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SURREALISM<ENTER> COMMAND NOT FOUND

Lucas Losada Gomendio. 06088403 - U30025

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The beauty will be convulsive or will be not at all (Andr Breton)1 The term surrealism, or to consider something surreal, has become a common word in our everyday life to describe images or tenets that doesnt are not recognizable to one or more of our logics standards. We have deviated, vulgarized, the word from its original intention. It has been turned around. Shockingly we have come back to the idea of surrealism being just a series of semi-rational provocative methods or techniques, a mosaic of revelations to alter the prevailing state of things of that lacking practical use. For the purpose of clarifying I will divide the essay into individual topics. Rationalized world Architecture has been used to lure attention from its more archaic and primal forms, to captive and represent a certain idea. Through the analysis of architecture we find that its role generally is to project on the ground the image of social institutions, translating the economic or political structure of society into building or group of buildings and so that its adaptation responds to the external events society, it would serve the powers in place and try to shield and protect its framework thought a retinal visualization of it2. Even across the greatest and most rebellious times in history, architecture has helped the prevalent views for the existing socioeconomic power, adapting the space. Since its beginning in that of the vernacular and survival duty, architecture has been and continuous to be- affected from outside its own disciplinary practice3. As with many other things, only the privileged ones that can look further into their generations perspective would achieve a better understanding of the future. Modernist attempts Modernism and rationalism was the dominating main stream in the socioeconomic framework for most of the past century and has survived deeply rooted into our days. The Sicle des Lumieres and the prevalence of reason upon all things as well as its affinities with the bourgeoisies values that preceded the industrial revolution submerged the spark of genuine intentions initiated with Futurism and the avant-garde moment in the latent state it is found today. Nevertheless some of the ideas persisted and scratched modern-

Cover FIG.GIOGIO DE CHIRICO Montparnasse

FIG.1. MAX ERNST 3 2

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ism in an almost invisible way. All of them were mere attempts to redeem their own self-reproaches from exterminating the delights of spatial expressions. Well known examples for these attempts are the evocative solarium Le Corbusier designed for his friend Carlos Beistegui in Paris (1930-1) could relates to Corbus approaches of objects a reaction poetique or the semi-metaphysical perspective that can be found in Oscar Niemeyers work in Brasilia, almost resembling Chiricos vision of the desolated space4. A celebration of everydays metaphysical phenomena, only that there is no one there. Rationality gives surrealism the background to liberate the mind from the repressive societal aspects. Surrealism intentions Andre Breton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 to formulate the purposes of the movement, but surrealism appeared along with Dadaism and not as a consequence- as the ambition derived from the early activities of pre- and postwar avant-garde movement as means to create a supreme reconciliation of dream and reality and the philosophical Grand Oeuvre. It derives from a total rejection of current logics and culture and tries to revolt against the hyper-logical of reality5. Surrealists long to return to the archaic forms and feel nostalgia for the poetic thought and the powers of the archaic men, the pouvir perd, and thus they put forth into the task of transforming society trough the alchemy of words and images6. These archaic men and the relationship with nature take us back to the archaic society and its oneiric philosophy and rituals. They are concerned with archetypical symbols capable of creating a general adherence of humanity to replace logical repressions which that can only resolve irrelevant matters. The nature of their ideas conduct to finding a key that would open the hidden side, a side of which they are sure of its existence. The focus is transported into the creative productiveness of dreams, and its realization through a series of techniques such as automatism and objective chance. The first implies the use of psychoanalytical methods emanated from Freudian theories of free association, but they soon realized that it was artist dependant and did not shed any light on the common unconsciousness mystery. Objective chance tries to spark off your mind into the surreal by envisioning different objects juxtaposed from their context. They were tool for a newly created supra-reality. The movement chased after desire as

FIG.2.

FIG.3.XILITLAS GARDENS 3

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the way to change reality and create a new myth there is no society without a myth7. Through its very convulsive life, surrealism went through various transformations, and by the second manifesto in 1929, Breton tries to tackle a more universal approach into the collective unconsciousness, the creation of the new myth through analogies capable of creation a new cosmogony that defamiliarize ourselves from everyday reality. These analogies can bring us to a common place, the one that forces or production have turned to rubble, a place where the unexpected is to appear, we look into our childhood and the emotions of dream-like imagination that followed the disintegration of the common logics. Surrealism tend to have an immersing obsession with the qualities of crystal, as a supreme point for creation, the believed in its ritual and esoteric connexion as spontaneity and imaginations origin. They used it with intentions to undermine reality and prove the fragile grasp that have on reality. In pure surrealism, art would despair as being inferior to reality. Intellectually, it was a very productive movements started as art and literature and moving fast into sculpture and the built sphere, incorporating, mostly by Breton, science in the form of psychology, philosophy and anthropology. Artaud, for instance, concluded that it was a mistake to equate all consciousness with whatever could be expressed on words and after being excluded by Breton as editor of la revolution surrealiste for his violent speech ended up pushing the boundaries of theatrical psychology until its close destruction8. Returning to the liberating exercises of analogies, it is also important to remember that our brains are hard-wired and that our senses have survival value, symbolism is connected to the primitive emotional brain and it does not discern between threats and promises and that might be a possible reason why the archaic men did not pursue materialize the city as a representation beyond the senses9. On the other hand, machines and ultimate reason might make our intelligence redundant the aesthetics a practical decision more in the way to Dadaism intention to destroy art to save the subject. Surrealism had the ability to fuse to distant images to produce uninterrupted successions of latencies from the hidden real of their origins, a common architecture technique10. Creating a threshold into the imaginary kingdom, the key to our lost world. This is the reason way, surreal5 4 ism should engage with social values as means of

