ARMED LOVE 14: Sixties Surrealism w/ Abigail Susik
This Wreckage
Sean KB and AP Andy
4.2 • 980 Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2026
⏱️ 95 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Abigail Susik is an art historian, vice president of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism, and editor of Resurgence! Jonathan Leake, Radical Surrealism, and the Resurgence Youth Movement, 1964-1967, a compilation of publications by a surrealist sixties' anarchist group in NYC.
For this Armed Love episode, we challenge ourselves to understand the political potency of the interwar avant-garde art movements (Dada, Futurism, Surrealism), their resurgence within the sixties New Left, and the potentials for avant-garde revolutionary praxis to confront political challenges today.
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TJ Clark works mentioned: https://archive.org/details/imageofpeoplegus0000clar_q5r5 https://archive.org/details/farewelltoideaep0000tjcl
Andre Breton's surrealist manifestos: https://monoskop.org/images/2/2f/Breton_Andre_Manifestoes_of_Surrealism.pdf
SI's 1957 text mentioning surrealism: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/guy-debord-report-on-the-construction-of-situations
Resurgence Youth Movement's Guerilla Manifesto: https://illwill.com/guerilla-manifesto
Archive of Rebel Worker journal: https://libcom.org/article/rebel-worker-journal
Schizofeminism: https://www.schizofeminism.com/
Iraqi (not Iranian) artist mentioned at the end: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haifa_Zangana Abigail also recommends David Roediger and Robin DG Kelley
Music: George Antheil - Ballet mècanique, part 1
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Happy New Year, everybody. |
| 0:08.6 | It's the Year of the Fire Horse, and I'm here with Abigail Seussick, an art historian, |
| 0:15.4 | vice president of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism, |
| 0:19.8 | an editor of Resurgence, Jonathan Leak, |
| 0:22.7 | Radical Surrealism, and the Resurgence Youth Movement 1964 to 1967. And I mentioned the firehorse |
| 0:30.7 | because it's the year of the horse and the first year of the fire horse in 60 years since 1966. |
| 0:36.9 | Totally. I'm a fire dragon. So I think I have 13 more years to go. |
| 0:40.7 | I'm just waiting. |
| 0:41.6 | But Firehorse seems like it could be a good one. |
| 0:44.5 | I don't know much about astrology at all, including Chinese astrology. |
| 0:47.8 | But I was looking into it on Reddit, because I'm Chinamaxing. |
| 0:51.6 | That's the new trend. |
| 0:53.3 | And it says that the year of the |
| 0:55.5 | fire, energy, passion, enthusiasm, movement combined with the energy of the horse. This is amplified |
| 1:02.7 | at an almost chaotic pace. And there's a lot of theories about the year of the fire horse setting |
| 1:08.5 | into motion the most turbulent times of the 60s and around the world. |
| 1:13.4 | So I thought it was maybe an appropriate way to start moving back to the 60s mindset like we like |
| 1:18.6 | to do on this armed love, this wreckage vertical. |
| 1:21.9 | So yeah, we want to work our way towards the 60s talking about the resurgence youth movement, |
| 1:27.1 | which was an anarchist |
| 1:28.9 | group in New York and some of the other surrealist currents of the 60s. Before we get there, |
| 1:34.5 | I want to work all the way back from the beginning of surrealism and even starting with Dada, |
... |
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