Dada Motel

[The information below is quoted an article by Kat Kerlin in the May 31 Reno News & Review]

Dada Motel

"For three nights, June 28-30, dozens of independent artists are renting motel rooms in downtown Reno and turning them into art galleries.

Dianna Sion-Callender is wallpapering an entire room—bed and all—in collage. Chad Sorg is locking himself in a glass room and drawing on pallets. Bernie Beauchamp promises to “rip the lid off you childhood notions of puppetry.” Other visual artists include sculptor Greg Adams, printmaker Candace Nicol, painter Jim Zlokovich, muralist Erik Burke, and photographers Dean Burton, David Muskin and (RN&R contributor) Kris Vagner. San Francisco singer-songwriter Sonny Smith performs at the El Cortez’s Trocadero Room, as do local poets and actors. Artist Erik Holland, who ran against Reno mayor Bob Cashell in November’s election, is mayor of this three-day community. He’ll be giving a literal Stamp of Dada approval on the events and making speeches.

Most of the art will take place at the El Cortez. Other participating motels include the Townhouse, the El Rey and the Star of Reno. Downtown businesses, including a number of venues along First, Second and Fourth streets are also getting in on Dada, opening their spaces to visual and performance artists.

Free for spectators, the artists are doing it on their own dime—no sponsors, no promotion other than their own and a listing on the DaMM (Dada Motel Map). As Callender says, “It’s art for art’s sake.”

About six months ago, neon artist Jeff Johnson got the harebrained idea for this art show about everything and nothing.

“There was a whole bunch of art that wasn’t being represented at all,” he says. “Modern art and art that is on the living edge of time ... art that was alive and being spontaneously created, rather than the same old thing you know you can make money off.”

To keep this sense of spontaneity, Dada Motel doesn’t intend to become an annual event. “Annual event” is inherently not spontaneous.

Sorg, a Dada organizer and artist, says Dada Motel is about taking artistic expression into one’s own hands.

“I think artists are sitting around waiting for things to happen—waiting for another gallery to open up or waiting for someone to like their slides, and we think everybody should just be doing it,” he says.

“It’s all just for us so that no one can say somebody else ruined it for them because they didn’t share our vision,” says Johnson. “It’s foolproof. … At Dada Motel, you get to do it on your own initiative.”

DaMMs will be distributed around Reno and printed in Sierra Arts magazine.

[image from a google image search for 'dada,' from the Wikimedia Commons entry "Dada-1920." Caption: "1920 - le mouvement dadaïste. Auric, Picabia, Ribemont-Dessaignes, G.Everling, Casella et Tzara."]