From 19:00 – 21:00 at PrintRoom
Schietbaanstraat 17, Rotterdam
FLAMETTI, or the dandyism of the poor — a novel by Hugo Ball, translated and read by Catherine Schelbert
Presentation of the epic audio book adventure with audio fragments, a talk and a live musical intermezzo by FGA and Nina Hitz.
We’ll serve drinks & bites!
Catherine Schelbert’s reading of Hugo Ball’s Flametti, or the dandyism of the poor is published as FGA#44, to celebrate Fucking Good Art’s 20th anniversary, and consists of an audiobook/radio play, a read-along paperback, and 10-inch vinyl record.
This new FGA is a 6h 40min audiobook / radio play adaptation of the English translation of Hugo Ball’s 1916 novel Flametti, or the dandyism of the poor, with music in the spirit of Dada by Robert Hamelijnck, Nina Hitz, Nienke Terpsma, and also starring Vilbjørg Broch, Lucas Simonis, Klaas Hekman & Wu Wei, and Christien Coetzee (in order of appearance).
Flametti, or the dandyism of the poor is a dark satirical comedy about an impoverished vaudeville company and the rise and fall of its director Max Flametti, a figure of tragic proportions entangled in his inescapable self. It is also the story of the allure of the “Fuchsweide, the concert and entertainment quarter of the off-beat, fun-loving crowd,” which is in danger of being “cleansed” by the police. This deceptively straightforward, everyman tale eloquently renders the complex, conflicted, non-professionalized, messy, forgotten humus of a vibrant urban scene that prevailed in Zurich over a hundred years ago.
Hugo Ball wrote this provocative, largely overlooked, semi-autobiographical novel in 1916, the same year he, Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara, and others founded Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Their artist-run nightclub existed for less than a year and gave birth to Dada as a form of artistic protest against the brutality of the First World War raging in Europe. They spread their ideas in absurd, grotesque performances, sound poetry, and manifestos. It is from this cultural and political context that the novel Flametti emerged.
Co-published by edition fink, Zurich and FGA.
Fucking Good Art is both an artist collective (Rob Hamelijnck & Nienke Terpsma) and a recurrent publication on contemporary art, which manifests physically as well as on the internet.
FGA / Nienke Terpsma (left), BAB Art Book Fest, photo Willem Mes