Vaneigem tion with Raoul In Conversa- Hans Ulrich Obrist

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 Hans Ulrich Obrist 01 / 12 In Conversa-tion with Raoul Vaneigem stranglehold of the commodity. a life rediscovered will put an end to the deadly creation of an existence in which the poetry of Chamoiseau, Glissant, and their friends for the On the other hand, I welcome the appeal by the scams of government by the Left or the Right. and public services that are finally liberated from natural power, a more natural form of farming, can form, coordinate, and begin self-producing civil disobedience so that local communities masters, the multinational mafias. I call for want nothing to do with either the state or its I agree with the Zapatistas from Chiapas who relationship whatsoever with people of power. Raoul Vaneigem to found a new society on the principle of self- need to bring consumer society to an end and agree over a period of nearly ten years on the had very different temperaments, but we would immediately invited me to Paris. The two of us by putting me in touch with Guy Debord who people’s blood boil. Lefebvre kindly responded them all with the common virtue of making the language, music, and film imagery by crediting an attempt to unify radical concepts, Lettrist of sorts on “poetry and revolution” that was Remainder] was published, I sent him an essay When Lefebvre’s a rather festive conception of existence. I found was fueled by working class consciousness and up in an environment in which our fighting spirit own radicality absolves me from any label. I grew situationist project at its most revolutionary. My personally pressed on with in the spirit of the in my personal evolution, an evolution I have now disappeared was an important moment throughout. My participation in a group that has that, in my case, has remained revolutionary with the spectacular recuperation of a project throngs of ideologues. I have nothing in common particularity kept us from being mistaken for the was ever only a token of identification. Its unanimous in rejecting. The term “situationist” ism is an ideology that the situationists were RV situationism begin, and what was your nings? How did your participation in HUO to Obama? What would your appeal and/or advice be have written an appeal to Barack Obama. Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, who Hans Ulrich Obrist I would first like to clarify that situation send him poetic essays? to you at the time? Why did you decide to figure of Henri Lefebvre. What did he mean your relationship with the SI, there was the fundamental contribution? At the outset of La Somme et le reste Critique of Everyday Life Could we talk about your begin

I refuse to cultivate any

I just visited Edouard [The Sum and the captivating. - - sweeps away the ruins of oppression. into an offensive of life, and that an art of living resistance to market exploitation is transformed cal consciousness. I just do what I can to see that simply the spokesman, among others, of a radi spectacle’s standard operating procedure. I am then set up against one another according to the reducing us to cardboard cut-outs that it can ationism in its most ridiculous version aims at: RV trade and the death-reflex. supersede survival, predatory behavior, power, Rather, it illuminates now how lifestyle can and a genuinely human society has emerged. what happens once consumer society is rejected munist Party. The situationist project is not about communities in Spain later smashed by the Com out by Lenin and Trotsky, by the libertarian movement and the Republic of Councils wiped out by the Paris Commune, by the Makhnovist meditation on the new type of society sketched ationist experience can also be seen as a critical showing its limits and its weaknesses, the situ to the paranoia typical of minds under siege. By for radical rupture, and of the danger of giving in the hostility of the dominant world, of the need formed a “group-at-risk” that was conscious of based on the profitable exploitation of man. We the control and stranglehold of an economy does convey our will to liberate daily life from The military metaphor is questionable, but it like a beachhead active within enemy territory. group was already sketching out a situation, RV with the collapse of financial capitalism. autonomous groups that are now coming to grips just beginning to manifest themselves in the source of inspiration to this day. Its effects are lapses, never ceased to motivate us, remains a The radicality, which, notwithstanding some ations, the superseding of predatory behavior. RV the existential angst that it generates. management, where life supersedes survival and Not as roles. That is precisely what situ How do you see Debord’s role and your role? protagonists of the situationist movement. HUO By its very style of living and thinking, our define the situationist project in 2009? tions for you, concretely? How would you tion of situations. What were those situa commits her- or himself to the construc defined the situationist as someone who HUO Psychogeography, the construction of situ unrealized? HUO You and Guy Debord are the main The Situationist International Which situationist projects remain ------

