Event: Surrealist Topographies

Organised by Nathalie Aubert and Eric White, Oxford Brookes University

The main aim of this symposium is to create an understanding of the Surrealist movement as a network and explore its topographies. For a long time, phrases like the ‘British literary diaspora’ have been used to describe ‘the great flight of writers from England’ in the 1920s and 30s, rather than there being an alternatively-viewed sense offered of the active quest for engagement with the continent. Most of these artists headed for the Continent, thus creating a bridge between a number of European capitals (among other destinations). It was not a one-way bridge however: the two wars for example were responsible for the arrival of refugee European intellectuals in London, who were influential in changing the artistic landscape of the Uk’s capital. This symposium hopes to provide an opportunity to examine Surrealism and its engagement in London, Paris and Brussels, and seeks to explore the extent to which interactions between artists and poets in England, France and Belgium produced a range of practices with a common core. As an interdisciplinary, multilingual event it brings together literary and visual arts experts from Britain and overseas to map the transnational contours of Surrealist theory and practice.

Speakers include: Paul Aron (Université Libre de Bruxelles); Fabrice Flahutez (Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre); Stephen Forcer (Birmingham University); Gavin Parkinson (Courtauld Institute, London); Effie Rentzou (Princeton University); and Nicole Sierra (King’s College London).