Situationist International

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See also: Art | Philosophies

The Situationist International was a diversely influential group of european artists and theorists who set out in 1957 to develop an "activity to replace art", by taking the energy and creativity wasted on creating objects of "passive contemplation", and instead applying it to all aspects of daily life. The idea was to utilize any and all art forms to produce a unitary subjective experience or "passage" through a given space and time. The resulting "situations" would not be simply observed but directly lived by the participants. Their goal was initially to create experimental cities dedicated to this new activity, which would be supported by their allure as places set aside for inventing new and more interesting ways to *play* - a sort of post-modern Las Vegas or Coney Island.

The unlikelihood of this scenario led to the increasing politicization of the group, who began to espouse worldwide revolution based on the ideas of "generalized self-management" expressed in the form of "worker's councils". This position was seemingly contradicted by their extremist critique of labour, condensed in the slogan "never work." Despite this unresolved ambiguity, their ideas reached their widest application (so far) during the May-June "events" of 1968.

Among other cultural innovations, they pioneered the technique of re-using or re-contextualizing pre-existing cultural elements for the purpose of radical critique (aka "detournement") which prefigured later trends of "sampling", "appropriation", and "guerrilla media". Their unique insistence on placing a notice of "no copyright" on all their published works also anticipates more mainstream interest in this topic by several decades. The group, which never consisted of more that 10 or 15 members, dissolved itself in 1972. Key texts (in english translations:) Guy Debord, "Society of the Spectacle"; Raoul Vaneigem, "The Revolution of Everyday Life"; Ken Knabb (translator), "Situationist International Anthology" (collection of S.I. Journal articles, pre- and post-S.I. texts.)

Additional related texts:

Libero Andreotti (Editor), Theory of the Derive: And Other Situationist Writings on the City

Griel Marcus, Lipstick Traces