the surrealist object part I

Two realms of objects

Gestalt psychology once emphasised the fundamental difference in the phenomenology of natural objects and artifacts. So as not to assume any particular metaphysical implications of these, we might rather say that there is a fundamental difference between discrete single objects as typically examplified by artifacts on one hand, and non-discrete objects as typically examplified by natural objects. So, artifacts are usually discrete, easily distinguished from each other, usually geometrically regular (or more or less complex assemblies of individual geometrical units), usually brightly coloured, easily sorted, stacked, and counted; they can be understood teleologically, in terms of intended function. Natural objects are usually the opposite: usually merging together, difficult to separate from each other and to understand the individual units among, indeed quite ambiguous in such ontological terms, and furthermore typically geometrically irregular and with heterogenous and often diffusely blending colours, unintelligable in terms of intended function without advanced theories (either a "secondary teleology" through a functionally focused adaptationist evolutionary biology, or theism).

Of course this is by no means a sharp border, there are several untypical objects from both sides. Every archaeologist will complain that it can be very difficult to separate artifacts among natural-looking objects. And there is nothing stable about them. Things are pulled out of the diffuse logical flow (in this sense "natural") and transformed into artifacts by slight manipulations and sometimes by this act of choice and removal out of original context itself. An obvious example is how shells, beautiful stones, interesting roots, dead insects, skeleton parts, etc, are picked up, collected and transformed into aesthetical and occasionally scientific objects, and how fruits and other plant parts as well as dead animals are picked up as food items. On the other hand, discarded and abandoned artifacts enter the sphere of unseparable natural objects; littering and ruins. In a sense, art is a big endeavour to create artifacts with the opacity of natural objects, which will be able to produce meaning far beyond the simple statement of their intended function, in a way that simulates or indeed becomes nature.

The distinction approximately corresponds with that between indoors and outdoors environments. An indoors environment is one intentionally structured, usually geometrically arranged, dominated by artifacts and their rational arrangement for a purpose. Outdoors is structured by other factors than reason and intelligence, and is dominated by natural objects - though in many cases, such as cities, baroque gardens, and agricultural fields, there will indeed be a superimposed artificial and gemetrically regular structure, but however one which will be immediately subverted by the action of weather, plants and animals; there will be leaves, twigs, dust and seeds moving around, snow and pools of water, emerging plants and mushrooms, as well as a more or less rapid weathering and irrational rearranging of the artifacts through the actions of weather, irresponsible or responsible humans, as well as by other animals and plants of course.

It seems like the ambiguity and transition in this respect has often been interesting to surrealists. The transformation of natural environments into manifested projection spaces for the imagination have often aroused a great interest; brut architecture, utopian city planning, theme parks, park planning, japanese gardens, futuristic visions, have all had their share of attention (often including suspiciousness) from surrealists. So has, and far less ambiguously so, that which moves in the other direction in the relationship, becoming secondary nature: ruins and abandoned environments, worthless places, vast ruderal areas, junkyards.

And a special polemical case in this very matter is the category of surrealist objects. Surrealism takes objects out of their functional context and allow them to develop a natural-like semantical richness. The shared component in all surrealist objects is that they have been made poetic objects by having been taken out of their given context and allowed to develop a network of relationships, associations and determinations that are unrestricted by functional context. Then for the artifact-type objects this means more to take them out of utilistic context, and for natural objects to take them out of natural context. However, in both cases we must take care not to fall in the trap of establishing a new quasi-functional concept based on aesthetics in the narrow sense and/or anecdotal/selfbiographical sentimentality. Those objects which are put on a piedestal for being beautiful or for reminding someone of a beautiful event or period in life are only "liberated" in a weak sense, they are transposed into another utilistic context, less restricted for sure, and since that particular purpose is largely conditional and focused on a subjective level (also where the objects are marketed as commodities) they often have occasion to transgress it. Because it is only when they are allowed to be "worthless", to be isolated and reconfigurated without particular goals, that they can develop quite new unexpected relationships and insights. This state is far easier attained in an unordered accumulation of curiosities, or in a playful assemblage, or in a crowded exhibition, than when tastefully displayed with appropriate margins and spaces, but its not impossible among conventional aesthetical objects, nor in conventional art, or low-brow home decoration in general, nor by chance in the toolshed, the cellar, or even the marketplace.

