|
Situationist, Situationist refers to a member of the Situationist International (SI), a very small group of international, political and artistic agitators with roots in Marxism, Anarchism and the early twentieth century European artistic avant garde. Formed in 1957, the SI was active in Europe through the 1960s and had aspirations for major social and political transformations. In the 1960s the group, split into a few different groups, including the Situationist Bauhaus, the Antinational and 2ns SI. The (1st)SI disbanded in 1972 * The first issue of the journal Internationale Situationniste defined situationist as "having to do with the theory or practical activity of constructing situations. One who engages in the construction of situations. A member of the Situationist International" The same journal defined situationism as "a meaningless term improperly derived from the above. There is no such thing as situationism, which would mean a doctrine of interpretation of existing facts. The notion of situationism is obviously devised by antisituationists." Situationist International The SI was formed at a meeting in the Italian village of Cosio d'Arroscia on 28 July 1957 with the fusion of several extremely small artistic tendencies, which claimed to be ''avant-gardistes'': Lettrist International, the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus (an off-shoot of COBRA), and the London Psychogeographical Association. The groups came together intending to reawaken the radical political potential of surrealism. The group also later drew ideas from the left communist group Socialisme ou Barbarie. The most prominent French member of the group, Guy Debord, has tended to polarise opinion. Some describe him as having provided the theoretical clarity within the group; others say that he exercised dictatorial control over its development and membership, while yet others say that he was a powerful writer, but a second rate thinker. Other members included the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys, the Italo-Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi, the English artist Ralph Rumney (sole member of the London Psychogeographical Society, Rumney suffered expulsion relatively soon after the formation of the Situationist International), the Scandinavian artist Asger Jorn (who after parting with the SI also founded the Scandinavian Institute for Comparative Vandalism), the veteran of the Hungarian Uprising Attila Kotanyi, the French writer Michele Bernstein, and Raoul Vaneigem. Debord and Bernstein later married. Situationist Bauhaus Jørgen Nash and Asger Jorn formed the Situationist Bauhaus in 1960, purchasing a farm in Southern Sweden. They continued with various artistic and political activities and their deeper theoretical involvement has often meant they have been ignored by those who prefer the more didactic style of Paris-centred International. Second Situationist International The SI experienced splits and expulsions from its beginning. The most prominent split in the group, in 1962, resulted in the Paris section retaining the name Situationist International while excluding the German section, who as Gruppe SPUR had merged into the SI in 1959. The excluded group declared themselves The Second Situationist International and based themselves at the Bauhaus in Sweden. While the entire history of the Situationists was marked by their impetus to revolutionize life, the split was characterised by Vaneigem (of the French section), and by many subsequent critics, as marking a transition in the French group from the Situationist view of revolution possibly taking an "artistic" form to an involvement in "political" agitation. Asger Jorn continued to fund both groups with the proceeds of his works of art. One way or another, the currents which the SI took as predecessors saw their purpose as involving a radical redefinition of the role of art in the twentieth century. The Situationists themselves took a dialectical viewpoint, seeing their task as superseding art, abolishing the notion of art as a separate, specialized activity and transforming it so it became part of the fabric of everyday life. From the Situationist's viewpoint, art is revolutionary or it is nothing. In this way, the Situationists saw their efforts as completing the work of both Dada and surrealism while abolishing both. Still, the Situationists answered the question "What is revolutionary?" differently at different times. May 1968 Those who followed the "artistic" view of the SI might view the evolution of SI as producing a more boring or dogmatic organization. Those following the political view would see the May 1968 uprisings as a logical outcome of the SI's dialectical approach: while savaging present day society, they sought a revolutionary society which would embody the positive tendencies of capitalist development. The "realization and suppression of Art" is simply the most developed of the many dialectical supersessions which the SI sought over the years. For the Situationist International of 1968, the world triumph of workers councils would bring about all these supersessions. An important event leading up to May 1968 was the so called Strasbourg scandal. A group of students managed to use public funds to publish the pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life: considered in its economic, political, psychological, sexual, and particularly intellectual aspects, and a modest proposal for its remedy. The pamphlet circulated in thousands of copies and helped to make the situationists well known throughout the nonstalinist left. The SI's part in the revolt of 1968 has often been overemphasised. They were a very small group, but were expert self-propagandists, and their slogans appeared daubed on walls throughout Paris at this time. SI member René Viénet's 1968 book Enragés and Situationists in the Occupations Movement, France, May '68 gives an account of the involvement of the SI with the student group of Enragés and the occupation of the Sorbonne. The occupations of 1968 started at the university of Nanterre and spread to the Sorbonne. The police tried to take back the Sorbonne and a riot ensued. Following this a general strike was declared with up to 10 million workers participating. The SI originally participated in the Sorbonne occupations and defended barricades in the riots. The SI distributed calls for the occupation of factories and the formation of workers’ councils but disillusioned with the students left the university to set up the CMDO (The Council For The Maintenance Of The Occupations) which distributed the SI’s demands on a much wider scale. After the end of the movement, the CMDO disbanded. The Situationist Antinational was published for a short while in the 1970s, after the dissolving of the 1SI in 1972. Influence Situationist ideas have continued to echo profoundly through many aspects of culture and politics in Europe and the USA. Even in their own time, with limited translations of their dense theoretical texts, combined with their very successful self-mythologisation, the term 'situationist' was often used to refer to any rebel or outsider, rather than to a body of surrealist-inspired Marxist critical theory. As such, the term 'situationist' and those of 'spectacle' and 'detournement' have often been decontextualised and recuperated. In political terms, in