A
French philosopher and theorist influenced by Marx, Debord founded Situationist International in the mid 50s.
The Situationist artistic and political
movement experimented with the idea of constructing
a situation. This was to combat the passivity created by
capitalism, which Debord called the Society of the Spectacle (people being seduced
into consumerism by capitalism through contemporary mass media.)
Written
as a manifesto for the group, this introduces key ideas such as psychogeography; "the
study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment,
consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals”.
It
concentrates on the urban environment.
Debord’s Psychogeographique de Paris. A map of the city of Paris, cut it into pieces and glued together in a different way. The new map was supposed to show locations which evoked the most emotions from people.
Debord’s idea seems to be that capitalism turns
people into robots moving in a fixed, passive, predetermined way (eg
home/work/home).
People can explore psychogeography through dérives (–
translating as ‘drift) which encourage people to move actively and consciously
through the city, moving at random, & finding chance encounters and personal
memories.
‘Never work’ written all over Paris in the1950s
'Call in sick' DFace 2008 Hackney
Debord writes about ‘…
a general idea of happiness prevalent among the bourgeoisie and
maintained by a system of publicity… an idea of
happiness whose crisis must be provoked on every occasion by every means’.
Another prophetic idea by Debord was the idea of ‘détournement'
(can be translated as diversion, or in current usage, hijacking) ie changing a pre-existing work of art or
literature to subvert its meaning. Quoting
or plagiarizing existing images so that the original is subverted.
(Le
Retour de la Colonne Durutti altered
comic by André Bertrand that was handed out at a University in 1966 during a student protest
Cowboy 2: "Realisation"
Cowboy 1: "Yeah? I guess that means pretty hard work with big books and piles of paper on a big table."
Cowboy 2: "Nope. I drift. Mostly I just drift."
Starts Wars - Dr D 2003
Sold Out/ Clearance sale Aida Wilde -
Screenprint/posters in Hackney Wick by Aida Wilde on the sale of artist studio buildings to make way for investment properties.
The opposite to‘détournement' is the idea of recuperation, in which subversive works or ideas are taken
over by mainstream media. This is a survival technique for capitalism, as it attempts to absorb resistance. I will talk about this in
the next blog.
The word count didn’t allow for examples of
contemporary artists/inheritors of the Situationists but here are some links:
@specialpatrols Special Patrol Group
www.Platformlondon.org
www.brandalismuk.ch
https://www.instagram.com/resistanceisfemale/
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