[spectre] The Rise and Fall of the Situationists

[Copenhagen Free University]

The Rise and Fall of the Situationists

"But the new frontier of mankind is not only in Outer Space; it is in
the radical transformation of life on this planet."
Asger Jorn and Guy Debord in 'Mutant', 1962

In September 2003 we begin a new project at the Copenhagen Free
University with the title The Rise and Fall of The Situationists. This
project is launched with the opening of a website containing
Situationists texts in Danish translation - <>Situationistisk Arkiv
(For non-Danish speakers a parallel archive of English texts can be
found at the '<>Scandinavian Situationism' page at www.infopool.org.uk).

Over the past years we have been (more or less) systematically engaged
in mapping the many branches of the Situationist movement. In both a
geographical and historical sense our expedition has taken place from a
Scandinavian point of departure. On the way we have collected much
documentation, including printed matter, paintings, films, and
interviews, which will be presented at the Free Uni over the autumn.
Info on the reading room, exhibition, publications, film screenings,
and talks will follow.

When the Situationist International was founded in Italy in 1957 the
two main protagonists were the painter Asger Jorn and the filmmaker and
writer Guy Debord. In many ways Jorn and Debord represent two central
tendencies within the Situationist movement; tendencies, which over the
years mutually spurred and inspired each other but eventually began to
exclude each other. What divided them was the role of art in the
cultural revolution.

The schism, initially more a question of means than of ends, can
roughly be summed up in the following antagonisms: analysis vs. action,
iconoclasm vs. image production, and revolutionary politics vs.
revolutionary art. Both tendencies developed through the 1960s as parts
of the Situationist movement, even though Debord and the Parisian
theoreticians early in the 1960s excluded the German/Scandinavian
artists from the Situationist International. As a countermove the
excludees founded the 2nd Situationist International/ Bauhaus
Situationiste at Drakabygget in Southern Sweden.

The liberation from a repressive capitalist society through
experimental play was meant to be the aim of both the 1st SI and the
2nd SI, but after the defeat of the May '68 insurrection the
Situationist project disintegrated in the 1970s and eventually ended up
as pure farce (with the rejection of society brought to its extreme
with Debord's pathetic suicide in 1994 and with Jørgen Nash and
Drakabygget's maundering creativism still undiminished).

As the Situationists took much inspiration from the failed projects
preceding their own - DADA, Surrealism and Lettrism - we look at the
material collected and sift through what the Situationists did and
wrote in their critique of the city, art, daily life, the fetishism of
commodities, politics, reification, and the spectacle. But, this time,
the aim is not to make anyone think that the Situationist project was
successful.

It is our own task to produce a critique relevant for today!

Yours

Jakob Jakobsen


Thanks to Jacqueline de Jong, Gordon Fazakerley, Peter Laugesen, Howard
Slater, Mikkel Bolt, Fabian Tomsett, Reuben Keehan, Simon Ford and
Stewart Home.




Copenhagen Free University
Læssøesgade 3, 4., DK - 2200 Copenhagen N
Contact: +45 3537 0447 or <>www.copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk

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