There are no words with innocent or neutral meanings. In those societies that are characterized by class antagonism and hierarchical distribution of power relations, where every action, every gesture, every utterance has to confront the phantasmagoria of commodity and the control technologies of the state, words are fields of a social war. To give univocal significations is a warfare practice of an enemy competent enough to organize, on the basis of a radical dissociation, the space of culture and the time of everyday life.

The caste of intellectuals undertakes the role to construct common sense confirming dominant beliefs as given truths, to idealize what now exists as "objective reality", through specialized power and knowledge practices, and also to demarcate, in this way, a sphere ostensibly detached from social experience, a whole world of dispensable intellectual goods ready to be consumed, eternal values and universal meanings that only the connoisseur, the talented, the qualified one has the discretion to launch as a new Prometheus. All these who don’t have access to this whole world, who don’t share the current artistic vagaries or don’t possess the current techniques of knowledge construction, content themselves with playing the role of the "audience", of the consumers of cultural products.

The reality, however, of this "audience", the time of their everyday life, is formed within an experience of struggles, contradictions, conflicts, and compulsions. Knowledge, aesthetic forms, all kinds of "truths" are molded within the selfsame social experience too. If they are being detached from the field of this day-after-day social war is because only by means of such specialized neutral truths "audience" becomes able to forget what every member of it actually experiences, to be persuaded at last that this "life is beautiful", that it’s worth enduring, just because someone else has already discovered, instead of them, its definite, deepest meaning. To forget or to endure does not mean only that the forepassed battles have been lost, but, mostly, that the fate of the oncoming battles has already been decided and that there is no point of taking part in them.

"Audience" is invented in order to listen to the communiqués of a war supposed whensoever to be definitely over. Dictionaries, didactical textbooks, encyclopedias, museum catalogs are, for the main part, loci where one of the opponents, the up to know defeater, defends publicly his conquests, anticipates his irrevocable prevalence, and elicits acquiescence for his next expedition. Dead signs, words whose signification appears to be neutral and innocent, perpetuate a world under conquest and a life in chains. They present as something self-evident or normal the class exploitation, the hierarchical structure of power relations, the political oppression, and the annihilation of subjectivity in a consciousness addicted to submit itself to the prohibitions of dominant ethics, to satisfy the aesthetic standards of cultural industry, and to adapt itself to the requirements of a rationalism that settles only for everything exchangeable or efficient.

Since history of words is the history of a war in suspense, the meaning of the word "surrealism" is at stake in the wind of the street. Some times it turns out to be a trophy in the enemy’s hands, other times it ends up being a banner at the memorial ceremonies organized by "friends", but there are also times when it emerges once more as a martial spell for those who are willing to continue the adventure of the revolutionary destruction of dominant values, changing the world, changing life, realizing total freedom.

In the milieu of art critics, in the "specialists" of culture, surrealism refers to a movement of literary writers, painters, and cinematographers, that appeared once upon a time in Paris just to complete not too long after its initiation - though with much hue and cry - its lifecircle, leaving behind on consignment a style of painting, a technique of automatism and literary experimentation, in other words, some means of expression that are nothing but traces of a long ago dead avant-garde, exhibits in the armory of modern art.

In advertising and mass media, generally in the industry of the spectacle, surrealism is synonymous to anything odd, weird or extravagant, to an incoherently provocative joke, to an erratic happening, to a tumultuous spectacle. Some of the adapted ex surrealists, who were designated as "great and eminent artists", like Avida Dollars (registered under the name of Salvador Dali), decisively conduced to this signification, proving themselves to be a good investment for their bosses. This enthusiastic adaptation to the totally commodificated culture or to the idealized commodity is not, of course, a prerogative of ex surrealists ; Andy Warhol was just an advertiser. However, surrealism, in order to refer to an extravaganza that is treated with tolerance and condescension, to a lifestyle of the irrational, has first to be denuded from its revolutionary essence. Only as something innocuous it can be assimilated comfortably to the codes and the techniques of the spectacle, of this extolling monologue that the world of commodities bestows on itself.

