Lost Profiles: A Parisian Dada Salon
Book release, panel, concert, and other surprises!

The evening includes the release and first time translation of the classic, Lost Profiles: Memoirs of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism, by Philippe Soupault, published by City Lights Books with editor Garett Caples, translator and poet Alan Bernheimer. Also joining them is Professor Abigail Susik of Willamette University who will give special presentation on the history of Parisian Dada. The evening is moderated by City Lights Program Director Peter Maravelis and literature Professor Mark Calkins (SFSU).

8:00 pm Concert

A concert with sensational New Music composer/singer Amy X. Neuburg and percussionist Moe! Staiano follows the program. Neuburg offers her unique 21^st century contribution to Dadaism mixing stellar vocals, word poems, and electronic layering.

Lost Profiles: Memoirs of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism by Philippe Soupault

A classic since its 1962 publication, Lost Profiles introduces readers to a variety of literary lions. We meet an elegant Marcel Proust, an exhausted James Joyce, and an enigmatic Apollinaire, surrealist precursors like Pierre Reverdy and Blaise Cendrars, and surrealist René Crevel. The collection ends with essays on two modernist forerunners, Charles Baudelaire and Henri Rousseau. With an afterward by Ron Padgett, Lost Profiles confirms Soupault's place in the vanguard of twentieth century literature.

Philippe Soupault (1897-1990) served in the French army during WWI and subsequently joined the Dada movement. In 1919, he collaborated with André Breton on the automatic text Les Champs magnétiques, the foundation of the surrealist movement. In the years that followed, he wrote novels and journalism, directed Radio Tunis in Tunisia, and worked for UNESCO.

DADA Movement

Along with Russian Constructivism and Surrealism, Dada stands as one of the three most significant movements of the historical avante garde. Born in the heart of Europe in the midst of World War 1, Dada displayed a raucous skepticism about accepted values. Its embrace of new materials, of collage and assemblage technique, of the designation of manufactured objects as art objects as well as its interest in performance, sound poetry and manifestos fundamentally shaped the terms of modern art practice and created an abiding legacy for post-war art.

Dada emerged in Berlin, Cologne, Hanover, New York, and Paris and in 1916 the Cabaret Voltaire was founded in Zurich. What follows is the wide-spread collaboration of artists, writers, designers and performers who created literary journals, exhibitions, happenings, and politically charged "anti-art" events.

Panelists

Mark Calkins, PH.D. (moderator), is on the Lecturer Faculty in the Department of Comparative and World Literature, College of Liberal and Creative Arts, San Francisco State University. He has been the moderator of Mechanics' Institute's dedicated Proust Group for over ten years.

Garrett Caples is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Garrett Caples Reader (Black Square, 1999) and Complications (Meritage, 2007), and the book of essays, Retrievals (Wave, 2014), concerning overlooked and/or forgotten writers and artists. He is also an editor at City Lights Books, where he curates the Spotlight poetry series. His major editorial projects include co-editing The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia, and Particulars of Place by Richard O. Moore.

Poet Alan Bernheimer's most recent collection is The Spoonlight Institute, published by Adventures in Poetry in 2009. He has lived in the Bay Area since the late 1970s, where he was active in Poets Theater and produced a radio program, "In the American Tree," of new writing by poets. He has translated works by Robert Desnos and Valery Larbaud.

Peter Maravelis (moderator) is a native San Franciscan with a life-long involvement in the art and literary scenes. He programs the events calendar at City Lights Bookstore and is editor of the first and second volumes of San Francisco Noir.

Dr. Abigail Susik is the Assistant professor of Art History at Willamette University. She curated an exhibition of nudes by Imogen Cunningham, "For Myself, 1906-1939, at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art. Her published work includes "Chance and Automatism: Genealogies of the Dissociative in Dada and Surrelaism, (forthcoming in Blackwell Companion to Dada and Surrealism" and "Animistic Time in Hans Richter's Vormittagsspuk (1927-28)" forthcoming in Time and Temporality.