What does Dada mean? The answer lies in the distinction between the perceptible and the designation and the failure to mediate discursively between the two. With the inception of Dada-Zurich – at the intersection between literary and art studies, comparative studies, image-text theory and philosophy – the relationship between modernity and avant-garde as well as between avant-garde and Dadaism was redefined. This redefinition was a consequence of the scandalous aesthetic theoretical insights of Dada Zurich, which concretized in practical and poetic form an aesthetic theory that in itself is aesthetic, and developed an aesthetic-theoretical understanding in which aisthesis takes up a central position. Dada uses the avant-garde as material. The aesthetic theoretical potential of Dada Zurich in turn had an impact not only on the artefacts that were actually used and aesthetically reflected by Dada, but on all modern – including avant-garde – artefacts.