THE MEASUREMENT MANIFESTO after DADA (Betancourt)†

Dani Salvadori

*[Delete as applicable]

Today, confidence is obsolete.

We document [art/graphs/life]* based on deaths.
We seek truth through counting, breath, and numbers.
We are at the crossroads of the light, alert, awaiting data.

If you find it futile and don't want to waste your time on a measurement
that means nothing, remember that our projections fall on fertile ground.

We have a right to prospect for answers, because we have no power.
We are ghosts [drunk/weary/living]* on energy.
We wear a crown, as abundant as a virus.

Our striving for knowledge is a work of [art/calculation/hope]* which seems
to lead to [art/nowhere/home]*.

[Art/Description/Addition]* is a possible [concept/reality/feeling]*.
As it approaches it is [exalted/dreaded/ignored]*.
Indefinable and advancing.

[Art/Enumeration/Reckoning]* comes to life through the medium, as ecstatic
as the [artist/counter/hedonist]*. Such [art/forecasting/ecstasy]* is endless.

The line stands for freedom.
Belief changes its meaning when we believe it.
Every [artist/statistician/hero]* must be allowed to mould their picture.

In order to make a better [art/graph/death]* the [artists/guilty/corpses]* pile
up and produce the total.

† In 1996 Michael Betancourt extracted The ---------------------- Manifesto from the Dada Manifesto and made it available to all as an early Internet template. https://www.michaelbetancourt.com/index.html [100 Artists’ Manifestos From the Futurists to the Stuckists, Selected by Alex Danchev, Penguin 2011]

The Science

The coronavirus pandemic has seen the general public exposed to graphs and numbers in an unprecedented way. But all graphs are merely a picture of what the compiler chooses to measure and how they choose to measure it. They are only one truth. The poem explores some of the other truths behind counting and how it could be portrayed. Through use of the Dada Manifesto I am also looking at how certainty always fails.

The Poet

Dani Salvadori studied physics as an undergraduate but has made her career in the arts, most latterly in the business end of arts education. Her poetry has been published in a wide range of journals and her photography and video art has been shown around the world. She has never lost her love of the graph.

Next poem: The Sound of Silence by Doryn Herbst