Design Art Papers 2025 | No. 13

8–11). As articulated by Dadaist member Marcel Janco, “We had lost confidence in our culture. Everything had to be demolished. We would begin again after the tabula rasa” (Hofmann 2001). Consequently, Dada artwas characterizedby its eclectic, experimental, and avant-garde nature, presented with an aggressively political stance. However, as articulated by one of its key proponents, Hans Richter, Dada was not to be considered art at all but rather “anti-art” (Richter 1965: 48–51). This distinction arose from its multifaceted approach, as it actively avoided and subverted contemporary artistic norms, deliberately trespassing conventional artistic boundaries (Gardner 2015: 900–9004; Richter 1965: 48–51). Figure 1.1: Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919. Coloured reproduction with pencil and white gouache. 19.7 x 12.4 cm. Courtesy of Norton Simon Museum. © Succession Marcel Duchamp / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. The movement’s irreverent, satirical, and confrontational character underscored its intention to shock and challenge societal norms (see Fig. 1.1), with the works of Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Höch, and Francis Picabia best representing this attitude (Gardner 2015: 900–9004; Richter 1965: 92–6). Nevertheless, the Dadaist movement itself was relatively short-lived, as following the conclusion of the First World War, the infighting between members and a radically shifting socio-political landscape compounded its downfall (Anania 2022; Trachtman 2006). 1.2. Neo-Dada - Collective Appropriation In the mid-20th century, Neo-Dada arose, rejecting the emotional intensity and elitism of modernist art while retaining Dada’s subversive spirit. Neo-Dadaists emphasized the role of audience interpretation and sought to collapse the boundaries between art and everyday life. Rather than dismantle modern culture, they expanded the definition of art by integrating performance, consumer goods, and mass media, as seen in works like Rauschenberg’s Retroactive I (see Fig. 1.2) (Dempsey 2002: 201–4; Wolf 2012). Unlike its predecessor, however, Neo-Dada did not aim to dismantle modern culture but rather to expand the parameters of fine art through experimentation and the rejection of artistic traditions (Wolf 2012). By amalgamating various materials and mediums, it entwined assemblages, performances, and most notably, elements of mass media/consumer culture, thereby attempting to redefine the concept of artwork (see Fig. 1.2). Despite clear parallels, some original Dadaists were critical of Neo-Dada, viewing it as lacking in innovation and overly commercialized, departing from Dada’s anti- bourgeois stance and transforming confrontational critiques into aesthetic objects (Young 1981: 201–4). Marcel Duchamp voiced such concerns in 1962, stating, “When I discovered readymades, I thought to discourage aesthetics. [...] I threw the bottle rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge, and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty” (Richter 1965: 207–8). While Neo-Dada ultimately waned as a distinct movement, its innovative use of mass culture as an artistic medium significantly influenced subsequent developments, particularly in paving the way for Pop Art’s engagement with consumerism and popular imagery. Considering the previously discussed point, contemporary meme culture bears significant conceptual resemblance to both Dada and Neo-Dada. Like Dadaists confronting global catastrophe, meme creators respond to present-day crises with irony, absurdity, and satire. Their deployment of irrational humour reflects a generational commentary on the absurdities of modern life. A defining characteristic of memes, namely appropriation, echoes the Neo-Dadaist strategy of recontextualizing mass media. Memes remix pre- existing cultural materials into new, collaborative forms, embodying a digital version of Neo-Dada’s participatory ethos. Further, memes combine Dada’s critique of capitalist rationality with Neo-Dada’s entanglement with consumer culture. They both reflect and subvert the systems they inhabit, often using humour as a vehicle for critique. Their viral circulation and ephemeral nature resist commodification while simultaneously engaging with it. Though memes diverge from conventional notions of artistic coherence or authorship, they function as participatory digital art; fluid, evolving, and decentralized. They capture the cultural zeitgeist and disseminate collective commentary, embodying the anti-aesthetic, anti-institutional spirit of Dada in a digital, postmodern age. 2. The Evolution and Propagation of Memes Memes have been a prominent feature of internet culture since its early development, emerging alongside the medium’s open-ended and participatory nature (Benveniste 2022; Brown 2022; Watercutter et al. 2018). Functioning as a “cultural mirror”, they reflect the social and cultural dynamics of their time. To better illustrate their evolution, this paper divides meme history into distinct “eras”, each defined by shifts in format, function, and cultural relevance. 2.1. The Proto-Internet Era (1991-2001) Although the World Wide Web was launched in 1991, widespread Internet adoption and growth occurred primarily during the dot-com bubble (CERN, n.d.). Early widespread meme-like phenomena, such as “Dancing Baby” (I Awesome et al. 2009; Lennlee 2020) and “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” (see Fig. 2.1) (Jamies Dubs et al. 2008) lack a replicable structure or clear messaging, in turn acting more as transient trends or in- group jokes, rather than as propagators of information. An important milestone was the 1998 launch of Something Awful, a humour-focused website whose forums fostered a sarcastic, vibrant user base. Many of these forums acted as a “primordial soup” for internet culture due to their congruence of internet- savvy users, centralised space to discuss memes, and a predisposition for an acerbic tone (Tomberry et al. 2010; Wofford 2017). While its influence would culminate in the 2000s, Something Awful exemplifies how forums, and later social media, act as communal spaces essential in meme dissemination. It can be positioned that the proto-internet era gradually ended following the dot-com bubble burst (The Editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2025), especially in year following the emergence of social websites (i.e. Myspace, Facebook, YouTube) and software foundational to internet culture. 