Categories
Exhibition

Once Upon a Tomorrow: Surrealism in Wales

Members of La Sirena will be joining the Welsh surrealist tribe and surrealists from across the UK at this event. We hope to meet some of you there. Further details at the Globe website.

Categories
Film Game Poem Talks and Presentations

The Lost Plot

Surrealerpool, the Liverpool Surrealist group, organised a public happening ‘The Lost Plot’ on Friday 9th February 2023. This was a vibrant and thoroughly ‘pataphysical manifestation of the Surrealerpool group. We hope there will be many more.

Doug Campbell attended as a representative of La Sirena, and is entirely responsible for the ‘in the moment’ quality of the photos below. We hope they give a flavour of the event.

The programme

Arrivals

Collective performance of the Surrealerpool manifesto

Further inspirational readings

The audience is rapt!

Climactic ritual sacrifice of the Lost Plot piñata

Denouement!

The website of the Surrealerpool group, is linked below. Their numerous publications are uniformly excellent and warmly recommended.

http://www.surrealerpool.online/

Categories
Enquiry La Sirena

Images of La Sirena

Fantomas meets the Sirens!

‘The Fantastic Aquarium’ (Mexico, 1974) Art by Gonzalo Mayo.

Categories
Enquiry Exhibition La Sirena Tattoo

Images of La Sirena

I recently acquired the tattoo shown above right. It wasn’t until I showed it to the group that it was pointed out that it qualified as an image of La Sirena, both as a hybrid being capable of traversing earth and air, and because the sirens of the Homer’s Odyssey were female figures with wings.

The tattoo, by John at Bizarre Ink of Edinburgh, is based on the ‘Queen of the Night’ also known as the ‘Burney Relief’, shown at the top left. I had been fascinated by this figure for years, and finally got to experience her presence at the ‘Feminine Power’ exhibition at the British museum a few weeks ago. I was coming to a significant hinge-point in my life, a tattoo seemed an appropriate ritual marker, and I suddenly realised what it had to be.

The story of the Burney Relief is a mystery worthy of the pulps. Acquired from a dealer in the late nineteenth century, its exact origin is unknown and it was long thought to be a forgery. It has since been widely associated with Lilith, though current scholarship suggests it is a representation of the Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love OR Ishtar’s elder sister and arch-rival Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld. (The sisters were much later syncretised by the Greeks as Aphrodite and Hekate respectively.) This duality pleases me, and I suppose the tattoo represents whichever queen of the night I find myself in most need of at any given time.

Categories
Enquiry Exhibition La Sirena

Images of La Sirena

‘Mami Wata’ Nigeria C19. From ‘Feminine Power: From the Divine to the Demonic’ at the British Museum.
Categories
La Sirena

‘Orrery’

Collaborative Collage, Doug Campbell, Janice Hathaway, Sunday 5 June 2022

Categories
La Sirena

Images of La Sirena

‘Siren’ (Oil on Canvas, 1900) by Odilon Redon
Categories
La Sirena

‘An Image Being Detached From Meaning’

Digital Collage by Doug Campbell
Categories
Game

Curious Corpses

Exquisite Corpses produced during the group excursion to London (22-23/12/21)

Categories
Exhibition Game

Curious and Curiouser

Members of La Sirena (Left to Right: Taya King, Darren Thomas and Doug Campbell) met up in London yesterday to attend the ‘Curious and Curiouser’ exhibition on Carroll’s ‘Alice’ books at the Victoria and Albert museum. We went for a meal afterward, and glasses were raised to our comrade Daina Kopp, who sadly couldn’t make it this time. Proper scans of the Exquisite Corpses we made together to follow.