“Catherine Schelbert’s reading of Hugo Ball’s Flametti, or the dandyism of the poor was initiated by Robert Hamelijnck and Nienke Terpsma. It is published as FGA#44, to celebrate FGAs 20th anniversary, and consists of an audiobook/radio play, a read-along paperback, and 10-inch vinyl record. …
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 his hilarious, 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.
Content warning: The novel contains historical slang including cultural, racist, and sexist stereotyping.
Catherine Schelbert’s translation of Flametti oder Vom Dandysmus der Armen, the first-ever in English, was published by Wakefield Press in 2014 and awarded the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translation Prize in 2015.”
This issue of Fucking Good Art consists of the first ever English translation of Ball’s semi-autobiographical comedy by Catherine Schelbert, accompanied by the audiobook version read by Schelbert as well as music in the spirit of Dada by Robert Hamelijnck, Nina Hitz, Nienke Terpsma, and guests; an overlooked treasure and important document of Dada.
Soft cover in dust jacket, 18 x 11 cm, 196 pages + 10 inch LP in sleeve (26 x 25,5 cm), total playing time of 6h 40min, FGA#44, Rotterdam 2024
ISBN: 978-3-03746-271-3
ISSN: 1874-0227
