There are no words with innocent or neutral
meanings. In those societies that are characterized by class competition
and hierarchical distribution of power relations, where every action, every
gesture, every utterance has to confront the phantasmagoria of commodity
and the controlling technologies of the state, words are battlefields of
a social war. To give univocal significations is a warfare practice of an
enemy competent enough to organize, on the basis of a radical dissociation,
the space of culture and the time of everyday life.
The caste of intellectuals undertakes the role to construct common sense
confirming the dominant beliefs as truths taken for granted, to idealize
what now exists as an "objective reality", through specialized power-knowledge
practices, and thus to demarcate a sphere apparently detached from the social
experience, a whole world of dispensable intellectual goods ready to be consumed,
eternal values and universal notions that only the connoisseur, the talented,
the expert one is able to launch as a new Prometheus. All the other who don't
have access to this detached world, who don't share the current artistic
vagaries or don't possess the current techniques of knowledge-constructing,
content themselves with playing the role of the "audience", of these who
just consume the products of culture.
However, the reality of this "audience", the time of their everyday life,
is formed within an experience of struggles, contradictions, conflicts, and
constraints. Knowledge, aesthetic forms, all kinds of "truths" are molded
within the same social experience too. The only reason why they are detached
from the battlefield of this day-after-day social war is that only by means
of such specialized neutral truths can the "audience" forget whatever actually
experiences, can be persuaded at last that this "life is beautiful", that
it's worth enduring, just because someone else has already discovered, instead
of them, its definite, deepest meaning. To forget or to endure does not only
mean that the past battles have been lost, but, mostly, that the fate of
the forthcoming battles has already been decided and that there is no point
in taking part in them.
"Audience" is invented in order to listen to the communiqués of a
war supposed everytime to be definitely over. Dictionaries, educational textbooks,
encyclopedias, museum catalogues are, mainly, loci where one of the opponents,
the winner so far, defends publicly his conquests, reckons on his irrevocable
prevalence, and elicits acquiescence for his next expedition. Dead signs,
words whose signification appears to be neutral and innocent, perpetuate
a world under conquest and a life in chains. They present as something self-evident
or normal the class exploitation, the hierarchical structure of power relations,
the political oppression, and the annihilation of subjectivity in a conscience
addicted to submit itself to the prohibitions of dominant ethics, to satisfy
the aesthetic standards of cultural industry, and adapt itself to the requirements
of a rationalism that has room only for everything exchangeable or efficient.
Since the history of words is a history of a war in suspense, the meaning
of the word "surrealism" is at stake in the wind of the street. Some times
it turns out to be a trophy in the enemy's hands, other times it ends up
being a banner at the memorial ceremonies organized by "friends", but there
are also cases when it emerges once more as a martial spell for those who
are willing to continue the adventure of the revolutionary destruction of
dominant values, changing the world, changing life, realizing total freedom.
In the milieu of art critics, in the "specialists" of culture, surrealism
refers to a movement of literary writers, painters, and cinematographers,
that once appeared in Paris and soon was brought to an end though with a
lot of fuss - leaving behind as a heritage a style of painting, a technique
of automatism and literary experimentation, in other words, some means of
expression that are nothing but traces of a long ago dead avant-garde, exhibits
in the armory of modern art.
In advertising and mass media, generally in the industry of the spectacle,
surrealism is synonymous to anything odd, weird or extravagant, to an incoherently
provocative joke, to an erratic happening, to a tumultuous spectacle. Some
of the adapted to the system former surrealists, who were nominated as "great
and eminent artists", like Avida Dollars (registered under the name of Salvador
Dali), decisively contributed to this signification, proving themselves to
be a good investment for their bosses. This enthusiastic adaptation to the
totally commodificated culture or to the idealized commodity is not, of course,
a prerogative of ex surrealists; Andy Warhol was just an advertiser. However,
surrealism, in order to refer to an extravaganza that is treated with tolerance
and condescension, to a lifestyle of the irrational, has first to be denuded
of its revolutionary essence. Only as something innocuous it can be easily
assimilated to the codes and the techniques of the spectacle, of this praising
monologue that the world of commodities reserves for itself.
