Introducing

Surrealist Times Dinners

A Collaborative Endeavor

between myself Tony(a) Lemos & Carlos Uriona , Cultural Strategist at Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield

The Dinners

Beginning on Tuesday January 21st, the day after Trump’s second inauguration, one or two people per week will receive an invitation to the “Surreal Times Dinners”. Dinner will be served along with dialog on action, hope, gardens, community, creativity and an invitation to participate in a surreal art games such but not limited to exquisite corps. These dinners will continue for the duration of his presidency. The dinners are part performance piece, part art project and will filmed/recorded as a way of documenting these surreal times.

Every 6 months all previous dinner guests will be invited to attend a community meal at a location in Ashfield to continue the dialog and check in.

The dinners are part performance piece, part art project and will be filmed as way of documeting these surreal times.

How to get an Invitation:

Would you like to receive an invitation? Please fill out this google form and when your name comes up you will receive an email invite with a date. At that point you can accept or decline the invitation. While I cannot cater to specific dietary requests please do let me know if you have a severe allergy.

The Logistics

All weekly dinners will take place in Conway, MA (exact address will be on invitation) on Tuesday evenings from 6-8pm. Each week two guests will be invited, guests will be picked at random.

Attire: You are invited but not required to come dressed as your alter ego, dress up or dress down, whatever inspires you.

You are not required to bring anything at all. If you would like to bring something bring something you love! either an appetizer or desert or wine or flowers

The Why?

Why not? In times like this growing community is vital, as is keeping a record of our lives and stories, as history writes a different story and tries to erase some of our experiences documenting our day to day is important. Telling our stories from a historical approach is important because it helps us keep traditions, languages, and values alive, ensuring they are passed down to future generations. Providing a historical perspective to future generations ca shows how past events have shaped societies, policies, and individual lives. Many stories have been overlooked or silenced. A historical approach helps recover and amplify diverse voices, ensuring a fuller, more inclusive narrative. Stories of resilience, struggle, and triumph can inspire social movements and encourage positive transformation. When we connect our personal or community stories to historical events, we see how interconnected we all are, fostering empathy and understanding.

Receiving an invitation is an opportunity to engage in dialog, grow community and perhaps plant a seed to help grow our way out of these surreal times. Through out history people have gathered around their kitchen tables to help understand + deal with times they were experiencing. So many important movements have begun around a kitchen table including the Harlem Renaissance, with a dinner party that took place on March 21, 1924, an unprecedented interracial gathering that included such luminaries as W.E.B. Du Bois, Carl Van Doren and Alain Locke, as well as up-and-coming writers like Countee Cullen.

Growing in person community as well as having IRL experiences is vital to surviving these times, one of guiding posts of Surrealist movement was its success as a collective body, in collaboration it’s easy to go beyond what can be done in isolation. Surrealism can lead the way to revolution, whether social, personal, political, or artistic, the movement urges people to find magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional.

Consider this a creative form of resistance and documentation.

The inspiration

My direct inspiration for this project came from reading about the friendship of three of my favorite Surrealist artists Remedios Varo, Kati Horna and Leonora Carrington, three women living in Mexico City in the 1940’s (all like myself immigrants from Europe). The three of them embodied what can only be called “a lifestyle of surrealism”, while also spending a significant time in domestic activities like sharing meals, coffee and dialog around the kitchen table discussing feminism, art, alchemy, magic, Tarot and astrology, and like myself had a propensity for practical jokes! These women lived through a lot! and I think it is safe to say their friendship and creativity got them through.

Another large influence on this project and on my personal journey in general is ”The Dinner Party”  by Judy Chicago. I still remember being introduced to the project as a young teenager, such a coming-of-age moment  and then finally getting to see it in person. There are two guests that table I like to think of as direct descendents; Sapho and Aspasia. (Aspasia was a metic ( meaning foreign resident) of Athens in the 5th  originally from Anatolia, in Athens she was an educator. My maternal grandmother came from Anatolia (now Turkey) and was also called Aspasia.

Did you know Salvador Dali and his wife Gala (Elena Ivanovna Diakonova) began hosting a series known as “Les Dîners” beginning in the 1970s in Paris, they were meant to shock attendees in the most delightful ways. sometimes with absurd presentation, or wacky recipes there was a surrealist twist on every aspect of the evening. (this was the beginning of the Salon movement)

What about the little know secret journal called "De Schone Zakdoek" translated to "the Clean Kerchief" a secret journal published by Gertrude Pape and Theo van Baaren in 1941 during Nazi Occupation of Netherlands. It documents a time through art /literature/ poetry that came about from monday night gatherings in Gertrudes flat where she and her friends engaged in discussions/collab art and occationally seances.

These Surrealist times

History repeats.

21st Century America has been surreal, it begun with the contested election of 2000, followed by terroist attacks on NYC, Wars ( Iraq, Afganistan), the 2008 financial collapse, The whirlwind election of President Obama (a moment of hope) followed by a rise of the antidemocratic authoritarianism of Donald Trump, a Pandemic, 1 million dead Americans, more wars; Ukraine, followed by a glimmer of hope, and more wars (Israel Gaza), and then now moving into another period of unknown.

A population of growing anxiety and separation. As a community herbalist and healer for the past 25 years I have come to the conclusion that the greatest consequential disease Americans are facing is separation. Separation of self, lack of community, real in person connections, connection to the earth connection to the elements.

In a dopamine addicted culture I believe we are lacking slow real time connections so I would like to invite you to the Surrealist Times (Tuesday) Night Dinners

Curious? Would you like to receive an invitation or nominate someone? Click here

Other ways to support this (on going) project:

Are you an audiophile or videographer willing to donate your time?

Are you knowledgeable about grants/grant writing and know of the perfect grant for this project

Spread the word, do you have a friend who you think would make a great guest, have then fill out the google doc/

List of Random (thrifted) things I am looking for:

Adult sized wooden chairs (all wood),

Full sized manequins

Full Sized Mannequin legs

Monetary Donations:

One time donations of any amount/ or Become a friend of the Project (be listed as a friend on the website and all final materials and pledge a monthly donation of $5/$10/$20 (venmo/paypal/stripe)