ADA – Aktionen der Avantgarde
«ADA - Avant-garde actions»

Actions, happenings and processes commissioned by Jörn Merkert and Ursula Prinz, the curators of the «ADA» festival, were carried out between 9 September and 3 October 1973 by Robert Filliou, Taka Limura, Allan Kaprow, Mario Merz and the Berlin-based artists Wolf Kahlen and Wolf Vostell. Many of the participants consciously deployed video as an independent artistic medium. Concurrently with the festival, the artists created in the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, environments that were closely related with the actions and aimed to solicit spectator participation through visual or verbal communication and provocation. The series of events was brought to a closed by a debate between the artists and public in which the ‘ADA’ model and new communications structures were analyzed.
The first «ADA» festival was followed up by «ADA2» from 27 to 29 September 1974, with projects by Amelith, Daniel Buren, Rafael Conogar, Jochen Gerz, Ekkat Kaemmerling, Edward Kienholz, Jannis Kounellis and Wolf Vostell. An «ADA2» school was organized by Wolf Kahlen.