Natural objects, merged as they are in the environment, are mostly in a sense asleep: associatively, imaginatively, symbolically, communicatively – and remember that these four aspects are all different, even though they partially overlap with each other. Bringing them out of context is a way of stirring them to wake them up, and it may be to an existence in slavery under some practical work task, or in tragical-pregnant isolation stretching out to establish relationships in all directions... Surrealist objects lie around longing for their freedom, planning for it, and occasionally allowing us to catch a glimpse of it, everywhere.

Some clarifications

I hope I don't have to say that it would be absurd to interpret these distinctions in terms of value; all different modes of being an object are perfectly legitimate ways of being an object. Of the two sleeping modes, the artifacts are characterised by their straightforward rational use value for us, and the natural objects by their non-rational use value for themselves (which may seem excitingly alien to us). The awakening mode, the objects released from utilistic connections from either camp, assumes a poetic use value, for themselves but in complicity with us.

If we are nowadays rather immune to the danger of getting dazzled by the artifacts after progress and rational solutions proved to be of limited application, there may still be an obvious risk of romanticising natural objects simply by being inexperienced with them and remaining uninformed about them: they may all seem so admirably inhuman, irrational and free for anyone who has no analytical tools for observing patterns in nature and thus keeps missing their modes of connection, modes of repetition, modes of labor, modes of economy, modes of utilism; such a person would believe every natural object encountered will be in itself free of determinations and thus a surrealist object. But of course, that person is likely to mostly stay in the city or at least not look very carefully around, in order to maintain that strange bias where only artifacts are typical objects and all natural objects are strange harbingers of a hidden world of wonders. It would be alien to me to suggest that natural objects are not interesting, exciting and beautiful objects in their capacity of natural objects, their own utilistic connection, (which is partly about their negating the artifact mode of utility and partly about aesthetical and psychological response to their general morphology, their organisation principles, their visual signals, etc) - but still that is what exactly what has to be superceded to make them surrealist objects rather than either scientific objects, aesthetic objects, objects of mere wonder and entertainment, or natural objects in their own right. I am talking about where they too are taken out of context. And this does not mean the vast sphere of antropomorphising, to regard the facial expressions of animals, the atrocities of insects, the mysterious behaviors of plants, as mere jokes for their unfettered variations of human analogues. I am talking about new and poetic contexts, where they may or may not evoke wonder or associations to their lifestyles and evolution, may or may not evoke transgressions of the notions of the human, but regardless of whether they do or not, remain open to establish new connections. Releasing them from their utilistic connection simply by stubborn ignorance of it is a very fragile form of liberation; it not only demands the same ignorance and non-familiarity of every observer, but tends to nivellate and therefore in the long term depreciate the whole world of natural objects.

Just like the poetic use of a shoe seems to presuppose observing the very transcendence from being a vehicle for containing feet and separating them from the possibly hostile ground into something else, and would not be the same thing for someone who had never considered using shoes; in the same way the strange shape of a mushroom will be a carrier of poetry rather than of superstitions when it is first understood and then abandoned that it is a mere temporary sexual organ of the fungus body interweaving the ground, and its sudden appearance comes from a very determined structure of chitine growing fast by absorbing very much water but then manifestating that structure only in an irregular form exactly conforming to the temporary configuration of the surrounding - now all of this is perhaps a bit mysterious indeed, but if we are excited about that, we are excited about the life of fungi, which biology has far more to teach us about than poetry has. There is a sense of wonder about a mushroom which simply does not depend on whether one associates to the particular forest habitat where it grew or not, whether one knows how it tastes or not, whether one has seen hundreds of mushrooms like it or not, whether one knows about the sexual mysteries of fungi or not, etc - and it is only when that particular sense of wonder is succesfully invoked that the mushroom becomes a surrealist object, a "liberated object", rather than an object of exoticism.