2.2. The Image Macro Era (2002-2013) The early to mid-2000s saw the beginning of what can later be described as internet culture, with Something Awful solidifying itself as the foundation onto with meme culturewould later blossom, due to its popularity as a host for “humorous” user-generated content. Despiteof their popularity,memeswouldmostly remain an underground internet phenomenon, as larger social media platforms, like Myspace or Facebook, began to overshadow forum-based websites by specifically targeting new or casual internet users. Forums, on the other hand, would attract the far more engaged, yet insular, internet communities (Silva 2024; Watercutter et al. 2018). It can extrapolate that by lacking a varied enough pool of community members, an issue exacerbated by their lack of discoverability from mainstream internet, memes from this period are often self-referential, entrenched in “nerd culture”, and act as a shorthand signifier of their in-group status. However, by presenting these memes through semi-established templates (e.g. Image Macros), the template itself becomes both a “container” for the joke and the shorthand itself, where understanding the meme requires knowledge of both the shorthand, and the ‘in-group joke’. Further supporting this point is their need, as multimodal constructs, to communicate via shared cultural knowledge, oftenthatof pop-culture (Dancygier et al. 2017: 565; Zenner, Geeraerts 2018: 167-194). Due to the memes of this era originating from small- scale, often niche communities, the shared cultural knowledge is highly specific to that of the group’s common interests (Watercutter et al. 2018), such that the “It’s a Trap” meme (see. Figure 2.2) (Kenneth et al. 2009: n.pag) becomes unreadable to an outsider who isn’t aware of the line’s relevance withing the Star Wars fandom, less so to a user who isn’t familiar with the Star Wars franchise as a whole. This feature of meme culture would compound in the mid-to-late 2000s, as memes began to enter the boarder internet sphere, the shorthand and ‘in-group joke’ components of memes would become meme itself. Due to most users lack of prior knowledge to contextualise the in-group joke of respective meme, this era is largely characterised by a lack of variation, overuse of structural templates, and crude humour, as exemplified by early “Image Macros” (g19ol et al. 2012: n.pag), “Advice Animals” (Don Caldwell et al. 2011), and “Rage Comics” (Boutin 2012; Sav et al. 2011). YouTube played a crucial role in fostering diverse online communities and subcultures after the turn of the decade, its early popularity fuelled by the reuploads of viral videos propelled meme culture into the video format, as well as giving way for Flash animationmemes (e.g. the “Badger Badger Badger” meme, Kristen et al. 2009) and website-specific ones (e.g. “YouTube Poops”, itsleeford et al. 2009). What once were simply in-jokes shared among frequenters of small-scale forums were now acting as an introduction to the early meme culture (Komaiko 2023; Watercutter et al. 2018; Yalcinkaya 2020; Smith 2019). The mid-2000’s introduction of Reddit and 4chan further intensified meme circulation, largely through the anonymity, forum-like structure, and integrated image-hosting they offered. Reddit’s upvote and subreddit systems increased the discoverability of internet communities, while 4chan’s unmoderated environment and complete anonymity, paired with its fringe and extremist communities, influenced meme diversity and further popularized trolling culture (Broderick 2025; Knowledge at Wharton Staff 2019; Komaiko 2023; Wofford 2017). These platforms succeeded Something Awful by hosting and facilitating broader participation in meme creation through mainstream presence, while social media website like Twitter, Tumblr, and even 9GAG, further mainstreamed meme culture (Vanian 2022; Canales 2022; Dixon 2015; Watercutter et al. 2018). The decline of the ‘Image Macro Era’ was marked by the prevalence of social-media platforms in favour of forums, which would introduce new content formats and greatly alter meme culture, signalling the transition to a new paradigm. 2.3. The Ironic Era (2014-2019) As memes became ubiquitous, the overuse of image macros led to cultural fatigue. In response, "ironic memes" rose to prominence, marked by their satirical tone and deliberately crude or humourless content, often referencing/reusing older meme conventions (James Blunt et al. 2015). While serving as a temporary substitute for traditional image macros, ironic memes introduced the satirical tone now central to internet culture, catalysing a “philosophical” shift in meme creation (Komaiko 2023; Watercutter et al. 2018). By 2014, “dank” memes succeeded ironic memes, occupying a similar cultural role but defined by deliberately absurd, surreal, or derivative humour (Don Caldwell et al. 2014). Notable examples of “dank memes” include “Surreal Memes” (Chloe 2019), “Deep-fried Memes” (see Fig. 2.3) (Adam et al. 2017; Hathaway 2019), and “You Know I Had To Do It To Em” (fuck2016, 2016). Despite their sardonic tone to previous meme constructs and keen subtextual intent to distance themselves from Images Macros, they would not entirely supersede its predecessors, a seen with the presence of template-like structure in “Object Labelling” memes (Adam 2018b). As dank memes evolved, they embraced increasingly surreal themes and open-ended formats (Komaiko 247 246 / / / / Caiete de Arte și Design / nr. 13 / 2025 / / / / Publicație a Centrului de Cercetare și Creație în Artele Decorative și Design / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /