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An assemblage by Steven Cline<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Joanna Moorhead writing in Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington<\/em> (Thames & Hudson, 2023):<\/p>\n Penelope [Rosemont] also remembers that Leonora was keen on what the group called their \u201cSurrealist Survival Kits\u201d; these were \u201ca collection of poetic, magical, talismanic objects, along with images and other \u2018Surrealist things\u2019. A kit might include a feather, a pebble, a piece of glass, some verses from a poem. \u2018The purpose of these kits is to offset the destructive facts of daily life, to pull us through the hardest times, to reawaken our sense of wonder and to renew our capacity for reverie and revolt.\u2019\u201d For Penelope, it spoke to Leonora\u2019s wider vision of the world: \u201ctentative, playful, humorous, generous, adventurous, egalitarian, non-dogmatic, the opposite of conventional either\/or thinking\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Penelope Rosemont writing in Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields<\/em> (City Lights, 2019):<\/p>\n Well, Leonora laughed and said, \u201cYes, I did that too. But what we really need now is a Surrealist Survival Kit,\u201d and we had much fun deciding what would go into our Surrealist Survival Kit.<\/p>\n She spoke frequently of the urgent need for this special piece of equipment, the \u201cSurrealist Survival Kit\u201d\u2014which is described by Kenneth Cox in the wonderful book What Will Be<\/em> (2014) as a \u201ccollection of poetic, magical, talismanic objects, images, and other \u2018favourite things.\u2019 A kit could include, for example: a pebble, a feather, a bird\u2019s egg, a piece of wood, a chunk of coral, a bead, a shell, a bit of coloured glass, a painting the size of a postage-stamp, a poem by Benjamin P\u00e9ret, a \u2018Let There Be Wolves!\u2019 sticker). Every item small enough to keep in a cloth sack children kept marbles in.<\/p>\n \u201cIts purpose: to offset the destructive effects of daily life, to pull us through the hardest times, to reawaken our sense of wonder and to renew our capacity for dream and action. Designed to function symbolically; each would be different, for no two people are exactly alike.<\/p>\n \u201cOvercome by demoralization and defeat, depressed or suicidal, then is the time to open one\u2019s \u201cSurrealist Survival Kit\u201d and enjoy a breath of magical fresh air. To lay out its marvellous contents carefully before oneself, one by one, and let the objects and images play together, arrange them, rearrange them, enter the play with them. Relaxing and soothing as well as exhilarating and reinvigorating. In other words, just what every surrealist needs.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n From Athens meeting report, June 2011<\/a>, by SLAG (Surrealist London Action Group):<\/p>\n As we reflected together on the unfolding results of our game, we understood that what made the kits significant was not the personal collection of \u201cfavourite things\u201d by individuals\u2014\u201ceach one […] different, for no two people are exactly alike\u201d in Penelope Rosemont\u2019s words\u2014but the process of assembling them, of finding or constructing oneiric objects from literally any old rubbish that was lying around, the transmutation of base matter into the gold of future time. In other words, our Survival Kit was not the objects themselves, but the ability to find and transform them. Surrealism is our survival kit, and as such is a necessary\u2014though insufficient\u2014condition for the social revolution that must come.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Elsewhere on { feuilleton } Previously on { feuilleton } An assemblage by Steven Cline. Joanna Moorhead writing in Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington (Thames & Hudson, 2023): Penelope [Rosemont] also remembers that Leonora was keen on what the group called their \u201cSurrealist Survival Kits\u201d; these were \u201ca collection of poetic, magical, talismanic objects, along with images and other \u2018Surrealist things\u2019. … Continue reading “Leonora Carrington’s Surrealist Survival Kit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,18],"tags":[2576,13276,731,10682,13275],"class_list":["post-23990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-surrealism","tag-joanna-moorhead","tag-kenneth-cox","tag-leonora-carrington","tag-penelope-rosemont","tag-steven-cline"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-6eW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n\u2022 The Surrealism archive<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\u2022 Leonora Carrington and the House of Fear<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"