FIG.4.DALI. PREMONITION OF CIVIL WAR

FIG.5.MAGRITTE. HUMAN CONDITION IIIV

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change as for the total dislocate of traditions, to be able to use the experience of marvellous as a step towards a better society, not just an aesthetic dream for privileged player11. No reason for existing Utopia is the magic lamp of those who refuse to leave themselves crushed by the night (Rene-Guy Dourmayrou, Andre Breton et lart magique a Saint-Cirq-la-Popie)12 The relationships between architecture and surrealism comes a logical extension of poetic analogies of the physical object, what in surrealist terms can be read as a found object or object trouv. The surrealists were first interested in Art Nouveau and more specifically in Gaudis work. For instance, Casa Battlo can be seen as the realisation of the original building , tackling the crisis of the objects in industrialized societies, it looks for built analogies, and Casa Mia tries to reduce the distance between the spontaneity of vision and the spontaneity of nature dreamed reality. Creation in architecture becomes a drama of desire and representation, when for most art forms, surrealism is a beholding theoretical framework, in architecture, forms are always real. Adolf Loos was the first to challenge the limits of illusion and reality from a Dadaism perspective for bourgeoisie detachment from what they see, uncommitted and uninvolved. The transposition of real and its mirror image. Other styles have also derived from surrealist practices like Deconstructivism and the fragmented building, which infers from (remotely) it. More importantly was Duchamps concept of ready-made art, which when translated into architecture it becomes evident its tremendous success. Surrealism encouraged the use of surrealist techniques to explore the unconsciousness and its analogies to the object trouv but it had no use for any of the given styles, narrowing down the spectrum of intervention. It rather encouraged the use of the irrationality of concrete, it flux, the daily transformation of objects to construct the builders unconscious13. Breton himself attempted irrational beautifying of Paris with juxtaposition of distant realities incompatible of scale or shape in places that really had no reason for existing, he tried the unison of unconscious of the city with the unconscious of the men and destroy the old antinomy between dream and action14. Symbolizing was the key conductor architecture as this point since objects could be void and ed-

FIG.6.LE CORBUSIERFireplace and Arc de triomphe

FIG.7.DALI.YOUNG VIRGIN AUTO-SODOMIZED BY HER OWN CHASTITY

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ible and spaces are not. Duchamp created the glass in between 1915 and 1930 -he had in mind the alchemical qualities that are attributed to crystal - and the box, with random thoughts and notes to be read while inside the glass to try and get rid of the retinal aspect of objects. He was trying to achieve a special relationship made up of references and wits and putting in people as the main alchemical ingredient and live actions as special attitudes. The junction of image and idea. Surrealism in architecture has been referred as the blind object, the possibility to encode desires15, but defamiliarizing ourselves is critical to restore the (un)conscious experience. Home is utmost representative of repressive stability, a place of bourgeois morals and politics, ideologically rotten and constricting, though amid our room lays our childhood, the surrealist palace of imagination, the castle, that later becomes rubble and that has been depicted in numerous surreal paintings. Architecture is a vital part of everyday life. Surrealist poetics are drifting in our need to bring them down to try and cast together familiar object whilst looking for the strange new object to arise. Built examples Only a few examples have been made of actual architecture for what it relates to inhabitancy. Even though Gaudi was a reference and a starting point for the found object in surrealism, he was never a surrealist, nor in time nor in spirit. Gaudi and Art Nouveau were privileged by the surrealists for their mediumistic architecture, and their organic analogies like the fluidity of water over earth and the preoccupation of the soft forms and the time-space continuum16. Another characteristic of Gaudis architecture is the truly mythical and ritualistic inspiration in his works, the structures celebrate what they supports, but after all Christianity and his own dismals and self-reproach was at the root of his needs for delving into a new set of external retinal experience. The only true surrealist architect of all was Frederick Kiesler, whose organic approach in the Endless House expressed as metabolic processes and delivery of complete seclusion and physical separation encapsulate the desire top find a key and cross the threshold in the hollows of the earth17. Walter Benjamin described its prenatal comfort as being the image of the abode of the human being in the maternal womb. This womb is exposed to, according to the architect, two forces intrinsic in every object, the integrating and the disintegrating force. He wanted to envelop the dwelling within mobile7 flexible forms to create a more desirable and 6

