Drama360/The Avant-Garde Surrealism ***

INITIAL RESPONSE: BARNABY BENNETT

1.	Goldberg, Roselee. “Surrealist Performance: ‘The Construction of Ruins’.” Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated, 1979. [PAGES: 49-62]

2.	Un Chien Andalou. 1929. Film. Luis Bunuel.

Goldberg’s article provides a thorough overview and history of the Dada and Surrealist movements of the early 20th Century, whose works originated primarily from Paris. Both of these related performance movements sought to express creativity in new and subversive ways – spectacles that embraced subconscious thought, the fragmented strange world of dreams and destruction. The major figures in this movement included Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, Erik Satie, Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Eluard, Francis Picabia and a number of others who both worked with each other and fought with one another over the course of the 1920’s and throughout the next decade, depending on what was en vogue and in favor at the time. Surrealism can be considered a fragmentation of what Dadaism was working towards, as members of previous Dada performances grew disenchanted with the movement and began to move in a different direction – surrealism. Surrealism began officially in 1924 with the publication of Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto. Surrealist performances favored strange juxtaposition and of viscerally stimulating/shocking sights and sounds. This movement came to an end in 1938 with the International Exhibition of Surrealism at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, not formally of course, but rather because the Second World War prevented happenings on a similar scale to take place for the time being. However, the influence of Surrealism carried over and continued to be influential in future art and performance movements that placed an emphasis of spontaneity and subconscious means of creation.

If you don't have the article, it can be downloaded in PDF format at: http://www.sendspace.com/file/fs5hcu

response:

Surrealism used many ideologies and techniques of Dadaism, maybe because of the contribution of Tzara? It was said surrealism was also heavily influence by Floyd's studies of human subconsciousness. Just like the short clip Un Chien Andalou, it was a totally unconscious and illogical play (created based on dreams), but at the same time on the other hand, the use of unconsciousness(or subconsciousness) to create an art itself is actually recreating the very conscious self without any bandages and limitations of the man made rules. I totally agree that surrealism is a branch of Dadaism, at the same time surrealism had pushed the randomness and improvisation of Dadaism to a new level. Surrealism developed an unique technique to push the ideologies of Dadaism even further, that is again, through the use of unconsciousness to unlock the real consciousness. Through such technique, the creativity of artist is no more restrained, many seemingly absurd but yet astonishing arts were created. I always dream about one scene (maybe over hundreds of times already): there is a huge white bath tub like basin, millions and millions of black little objects are just trying so hard to climb out the white object, but the surface is so slippery, many of the "black beings" fell right back to the button of the white space, then they start all over again, and non has ever escaped the white in my dreams. It feels like I am one of those "black beings", but same time it feels like I am just observing. However every time I dreamed about this, it always ended up with me woke up and tears washed my eyes. Subconsciousness is an amazing thing, even my dream never made any sense, but it always moves me and inspires me somehow. Maybe this dream of mine is just like an unconscious surrealism performance creation in my own brain, it makes no logical sense, but it makes me feel so real and so sincere.

Response: Huibing Wu

Breton, studied medicine and psychiatry, is a poet and also the founder of surrealism. Sigmund Freud's work of psychoanalysis, dream analysis are the important parts of developing surrealism. Psychoanalysts often use the 'free association' method to elicit patients unconscious thoughts. Therefore, in my point of view, Freud's 'free association' was very much like Breton's automatic writing, which is process or production of writing material that does not come from the conscious thought of the writer. Besides, automatic drawing also developed by surrealists. In automatic drawing, the hand is allowed to move randomly across the paper. The purpose of both automatic writing and automatic drawing is to express the subconscious mind.

The influences on surrealism derived from the writings and thought of Sigmund Freud. Freud has a particular influence on Andre Breton, one of the leading theorists of the movement, and Salvador Dali, perhaps its best-known practitioner.

Response: Yibin Wang

In my opinion, the main character of surrealism is it derives from hallucination and dreamland. Surrealists commit to find people’s unconscious and advocate to abandon logical experience. Therefore, their art performances are those which are really beyond description. For example, a man uses a razor to cut his wife’s eyeballs in that movie ‘Un Chien Andalou’. This is really unbelievable and I think it cannot happen in real life. However, surrealists just use this technique to connect people’s visional mind with realism. And it shocks people’s sight a lot. Through comparing these two different forms, people can understand what surrealists want to tell.

Response: Sijin Chen

Before I read this article, my understanding of Dadaism and surrealism was just creations that totally make no sense and break traditional art and performances. I thought that the performance that has absolute no meanings and totally weird means that they are Dadaism and surrealism creation. However, after I read this article which talks about the history of Dadaism and surrealism, my knowledge about that concept have developed a lot. I found that the reason for Dadaism to exist is when WWII happened people need hope and positive influences from art. The Anti-design and Anti-art that creates new era and Surrealism carried on after Dadaism. I notice that a successful Dadaism and Surrealism work should have the ability to influence people by implication rather than just non-sense.

