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DADA TO GO. Friedrich W. Block's statement on digital poetry (1) begins with an important and ends with an insufficient point. It is correct to realize that digital poetry - or, better, net art (2) - has always wanted to be more than just the extended arm of the old media. Projects such as "Hettches Null" superficially presented themselves as digitally advanced, but flipside they finally ended up as book again. This is and was an important, critical initial position which one can maintain towards the net book - however, the dissociation of the (classical) book has long ago lost its priority. Unfortunately, Block's arguments for digital texts don't go far enough, almost in a classical sense of discourse they stop at a neuralgic end: the avant-garde. New media and the role prose of Californian ideology are, only slightly differenciated, compared with the endeavours of net art which, already at an early stage, critically dealt with the economic barter of new media. At the same time, Block's idea of permanent progress and extension of literature and art could easily be transferred into a present perception of avant-garde: the aim of avant-garde nowadays is no longer progress, but transgression - the exceeding of neuralgic limits, often merely the sustaining or keeping of limits (3). Net art is fighting against the same hierarchies as traditional fields of art do (4), even though the main antagonism between mass production for a broad or a limited audience didn't play any major role for a long time. Meanwhile, also net art has reached the art field and has found its entry to reception and canonizing. It is more difficult, however, to grasp the antagonism which looms within the field of limited production (i.e. in the sub-field of pure production which deliberately addresses a small audience) - that net art field which critically and transgressively refers to the employment and means of new media. As in other fields - such as the literary field - a contrast between avant-garde and successful avant-garde (5) has been established. It is not always easy to grasp this difference, as net art has dealt absolutely critically with its own success (6). The transgressive aspect of the current avant-garde approach may possibly only exist in following the capital streams as outlined by Deleuze/Guattari, in pursuing their work of deterretorialization and, thus, placing one's bet on that point which can no longer be re-territorialized, the point "where capitalism would fire itself and its streams to the moon." Even the logic of permanent revolution (8) - which absolutely equals the idea of the avant-garde - stated by Bourdieu can be contradicted when one perceives the moon as a footloose satellite which can circle either on its own or as a couple. To trail DADA traces within the net is a possibility to look up footloose text satellites at short notice and to bring single DADA groups and sources to the level of the structural gap (9). In doing so, it doesn't make much sense to talk of DADA per se, too diverse are the approaches towards and updates of historical DADAism: e.g. virtual identities settle down - present (Babel, Hugo Baron, Frieder Rusmann, Dadasophin) and historical ones (Duchamp, Tzara, Serner, Ball, Schwitters) -, bananas are dealt with and indexed (anna banana), finishing touches are added to the death of art and the artists (kunsttot.de), virtual states are created (Bananaland, Rongwrong Puppet Empire) and now and then the audience is totally obsolete (Neumerz, Dadasophin). The project DADA TO GO pools the diverse traces in an audio text that lets the DADA groups act within an environment that's borrowed from a computer game and gets DADAism moving. For: In the beginning of DADA there was boredom ... Notes 1 block, friedrich w.: acht finger digitaler poetik. in: block, f. w./ heibach, ch./ wenz, k. (ed.): p0es1s. ästhetik digitaler poesie. hatje cantz 2004, p. 307-317, here: p. 310 2 net art seems to be a more adequate term than digital poetry; the latter would reset the transborder aspect and limit the phenonemon within the literary field 3 asholt, wolfgang/ fähnders, walter: einleitung. in: asholt, wolfgang/ fähnders, walter (ed.): der blick vom wolkenkratzer. avantgarde - avantgardekritik - avantgardeforschung. rodopi 2000, p. 9-27, here: p. 13 4 cf. bourdieu, pierre: die regeln der kunst. suhrkamp 1999, p. 198 5 to express this in a rakishly economical way: the group of established and not yet established avant-gardists 6 compare discussions at nettime.org 7 deleuze, gilles/ guattari, félix: anti-ödipus. suhrkamp 1992, p. 44 8 bourdieu, pierre: loc. cit., p. 202 9 to reach the level of the structural gap: one must achieve a certain barrier of acceptance in order to be noticed at all |