There is, also, a third version of the definition of surrealism, one more
unique characteristic of sun-bathed greece, of the "most beautiful country
in the world" that ancient greeks illuminate from their throne high in the
sky by their spirit, ascribing to it an irresistible luster, thanks to their
accomplishments, and other blah-blah crap like that. In a country where nationalist
obsession is the standard, surrealism, as an artistic style and as spectacular
irrationality, becomes "iperrealismos", a hardly innocent greek translation
of the word, indicating a technique appropriate for someone to write popular
poems and produce paintings of great value, with a bit of greek sea and marbles
glancing in the sunlight. In "iperrealistic" styling the national element
is predominant, as if surrealism was discovered once again from the very
beginning, having on the one hand the "dogmatic" surrealists all over the
world, who despise every national reference, and on the other hand the "enlightened"
greek "iperrealists", the heirs to the history of the supposed supremacy
of ancient greek spirit. Being an "iperrealist" one can be registered in
the history of "greek civilization" (of this abominable ideological construction),
has the opportunity to become "ambassador" of "hellenism", nobelist-exportable
product, or at least can settle down in the milieu of art-loving philistines
as an equal associate; in any case, one can thus be recognized as a "man
of letters and arts" (under the total, undoubtedly, control of the greek
state). Nicolas Calas and Adonis Kyrou, the only greeks who joined substantially
the surrealist
movement (even though they developed their activity mostly away from greece),
and Andreas Empeirikos, who granted us, through his work, some rare and precious
moments of loving revolutionarity, though he never confronted the domestic
literary milieu, still remain the exceptions that prove the rule.
But what is the meaning of surrealism in the wind of the street, and, what's
more, from the standpoint of barricades? Notwithstanding the several, from
time to time, aspiring death-heralds, surrealism, as a global movement for
the revolutionarization of conscience, passed through the Clashing Rocks
of time. Surrealist groups preserved their independence, both from the dominant
institutions, through which the ideological production percolates, and the
political bureaucracies that imposed a monopoly of knowledge on the historical
revolutionary movements. Collective surrealist activity was not turned into
an artistic one, nor even degraded itself to an apologetic. This independence
of surrealism, the preservation of its revolutionary breath, was obtained
through a series of crisis, internal conflicts, and intransigent struggles
against every attempt of assimilation.
The fate of surrealist movement has been connected with the fate of historical
endeavours for emancipation, and in this regard surrealism has not remained
unharmed after the defeats of the historical revolutions, and the victories
that the enemies of freedom have won. Nevertheless, the incessant recurrence
of this negation of the existent world, the slow but steady reappearance
of this devil-in-love in history, is the incontestable proof of the truth
that
the drifting cadaver ain't dead, and the old scores are yet to be settled.
As long as the quest for total freedom retains its actuality, as long as
their civilization controls the desire, prescribes the width of possible
experiences, and converts the world into an enormous prison of exchangeable
objects, surrealism will always return, revealing to us the urgent need for
our realization as subjectivities.
Hence, surrealism is, above all, a polemic option, an option of uprising
and destruction of bourgeois civilization values. It vibrates with hatred
and abhorrence for this compartmentalized world. With its proper means, opening
up its own pathways to freedom, it fosters focuses of subversion, contributes
to the preparation of revolution, and is there when its outbreak comes. Within
the abyss of oppression, it joins the voice of every oppressed woman and
man. Even though it cannot be subjected to any political project, and it
doesn't act directly on the central political scene either, it retains an
unfading political dimension. On this ground, one can understand the elective
affinity of surrealism with Dadaist furor and Situationists' criticism on
the society of the spectacle. Insofar as it premises the destruction of art,
the object's stripping of their function as commodities, and the subversion
of this society altogether, surrealism cannot do anything but embody Dada
as a permanent and beneficial parasite inside its bowels, and situationist
critique as a permanent nuance on the landscapes it explores.
Yet, beyond contestation and critique, surrealist movement aims at the replacement
of dominant values by new ones. Against the smashing of freedom into the
networks of commodity circulation, it lays claim to the weeding out of the
pathways of desire, to the convergence of love and revolution, pointing to
the mythical kingdom of poetry, through the magical ripples of imagination.
That is to say, nothing less than total freedom.
It concerns the exploration of new fields, beyond the borders of the rational
world, with the unconscious as vehicle, so that the possibilities of overwhelming
the alienation can be revealed. In this adventure it doesn't seek explanations
and meanings, but the revelation itself, an entrancing experience, anything
but religious, an intoxicating route of transmutation through concepts and
symbols, which are drafted from prosaic reality. Questioning the given limits
of language, thought, creativity, we try to unlock our desires, to recall
our forgotten selves or to meet an entirely new self untraceable till now.
The starting point is the awareness that our lives are alienated, that we
internalize oppression with such receptivity, that we experience everyday
a schism between what we are forced to be and what we have repressed or haven't
found yet.
