"what is at issue here is evaluating the danger of what might happen to our humanity in the present half-century, and distinguishing between what we want to keep and what we are ready to lose, between what we can welcome as legitimate human development and what we should reject with our last ounce of strength as dehumanization. I cannot think that choices of this kind are unimportant. p. 140"
from Jacques Ellul’s, "The Technological Society"
I decided to open with this passage taken from Ellul’s book to start
the trajectory of the projectile that I am sending into your mind. Beware,
I do not agree with Ellul’s delusions regarding his admiration for the
Barthian dialectic. I do admire his desire to analyze the logic behind the
techniques of the technology that we all have lived with for the past fifty
years, however I strongly disagree with his faith-based initiatives of
philosophical inquiry into the metaphysics of technology. Now, why I am
starting with this? Because modern life, our lives, our day to day reality,
has become subordinated to the rigid polarities of determinate goals
and functions, mechanized humanity inside a virtual world in a
continuous flux of voltage highs and voltage lows, sending us into a
virtual nothingness. The link between the individual and society
becomes regimented and placed within the grid matrix of the social
order. You all know this as fact. Now how do we release ourselves from
the controls of these rigid properties and reflected determinations?
Remember that in today’s technological society, our modern lives are
fixed, never really mediated through a whole process. I believed C.L.R.
James warned us about this in the past. See what this does to your own
mind? See what this does to your life? How can we save ourselves and
free our minds and lives from the machine?
Here is where Surrealism and its majestic weapon of photomontage
saves the day with its revelations, its new reflection as thought process
entering into the paradigm of modern life. This is where the Third
Dimension is positioned in perfect harmony with reality and absolute
Essence! First, Surrealist Photomontage is not a private affair. It never
was.The graphic signifiers produced by automatism and our
subconscious are produced in the medium of photomontage to place
emphasis on thediscoveries of distinct moments hidden in the mind,
then coming into being. As Surrealism has the creative power to
determine itself freely, the medium of Photomontage has the ability to
satisfy Hegel’s argument for objectivity, the absolute being of the
Notion. This is how it happens. The images in a Surrealist
Photomontage clarify their point of origin where DaDa destroyed the
point of origin. In the Surrealist Photomontage the point of origin is the
Subjective Notion, in DaDa it was the Objective Notion, dynamic and
explicit. Why do you think Heartfield was working so extensively in anti-
Hitler Propaganda? It is not that hard to identify DESIRE to combat
reality, or any of the hidden sublayers of the subconscious when
working in Photomontage. The key is to clarify the main juxtapositioned
elements (emerging from one’s own mind) when introducing the anti-
thesis in one’s piece. A perfect weapon for revolution, one that destroys
all obstacles. No laws are obeyed in creating the marvelous. This is not
technique that one uses, its more of a substancethat comes to surface.
Can you understand?
Max Ernst is primarily responsible for the evolution of
photomontage and collage in Surrealism during the 1920’s, yet Toyen
(during the 1930’s and on) is one who really stands out. There are
many other surrealists and artists who worked in photomontage (and
collage) that should be mentioned as great contributors to the
marvelous. A few to be mentioned are Conroy Maddox, Claude Cahun,
Jindrich Styrsky, Man Ray, Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, Václav Zykmund,
František Vobecký, Karel Teige (his classifiable collages), Raul Ubac,
Georges Hugnet, etc., etc. Even many of Hannah Hoch’s
Photomontages made during the 1930’s to the 1960’s can be classifed
as Surrealist, though her intentions were not inclined towards revelation
and the wonders of the marvelous, this can be debated, that is why I
mention this icon of Dada. I shall not leave out the great David Singer,
though many art historians would classify his work during the late
1960’s as psychedelic, I say surrealist!
Anger drives my photomontages, like a powerful drug. Many of my
own works are misinterpreted as satire, they are not! They are mainly
revealing in essence, also totally insane, which is something that drives
me to keep going. I cannot rationally describe the discoveries that I
make fromwithin my own mind, but I do want to become one with
delusions and hallucinations, where I am most content. Who really
cares about delicate tonal scales? Reality is a Trap! The Steering Arm is
glowing a hypnotic rainbow over bleeding flowers, I can see the horse,
can you?
Even Tolstoy says, "The activity of art is based on the capacity of
people to infect others with their own emotions and to be infected by the
emotions of others. ... Strong emotions, weak emotions, important
emotions, or irrelevant emotions, good emotions or bad emotions – if
they contaminate the reader, the spectator, or the listener – become the
subject of art." The mind is always infected, every minute, every second
of the day, it is bombarded with simultaneous stimuli that has to pass
through filters.Where does the information go that does not remain
stored in the hierarchyof the conscious? Freud was so on the mark
when he explored the hidden layers of the subconscious in his human
subjects! Such treasures can be found there! The supreme human
activity resides in the exploration of the mind.
There must be a clear understanding here in this observation of
"infecting the mind". Surrealist Photomontage does not dismiss or
diminish the qualitative expansion beyond an individual's feeling! The
obvious paradox that even Tolstoy dealt with is the situation, the reality
conclusion that one cannot escape from! Please allow me to be as
direct with you as I can here, Surrealism is at war with logic and
reality. Only when reality becomes synthesized with the anti-thesis, (the
emerging juxtapositions) from our minds, can the qualitative
significance of reality become enduring.
Keith Wigdor, Surrealist
August 16, 2005