In 1924, André Breton’s “Manifesto of Surrealism” emerged from the ruins of a world devastated by war, political turmoil, and distrust in established systems. The surrealists sought to break free from the constraints of logic and reason, offering a dream-like vision of reality that questioned what was real and what was illusion. A century later, we find ourselves living in a time of similar discontent. The far-right is rising once again, wars rage across the world, and distrust in governments and institutions runs deep. But unlike in Breton’s time, today’s distortions of reality are magnified and manipulated by technology. This is the era I call “Metasurrealism”.

Metasurrealism is an evolution of the original movement. It retains surrealism’s core mission of unveiling the subconscious and the bizarre, but in a world where technology layers over every aspect of our perception. Today, our reality is fragmented by algorithms, AI-generated content, and the constant flood of (dis)information. Our sense of what’s real is increasingly warped by forces we cannot see, driven by technologies we don’t fully understand.

The central thesis of Metasurrealism is the collapse of the boundary between the real and the artificial. Through AI, virtual reality, and the pervasiveness of digital content, we are living in a reality where authenticity is perpetually in question. The very notion of ‘truth’ is now a slippery concept. In this digital world, we no longer know if what we’re experiencing is reality, illusion, or manipulation.

The consequences of this metasurrealist condition are profound: we are disconnected from each other, from our own minds, and from the objective world. The core challenge of this age, then, is to name it, to understand it, and to examine its aspects. Once we create the vocabulary to describe this era, we can start managing the complexities and reclaiming agency over the ecosystems created by and for us through technology. Metasurrealism is our call to recognize the distortion and build frameworks to navigate it.

Metasurrealism is not a dystopia we are destined to drown in. It’s a toolkit to confront the firehose of technological evolution we live within, to subvert and reshape it. I invite others to contribute to this exploration. We can map the terrain of Metasurrealism and build the vocabulary and processes to make the most of this subsuming technological age.

Kim Bingham
November 2024