Assignment 4; Surrealism

Title: A Surrealistic Interpretation of Rural Temasek
Technical Specifications: ISO 400, 1.00, f/4.0, 17-85@17mm
Description: I'm sure many of you will just condemn me and say that there's nothing surreal about this photo. But please allow me to explain.

Surrealism basically means that it sur(passes-)realism. With this definition then, one will first need to know what is real, and hence realism, before being able to tell what is not real, and subsequently understand that surreal basically means something 'unreal' and yet is strikingly real i.e. dreamlike.

With this framework formally laid out, I shall first attempt to decipher what is real. What is real? This is a question that has bothered many a great thinkers alike. And I opine that it is best summarized in Rene Descarte's first meditation on solipsism in that the only reality I can be certain of is "I exist", famously summarized by his phrase "I think. Therefore I am.".

With solipsism though, it opens up a can of worms, in that we can never be certain about the reality of this world. Indeed, our understanding of this world is so constructed that we can't be certain of what is real. To give a superficial example, how many of us can be certain that the Iraq war really happened? "Wag The Dog" anyone? We construct our reality based on what we learned be it from the media, from our parents, from our friends, from our lecturers, but can they really be certain that what they taugth is real? We learn that this color is red. But there is really nothing intrinsically red about the color. This resulted in different interpretations of the same color by different people even though most people will be able to identify it as red, albeit to varying degrees. Just think about the color-blind. Are they really blind to our colors? Or are we blind to their colors? Even the cameras and the computers need to be calibrated to 'see' the same colors, what's more the human eyes that can't be calibrated. This reminds me of the documentary "Nanook of the North" by Robert Flaherty, in which he commented that the inuit has 7 words for the color 'white'. White that looks the same to us, looks different to the indigenous tribe because that white to them represents their reality; that white represents the different types of snow surface they can or cannot walk on.

Since we can't be certain if what we know other than our own existance is real, how then can we know what is unreal? We can't. And that's when the 'construction' of reality comes in. We start by categorizing items together and call those people with dick 'male' and those people with vagina 'female'. But is it really as simple as that? What about our chromosomes? XY? XX? XXY? Why is it that we have supposed females with 'male chromosomes' and vice versa? It therefore brings about the flaws of "creating this reality". Is it then appropriate to use this 'created reality' to determine the real, unreal, and surreal? I opine not. Nothing is REAL and yet NOTHING is UNREAL. This is perhaps best illustrated by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in his book "Forget Foucault".

We are then caught in this predicament in that we can't decide what is real or unreal, and hence surreal. And since I need to do so for the sake of this assignment, I shall then move on to look at the history behind the creation of surrealism.

Needless to say, we are all well aware (if you have attended the lecture) that surrealism started of with the Dada art movement that seeked to ridicule 'traditional' Bourgeoisie's art by defacing them. Using this origin as a guide then, I question the notion of 'traditional' in that tradition is simply the zeitgeist of recent past i.e. traditional is in relation to the modern. What is modern 20 years ago will be traditional now. It's the zeitgeist of recent past because anything beyond this period would have been considered ancient. I'm sure many people will not consider the dressing in the Shang Dynasty, which is the beginning of China's history, to be traditional Chinese but rather ancient Chinese.

And with the rich history of surrealism as an art form, and its ubiquity in the recent (the movement sort of died down after WWII but it's still everywhere! Just look at the Singapore Biennale, the NUS Museum, Singapore Arts Museum, etc), it has become a tradition in its own rights. Using the origin of surrealism to defend my work then, I am 'defacing' traditional (surrealistic) art work to create a surrealisctic art work i.e. my photo is actually a surreal interpretation of the sureal. I therefore claim that my photo is actually surrealism twiced-removed or twice-justified, thereby creating a form of neo-surrealism. Doesn't that make it more surreal than all the other surreal works we see?

In terms of surrealist technique as well, the piece employs automatism in that I simply went around taking photo without any conscious self-censorship as to what to take. It's to a large degree free of rational control and it's illusionary when I named it "A Surrealistic Interpretation of Rural Temasek". It distorts our visual senses on how rural Temasek (the olden name for Singapore) is like. Yet at the same time, it critiques the modernity of Singapore in that we are actually quite rural beneath this facade. Just look at how we refused to give ways to alighting passengers in MRT stations, give up seats for pregnant ladies, scream shout and complain, etc. And critiquing the social is, viola, a nature of surrealistic art work as evident in its origin to critique the Bourgeoisie art works by scandalizing them.

With these arguments, I therefore claim that this photograph is indeed surreal and fitted for the theme.

Self-critique: Excellent piece of surrealistic work! I deserve an A for this assignment. =)