication subscribers making payment before May 15, 2016 will receive a premium with their issue in the form of a free copy of Understanding Dada by MetaDada editor, H. Michael Sanders. An entertaining and insightful review of Understanding Dada by Shyanna Bodenstein can be found here.
Deluxe Edition
Please note that a deluxe edition of 100 numbered copies of MetaDada No. 1 is being published simultaneously with the regular edition at a price of $125. The deluxe edition will include an 8.5” x 11” signed and numbered archival print of the MetaDada No. 1 cover image, Doll-Head Poet No. 4: Tristan Tzara at the Cabaret Voltaire, by editor H. Michael Sanders. In addition, the deluxe edition will be packaged with a copy of sounDada, an audio CD project of Dada sound works, soundtracks and spoken word by over twenty artists from around the world.
Remember, Dada is like toothpaste or Hemorrhoids. Once it is squeezed out of the tube you can’t easily put it back. So all we can do is put it in a useless magazine and try to pretend that it is art or literature. Help us get rid of this stuff. Buy it from us.
And now a word from our publisher…
Dada is a Racket!
A Note From the Publisher
By Howard M. “Burnt” Nortonn
“Invest your money in Dada! Dada is the only savings bank that pays interest in the hereafter!” – Richard Huelsenbeck, “Invest in Dada,” Der Dada 1 (June 1919)
“Is the aim of art to make money and cajole the nice nice bourgeois?”
– Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto 1918,” Dada 3 (March 1918)
Dada is a racket, pure and simple. Despite that fact, Dada does nothing but tell people the simple truth, that is abuse them. Dada doesn’t try to bamboozle the feeble-minded or the weak-willed in the manner of politicians and investment bankers, but instead lets fully-grown, healthy people decide when they’re good and ready to behave irrationally and engage in congenitally mindless risk-taking. That’s why Dada routinely offers irresistible opportunities to the elite, the college-educated, and the filthy rich to churn their money through financial mitosis and shield the ill-gotten proceeds from greedy government confiscation through artistic license. Dada spontaneously erupts in generous, spewing dividends on investment by foisting irritating art and rude, unintelligible poetry on those constipated by the routine of buying useless consumer products online.
A generous and ongoing financial investment in Dada enlarges the human spirit in ways unfathomable to those sending money to televangelists or political parties, and readily ensures that there will always be a constant barrage of commercial messages eroding pathways to reasonable thinking. The hope of the future is buying meaningless, nonfunctional aesthetic entertainment. This is at the very heart of the Dada way. Dada infests the dreams that money can buy with a virulent emotional infection. Invest in Dada so you can feel good about yourself and look askance at others. Dada will feel good about you too! Don’t forget to shine your shoes before going down to the bank to withdraw your money for Dada.
The most immediate and concrete way in which you can invest your money in Dada, beyond running for public office, is by contributing all available dollars to help fund the creative nonsense of MetaDada: The International Journal of Dada Mining. Dada recommends that you give until it hurts. Go on, you know you really want to. No, you really, really need to. Helping to pay for the creation of such artistic anti-art Dada bullshit is an investment in the continuation of some feeble sense of culture in the corroded, modern media wasteland, and simultaneously in your fluctuating personal sense of wellbeing. Think about how smug you’ll be once you’ve anted up and received your personalized artistic license. The entire sum contributed will be invested in Dada. You don’t want to die rich. Invest in Dada. Dada is a racket!
A Scholarly Postscript
“In 1919, the review Der Dada gave the ironic advice, “Invest your money in Dada.” Doubly ironic is the fact that anyone who had heeded this advice would be rich today. The most ephemeral publications of the Dadaists now fetch enormous prices at auction houses and antiquarian shops. And with good reason: ephemerality was at the heart of the Dadaists’ art. The many small periodicals that they produced are precious not only as documents of an influential artistic movement, but also as works of art in their own right.” – Timothy Shipe, “Dada Periodicals at Iowa,” Books at Iowa 46 (April 1987)
MetaDada 