Dadara or Daniel Rozenberg is a Dutch artist known for his flyers, paintings, album covers, statues and performance artwork. After completing his education,   Dadara started designing flyers, live-paintings and record covers for the then upcoming international electronic house music scene.

For more than a decade now, he is focused on both large interactive art projects and making paintings. The common thread throughout most of these works is that they provide a commentary on contemporary society. Topics include on one hand governmental control, lack of transparency, privacy issues, and regulations, and on the other hand value creation, money, and dreams.

In 2010, he started a very intriguing and thoughtful project called 'Exchanghibition Bank'. This projects made headlines on various blogs and caught the attention of many people over the web. The project links to a dedicated blog about the value of art and money. Do check out the Exchanghibition Bank at Burning Man. I am sure you'll love it.

We contacted Dadara for a small interview with us for which he managed to spare some time. Read it below:


Dadara, please introduce yourself to E-junkies.
I started as a cartoonist drawing for the Italian comic magazine Linus when I was seventeen. Then in the beginning of the nineties I painted hundreds of flyers and recorded covers for the upcoming house- and technoscene, which led German style mag Wiener to name me 'The Prophet Of The New Rave Generation'. LOL. I was inspired by the energy of the new movement but felt for myself the need to make work which was more meaningful and could act as a kind of surreal mirror for our society.

I started concentrating on paintings and eventually took my reflections on society out of the two-dimensional environment of the canvas into the public domain.


Tell us about a few of your projects.

My first big public sculpture was the 9 meters high Greyman Statue of No Liberty. I also started destroying my work, so the process itself would become equally important to the material outcome. This was also a way to keep the energy of the spur of the moment when things are happening and pure. By destroying the work afterwards it becomes mythical or an urban legend and never gets the chance to lose that energy and becoming a commercial commodity.









































The first work I destroyed was the Fools Ark, a big wooden three master, which I built in the Netherlands, then shipped to the States, and burnt in the Nevada desert. I thought I would find the moment of the burn fantastic and horrible at the same time. After all it would be a year of hard work, blood, sweat, tears, paint and money going up in flames. But I started grinning with the first flames and didn't stop laughing for a few years, though it ruined my life financially for a few years as well.



















































My last big project was 'Checkpoint Dreamyourtopia' - a border control checkpoint to enter your own Dreams. People would enter through a big pink Brainskull and get interrogated by the Department of Dreamland Security. It could be experienced in Nevada, in Texas, the Netherlands and eventually was rebuilt in an old swimming pool in Berlin, where we destroyed it by tearing down the walls between Dreams and Reality with chainsaws and sledgehammers, exactly twenty years after the Berlin Wall came down. But now I feel that destroying my work has also become something that I am expected to do, as in 'What will he do next: run it down with a bulldozer?", so decided that my new project will not be destroyed. At least that's what I think now haha.

























What inspires the artist within you?

Life. Every bit and piece of it. The nice parts and the not so nice ones. I always have a sketchbook with me, so jot down ideas and sketches all the time. Sometimes in a precise and conscious way, sometimes subconsciously as a kind of doodling around.


Tell us about your project 'Exchanghibition Bank'. What is it all about?

I started a new bank - the Exchanghibition Bank - in times when governments spend billions on preventing banks from falling, but those same governments are cutting back drastically on the Arts. A project which raises questions about the value(s) of Art and Money. The bank already has popped up at various spots in Amsterdam. In cultural venues, such as Paradiso and the Nuit Blanche festival, but we also did some guerrilla banking in the main hall of Amsterdam Central Station, where we provided visitors with the opportunity to exchange their euros for our banknotes of Zero or One Million. Recently we introduced our new banknote - the Infinite one - and presented the very first banknote to Larry Harvey, founder of Burning Man, based on a gift-economy, where money doesn't exist. And we did that in the Magna Plaza shopping center, which seems rather based on shop-till-you-drop!

And now we are going to bring banking and money to Burning Man........
























How did this creative idea strike to you?

A week after the destruction of Dreamyourtopia in Berlin I flew to Texas for the installation of my bomb bird on the rooftop of Centraltrak, the artist residency in which I stayed the year before, and after that had the first free time in ages. My first free day found me drinking coffee somewhere and suddenly this thought struck me - 'I should build a swimming pool filled with money. You can go in, but only in your swimwear and the pool is protected by lots of security guards, so you can't take any of the bills. But if you want one of these banknotes there will be a bank where you can buy them.' The proverbial inspirational lightning bolt! The moment it happened I knew this few seconds of inspiration would cost me a few years of my life. It's true 1% inspiration, 99% transpiration. Oh yes, it seems I forgot above, but eventually the Exchanghibition Bank will lead to the Pool of Plenty, a swimming pool filled with those banknotes. And this will lead to a virtual value of the artwork of many millions. Does that mean it's a good work of art?


Which project by you closest to your heart? And why?

At the moment I am totally, absolutely, completely obsessed by the Exchanghibition Bank project, so I would have to answer that one. But that's always the case - the project I am working on at the moment is the one which is dearest to me, it's the only way to make it work. I never thought that I'd ever get obsessed by money, but it is happening with this project. haha




















Your paintings are beautiful! What tools do you use to create them? Would you like to describe your creative work process?


The paintings of the Inevitable Beyond series are done in an automatic manner. Starting point would be a drawing from my sketch book and from there I would just continue in a subconscious way; letting the paint and colors guide me. Sometimes after a week working on a painting, I would feel that I ruined it, but then somehow I always managed to make the right decisions and they would come out great after I thought they were lost forever. The process of painting was very interesting. The struggle and sometimes I would change a color twenty times before it would feel right.


Let's have a rapid fire:


Music you prefer to listen while working?


John Frusciante, Apparat, The Cure, Four Tet, UNKLE, Joy Division

Actually music might be the one tool I can't do without now that I think of it.

These names are just the tip of the iceberg of the music which is continuously playing in my studio.


Tea or coffee?

coffee. espresso


Your greatest strength?

I never give up to dream.


One artist you admire the most?

At the moment the K-Foundation, formerly the KLF, because of their burning of a million British pounds. A project which has always inspired me and probably has made me lose a lot of money as well, because of the destruction of my projects. But I also think Andy Warhol was very visionary with his 'everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes', roughly twenty years before Mark Zuckerberg was even born and then there's Olafur Eliasson and zillions others, but okay let's stick with the K-Foundation for now.


Share one best compliment you've ever received for your work.

Several people have mailed/told me that my work has changed their life totally, somebody even sent me a six page essay how it influenced their life, but I also received an email after Dreamyourtopia which said "i truly hope your sharty poop shoot of a dream moops up the playa next year so i can take a dump on it." .......


Do you have any dream project of yours? 


As I mentioned before my dream for now is to become the Scrooge McDuck of the art world so I can swim in Money...........


What would you like to advise a budding artist?

Go for it! Follow your instinct and learn to become a good listener to your instinct!


And a final word for our readers?

Since our Millions are not (yet) accepted by shipping companies, please support our fundraising page on Indiegogo to get the bank to Burning Man.

For the Dreamyourtopia project I designed a Dreamdollar, which said; "Money alone won't make Dreams come true. But it sure helps"!
















Some more projects by Dadara:

Love, Peace and Terror:





























Paintings:








































Dadara, thanks for this wonderful interview. You're a great artist and it was a pleasure knowing about your artistic journey that has been of adventures.

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