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Title: Droomschaar Author: Rik Lina, Dick Geevers Date: 2019 / 1992 Language: en Topics: surrealism, anarchist periodicals, art, The Oystercatcher Source: The Oystercatcher #16, Mayday, 2019, page 28 Notes: Reprint of article published in Amsterdam in 1992. See related article, "Group Anarchy," on The Anarchist Library.
Droomschaar: the History of an Anarchist/Surrealist Magazine
Rik Lina and Dick Geevers (Amsterdam, 1992)
English translation by Lina and Sakolsky (2019)
The Oystercatcher #16, Mayday, 2019, page 28
The cooperation of surrealist artists and anarchists in the Netherlands
is relatively recent. Only since 1965, when a new generation revolted
against the established order and consumer-society, can one speak of a
fusion of anarchist and dadaist/surrealist ideas. There existed no
contact before between the flowering Dutch anarchist movement and
surrealism. The surrealists in The Netherlands never founed an official
group and never joined the international surrealist movement. They
preferred to stay independent and even mutual contacts were scarce. The
revolt of 1965, which lasted until 1968 and received the name Provo,
left obvious traces in Dutch society. One can name the Provo-movement as
anarchist because it revolted against the political system, against all
forms of authority, against militarism, ecological pollution and the
consumer-society: all the themes which play an important role in the
anarchist movement. But different from those anarchists who stressed
morality and reason and chose discussion, propaganda and demonstrative
action, Provo preferred a dadaist/ surrealist form of action: the
happening.
In an article about the Dutch surrealist Johannes Moesman (1909-1988),
Laurens Vancrevel in 1971 rightly pointed out the correspondence between
the ideas of this painter and anarchism: "To change life is before all
else the reconciliation of manifestation and desire. The reformation of
the world is nothing else, but only on a larger and more complex scale,
the plane of mutual relations and the interaction with nature.
Surrealism, just as anarchism, originates not from the reality of an
existing order, but from the representation of an imagined state of
anarchy". About 1970, a collaboration came to life between the
surrealist magazine Brumes Blondes (Laurens Vancrevel and Her de Vries)
and the counter-cultural "psychedelic dispatch" Moksha (Hans Geluk and
Rik Lina), both founded in Amsterdam. This contact remained isolated by
the lack of understanding which libertarian attitudes received in The
Netherlands. Only in 1989, when surrealists and anarchists wanted to
animate a new cultural magazine which would be a link in the chain of
publications and manifestations activating both movements in the
international milieu, would both worlds of ideas be joined. The
surrealist artists Tony Pusey and Rik Lina met in Amsterdam and started
to look around for fellow-travelers living in The Netherlands. By a
special kind of magnetism, a voluntary group of individuals composed
itself to start Droomschaar, a collaboration of anarchists and
surrealists looking for a common sensibility and for a means of
spontaneous expression to develop the individual self. Jose da Estevdo
wrote in the first issue: "Man has the means to imagine ideas, to create
dreams and to give his dreams form." Droomschaar is an ambiguous word
meaning not only "dream scissors", but also a group of people dreaming
together.
Joining Lina and Pusey were the anarchist poets/publishers Jan A.
Bervoets, Dick Gevers and Jose da C. Estevao, and the surrealist
poets/publishers Pieter Schermer and Heinrich Kaegi, in an editorial
board which united Dutch anarchists and surrealists. That this
co-operation proved fertile appears not only from the magazine
Droomschaar, and from the continuing series of exhibitions of
Droomschaar-artists all over Europe, but also from the appearance of the
anarchist magazine De Raaf and the founding of the "Forum for
International Libertarian Culture" in Amsterdam. It seemed a
communication of ideas was taking place from which an international
collective of artists came to life. For more than a year they met every
week (in later years every month) to research a unique way of working
together. They made automatic collective paintings, drawings, etc. by
working together at the same moment on one and the same work in a
strictly automatic way - without any arrangement or pre-meditated idea
or consideration before or during the work - and without any dominant or
regulating function by any one of the artists. The only thing all had in
common was the experience with automatic techniques. In the visual arts,
experiments like this are rare, but not unusual on an incidental scale.
These "group-improvisations", occurring just like in free-jazz, often
led to chaos and cacophony, but the working-process itself was the most
important and many of the results were remarkable.
As the Dutch anarchist Domela Nieuwenhuis has stated: "In the arts, in
that which claims to be called so, anarchy rules." In this way for the
Droomschaar artists, art is not only a source of ideas and images but
becomes also an instrument exceeding all bounds, allowing for immediate
communication, with the collective point of departure being a search for
the unknown properties of the human mind that are waiting for discovery.
To the anarchist and the surrealist this utopia is not an empty cry, but
a union of life and work, of nature and culture, a collective game of
poetry and surprise.
This essay originally appeared in the French publication Pied de Grue
(Waiting with Bated Breath) (Atelier de Creation Libertaire, 1994). The
magazine Droomschaar appeared in 5 issues during 1990-1994. A group of
Droomschaar artists named themselves CAPA, Collective Automatic Painters
Amsterdam, in 1997 and is still active today (2019). In Droomschaar #5
(1994), Rik Lina further elaborated on the anarchist basis of CAPA. An
English language excerpt from that article, "Group Anarchy," is
reprinted on page 30 [of The Oystercatcher #16, Mayday, 2019].