From the OTHER AIR catalogue:

OTHER AIR

“Close your eyes and open the window.”

This retrospective exhibition, OTHER AIR (1990-2011), presented from the 10th February to the 4th April 2012 in The Old Town Hall in Prague, spontaneously observes a certain time pattern: since it was exactly twenty years ago that the exhibition THE THIRD ARK of the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovkia took place in Prague’s Mánes gallery which, at that time, mapped the whole previous twenty years of the group’s activities (1970-1991). The constituent turning point for collective presentation was represented by the exhibition, with international participation, SACRILEGE – THE MARVELOUS AGAINST THE SACRED, held at the Salm Palace in Prague in 1999. The present-day Group of Czech-Slovak Surrealists now has a modified and enlarged make-up of individuals. Due to the circumstances after 1989, the group was able to emerge from underground publication and open up their activities to the public sphere. They now collaborate with individuals from France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Romania, Greece, USA and other countries, whose creative work, also presented in this exhibition, confirms the international dimension of surrealist activities. So much for the fragment of history. Let us say, here and now that this other air is a desirable element, or even an element indispensable to man. This exhibition attempts to map the aerial currents and open, perhaps more and more effectively, these living, breathing air holes – windows that are always, again and again, being closed in vain.

LEEDS SURREALIST GROUP will present the third issue of PHOSPHOR at The Space Project at 7.30pm on Wednesday, 7th December 2011 with discussions and a special screening of Jan Svankmajer’s Surviving Life.

84 pages • B5 format • ISSN 1755-0009

texts, poems, images, collective games on the theme of

MEMORY RECLAIMED

for full details see the Surrealist Editions website

Further information on the bookfair can be found at Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair.

Johannes Bergmark + Tippi Tillvind (duo):

“A great friendship found its voice of impro-expression turning into a rambunctious collaboration between a spunky musical instrument inventor and a timid collage maker. each performance is a flux of found, acoustic, electronic, prerecorded, trashy, trivial, complex sounds. sound poetry out of vintage movies hand in hand with screech of zippers or rubber bands from the amplified musical set up. eclectic like a brainstorm.”

and Gareth S. Brown:

“Gareth S. Brown is a Leeds-based composer and musician working mainly with computers but occasionally with other instruments and non-instruments and, just recently, field recordings. He has had three albums released on Bristol’s Misplaced Music as well as appearing on a number of compilations and remixing the music of other artists. Gareth is also a member of the Leeds Surrealist Group and contributes to their JournalPhosphor as well as to other publications of the international surrealist movement.”

I have recently had the opportunity to read the text: Querying Surrealism/Queering Surrealism (Sixth Biennial Symposium: Surrealism Laid Bare, West Dean, Chichester, United Kingdom, 18 – 20 June 2010), in which, it would appear, there is a complaint concerning the reason for my decision to decline the invitation to attend the symposium at West Dean:

“The claim that the organisers of the symposium misunderstand surrealism is, however, highly problematic. It suggests not simply that one group of people have a better understanding of surrealism, but that one group of people are in position to judge who understands surrealism better.” 

Despite this, there was never any assertion or indication that one or another group has a patent on the understanding of surrealism.

Instead, what was said, literally, was that it is good enough to study the source material instead of pursuing ignorance and a certain chicanery as to the facts. Therefore, it is not the case of putting one opinion above another, but rather the difference between knowledge and ignorance of the surrealist point of departure – which is objectively the same for everyone who opens their eyes.

The only reason for my responsible decision to decline the invitation to attend at West Dean was the detection, (just in time), that the West Dean symposium had – in this sense – its eyes wide shut.

Please see the attachment, in which this case was already objectively expounded in July 2010 and which, so I was informed, had previously been circulated to all the participants at the West Dean Conference.

Yours faithfully,

Jan Švankmajer.

Prague, September 21st.2011

(The review-article Querying Surrealism/Queering Surrealism to which Jan Švankmajer is responding can be found here. The attachment to which Švankmajer refers is the Staňkov Report.)

A new poetry collection by John Hartley Williams

including translations of poems by Benjamin Péret & Jacques Prévert

with a frontispiece by Kathleen Fox

24 pages ◊ A5 format ◊ July 2011

ISBN 978-1-906238-02-5

Price inclusive of postage & packing:

£5.00 UK   ◊   £6.00 Europe   ◊   £7.00 Rest of the World

Buy online at www.surrealisteditions.co.uk

Cheques / POs / IMOs payable to “Surrealist Editions” to be sent to: Surrealist Editions, 6 Aberdeen Grove, LEEDS, LS12 3QY, England

Further information can be found at The Shipley Alternative.

Further information can be found at Bradford Zine Fayre and on the venue at Impressions Gallery.