DADAncing at the Xroads

Part of our Dada Sound project (February 2016) - see more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/dadasounds. By Softday.

"In 2012 Softday created a live sound art work in response to the text of Sean Taylor's 2011 sound poem Dancing at the Crossroads of the End Times. The sound poem is augmented by an acousmatic composition created from our own field recordings and specific data sources relevant to the collapse of the Celtic Tiger here in Ireland, toxic banks and global recession.

Dancing at the Crossroads of the End Times addresses the malaise and meaninglessness of contemporary democracy - in what kind, we may well ask, of a democracy are we living in? It is a pertinent and urgent question that has to be addressed, and addressed courageously. The fantasy of a united and neoliberal Europe (crudely exposed by the recent refugee/migrant crisis) has been undermined by the near collapse of economies in Greece, Portugal,and Ireland, followed hot on their heels by Spain, Belgium and Italy. These near bankrupt economies have become experimental laboratories of our future. We know now that the global financial meltdown at the end of 2008 brought an end to the utopia of global market capitalism and heralded the rise of a quasi-redemptive cultural capitalism where consumer guilt and environmentalism are very nervous bed fellows. As we approach a political zero point or end time for capitalism, what now of the cherished values of liberalism; freedom, welfare and security?

Dancing at the Crossroads of the End Times is an on-going composition in progress, that has been added to and augmented as new field recordings and data sources are utilised by the artists."