Surrealism
On writing for the sound of it, scandalous joy, and the seriousness of scatterbrained expression.
The writer on the tradition of notebook writers, archiving his own work, and enjoying a ragged, damaged, nervous narration.
The author on writing about the swell before a war, factual inaccuracy as surrealism, and taking a jab at our own heedlessness.
The author discusses his debut collection, Aerialists, and the surreality of the human mind.
I have let a prudent amount of time go by and now believe, or more, I am absolutely certain that your spirit will find it auspicious to be in contact with me. I am a reincarnation of a friend you had in other times.
One painter’s apocalypse is another’s surrealist debauch.
The artist talks about the genesis, composition, and execution of a recently completed work.
Partly inspired by the Greek surrealist Yorgos Makris’s 1944 manifesto, “Let’s Blow Up the Acropolis!,” Christos Chrissopoulos’s novella, The Parthenon Bomber, sets out to imagine just what might lead a young man to write himself into history by blowing up an ur-symbol of Western civilization.
“I’m interested in subterranean culture that says ‘I will trick you’ to official culture, ‘I will play you.’”
Surrealism meets fantasy in The Last Days of New Paris, a recent novel by a British author of New Weird Fiction.
A cinepoem—introduced by Leonard Schwartz.
“She wasn’t loved, so she didn’t know how to give love.”
“Fiction can be this art object that doesn’t show us anything new about reality, but draws out everything fake.”
Silent film, Oulipian lyrics, and keeping it all together.
Masculinity, melodrama, and the Black Lodge.
Casanova, Dracula, and art in the age of digital filmmaking.
Pataphysics: A Useless Guide, a theological pseudoscience, defines hand gestures as providing access to the divine, and others as blasphemy.
Alyssa Kilzer speaks with Cole Rise, a photographer whose work achieves both surreal and cinematic qualities. They discuss his technique and process, travel, and his inspirations—including the challenging and maybe impossible question of why and how we are here and the size and existence of the universe.
