WHAT CAN BE DONE IN 2023?

 Regard this as an informal enquiry, as a stimulus to thought and action. In 2023 we are only one year away from the centenary of the publication of The Manifesto of Surrealism. For various people surrealism is a great success, an abject failure, a revolutionary project run into the sandbanks of art, an art or a literary movement, a continuing revolution beneath the surface of life. Most definitions see surrealism from one corner only, so, for art historians, who often seem to dominate the recording and interpretation of surrealism, see it as an art movement, still relevant or not, depending on their personal agenda, and so on. Very often, what the scholars write about has very little to do with anything surrealism has ever been or indeed is. 

Surrealists have always defined surrealism as beyond art and literature, also beyond politics and philosophy, although it has been active in all these realms. Many current surrealists do seem content to paint and write and play some games and I don't want to dismiss these activities, it would be hypocritical for me when I have very happily rediscovered painting in the last couple of years, and wouldn't even categorise much of what I produce as 'surrealist' at present. (But I hope I can say "watch this space...").

 I am deliberately trying not to over-formulate my questions at this point, but I hope I'm clear that I don't want us to be helpless at this critical time, a time in which we may perhaps already be doomed, given that governments and corporations are recklessly slow in acknowledging the environmental crisis, the political crises everywhere around us and are in any case complicit to varying extents with the worst aspects of these factors. Disaster Capitalism may destroy us all.

So my question is, what should and can surrealists be doing at this present time that is not simply making pictures and writing poems? What can we do that might make some impact on the world? Can we justify not trying to make that impact at a time when the far right threaten the world to a greater extent than any time since the 1940s?