There is, also, a third variant of the definition of surrealism, one more unique characteristic of sun-bathed greece, of the "most beautiful country in the world" that ancient greeks illuminate from on high by their spirit, ascribing to it an irresistible luster, through their accomplishments, and other blah-blah crap like that. In a country where nationalist obsession is the standard, surrealism, as an artistic style and as spectacular irrationality, becomes "iperrealismos", a hardly innocent greek translation of the word, indicating a technique appropriate for someone to write popular poems and to produce expensive paintings, with a bit of greek sea and marbles glancing in the sunlight. In "iperrealistic" styling the national element is predominant, as if surrealism was discovered once again from the beginning, having from the one side the "dogmatic" surrealists all over the world, who despise every national reference, and from the other side the "enlightened" greek "iperrealists", the heirs to the history of the supposed supremacy of ancient greek spirit. Being an "iperrealist" one can be recorded in the history of "greek civilization" (of this abominable ideological construction), has the opportunity to become "ambassador" of "hellenism", nobelist-exportable product, or at least can settle down in the milieu of art-loving philistines as an equal associate ; in any case, one can thus be recognized as a "man of letters and arts" (under the total, to be sure, control of the greek state). Nicolas Calas and Adonis Kyrou, the only greeks who joined substantially the surrealist movement (even though they developed their activity mostly away from greece), and Andreas Empeirikos, who granted us, through his work, some rare and precious moments of loving revolutionarity, though he never confronted the domestic literary milieu, still remain the exceptions that prove the rule.

But what is the meaning of surrealism in the wind of the street, and, what’s more, from the standpoint of barricades ? Notwithstanding the several, from time to time, aspiring death-heralds, surrealism, as a global movement for the revolutionarization of consciousness, passed through the Clashing Rocks of time. Surrealist groups preserved their independence, both from the dominant institutions, through which the ideological production percolates, and the political bureaucracies that imposed a monopoly of knowledge on the historical revolutionary movements. Collective surrealist activity was not turned into an artistic one, nor even degraded itself to an apologetic. This independence of surrealism, the preservation of its revolutionary breath, was obtained through a series of crisis, internal conflicts, and intransigent struggles against every attempt to be assimilated.

The fate of surrealist movement has been connected with the fate of historical endeavours for liberation, and in this regard surrealism has not remained unharmed after the defeats of the historical revolutions, and the victories that the enemies of freedom have won. Nevertheless, the incessant recurrence of this negation of the existent world, the slow but steady reappearance of this devil-in-love in history, is the incontestable proof of the truth that the drifting cadaver ain’t dead, and the old scores are yet to be settled. As long as the quest for total freedom retains its actuality, as long as their civilization controls desire, prescribes the width of possible experiences, and converts the world into an enormous prison of exchangeable objects, surrealism will always return, revealing to us the urgent need for our realization as subjectivities.

Hence, surrealism is, above all, a polemic option, an option of uprising and destruction of bourgeois civilization’s values. It vibrates with hatred and abhorrence for this compartmentalized world. With its proper means, opening up its own pathways to freedom, it fosters focuses of subversion, contributes to the preparation of revolution, and is there when its outbreak comes. Within the abyss of oppression, it joins the voice of every oppressed woman and man. Even though it cannot be subjected to any political project, and it doesn’t act directly on the central political scene either, it retains an unfading political dimension. On this ground, one can understand the elective affinity of surrealism with Dadaist furor and Situationists’ criticism on the society of the spectacle. Insofar as it premises the destruction of art, the object’s stripping of their function as commodities, and the subversion of this society altogether, surrealism cannot but embody Dada as a permanent and beneficial parasite inside its bowels, and situationist critique as a permanent nuance on the landscapes it explores.

