Zurich became a very active place to be during that time, many people gathered together within the clubs and cafes of Zurich's streets and alleys expressing and understand one another's situation. In many ways it was expected given the dynamics and instability of the place and time, that there was a great chance of war, the chance of their future being changed, destroyed and that something anything could happen, particularly given the way that Zurich had become a melting pot for opposing and disagreeing with the ideas of War. .
Dada, the name was chosen by accident in a German-French dictionary-meaning hobbyhorse. Implying a childlike quality expressing a primitiveness and a beginning at zero in terms of a new art. It was a lack of respect for the war and for a society capable of spawning such a war that became the motivating force behind the Dada's movement. .
As a result, the Dadaist's was offensive against anything associated with society at the time. It's bourgeois Victorian values that stood still whilst the war raged. It's language that had been used in a logical and sensible manner by statesmen of the day to try and justify the insanity, and sell the essentially illogical politics of the War to the people. And finally it's Art and by association it's artists. Particularly artists who knowingly professed 'art for art's sake'. Who, regardless of circumstances, wanted to go on producing what had been 'noble and beautiful'.
In the past, creating fake and untruthful art, served a gloss over the crimes of the War, aiding and assisting the hidden brutalisation of mankind. .
The Dadaists did this is by essentially embracing the opposite of what society embraced as a social value. Where society valued rational the Dadaist embraced the irrational. Where society valued the beautiful the Dadaists embraced the ugly. Where society favoured order the Dadaists favoured chaos. It was the Dadaists intention that by doing this they would in some way hold up a mirror to the world that would perhaps reflect the real insanity of what was taking place with the War.
