This irreplicable moment where art nullifies the work, renounces the artist, and inverts the perspective on artistic action.

Reading note

The Profile of Dada

by Valerio Magrelli — read in February 2026

Here we trace the history of the artistic movement that laid the foundations for so much criticism and speculation on art. The amalgamation of so many different characters and the renunciation, aversion to every rule make it an inexplicably cohesive movement despite differences. Divisions, contrasts, early exits are part of the artistic practice of Tzara and his companions.
This irreplicable moment where art nullifies the work, renounces the artist, and inverts the perspective on artistic action killed itself along with everything else, but created a new way and a new market for the new art we still experiment with today. The questions raised on chaos, copying, ephemerality, and contamination with mass language are still relevant.
In this era of machines, no longer useless, of intelligent artificial processes, a new reflection is due on the role and meaning of art.

Machines as figures in literature, rather than as a promise of efficiency, reappear in Macchine fantastiche.