In the 1943 Surrealist ranking of mythic beasts, the chimera reached a respectable #2, just falling short of the sphinx but still on top of such heavy hitters as the sirens, the basilisk and the hydra. Nonetheless, it is our intent to underscore and celebrate the chimera’s role in the surrealist bestiary. Its virtues are apparent: above all other creatures, comic overcomplication and blatant instability over the false streamlining of life.
We are a new surrealist group in solidarity with the International Surrealist Movement, located in the city of Ottawa on unceded, unsurrendered Algonquin territory. Revolutionary and intractable, we are robed gender-bending misfits who confuse the staff and patrons of whatever establishment we happen to occupy. Until recently, we have been more or less occulted in our activities, not necessarily out of fear of publicity but certainly in disdain of it. Our emphasis thus far has been mercilessly ludic, with such themes as bestiaries, dreams and dream algorithms, identity and gender dissolution and reconstruction, monsters, “Early Space History”, negating media terrorism, utopia, revolutionary politics, cartoons, Tarot, mythology, and popular fandom. For us, the surrealist imperative “More reality!” means, in effect: “More monsters!”
Website:
https://surrealistottawa.wordpress.com/
Contact us at:
chimera.ipa [at] gmail [dot] com
“Attractions are proportional to destinies.”
-Charles Fourier