M Forshage

The ecology of trash: the memoirs question and my american dung trowel

The ecology of trash

There is a famous definition of dirt from anthropology (Mary Douglas) as "whatever is in the wrong place". This emphasises the relativity of trash, and provides little for the understanding of what trash actually is. As a biologist, I consider it absolutely necessary to make a first distinction between rubbish and pollution. Rubbish are the things which do not interact much with the system, are not quickly degradable, and the human reactions against them are therefore primarily aesthetical. Pollution are the things which do interact easily with the system, are quickly degradable, and the human reactions against them are often based on concerns for the ecosystem.



Thus, rubbish are the things anybody may keep recognising as traces of human presence for a long time – artifacts of plastic, solid metals, concrete, glass, stone, treated wood etc. They have little fast interactions with the local system, and there is no good "ecological" argument against rubbish (there certainly is against the mass production of non-degradable and non-reutilisable packages in general, but not specifically against everyday-level littering). Therefore the problem is mostly that littering could be a sign of lack of orderliness or "poor morals" in the human population. In the city, it is still active in contributing to circulation because it keeps a class of lowpayed workers occupied, and it exposes brand logos without expensive advertisement costs. Outside the city, such as in the forest and on beaches, it is less active but may cause controversy when it keeps reminding romantically-minded nature-lovers that the landscapes are not pristine, and in a similar way may to anybody sabotage the atmospheres experienced by adding compulsory irrelevant associations. Thus, rubbish is an aesthetical category, it is about the economy and dynamics of sensory impressions and associations. And here we are definitely in the sphere of the relativistic anthrolopological argument: many people would say that paved roads, cars and buildings are rubbish only when they are abandoned; some will say they are rubbish also when in use.

Pollution disappears from sight more quickly because it contributes to the local system (paper, food scraps, excrement, urine, ionized metals, carcasses, untreated wood, toxic waste, "chemicals"), and we can make a proximate distinction between poison (immediately toxic to organisms) and fertilizers (short-term advantageous for organisms). Fertilisers can be far more dangerous than poisons though. To start with; adding nutrients will usually twist the species composition so that few common competitive species will thrive while many rare species will perish. Then, the increased mass of organic material will consume a lot of oxygen when degrading, and in a habitat with a limited oxygen supply it will run short, and dead areas are created (*).

The distinctions are not at all clearcut. Degradation is dependent on climate, to begin with. In a warm humid climate, many solid metals corrode quickly and a lot of things become pollution which would have been rubbish elsewhere. And on the other hand, in a dry or a very cold climate, degradation is slowed down so that even scraps of food and carcasses may be permanented as rubbish. And among the types of pollution all relationships are complex. Many poisons can be said to act by nurturing uncontrolledly (hormones for example). And take calcium, which can be immediately toxic, acts as a fertiliser and may increase diversity and sustainability. (Then there are other classes of pollution with their own problematics which we can not go into the delicate problematics of here: such as genetically modified organisms and radioactive waste.)

My american dung trowel

Perhaps most people don't regularly dig in dung, but I am a dung beetle enthusiast and researcher (herbivore dung is more interesting to me than human shit, mind you). My normal tool is a gardening trowel. But last year I was given a remarkable artifact as a present by good friends, an american dung trowel. We sure don't have particular dung trowels in europe. And the package of this one expounded a generalised life strategy (a so-called philosophy): one should make as little impact as possible. So this was an ecotourist gadget: if you had to shit while camping, you should make sure to bury your crap so that no one could see you had been there!



