The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess

This is the story of two people playing chess in a smoky café in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland.
The two people are Tristan Tzara, the founder of Dada, a radical art movement and V.I. Lenin, the architect of the Russian Revolution. And it’s the most important chess game ever played, because the world is never going to be the same when these guys get up from the table. Tzara goes on to change the look and meaning of the new century through poetry, art, paradox, absurdity, laughter, abolishing borders; while Lenin employs logic, ruthlessness, gravity, military discipline, the subjection of art to the “people” and mass murder in the name of building a utopian future. Now in the 21st century Leninism is dead, while Dada, art and poetry are still opening doors;” in fact, the primary currency of the future will be poetry.”

Speaker Details

Andrei Codrescu is an award winning writer and National Public Radio commentator. His latest books are Jealous Witnesses: New Poems and New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writing from the City. The author of many essay collections including Disappearance of the Outside and Raised by Puppets, Only to be Killed by Research, Codrescu is also the editor of the online journal Exquisite Corpse. Codrescu was the first speaker in the Microsoft Research Visiting Speaker Series, giving that first talk at MSR on April 28th, 2000.The full schedule of upcoming talks in the Microsoft Research Visiting Speaker Series is available here: http://sharepoint/sites/visitingspeaker/default.aspx

Date:
Speakers:
Andre Codrescu
Affiliation:
MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English, Louisiana State University