the 1960s and 1970s elements of Situationist critique influenced anarchists and other leftists, with various emphases and interpretations which combine Situationist concepts more or less successfully with a variety of other perspectives. Examples of these groups include: in Amsterdam, the Provos, in the UK King Mob, the producers of Heatwave magazine (who later briefy joined the SI) and the Angry Brigade. In the US, groups like Black Mask (later Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers), The Weathermen and the Rebel Worker group also explicitly employed their ideas. In the 1980s and 90s, Situationist ideas were taken up by 'second wave' anarchists. These theorists, such as Bob Black, Hakim Bey, Fredy Perlman and John Zerzan developed the SI's ideas in various directions, but all attempted to remove the perspectives and proposed practices of the SI from a Marxist theoretical context. These theorists were predominantly associated with the magazines Fifth Estate, and Green Anarchy, in which they developed these perspectives. Most recently, more politically heterogeneous radical groups such as Reclaim the Streets and Adbusters have respectively, seen themselves as 'creating situations' or practicing detournement on advertisments. In cultural terms, the SI's influence has been even greater, if more diffuse. The list of cultural practices which claim a debt to the SI is almost limitless, but there are some prominent examples: Classic Situationist texts include: On the Poverty of Student Life, "Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord, "The Revolution Of Everyday Life", and "The Situationist International Anthology" edited by Ken Knabb. The initial English-language text, although poorly and freely translated, was "Leaving The 20th Century' edited by Chris Gray. As many of the original Situationist texts tend to be carefully written, some people have found them dense and inaccessible. However, during the early 1980's English Anarchist Larry Law produced a series of 'pocket-books' under the name of "Spectacular Times" which aimed to make Situationist ideas more easily assimilated into popularist anarchism. Some people, though, feel that he much reduced their cohesiveness by this process. Contemporary Contemporary Situationist praxis is split between pro-situs, situlogists and psychogeographers. Criticism Critics of the Situationists frequently assert that their ideas are not in fact complex and difficult to understand, but are at best simple ideas expressed in deliberately difficult language, and at worst actually nonsensical. For example anarchist Chaz Bufe asserts that "obscure situationist jargon" is a major problem in the anarchist scene *. Key ideas in Situationist theory Ideas central to Situationist theory include: "Ha! You think it's funny? Turning rebellion into money?" -- The Clash, (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais. Recuperation is the process by which the spectacle takes a radical or revolutionary idea and repackages it as a saleable commodity. An example of recuperation, it could be argued, was the 1989 Situationist exhibition staged in Paris, Boston, and at the ICA gallery in London's Mall, wherein both original situationist manifestos, and contemporary Pro-Situ influenced works (records, fanzines, samizdat-style leaflets and propaganda) were presented in a way that reinforced the prestige of the art establishment, for passive public consumption. This event of course contrasts sharply to the occasion when the Situationist International gave a presentation at the ICA themselves, which famously ended when an audience member asked the group "what is situationism?" to which Guy Debord responded "we are not here to answer cuntish questions" before marching off to the bar. Although all would agree that a lot of water has gone under the bridge since 1989 with regard to the image of the SI in the media, another example that might be cited would be the exhibition and other events on "The SI and After" that were staged by the Aquarium art gallery in London in 2003. A longer-lasting example, it could be argued, would be the "Hacienda" nightclub in Manchester (1982-1997). Highly commercially successful, this was named by its owner, British music-industry businessman Tony Wilson, after a reference in the 1953 work "Formulary for a New Urbanism" by Ivan Chtcheglov. Millionaire Wilson's company Factory Records was one of the sponsors of the 1989 ICA exhibition (along with Beck's beer). Later, in 1996, he allowed a conference on the SI to be staged at the Hacienda night-club. Veteran Situationist-influenced critics of recuperation were not surprised to learn that Wilson had invested funds in collecting Situationist-linked artworks, including Debord's "Psychogeographical Map of Paris" (1953), some of which he allowed to be shown in public at the Aquarium event in 2003. An index of the financial astuteness of such speculation is the fact that there are now dealers in artworks and fine books who count Situationist-linked works among their specialities. One could view detournement as forming the opposite side of the coin to 'recuperation' (where radical ideas and images become safe and commodified), in that images produced by the spectacle get altered and subverted so that rather than supporting the status quo, their meaning becomes changed in order to put across a more radical or oppositionist message. The concept of detournement has had a popular influence amongst contemporary radicals, and the technique can be seen in action in the present day when looking at the work of Culture Jammers including Adbusters 1, whose 'subvertisements' 'detourn' Nike adverts, for example. In this case the original advertisement's imagery is altered in order to draw attention to said company's policy of shifting their production base to cheap-labour third-world 'free trade zones'. However, the line between 'recuperation' and 'detournement' can become thin (or at least very fuzzy) at times, as Naomi Klein points out in her book No Logo. Here she details how corporations such as Nike, Pepsi or Diesel have approached Culture Jammers and Adbusters (sometimes successfully) and offered them lucrative contracts in return for partaking in 'ironic' promotional campaigns. She points out further irony by drawing attention to merchandising produced in order to promote Adbusters' Buy Nothing day, an example of the recuperation of detournement (or of culture eating itself) if ever there was one. Klein's arguments about irony reifying rather than breaking down power structures is echoed by Slavoj Zizek. Zizek argues that the kind of distance opened up by detournement is the condition of possibility for ideology to operate: by attacking and distancing oneself from the sign-systems of capital, the subject creates a fantasy of transgression that "covers up" his/her actual complicity with capitalism as an overarching system. In contrast, evoLhypergrapHyCx are very fond of pointing out the differences between hypergraphics, 'detournement', the postmodern idea of appropriation and the Neoist use of plagiarism as the use of different and similar techniques used for different and similar means, effects and causes. Quotations SI writings Writings on the SI See also Activities or publications that share Situationist ideas See also - Anarchism and the arts | |||||||
|
| ||||||||
 |
|
| |