Surrealism

Surrealism is an art movement beginning in the 1920's. It originated from the DADA movement, as discussed below -

DADA and Surrealism
Dada was an art movement that began during and after the World War One. It took the perspective of antilogic, going against logic in state that logic began and continued the war. It was short lived between 1916 and 1922, and had works of performers, artists and other visual creatives, involving the 'Mona Lisa' painting and 'Fountain' sculpture. It's main theory is quoted as several things, Dada artists were also known for strongly going against religion and faith, this including 'Dada, abolition of prophets' and 'Dada, an abolition of memory.' It should be noted that one of their main arguments was religion. It acted as an influence for the new formed Surrealism. Surrealism takes the perspective of a dream. It's known that surrealists place work together that usually don't belong. They believe that this process triggers the unconscious mind. Their projects and art forms of work go against the usual human logic, with the purpose of audiences reacting in an unusual, provoked way. It also takes the perspective that we are all heavily psychologically influenced by unconscious sexual desires, also known as the theory of Freudianism. Surrealist techniques also had arisen, these being automatic surrealism (AS) and exquisite corpse surrealism (ECS.) AS is artwork created freely by the unconscious mind without any real thought. Imagery consists of various abstracted shapes and lines, in comparison to ECS, where a collection of images or words are put together by following a certain rule or when many contributors add to the artwork, depending on what was previously drawn. This being an exercise we also practised using wordplay. 

Surrealist filmmaking 
Surrealist films were produced off the idea of exquisite corpse surrealism, where surrealists would go to any film screening, and walk out when desired to move onto the next screening. Famous surrealist directors include Luis Bunuel, who started surrealist work during the 1920's as part of Avant-Garde surrealism. His films include L'age d'Or, Belle du Jour and That Obscure Object of Desire. His film 'The Phantom of Liberty' stuck with me most, a dinner scene where logic is completely challenged. Instead of the characters eating in the kitchen as the normal world would, they sit at toilet seats around each other. They have to be excused to use the kitchen, though in the real world, we would be excused to use the toilet. Another challenging surrealist filmmaker is Jan Svankmajer, known for his film 'Food.' Instead of actually eating food, the characters eat props surrounding them, including their clothes, dining table objects and furniture. Food is also recycled for each person coming in and eating, with some messages behind the story suggesting humans are too over indulgent. These being filmmakers and artists who started off the surrealist movement, more common themes can be found through visual effect movements and exploration of different, fantasy worlds. An example being Doctor Strange, directed by Scott Derrickson. The scene consists of the main character travelling to a different world purely by 'touching' and connecting with another soul. This demonstrated surrealism as there is no actual logic, but some possible meanings behind how humans are too attached to the world, that can be interpreted as short, or fake.

Surrealist activities -
Within our class, we demonstrated exquisite corpse surrealism in a group, with one person writing a line and leaving one word for the next person, without said person seeing what the previous person said. Eventually forming a story based on initial reactions of whats on their mind, or what comes to mind when viewing that first word. The other activity being free association / automatic surrealism, with a game known as 'word association.' In pairs / groups again, one person would say a word, then bouncing to the next person saying another word. We then chose the 3 main most shocking/ surprising words and made a story. The 3 words in my pair being homophobia, astronomy and 'roadman,' creating a story with complete opposing things and themes. Our words were proof of initial wordplay, again demonstrating the activity was based on the first thought, or, as argued from a surrealist point of view, what the unconscious brain is currently thinking, or what the unconscious brain had been influenced by from listening to the previous word. Personally, I found that both games were thought provoking, and formed stories that may not have been formed otherwise, as they may have been overthought or too logical, then not triggering the unconscious brain - making the stories automatically too logical from overthinking. Storytelling as the basis of creating visual work / artwork, I understand both ECS and AS as forms of surrealism techniques, depending on the desired impact the surrealist wanted to make on said audience viewing.