You have been searching for us without knowing it, following oblique references in crudely xeroxed marginal "samsidat" publications, crackpot mystical pamphlets, mail order courses ... a paper trail and a coded series of rumors spread at street level ... and the propagation of certain acts of insurrection against the Planetary Work Machine and the Consensus Reality ... or perhaps through various obscure mimeographed technical papers on the edges of "chaos science" ... through pirate computer networks ... or even through pure synchronicity and the pursuit of dreams. In any case we know something about you, your interests, deeds and desires, works and days ... and we know your address. Otherwise...you would not be reading this...
Interview conducted and translated 1983 by Kristin Ross
Printed in October 79, Winter 1997
H.L.: Are you going to ask me questions about the Situationists? Because I have something I'd like to talk about.
K.R.: Fine, go ahead.
H.L.: The Situationists . . . it's a delicate subject, one I care deeply about. It touches me in some ways ...
The SPUR group (German: Track or Trace) was one of the most important artists’ groups in post-war Germany, and played a key role in the development of German Informel art. Founding members included the painters Heimrad Prem (1934-78), Helmut Sturm (1932-2008) and HP (Hans Peter) Zimmer (1936-92), as well as the sculptor Lothar Fischer (1933-2004). [...]
Verso presents: ‘The Glorious Times of the Situationist International” with McKenzie Wark Wednesday 24 August, 7pm Starting up in the post-war Paris, and finding notoriety during the uprising of May 1968, the Situationists argued against mass media and advocated living life in opposition to advanced capitalism. They derived their name from the idea of purposefully [...]
The first issue of the magazine Spur (the trail), organ of the German section of the S.I., was published in Munich in August 1960, opening with a translation of the Situationist manifesto of the 17th of May [1960]. The second … Continue reading →
Posted by Richard Coyne ⋅ August 25, 2012 Original article In an articulate concluding statement at Pussy Riot’s trial in Moscow this week, one of their members Maria Alyokhina invoked Franz Kafka (1883-1924) and Guy Debord (1931-1994). The reference to show trials, menace and bureaucracy out-of-control in Kafka’s The Trial is obvious. Debord’s writing seems [...]
Based on the antics of a 1960s avant-garde art gang, “Situationist” turns random encounters into inspirational connections. What do you get when you mash up Marxist art from the 1960s with check-in apps from the 2010s? If your answer isn’t “Who the $*#& cares?” you may enjoy an iPhone app called “Situationist,” which gives a [...]
Guy Debord was born in Paris. His father died early, and he was raised by his grandmother in a series of Mediterranean towns. He was a headstrong youth, and after graduating high school he dropped out of the University of Paris where he had been studying law. He became a revolutionary poet, writer and filmmaker [...]
On the Passage of a few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International 1956-1972 A video documentary combining exhibition footage of the Situationist International exhibitions with film footage of the 1968 Paris student uprising, and graffiti and slogans based on the ideas of Guy Debord (one of the foremost spokesmen of [...]
Just who and what were the situationists and what was their influence on punk? Amy Britton investigates… “Ha Ha you think its funny/ turning rebellion into money?” The Clash “(White Man At) Hammersmith Palais.” The above words may be from the Clash, but like so much challenging punk rhetoric, it could so easily have come [...]
An Introduction to the Situationist International NB! #6 1984 * 1This text may be freely reproduced, translated or adapted, even without mentioning the source. 2As recently as the 1940s, art forms which shared punk’s ugliness, dissonance, and bohemian roots — dada and surrealism in the visual arts, existentialism in philosophy, and serialism in music, [...]
SOURCE A short introduction to the ideas of the Situationists. Based in France, their strand of libertarian Marxism became popular after the mass strikes of 1968. Situationist ideas came from the European organisation the Situationist International, formed in 1957. While it lasted only 15 years, its ideas were deeply influential, and have been a part [...]
The autonomy of the commodity is at the root of the dictatorship of appearance; of the fundamental tautology of the spectacle, where importance is always presupposed and defined by the staging of importance. The prefabricated pseudo-event which dominates and orients … Continue reading →
McKenzie Wark is an Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at The New School. His most recent book, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International , offers a reconsideration of the movement in terms of its lesser-known participants, its fringe activities, and its relevance for today. [...]
From Not Bored via Infoshop
It is with both pride and some embarrassment that we announce that we have once again translated Gianfranco Sanguinetti’s masterpiece, Truthful Report on the Last Chances to Save Capitalism in Italy, from French into Eng…
In the under-developed zones of the world market, gathered together in the ideology and – at the extreme – in a single man, all that is guaranteed by the state as indisputably admirable must be applauded and consumed passively. The … Continue reading →
Newly arrived at the stage of commodity abundance, capitalism disperses its representations of happiness – and thus of hierarchical success – in an infinity of objects and gadgets expressing, really and deceptively, so many appendages to the stratifications of consumer … Continue reading →
Contribution to a Situationist Definition of Play Internationale Situationniste #1 (June 1958) Translated by Reuben Keehan THE NOTION OF PLAY can only escape the linguistic and practical confusion surrounding it by being considered in its movement. After two centuries of negation by the continuous idealization of production, the primitive social functions of play are presented [...]
In May 1962, an image circulated widely of an American prototype of a machine serving to directly transcribe words on the keyboard of a typewriter. The human touch[1] of the publicity of this invention is naturally the happiness of the … Continue reading →