Three Rooms Press—the fierce New York-based independent publishing house inspired by Dada, punk and passion—presents an evening of incredibly provocative, disruptive and eclectic art and performance at the fourth annual ¡DADA! LONDON INVASION.
Doors: 6:30pm
Admission £5
The event promises to be a wild ride of contemporary Dada performance and poetry, celebrating the latest edition of MAINTENANT, an annual international journal of contemporary Dada writing and art. Costumes encouraged.
Performers from the UK and US will be featured, including performance group Dylan Nyoukis & The Student Vegetables, Avant-garde performer Anne Pigalle, poet and sci-art specialist Valerie Laws, poetry film director Zata Banks, provocative visual and performance artist Becky Fawcett, poet-photographer Derek Adams, and poet-performance artist Cathy Dreyer. Additional performers include poet-performance artists Sam Dodson, Winston Plowes, Paul Hawkins, Marina Kazakova, and Deborah Sibbald. The program will also include a special performance by critically-acclaimed musicians Santa Semeli and The Monks. New York-based authors Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges, co-directors of Three Rooms Press, will host and perform.
The event includes the London launch of the internationally-renowned MAINTENANT 12: Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art (2018, Three Rooms Press), which features more than 180 visual and literary works by artists and writers worldwide on this issue’s theme “WE ARE ALL A LIKE.” The journal will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
About MAINTENANT 12:
A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art serves up the controversial theme, “WE ARE ALL A ‘LIKE’.” With the rise in social media use―and abuse―the concept of “like” has reached whole new levels. There’s the idea of an individual’s reaction to events, people, images, etc. as a reduction to “Like” or “Dislike” without need for deeper consideration. Then there is the status factor: that something which is “Liked” by the largest number of people is of value. In fact, in the social media orbit, it is seemingly beneficial to offer strong, sharp, simplistic opinions―instead of nuanced, deeper, shaded considerations―simply because they provoke the greatest likelihood of widespread attention. How will this reduction of thought shape the future of interpersonal relations, intellectual advancement, and politics? As we teeter on the brink of nuclear war, the concepts of Dada brilliantly encompass the urgency of present times with both clarity and purposeful confusion.
The MAINTENANT series, established in 2005, gathers the work of renowned and emerging dada artists and writers from around the world. The series has been archived in leading international institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art–New York, the BelVUE Museum–Brussels, and more. Renowned contributors have included artists Mark Kostabi, Raymond Pettibon, Giovanni Fontana, Jean-Jacques Lebel, and Kazunori Murakami. Writers have included Allen Ginsberg, Gerard Malanga, Charles Plymell, Jerome Rothenberg, and more, with a strong contingent of punk musician-artist-writers including Grant Hart, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, and Exene Cervenka.
What the heck is Dada?
The original Dada movement peaked from 1916-1922, primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Its purpose was to ridicule what its participants considered to be the meaninglessness of the modern world. In addition to being anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and anarchist in nature.
About Three Rooms Press
Three Rooms Press is a fiercely independent New York-based publisher inspired by dada, punk and passion. Founded in 1993, it serves as a leading independent publisher of cut-the-edge creative, including fiction, memoir, poetry translations, drama and art. In addition, Three Rooms Press produces and promotes a variety of literary and cultural events in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and more, including readings, plays, workshops and concerts. Three Rooms Press books are distributed in the U.S. and internationally by PGW/Ingram.