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 Hans Ulrich Obrist 032 / In Conversa-tion with Raoul Vaneigem May 1968, we knew that some recuperation was RV woman, J.V. Martin, Raoul Vaneigem and Guy Debord) Situationist International, November 1962 (from left to right: an unknown the production of a covetous power. Creative life, specific to humans—was supplanted by work, by an involution in which creativity—a quality Middle Neolithic with intensive farming, caused exploitation of nature and man, starting in the RV World and Exuberant Life]. monde et la joie de vivre experimental adventure in of radicalism. I have attempted to analyze our radicality, disown it, or lapse into the imposture allow the individuals to either consolidate their ture. The group vanished in such a way as to oblivion all of us who participated in the adven not indiscriminately sweep away to the shores of such a heavy price. The shipwreck, however, did of failure for which the group ended up paying ful to examine how it is that we sowed the seeds anathema are now long past, and it might be use of conscience. Those times of catharsis and of breaches of revolutionary spirit, of dereliction paranoid denunciation: of betrayals of radicality, fallen into. Dissension intensified to the point of were commensurate with the self-parody we had uselessness, and the only answers put forward conference was demonstrating its increasing inside. The group was crumbling, the Venice that in fact they were shattering us from the that we had failed to shatter those mechanisms, clear to us, during the last conference in Venice, them neatly into the cultural puzzle. It became of alienation that would falsify our ideas and fit afoot. We were familiar with the mechanisms Following the occupation movements of ing from the group? HUO Survival is budgeted life. The system of survival. What is the difference? HUO What were your reasons for resign You have written a lot on life, not [Between Mourning the Entre le deuil du - - - the commodity. has been ruined by the inhumanity of the cult of to rebuild—on human foundations—a world that with life. We have to reground ourselves in order increased vigilance, awareness, and solidarity an ongoing process that simply requires from us tensions. This is not a fact I am describing, but repression and the deadly resolutions of psychic police despotism, of religions, of ideologies, of children, of intellectual dominion, of military and for and fear of women, of the misleading of of money, of power, of hierarchy, of contempt of the forsaking of happiness, of the fetishizing separation from the self, of sacrifice, of guilt, of nature, of work, of trade, of predation, of are moving toward the end of the exploitation The break with patriarchal values is final. We the shift in civilization revealed by May 1968. dealers cash in on, they cannot conceal for long general despair, which our ruling wheelers and patched up in a hurry and tossed out to feed a ideologies and old religious infirmities being RV most radical about May 1968. progression in hearts and minds of what was eventually rouse it from its slumber, as will the and powerlessness of the governing classes will one eye open. The arrogance, incompetence, insurrectional consciousness always sleeps with have the exploited masses been so passive. Still, forces of repression been so weakened, yet never situation is paradoxical: never in Europe have the been sounding the alarm for a decade or so. Our idiots than in the political sphere, a number had among economists, where one finds even more capitalism. This was easily predictable. Even RV of all economic mechanisms. defines animal behavior, became the generator subsistence. From then on, predation, which declined and gave way to a brutish struggle for as had begun to unfold during the Paleolithic, been aborted. to establish a US-led globalization has world is emerging now in which the attempt must be reinvented. He says that a new ing the After-Crisis]. For him, everything just published moment, in 2009? Jean-Pierre Page has HUO Even if we are today seeing recycled May ‘68? Has it all been appropriated? ant life.” You revisit May ‘68. What is left of “between mourning the world and exuber HUO We are witnessing the collapse of financial have evolved? May ‘68, how do you feel life and society HUO What do you think of the current Your new book takes us on a trip Today, more than forty years after Penser l’après crise [Think - -

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 Hans Ulrich Obrist 03 / 12 In Conversa-tion with Raoul Vaneigem bankruptcy, that of our existence. eteering that is designing, together with its own time to break with the laws of a political rack conceived and manufactured by workers. It is to buy at market prices even though they were sell them—goods that we are currently forced our own use—that is to say, no longer in order to production . . .). The idea is to produce for us, for health centers, transport, metal and textile for all (natural power, biodiversity, education, that produce indispensable goods and services future belongs to self-managed communities and a hypocritical moralization of trade. The farming, a hastily patched-up public sector, natural power, the return to use value, organic reenergized by the production of non-polluting witness is about to give way to a capitalism speculative capitalism whose debacle we now 1789 revolution on. Similarly, the stock-dabbling by the emerging free-trade economy, from the Régime was a fossilized form that was shattered RV bankster-state, taxes vainly used to try to plug of financial capitalism. Why pay taxes to the from its citizens to support the embezzlements the decisions of a government that embezzles tions. Civil disobedience means disregarding supersede and cancel out commercial rela hypothetical well-being. Human relations must amidst constant destitution, to deliver a most spread ruin and destruction while pretending, with an economic system that has consistently and a fraud. There must be a decisive break RV to live on. place, we will once again allow market barbarism economic reality and create a human reality in its the energy of plants and soil. If we do not exit created—will be free as the wind, the sun, and which—once the new means of production are power and making us pay the high price for that will try to save its skin by investing in natural man. And against a patched-up capitalism that has been based on the exploitation of nature and Against the economy that for thousands of years nomic war. It is a world war against the economy. RV claims? An economic Third World War? HUO The agrarian economy of the Ancien The moralization of profit is an illusion growth imperative? instead? How does one escape from the profit as motive and pursue well-being globalization? How does one get rid of global imbalances. What do you think of lines of greater justice, in order to shrink reorganization of globalization along the tion Work HUO We are at war, yes, but this is not an eco Is this a war of a new kind, as Page In his book , Joseph Stiglitz argues for a Making Globaliza - - - - Image courtesy Peter Blum, New York. Chris Marker's Gay-Lussac (Paris, May 1968) still from if... (1968), directed by Lindsay Anderson

