april 23 2026
I watched just a few days ago a short video essay by Heaven Sent Honey ; she named it “Summer like a Surrealist.” As a lover of weird shit, a beginner psychoanalysis literature reader, and a longtime tarot enthusiast, I quite simply loved it. Also, I’m surely stealing her makeup look, but I feel like elongating the lines.
Then, a day later, I had my morning phone call with my dad. He asked me if I could go in his place with my stepmom to a conference on surréalisme. Well, what a coincidence. Naturally, I had to go, so after a good time with my acupuncturist, off I was to an amazing space called La Feuille en Papier Doré. Of course, we’re in Brussels, so surrealism is in the DNA of the city, with artists like Nougé, Magritte, and such and such...
Well, what I saw and heard, I did not expect. It wasn’t a conference but more of an exposé of many of the works of a living mad ANartist, (he insists he’s not an artist) in the name of Paul Gonze. He’s got this shamanistic way of presenting his vision to the world, and a ritualistic way of executing it. All the works he presented were done with a team or a collective of other like-minded individuals. It’s not painting or sculpture, it’s PERFORMANCE.
One of my favourite forms of art. I’m an Abramović stan, I love the witch, I’m sorry. He explained his various projects, and I loved every last one.
There’s one that really caught my attention with its sheer beauty and poetry. It’s called “À quoi rêve une chenille ?” or “What does a caterpillar dream of?” Him and his team, called MASS MOVING, went to Japan and announced the release of ten thousand butterflies in Tokyo.
To do so, they caught butterflies in the wild in the hundreds, fed them, let them copulate, and waited for the eggs to hatch. Then they fed the caterpillars and watched them enter their cocoons. Meanwhile, they made bombs… or trap boxes for the future butterflies so they could transport them from one place to another. Once everything was set and ready, the cocoons hatched, and the now butterflies were in the bombs. Off they were to Tokyo.
Paul explained that they had found this roundabout he described as “un îlot de verdure dans une mer de béton,” which translates to “an isle of greenery in a sea of concrete.” I’ve seen many roundabouts as such, looking very out of place. On that peculiar island, they placed a bomb, the box opened, the little creatures all flew out, and all went still. So much so that a traffic jam was caused. There’s a picture of a woman almost in meditation as a butterfly landed on her arm.
This is the type of moment you won’t ever forget. I’m sure I’ll remember it, and I’ve only seen pictures. Click the link above to see the whole process. I TRULY recommend it. There are so many ways to understand this and so many ways to put it into language, but never could it amount to the emotions felt by experiencing it.
I love rituals. I feel like all I do is talk, all I do is listen to people talk, but I want to see. I want to feel. Don’t tell me, show me. Exorcise the emotions and give them an image, a movement. If you want me to stay still, don’t say it, throw a butterfly bomb in my living room.
I crave nonsense filled to the brim with sense type of things happening. I was once sat in a park with my friend doing tarot at night during Covid. A man stopped by, his bare feet lit by our cheap candle. He asked if he could ask a question, we said yes. He said, “Are you conscious of your consciousness?” After being taken aback for a minute, a long discussion started. Later, my friend and I got a tattoo that could remind us of him forever.
That was during Covid. I’m scratching my head at when did a thing like that happen again after. I’m not asking for a mystical experience, but something ridiculous, but more and more I feel like okay, maybe I should be doing the ridiculous thing.
Coming back to Paul, he proposed a project for April 2027, when a solar eclipse will occur. It will last 6 minutes and will be seen around the Mediterranean to West Asia. He imagined a wave of lights responding to this eclipse that was seen in olden times as a bad omen. The lights would be the thousands of flashlights that we all happen to have in our pockets, being the smartphone. The project is called “rêve de lumière” or “a dream of light.”
I thought that this was such a great idea, that we humans, by the force of modernity, are linked by this tool that we all came to hate a little bit. I was thinking of the poetry of this moment of togetherness. Of the erasure of distances and great unification, humbled facing the occulted sun, but with our lights and our hearts.
I was the only person younger than 65 in the audience of roughly 20 to 30 people. I’ve never felt the distance between me and older generations in this manner. They were talking about energetic pollution, which is so beside the point and irrelevant to the discussion. I was appalled. It was so odd because I’m very critical of social media and phone culture; at the same time, I recognise the way it unifies us. It really made me think.
I couldn’t begin to describe how I got to this point, but it made me think about how the Internet is, in its essence, Marxist surrealism. I just do not know how to explain it. I might be talking out of my ass and using big words for the sake of it. But Marxist surrealism is what intuitively came to mind when I was thinking about memes. Memes are sometimes so devoid of sense, but it’s the language that we all speak, us people in the confidence.
I was thinking about how, when I was in Thailand, I saw two little boys, one being Thai, the other one being French, a tourist. They were both saying “67” to each other with the moves, you know. I laughed along with the other people that knew of the meme. People that didn’t know what it meant laughed, but not as hard, or just didn’t laugh because they didn’t understand. That’s all these two little boys could say to each other that was understandable to one another. I thought it was beautiful. Beyond their cultural differences, they had humour in common.
The Internet is a culture of reference you have to know to be in the know. The 67 meme is really just an American kid happily shouting “67” after his basketball team scored. When I first heard it, I couldn’t understand what was funny, but one thing is true: encountering the number 67 in the wild is always a notable experience nowadays. I’m definitely reaching, but I feel like 67 is the epitome of our post-ironic surrealist collective humour that we created on the Internet.
Are we seriously laughing at numbers? Well, we must.
Anyway here’s Paul's website ( i’m sorry to my non french-speaking friends, but it’s time to pop the translator)
thanks a lot
Lord Scarlett