[r277986140]

surrealism is a recuperation of the dadaist movement by the capital, guy debord's opinion, but i will further add that surrealism was a recuperation of the revolutionary artistic spirit of the early 20th century in general. futurists, cubists, dadaists all expressing important points about the nature of art and man, the future of art, its relationship to a common man as opposed to aristocrat which was a completely novel thing, and at its core the political and sexual potential of art. all of that, reduced to dali walking an anteater.

dadaist ideas were continued to be picked up by the avant guard over years, and as predictable recuperated with various degrees of success. one can trace a line of ideas from dadaists to punks, for example, and its easier to understand what is the relationship between dadaism and surrealism, by looking at the way punk was very rapidly stripped of its political potential and reduced to representation only.

it has become significantly hard to do, but one should go see kazemir malevich's "black square" at the tretyakov galery of art in moscow. none of the digital copies, that are mere representation, do it justice. the piece oozes power in person, it's a long subdued power, that we also have to see through the prism of gulags and terror that followed, but its a raw power of men, an ability to accomplish things both awesome and terrifying, to wrought matter into form. that power terrifies those who were in power at the time AND those who are in power now. disregard all that peasant, look it's a fish floating through a rain of melting clocks! dahlin, isn't it so maavelous and inventive.

[harwoodjp]

Critiques aside, the Situationists are indebted to Surrealism for its development of "unconscious" techniques. Derive, psychogeography, etc. are theoretically similar to automatic writing.

Your comment misses the political dimensions of Surrealism. They swayed between Leninist and Libertarian socialism. The entire point of the movement was to resist neoliberal tendencies, which produced disasters like the World Wars, etc.

See: Sadie Plant's The Most Radical Gesture for a description of the relationship between Dada, Surrealism, and the SI.

[r277986140]

in retrospect we consider automatism surrealist, but historically and from the consideration of situatonists' relationship with surrealists i think it would be fairer to say that both borrowed from the same origins. les champs magnétiques is 1919, how to write a dadaist poem is 1920, but surrealism manifesto is 1924. but the techniques involved predate both. and situationists themselves would've rejected the debt you're asigning them, on principles, and from the perspective of the historic development of the relevant techniques it would be hard to catch them in a lie.

i'm not missing the political dimension of surrealism, i'm deliberately ignoring it. there's two of us in these comments who are aware of these political dimensions, where's society's perspective on surrealism is duchamp's fountain and dali's persistence of memory. surrealist art is a one trick pony, that is at fault for how easily it was recuperated. situatonists argued that this dimension was built in from the very beginning.

[harwoodjp]

In Debord's explicit engagement with surrealism, he admits its influence. Detournement, for example, draws equally from Asger Jorn's technique of "modification" and Surrealist collage.

Furthermore, as a Marxist, he'd have to admit the dialectical (material) influence of surrealism and its offshots, including his.

Also - Situationist tactics are just as prone to recuperation as Surrealism. Anti-advertising, street art, etc. are totally integrated.

To add further nuance, Surrealism continued after Breton, et al. Surrealist groups still exist and were acting in parallel to the Situationists in the late '60s. For example, the Chicago group emerged from the Industrial Workers of the World/SDS, staged interventions (a la situations) and were among the first to distribute Situationist literature through their bookshop.

[r277986140]

your point is well taken, and we've already achieved sufficient subtlety. situatonists would've rejected the idea that they owe debt to an -ism, which is where we started, but debord would've freely acknowledge an influence of specific surrealists.

surrealist groups keep dragging a dead corpse around. there's nothing wrong with that, in same way as improv clubs are a perfectly acceptable leisure activities for the laptop class.

we can definitely agree that both surrealist and situationist tactics are at this point fully integrated. but then traditional protest tactics have been at this point fully integrated: you know si celebrating watts riots, but the covid riots might as well be a perfect case study on the nature of recuperation. i doubt op new york times writer thinks she's being anything but clever, but you know everything about it is a neat little mockery of our collective impotence.

there are lessons that we can derive from si writing AND surrealist works, but i don't think goofy "one simple hack the spectacle hates!" are it.

[mikhailfranco]

Not sure 'neoliberal' existed as a term in those days, and so it's not clear how it could have created all the woes of the world. Perhaps you are back-projecting modern leftist (SI - Socialist International?) critiques of capitalism.

[harwoodjp]

That's fair re: use of neoliberal. Surrealism's aim was to develop liberatory modes of thinking/being, in contrast to dogmas of rationality, capitalism, commodity culture, etc. SI = Situationist International