FIG.8. RENE MAGRITE LATTENTANT

FIG.9.KIESLER ENDELESS HOUSE

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FIG.9.DALI-THE SUBURBS OF PARAINOIC CRITICAL TOWN

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passionate place that could erode the outside/inside boundaries of inner consciousness18. The last architect not by profession- that I want to mention is Ferdinand Cheval, a French postman who gathered, single-handed, rocks from the region and constructed his own fairy tail over thirty-three years, his own unconscious passionate expression, his own Palais Ideal. Breton used to mention it in his lectures and loved the lack of utility and the individuals untutored and imaginative vision19. For that to pay homage to Dali I would like to refer to his painting The Suburbs of the Paranoiac-Critical Town (1931), which shows the whole array of architectural tricks while the extremely emotional rhetoric of the painting evokes on a flat surface what never has ever done on three dimensions. All phases of architecture are included on the verge of collapse, the architecture of the forgotten places, masks, and where people communicate in smothered whispers, acting out their lives in a theatre of torture20. Criticism No one makes up his head overnight, and especially Breton, whose rejection and contempt for architecture was palpable when he stated that modern- and all architecture save few examples - architecture was the most unhappy dream of collective unconscious, a solidification of desire in a most cruel and violent automatism. George Bataille agrees and asserts that architecture was simply authoritarian and its forms now the true masters across the land, gathering the servile multitudes in their shadow, enforcing administration and order and constraint21. Another criticism on the limitations of surrealism in the endeavour of transforming the found objects were written by the landscape architect Laurie Olin who expressed ambivalence about the use of surrealism for the design of everyday environments, wondering if surreal design can only express alienation, and a hallucinatory and obsessive preoccupation with loneliness, self, and unfulfilled yearning22. Another issue that surrealism purely addresses is the need for planification on growth and the dispersion of the original principal of surrealism before mentioned in Kieslers Endless House. Landscape architecture is one of the only areas probably the only one- where surrealism is still quite fertile, it opens the door for a sympathetic relationship with the built and natural landscape23. Painters and writers were inspired by landscapes. An ample spectrum of surreal land-

FIG.10.RENE MAGRITTE TIME TRANSFIXED

FIG.11.FACTEUR CHEVAL THE IDEAL PALACE

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scapes can be found in their painting or writings. They were seeking for spontaneous adventures and escape boredom24. It has all the desire of the archaic societal myths, rituals and alchemy latent in its imagery, its bizarre (potential) juxtaposition and rhetoric of legible object trouv. Landscape, as it appears in its context has the advantage that it is already a changing perceptive that can transform confronted feelings with the juxtaposition of everyday objects quicker than other environments, simply because we are psychologically wired to recognize those in raw nature, it bring us down to our primitive universal societal values and ignite the enigma of clarity and ambiguity25. Waking up

FIG.12.YVES TANGY-ENNUI ET TRANQUILITE

Criticism is nothing new in surrealism, it was criticized back in the 1930s and is still today if you try to apply it outside its social coolness(of the likes of OH MY GOD THATS SO SURREAL), but are not all this topics already part of todays issues?. Fragmentation occurs in society nowadays endlessly in all aspects, in fact we search for it most of the time. Alienation has become the news background. And last comes hallucination, what can I say that it was not done in the 60s?. The question now changes to: would we be able to recognize a legible object trouv with todays amoral or double-moral society?. It might have been a matter of height on the ladder of human evolution and as using Marx ideas, now we see further down into the futures possibilities. Not to forget surrealism erotic discourse evolved from the archaic ritual that according to mythology occurred in nature with men stripped of all constraints and common logic, a Dionysian venture into the wilderness. And as Tschumi points out in his introduction to Architecture and Disjunction, our irreverent society has the ability to generate unexpected social or cultural manifestation of any short26. There is a way Needless to say that with todays technology and access to the virtual environments, an entire new realm of possibilities and electronic found objects are available. A complete new world of algorithmic generated images based on timelines of odd variable so distant from one another that the bizarre idea of juxtaposition of objects or images is obsolete. The speed of change, which was 9 Roberto Mattas definition of automatism quantity,

