André Flicker

andre.flicker@mail.utoronto.ca

I would describe myself as genuinely curious, which is mirrored in the research I’ve been doing throughout my studies. Starting from my interest in short prose and its usage of narrative space and narration of space to dramaturgies of silence, the common thread of my research is the work of language and our reflective engagement with language as work.

In my dissertation I examine forms of Unsinn (non-sense) as last resorts for subjectivity. My focus is on early 20th century Dadaists of Zurich and Berlin and their exploration of subjectivity in traditional art forms and new media. Based on Dada’s provocation of the absence of sense produced in their intermedia works, I argue that Unsinn as an aesthetic mode is a dynamic movement that curates both drives at work in acts of mediating our surroundings: sense and the sensual. Dada’s Unsinn problematizes meaning and its constitution by compelling us to ask what the absence of meaning is and how it is performed.