Bureau of Surrealist Research

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bureau of Surrealist Research, also known as the Centrale Surréaliste, was a Paris-based office in which a loosely affiliated group of Surrealist writers and artists gathered to meet, hold discussions, and conduct interviews with the goal of investigating speech under trance. Located at 15 Rue de Grenelle, it opened in October of 1924 under the direction of Antonin Artaud, almost simultaneously with the publication of the first Surrealist Manifesto.

One of the more significant contributions of the Bureau was its implicit idea that Surrealism was not to be contained under the category of the aesthetic. An assumption of the Bureau was that Surrealism could be a mode of research, and could produce knowledge on a par with the knowledge produced by scientific researchers.