FIG.13.RIVERSLAPPER SLAMHOUNDS

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is so great the even when Breton wrote that the merveilleux is not the same for every period of time27, his vision was not looking further enough, perhaps he was not higher enough up the ladder. The velocity and dexterity of creating semi objects trouv proposed by Neil Spiller in his article entitled A Provisional Taxonomy of Slamhounds reflects the acceleration that has got into the virtual special experience. Now that the prevailing and omnipotent logic is green and globalizes the world through wire transfers, the ability of our lethargic mind to try and read a new object found has no relevance because while our neuronal connector were sending electric impulse to spark the awaited surreal envision, this spatial monstrosity has done a few hundred more of them. These space-time geometries are capable to bulk produce thousand of semi electronic convulsive objects trouv out of the algorithmic of the movement pattern of our eye over one minute. According to Spiller, the Slamhound is to pressure pad what nanotechnology is to a brick a whole different league of sensitivity and morphic surface28. What would not be possible when the fluctuating parameter of the algorithms relate to the physical space of the dweller? Conclusion Throughout this essay I have tried to emphasise different aspects that relate architecture and surrealism from the early stages of the movement into our days and beyond. Born on the verge of change between the 19th and the 20th century, surrealism have survived, latent the impetuous attacks of morality and societys logic, which have also survived. Both changed, morphed and derived into something different of what they were, or what we thought they represented. It is clear know that surrealism does not read rationalisms so object to and subvert, it has its own way somehow embedded into our minds hidden side, where all desires start. Walter Benjamin stated that the inconspicuous spot where in the immediacy of that long forgotten moment the future subsists so eloquently that we, looking back, may rediscover it29. This means that what its of the future, we might be capable to recognize as well. The new boundless virtual reality seems competent of creating a supreme set of aesthetics that might relate better to the unconscious. A dream friendly software capable of uploading new information when ever its needed to offer our newly created avatar an eternal enjoyment, a perpetually young

FIG.14.SPACE-TIME GATE. SLAMHOUNDS

FIG.15.BREAD-BURDENED DALIAN LEG.SLAMHOUNDS

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avatar drifting away form restricted emotions. The only restrictions as usual- are our human basic physical needs that could keep us not completely unplugged. Like John Goodbun and David Cunningham, I as well now announce the continuation of this bold enterprise called surrealism and architecture30. Architecture will be convulsive, or it will not be at all. Notes and Bibliography. 1 Breton, A, Nadja, NRF, Paris, 1963, last sentence of the novel.p155. quoted on Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London P.81 2 Tschimi, B. (1944), Architecture and Disjunction, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, p.5 3 Mical, T (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge.p4 4Veseley, D (1978) Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London P.87 5 Veseley, D (1978) Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London P.88 6 Veseley, D (1978) Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London P.88 7 Breton, A (1974) Manifestos of Surrealism, The University of Michigan Press. Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London p.88 8 Tschumi, B, (1978) Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London p114. 9 Smith, P. (1978) Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London p150. 10 Mical, T (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge.p5 11 Magallanes, F, (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge.p230 12 Doumayron R.-G.,(1991), catalogue Andre Bretonet lart magique a Saint-Cirq-la-Popie. Quoted on Mical, T (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge p209 13 Knight, S.(1978) Architecture and Design Profiles 11, .London p109 14 Tschumi, B, (1978) Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London p112 15 Mical, T (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge.p2 16 Veseley, D (1978) Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London P138 17 Benjamin, W, Mital, T (eds.) (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge p140 18 Phillips, S ,Mital, T (eds.) (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge 11 p142

FIG.16.SLAMHOUNDS. PARTIAL LANDSCAPE

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19 Lahji, N, Mital, T (eds.) (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge p124 20 Fawcett, C, (1978) Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London P122 21Vidler, A (1992), The architectural Uncanny, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass,p 150, quoted on Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London P.234 22 Olin, L (fall 1998), Form, Meaning, and Expression in Landscape Architecture, in Landscape journal, Volume 7, Number 2. P.154. quoted on Architecture and Design Profiles 11, 1978.London P.230 23 Magallanes, F, (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge.p221 24 Magallanes, F, (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge.p222 25 Magallanes, F, (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge.p224 26 Tschimi, B. (1944), Architecture and Disjunction, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, p.7 27 Magallanes, F, (2005), Surrealism and Architecture, New York, London, Routledge.p231 28 Spiller, N (2002), A provisional Taxonomy of Slamhoundsin Architecture and Design journal, Volume 72, No.3 p24 29 Benjamin, W. (19719) Surrealism: the last snapshot of the European intellignetsia, One way Street and other Writings, New Left Book, London. 30 Architecture and Design (2005) Mar-Apr, Volume 76 no.2 p.68 Extended Bibliography. - Blueprints 2007, Junen.225, p.111 - Architects Journal 200, June 29, Volume 211, no. 25, p35-39,42,44. - Architecture Review 1997. July Aug, Volume 166. No.245 p.58-60 - Coates, N, (2003), Guide to Ecstasy, Laurence King, London.

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