The Cabaret Voltaire, celebrating this year the centenary of the Dadaist movement which hatched out between its Zurich walls, is facing an uncertain future, Swissinfo.com reports. Struggling to gain its financial independence, the historic cabaret is looking for a benefactor to acquire the whole building (currently owned by the insurance company Swiss Life) as an ‘artwork’ for CFH 13 million (approx. £9.2m), to ensure its preservation. The future patron will therefore be expected to preserve the space and not transform it into a real estate opportunity, the same way ‘you wouldn’t buy a Van Gogh to cut it into pieces and make a carpet out of it, because you know it’s an artwork’ explains director Adrian Notz.
Founded in 1916 by Hugo Balls and Emmy Hennings as a cabaret for artistic and political purpose, the space featured numerous artists from different avant-garde movements, including Marinetti, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Giorgio de Chirico, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Max Ernst, and most notably, Hugo Balls’ reading of the Dada Manifesto that same year. The group soon moved to Paris and Berlin, but space remained active until 2002, when plans of closure were announced. In protest, a group of artists calling themselves ‘neodadaists’ illegally took over the building, organising performances, parties, poetry evenings and film nights during three months, before the police finally kicked them out. The cabaret has since then reopened with a regular programme of events, functioning on the diminishing support of Swiss foundations.
17 February 2016.