The images and the texts that surrealists create, and which often come to
light through collective games, are simply means that activate our hidden
self, they constitute a way for the limits between the real and the oneiric
to be crushed, and for us to indulge consciously to the labyrinths of desire.
Chance can lead us outside the borders of the jail named objective world,
into a sur-real dimension, where objects get unshackled from their current
uses and functions, reserving surprises and thrills, becoming fields for
the realization of a subject that dreams, falls in love, revolts, acts.
Surrealistic activity, according to this meaning, doesn't produce works of
art, but intends to reconfigure the relationship between humans and the objects
of the world, and mainly the relationship of humans among themselves, towards
a direction that dispenses with any sort of moral, aesthetic or rational
preconceptions. So, the images and the texts that result from surrealist
activity are not artistic objects that only the "experts" have the legitimate
right to produce. On the contrary, surrealism lays claims to the realization
of art by everybody, and not only by inspired artists who address themselves
to passive spectators, abolishing in practice concepts like talent, aesthetic
value, artist and audience. On the other hand, it is also clear that surrealist
creations can't be subjected to evaluation by any art critic; neither can
they be subjects of a research by enlightened academics. It is about events
to which anyone can contribute, which anyone can criticize, and for which
anyone can be criticized, provided that the
compass points constantly to the horizon of emancipation as a concrete viable experience.
In this daily warfare, nobody rests in peace, neither is going to. Our weapons
for the world transformation are childishness, love, poetry as a practice
which is diffused in our whole life (not only its literary expression) and
above all: subjectivity which bets its existence on the barricades, a subjectivity,
therefore, which becomes the key to the dynamic, persistently reconfigurable
conception of the world. The objective is what the dominant ideology offers
as
such, which certainly changes from time to time according to the existing power relationships.
But all these would be pointless and couldn't be realized if each one of
us claimed them just for himself or herself without perceiving the necessity
of collective action. Through collectivity we attempt to diffuse the revolutionary
possibilities of poetry into our everyday lives and, furthermore, to make
them widely available, without letting them be circumscribed by the narrow
limits of a group. It is certain that crisis and inertia exist inside all
of us; however, as experience has taught us, there are much more possibilities
to transform crisis and inertia via collectivity into something creative
that can seduce you.
Under this perspective, four years ago we made the decision of forming a
surrealist group in Ioannina and getting linked with the international surrealist
movement, which at this moment counts groups in Paris, Prague, Stockholm,
Buenos Aires, Chicago, Madrid, London, Leeds, Sao Paolo, since this movement
represents as clear as possible our above objectives.
In the nights when the planets' orbit deviate, it will definitely have screamings
to define the ordinary, not as something indifferent, but as something that
we neither love, nor hate, and yet we want it to be a song, that flies from
roof to roof and raises the dead from their graves.
A Short Historical Note of the Surrealist Group in Ioannina
The Surrealist Group of Ioannina was founded in January of 2000. The occasion
was a common choice of rupture with an atmosphere of costless and consuming
"alternativity" that flourishes in the student milieu. The cause, however,
was the realization from our part that in this world, which is overwhelmed
by commodities, our desire is being crushed on a daily basis. Despair, frustration
and alienation, the axes on which our reality every day reproduces itself,
cannot be assuaged by any form of art, aesthetics, or literature, all the
more when it is known, since a century or so, namely, from the time that
Dadaists gathered at Cabaret Voltaire, that art, aesthetics, and literature
are not but idealizations of this same world of oppression, phantasmagorias
of cultural industry. The only worthwhile thing, then, for us was the collective
seeking of desire; its expression, its recording, its depicting. International
surrealist movement opens up a ground of such collective seeking, and this
is the reason why it didn't take us long to join it.
On the beginning, we consciously chose to emphasize on the internal functioning
of the group and to consolidate a feeling of mutual intimacy and complicity,
since we intended to avoid the transient character of a student "fellowship"
or of a literary spurious friendship. At the same time, we experimented,
inventing surrealist games and playing games of other surrealist groups.
Samples of one of the first games that we invented were published translated
into English in the bulletin "Manticore" of the surrealist group of Leeds.
But the first outing happened when in December of 2002 we edited and published
a game, which we named "Allegories of Objective Past Perfect", together with
four short texts. At the end of 2003 we made an intervention handing out
a declaration against a nationalist "art" exhibition, which was hosted in
one of Ioannina's cafés. After that, what followed was the renewal
of the group, the development of relations with friends who are interested
in surrealism, the writing of our manifesto, after thorough discussions,
and the decision to publish a bulletin named "Penetralia".