When I watch the video about Surrealism, I can not guess what happen next. It leads audience to think about the meaning of the performance. The next happening thing may shock to audience. However, audience like these surrealism style performance. Surrealism is come from realism. People know it is not realism because they know what realism is. Artists may exaggerate or add some abnormal things after a real thing. Audience does not care about the things is right or wrong. They care about the performance is wonderful and attractive. Surrealism prefer audience who like to change their life and mind. response: Jiachen Wu

I personally like surrealism because its idea was related with human consciousness. To use human consciousness to create an art, and itself was created without any man made rules and limitation. Some people may say surrealism used a lot of ideologies and techniques from Dadaism so they are really similar. I don’t really agree with that. Let us look back to the development of human history, anything which human invented or was mostly based on previous people’s ideas and techniques. We like to absorb all sorts of old ideas or invention, and combine them together and create a new idea and invention.

INITIAL RESPONSE: JEREMY VERKLEY

3.	Un Chien Andalou. 1929. Film. Luis Bunuel.

4.	Artaud, Antonin. "The Theatre of Cruelty (First Manifesto)." Trans. Mary Caroline Richards. The Theater and Its Double. New York: Grove Press, 1958. [Pages 89-100].

Un Chien Andalou is a short surrealist film running about 17 minutes in length. Starts off with a man sharpening his razor, and then in conjunction with the a cloud crossing the moon he slices a lady's (Wife's?)Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0

ye with the razor. the next scene is a young man dressed as a nun with a box around his neck riding a bicycle. He falls and the same lady whose eye was slit (now damage free) rushes to his corpse. She aranges his clothes on a bed and he appears beside her looking at his hand. There is a hole in it with ants crawling out of it. The two analyze this for a while and it cuts to an androgynous looking investigator poking a severed hand on the street while police officers keep an angry crowd at bay. Eventually the hand is put into the box the nun guy had around his neck. Then the lady and ant hand man watch in horror as the inspector is deserted and sub-sequentially run over by a car. Ant hand man then grabs the lady's chest, she runs away and resists for a while but eventually give in while he imagines her nude breasts and buttocks she runs away and he pursues eventually cornering her. she grabs a nearby tennis racket for defense. the man gets and idea and grabs two robes and begins pulling them. Attached to the robes are two stone(?) tablets tablets two baby grand piano's with dead donkeys in them as well as to live and thoroughly startled priests. The wife escapes. The man now dressed again as a nun awakes to a doorbell that has been substituted by a martini shaker in two hands the lady goes to answer the door and a another man appears and very angry berates the nun. eventually making him pose near a wall. He then give the nun two books which turn into pistol and the nun shoots him. He falls out the door into a field and grasps the back of a nude woman who promptly fades away. The lady comes back and the nun man erases his mouth and replaces it with her armpit hair, she get upset with this and leaves while yelling at him. The lady then meets up with the now living man who was shot earlier and they walk the beach finding the discarded nuns clothes and walk off happily into the distance. The film cuts to the final shot where it shows them buried in the sand up to their chests.

Artuad talks about the fundamentals for a new form of theatre starting with technique saying that the language needs to be reworked in theatre so that it has the importance it does in dreams. That everything must the related to symbolism, metaphor and gesture. That the movements must be from all disciplines and yet none at all. Also there is a need for the theatre and dreams to have profound meaning in them that is not describable with only words. No themes is considered to be out of the scope of this theatre. The audience and performers are no longer separated and there is no set only objects that are used. The traditional theatre space is discarded and a new open space is to be used. Musical instrument are meant to be present and used at the objects are to create sound not music. Light must also be treated the way language is treated while also gaining the properties of an object to be used symbolically, and give emotional context. Costumes must be unaffected by modern dress and be ritualistic in nature. There should be use of masks and accessories. The worked must have a immediacy to it. There will be no written works directly use, but one may interpret them. The actors have no personal initiative in the work and must work as a group. It will need to be interpreted like a code. The cinema is inferior to the stage work. Cruelty is at the root of every spectacle. The theatre should be public.

Respond to 3.Un Chien Andalou. 1929. Film. Luis Bunuel :    Ping Yu

There are lots of things that I did not get from this film. Why did the man use a razor to cut the woman’s eye? What are the similarity between the moon and her eye ball? There are ants on the man’s hand in the movies. Do the ants represent the crowd? What are the relationship between the man and the woman? Are they lovers because the woman tried to collect what the man wore and she looked so worried about the man when she did artificial respiration to the man? Do they hate each other or why the man tried to hurt the woman again and again? Finally, there was no dog in the film, so why the film was called Un Chien Andalou? It was good, but just confused me.

Response: Zoe Wang

The man who was riding a bike was a lover of the woman. The man who cut her eye was her husband. At the beginning, a man cut her wife’s eye is an underlay of the story (this part was shocking and scared me), then later the wife fell in love with a bicycle boy. However, the couple came back together which they meet at the beach. That is my understanding after I watched the film three times. I think we cannot use logical interpretation to explain the title of the film, the moon, the ants and pulling of the piano. Sometimes, art is illogical.