Yet, beyond contestation and critique, surrealist movement aims at the replacement of dominant values by new ones. Against the smashing of freedom into the networks of commodity circulation, it lays claim to the weeding out of the pathways of desire, to the convergence of love and revolution, pointing to the mythical kingdom of poetry, through the magical undulations of imagination. That is to say, nothing less than total freedom.

It concerns the exploration of new fields, outside rational world’s borders, with the unconscious as vehicle, so that the possibilities of overwhelming the alienation can be revealed. In this adventure it doesn’t seek explanations and meanings, but the revelation itself, an entrancing experience, anything but religious, an intoxicating route of transmutation through concepts and symbols, which are drafted from prosaic reality. Questioning the given limits of language, thought, creativity, we try to unlock our desires, to recall our forgotten selves or to meet an entirely new self untraceable till now. The starting point is the awareness that our lives are alienated, that we internalize oppression with such receptivity, that we experience everyday a schism between what we are forced to be and what we have repressed or haven’t found yet.

The images and the texts that surrealists create, and which often come to light through collective games, are simply means that activate our hidden self, they constitute a way for the limits between the real and the oneiric to be crushed, and for us to indulge consciously to the labyrinths of desire. Chance can lead us outside the borders of the jail named objective world, into a sur-real dimension, where objects get unshackled from their current uses and functions, reserving surprises and thrills, becoming fields for the realization of a subject that dreams, falls in love, revolts, acts.

Surrealistic activity, according to this meaning, doesn’t produce works of art, but intends to reconfigure the relationship between humans and the objects of the world, and mainly the relationship of humans among themselves, towards a direction that dispenses with any sort of moral, aesthetic or rational preconceptions. So, the images and the texts that result from surrealist activity are not artistic objects that only the "experts" have the legitimate right to produce. On the contrary, surrealism lays claims to the realization of art by everybody, and not only by inspired artists who address themselves to passive spectators, abolishing in practice concepts like talent, aesthetic value, artist and audience. On the other hand, it is also clear that surrealist creations can’t be subjected to evaluation by any art critic ; neither can they be subjects of research for enlightened academicians. It is about events to which anyone can contribute, which anyone can criticize, and for which anyone can be criticized, provided that the compass points constantly to the horizon of emancipation as a concrete viable experience.

In this daily warfare, nobody rests in peace, neither is going to. Our weapons for the world’s transformation are childishness, love, poetry as a practice which is diffused in our whole lives (not only it’s literary expression) and above all : subjectivity which bets it’s existence on the barricades, a subjectivity, therefore, which becomes the key to the dynamic, persistently reconfigurable conception of the world. The objective is what the dominant ideology offers as such, which certainly changes from time to time accordingly to the existing power relationships.

But all these would be pointless and couldn’t be realized if each one of us claimed them just for himself without perceiving the necessity of collective action. Through collectivity we attempt to diffuse the revolutionary possibilities of poetry into our everyday lives and, furthermore, to make them widely available, without letting them be circumscribed by the narrow limits of a group. It is certain that crisis and inertia exist inside all of us ; however, as experience has taught us, there are much more possibilities to transform crisis and inertia via collectivity into something creative that can seduce you.

Under this perspective, four years ago we took the decision of forming a surrealist group in Ioannina and getting linked with the international surrealist movement, which at this moment counts groups in Paris, Prague, Stockholm, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Madrid, London, Leeds, Sao Paolo, since this movement represents as clear as possible our above objectives.

In the nights when the planets’ orbit deviate, it will definitely have screamings to define the ordinary, not as something indifferent, but as something that we neither love, nor hate, and yet we want it to be a song, that flies from roof to roof and raises the dead from their graves.

Aggelos Vasileiou, Giannis Golfinopoulos, Manolis Daskalos, Vangelis Koutalis, Lefki Mossou, Galini Notti, Marianna Xanthopoulou, Lydia Papazisi, Nikos Pegioudis, Makis Perdikomatis, Fotos Chailis, Kleoniki Chtistaki.

Ioannina, June 2004