Ok, a low-impact strategy is often strongly preferrable to the alternatives, on ecological as well as moral, political and aesthetical grounds. But it is also a generalisation of paranoid anal sadism. And it is sometimes used as an argument against radical change, or against all reform and historical dynamics. Furthermore, significantly in this particular case, it is a part of the common american environmentalist idea complex, one aspect of which is the idealisation of "nature" without human presence, historically connected with the specific denial of the indigenous population of North America and of the extent to which they had shaped the landscape. It can be taken as a bit cynical to see low impact supported at home while the United States forcefully apply their branding iron everywhere else in the world.

Specifically, there is not much point in burying your shit. At first glance, burying is a purely aesthetical gesture since it still feeds the environment with the nutrients. But this choice has ecological consequences, since the organisms degrading it subterraneanly will not be the same as the ones degrading it overground – overground there are for example many insects specialised on such resources, several of which are rare and threatened. Well, I don't suppose any local populations of threatened species will survive specifically on campers' crap, but there is not much point in denying the local assembly this resource either. Not even the argument of reducing fertilisation is a strong one, since the carbohydrates dominating dung are in fact far less powerful fertilising agents than for example urine, which has nitrogen in higher concentrations and indeed can be locally devastating. If you care about ecological low-impact living: go piss in water closets connected to sewage purification plants and not outdoors, but there's no big reason not to shit anywhere. (**) But no one seriously opposes public urinating, except the police and some overzealous feminists who take the metaphor of "territorial pissing" (which in the real form makes little sense in humans) litterally.

Leaving memoirs

So, at the individual level, the problem of rubbish is as I said a purely aesthetical problem. Different people are differently inclined here. Some are happy to just drop whatever waste they produce wherever they are, some are even more eager and work hard to leave a trace on the environments they visit, while some are careful to make as little impact as possible. Surrealists often cite Lautréamont saying "I shall leave no memoirs", but many surrealists do write memoirs and other anecdotal works anyway, and many are very eager to expose their names in journals, books, exhibitions, webpages, etc.

It is all anal in the sense that it relates to potty training, to the control of withholding and releasing. But when releasing becomes compulsory, it is usually related to a specific lack of concern about consequences, or in fact a mere strategy in manifesting power through not caring, or of a struggle for attention maybe conditioned by uninterested parents. Withholding compulsorily is the classic anal-sadistic disturbance euphemised as pedantery etc, and may be related to interested parents instead, when in late childhood and early adolescence this strategy becomes meaningful as the obsession not to leave much traces based on which the detective parents can deduce whatever one has been up to. The latter strategy comes to use in paranoia visavis the authorities, but may elsewhere make good impressions on friends of order and cleanliness. The subversion that is so secret that it leaves no traces also has very little occasion to actually subvert something.

Surrealists have little reason to partake in this era's grand competition over exposure of personal names as brand names. "I would like to see that those of us who are on their way of making a name for themselves, would erase it" as Nougé famously said. Here at Icecrawler these concerns have been discussed several times, with "Re: surrealist groups and publicity" perhaps as a centerpiece. We tend to believe more in messages in a bottle, in the capacity of the desire of the interested to find the relevant. Of course the noise, the advertised nonsense, the generalised rubbish, often makes this difficult. It might be useful to use personal names as scattered signs for the interested to follow, and for attachment points in building the bigger structure of collective experience. Because it is all about conveying experience. I think it makes sense to regard the accounts of our experiences as a very special kind of rubbish, a rather discrete one that does not yell for attention and disturb the general perception of the landscape, but should be in plain view for anyone who knows how to look for it.

Mattias Forshage


(*) For example, we have this problem with dead sea beds in the Baltic.

(**) I don't know if I need to make this reservation: openly or buried, it is not a good idea to dump large quantities of human excrement in the environment, because it may feed e-coli-bacteria to the groundwater and potentially cause health problems.