Tuesday, June 21, 2022

"The most simple surrealist act" seen from 2022

In his "Second Manifeste du Surréalisme" (1929), André Breton writes that surrealism "n'attend encore rien que de la violence". This appeal to violence could be taken abstractly, but a more concrete image follows: "L’acte surréaliste le plus simple consiste, revolvers aux poings, à descendre dans la rue et à tirer au hasard, tant qu’on peut, dans la foule." While it might be possible to read even this image as a metaphor, it's quite hard to do so today, especially in the United States, when Breton's "most simple surrealist act" of shooting a gun into a crowd has not only become a regular event but even comes with manifestoes of its own. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 21 June 2022)

 


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