tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10161060.post112100290520666116..comments2023-11-05T04:31:48.615-05:00Comments on Elusive Lucidity: A Few Comments on SurrealismZChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10161060.post-1121577274921113812005-07-17T01:14:00.000-04:002005-07-17T01:14:00.000-04:00Well, I don't think big-S Surrealism is an influen...Well, I don't think big-S Surrealism is an influence on Apichatpong. I do think that his films are surreal (occasionally and deliberately absurd, mysterious, capable of robbing oneself of much 'presence of mind' in the Breton quote). And they comment obliquely on what is happening in the greater context around them.<BR/><BR/>The exquisite corpse structure of <I>Mysterious Object</I> is certainly comparable to Surrealist literary exercises. But, again, it's not that I think there's an influence from France and Central Europe all the way to 'remote' corners of the globe--it's that I suspect that these corners are doing, in their own way, what some of the art of the vanguard of Western capitalist modernity was doing in its own day. <BR/><BR/>A few scattered thoughts to consider: Surrealism was something that largely emerged and flowered between the wars; Freudianism, a rationalizing 'science' to the things Surrealism exploited (namely sex and death), was biggest, at least in America, after WWII. The Fordian production models declined and we entered the era that a lot of intellectuals call 'late capitalism' (I'm not entirely sure how to define this, and suspect there's no one definition). The word 'postmodernism' was coined in the 1930s, I believe. I <I>think</I> there's a connection to all this. I want to say that Surrealism as a distinct historical art movement is really a manifestation of a small-s surrealism that emerges in art that begins to feel a certain rupture, a rupture having to do with our epoch and its global economic situation. If the distinct manifestation of surrealism known as Surrealism seems to have faded out of existence, maybe it's because it no longer spoke to (or appeared to speak to) the concerns of its place and age. But a certain absurdity, a certain fascination with dreams, games, sex, and death, pervades the work of filmmakers I've mentioned previously ... who are interested in working in provincial areas, to an extent, the places where globalization has still only gone so far. I'm tantalized by the idea of a deep connection here.ZChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10211734319629732065noreply@blogger.com