Surrealist Action and Destruction
Human civilization has imposed an intensive domination on all living forms in the planet since its very beginning. Medieval Christianity thinking and Illumination thinking have been both developed on human centred idea of the universe. However, we, Surrealists, believe that human being is not superior at all to any species of the fish or bird. We consider all trees, animals, primitive life forms, flowers as the parts of spectacular unity gifted to us by the Eternity.
We are now facing a severe destruction on all life forms and ecological balance resulting from the greed of the multinational companies, cruelty of the States of any kind and comfortable life style of consumption societies. Therefore, we have repeated the following warning in the announcement of Destruction 2011 activity:
“There is no need for a hollow optimism. We are the guests of a planet that has maximum 100 years left. We believe that human race is not superior. We believe that a new list needs to be created for admission of the living creatures to the Noah’s Ark after the flood. With today’s civilization that human race has created , it should be discussed whether this race will be accepted on board or not.”
Our two basic references on this matter are two important texts of André Breton, namely “Prolegomena to a Third Manifesto of Surrealism or Else,” (1942) and “On Surrealism and Its Living Works” (1953). We are trying to go through the crack in the mirror created by Master Breton with the contribution of intellectual- scientific advancements realized in this process. Developments in fields of genetics, nano- technology and quantum should inspire us for discussing new species, evolutions and mutant existence. We need to think about new passions, new sexual organs and new forms of existence.
Thus each radical idea-approach in the current intellectual field remains in the domain of S.E.T. Intellectuals such as Deleuze, Baudrillard, Kroker, Haraway have created significant theoretical works on this matter in the past recent 40 years. Especially “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985) and “The Companion Species Manifesto” (2003) has opened new horizons in this field.
Returning to core intellectual climate that Destruction 2011 tries to create, we can say the metaphor of Noah’s Ark was a deliberate choice for the text of first announcement. Surrealist idea has attached a special interest to myths since its emergence. Not only esoteric approaches such as voodoo, Hermetism, occult, sorcery and conjuration that the dominant order of intelligence tries to ban but also all religious beliefs get their shares from the reversing techniques of Surrealism. Primarily Breton, Peret, Carrington, Artaud and Varo are the masters of this art. Meanwhile, the roots of such efforts are quite old. Gnostics carried out powerful readings against dogmas of Christianity as well as Sufi intellectuals against dominant Islamic beliefs.
Détournement action is a weapon of Surrealist galaxy that can be directed and fired against any field. Dominant religious dogmas will undoubtedly get their share from this intervention and they will start circulating as distorted and reproduced imagery- legends. So, for us the use of the metaphor of the Noah’s Ark presents many imaginative opportunities to create a new list for those to be admitted to the ark before Destruction. We will be creating a list of a wide range of living forms excluding human being and prioritizing species that are on the verge of extinction. The position of humans as being responsible for destruction of the planet is a topic that we need mostly to think about. One of the main discussion topics in our event “Public Enemy” was to develop an attack against the concept of humanism. We believe that Destruction will continue this effort from the point we stand.
It is beneficial to refer to the question raised by Frederick Jameson for discussions related to Destruction and its associated processes of annihilation - termination . Everybody may easily think about the end of the world; however, nobody thinks about the end of the capitalist system. At this point, Destruction and the revolutionary transformation of daily life are the main battle fields of S.E.T apart from the ideas of individual, ecological or mythic destruction. To dream poetic new worlds full of desire to be established after the dawn of Destruction ! For dreaming poetic and passionate new worlds to be established after the dawn of the Demolition!
Surrealist Action Turkey