The film was obscenely weird with numerous 'cruel' events taking place, from eye ball slitting, severed hands, guns, armpit hair etc. The article however wasn't blunt at all in describing this exact kind of performance. There wasn't much discussion of violence or odd cruel acts either but rather more broad comments that if interpreted a certain way would result in something like the film. This makes one think that the theatre of cruelty can be more than one stereotype of just 'cruel things' but it can be anything related somehow to symbolism, metaphor and gesture etc. This film was just one particular interpretation of the 'theatre of cruelty' rules.

Response to 4: Nathan Hunt

In attempting to reconsturct meaning in the theatre I am left curious if all the means taken are simply means that will replace one status quo for another. I feel as if Artuad's attempt to break away from the contraints of the old format of theatre may be redundant. His goal, if I am correct, is to create more signifigant meaning in the audience by allowing them to find their own significance in the manipulation of not previously used elements. This would mean that those that had experienced classic theatre would no longer be framed by the mindset that comes about from experiencing that archaic rule set over and over again (for example: The lights dim equates to the show starting rule). I can understand how individuals are locked into a mindset from their previous experiences of theatre but don't agree with it being necessary to 'liberate' them through different use of mediums to acquire more significant meaning. Why is it that the significane and connection that one finds when he has been framed (IE put into a role) be less of the significance of one whom discovered that role himself? This is a question I am not yet ready to answer.

Response: Brittany Kozloski

I believe that one of Artaud's main objectives was to not only change the way theater is portrayed but to uncover a sense of truth and honesty both audience and performers hide. Through his method of cruelty, Artaud creates psychological conflicts which causes awareness among the audience of the cruelty and violence found in life. Futhermore, Artuad strips the necessity of a script, removing language and therefore creating an experience to which the audience is required to rely on their other senses. If Antonin Artaud succeeds, the audience leaves with an unforgettable experience that has shocked them into awareness of their previous lives of repression and causes an uproar for the demand of their liberty.

Response to 3.Un Chien Andalou. 1929. Film. Luis Bunuel: Meng Shi

Actually, this film is really mystificatory and uncomfortabl for people because there are some sanguinary scene.When I watched this film at the first time, I didn't know what point and means they want to express.Then, I watched the second time,the third time, and I got farther understanding.In my opinion, this performance is talking about surrealism,and the whole film is just like as a dream.There is an arrestive beginning of the film that it is very shocked and raise the curtain.In addition,woman's husband look at the moon,and then cut the woman's eyeball.I think he was trying to open the eyeball as a moon to open people's mind.Even though we can not understand why they do those to express their emotion, but we should value them because they attained another field.

Response: Siliang Li

To me, surrealism is like living in the dream. Everything in dream is real but altered. Surrealist use the real images or matters but make them look unreal. For instances, surrealist artist uses the specific images: clocks, trees, faces - but in unrealistic surroundings - the paper or plastic buidings. Unexpected settings for regular items like apples with hats on them. Disturbing images - eyeballs on a plate. All like images that all of us have had in dreams, unexpected, disjointed from reality and yet recognizable.

Response:

There are so many of the initial manifestations of Dada and Surrealism were public gatherings, demonstrations, and other similar activities, the journals, through their announcements and coverage of these events, provide invaluable documentation of the evolution of Dada and Surrealism. Their passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture captures the climate, and Surrealist revolts and contributes greatly to our understanding of the often enigmatic imagery of these movements.With the Dadaists spreading throughout Europe, the impact of the movement had only just begun.Also,It knows as Anthologies Dada. With travel possible again at the end of the war, many of the Zurich group returned to their respective countries and Dada activities in Zurich came to an end

Response: Xiaochao Ma

Be honest, I was just like Meng Shi, I did not get the point from the movie. I even told my self that I am not an art person. Before I watched this movie, I knew nothing about surrealism. I thought it was kind of like something not belongs to this society. I thought this movie did not make any sense when I first watched it. Actually, I was kink of scared the part which the man was cutting the woman’s eyeball. However, I thought this part must represent something, or that man was hoping other people could understand what he was doing.

Response: Chao Jiang

Surrealism style performances are what I love best because it repeat in my mind after I watched the performance. Author’s intention sometimes is not obvious, maybe she/he want it to be blurred. Once audience figures out the author’s intention, especially for a hard to understand one, they will be very happy. In addition, there are some surrealism performances have no meaning, but they create an emotion, a feeling that cannot be described which I think is even better. The feeling might be encouraging, or it might bring hope. During war, this is what can influence people besides guns and cannons. The reason for performances art to exist is to influence instead of just entertainment.

Response:Jingyi Chen

Surrealism is a cultural movement which was developed out of the Dada, thus, we could find the mark of Dada. But the thing is surrealism is more easily understanding than Dada. Surrealism looks more like a dream of every people could have in sleep. Products of surrealism are more like element of surprise and nonexistent things. But I think we could find the moral that artist wants to be showed from their works of arts. The film of Un Chien Andalou is a typical type of surrealism, film producer use their own understanding of surrealism to show in their artwork.