034 / . racketeering mafias than chaos, despair, suicidal out conscience. Nothing is more profitable to the absence of sentient intelligence, violence with The worst would be the unawareness of life, the end to its exploitation, rape, and plundering. human, an alliance with nature that puts an early markers of a lifestyle that is genuinely instead, still just barely and confusedly, are the old patriarchal world are vanishing. Percolating signals a deep shift: the reference points of the gence of human civilization. The current turmoil the collapse of market civilization and the emer of the economy as a management system. It is crisis. What we are facing today is an implosion RV backtracking.” called this “creating situations that rule out any daily lives of everyone. The situationists have measures in favor of the environment and the democracy. Local councils will be set up to take mentary democracy is made obsolete by direct in which our pork-barreling, corrupt parlia globally through a federation of communities RV consumerist propaganda. needs, that is, not needs prefabricated by social value, meeting the needs of all—authentic for themselves and by themselves all goods of aim of local communities should be to produce of profit they call “growth.” From now on, the the public interest, nor with that contrivance debt, which covers up a massive defrauding of need concern ourselves neither with government overwhelms the tyranny of money and power. We to create communities where desire for life It is up to us to capitalize on this epochal shift towards a state that is plundering us is a right. parliamentary democracy. Civil disobedience has every right to ignore the decrees of corrupt The direct democracy of self-managed councils free power networks in every local community? allocate them instead to the self-management of the sinkhole of corruption, when we could The crisis of the was ‘30s an economic new generations to rebel? current economic despair might push the more intolerable today. Do you think the when the economy was booming is even ten that what was already intolerable in ‘68 globalization from the ‘30s? You have writ effects as the miscarriages of the previous globalization have the same dangerous HUO For me, it should mean acting locally and do you think of his notion of globality? dialogue that produces differences. What homogenizes, while globality is a global Globalization eradicates differences and between globality and globalization. HUO Might the current miscarriages of Edouard Glissant distinguishes - - - -

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 Hans Ulrich Obrist 05 / 12 In Conversa-tion with Raoul Vaneigem resources for the benefit of human interests, not collectives that are capable of managing natural environment, plants, animals. We must establish at profit’s appropriation of our water, air, soil, We must go beyond our natural indignation nature will disseminate equality and freeness. that this new alliance with the forces of life and as I would like to witness it). But I have no doubt transformation will take (hopefully not too long, RV in a panic, remains the only value. mercenary greed, in which money, even devalued rebellion, and the nihilism that is spread by by recreating the world for the benefit of all. subsistence and predation to a new art of living, RV progress supersedes human progress. tion is indeed a regression in which technical and spiritualizes. In this sense market civiliza appropriation economy confiscates, transcends, jouissance lence. Creation gave way to work, life to survival, with their stream of wars, destitution, and vio of contempt for women, and of priests and kings society stratified, the reign of patriarchy began, also then that religion surfaced as an institution, and the exploitation of natural resources. It was intensive agriculture became based on looting relationship to nature loosened progressively, as animality. But during the Neolithic, the osmotic species as it breaks free from its original creativity—the distinctive trait of the human Paleolithic age meant the development of RV point of view. only solution from both an individual and social sion of consumer society, it appears to be the historical contexts. At this point, given the implo an experience attempted many times in hostile that I foresee has a name: self-management, market interests. This process of reappropriation I do not know how long the current zation of water and air. libraries). So we must oppose the marketi institutions (on the model, say, of public belongs to “demarketized,” free-of-charge to replace it. He believes that the future a more democratic and egalitarian system it will take another twenty to fifty years for undergoing a structural crisis. He predicts Wallerstein claims that our world system is HUO Advancing from survival, the struggle for HUO As I mentioned above, evolution in the society to be a regression? animal condition. Do you consider market the work imperative as an inhuman, almost HUO to the animal predation that the In his book For you, what is a life in progress? In your writing you have described Utopistics 1 What is your view? , Immanuel - - - - own future. the same as the creation by individuals of their that the creation of an environment is one and is not a diagram, but an experimental proposition be undertaken—so I agree with John Cage. This draft for an experiment I still hope might one day are totalitarian). It is a clumsy and naïve rough is not an ideal city or a model space (all models deprived it of altogether. The Oarystis I describe next gives Brussels a charm that urbanism has wonderful bistros. Strolling from one to the “architect” is an insult), has held on to some (remember that in the dialect of Brussels, estate developers and disgraceful architects sustaining. Even Brussels, so devastated by real human warmth its beauty has been capable of less about architecture than about how much Barcelona, and certain districts of Paris. I care Prague. I appreciate Mantua, Rome, Bologna, RV money than to the poetry of a new style of life. today would be to pay more attention to saving the self-built housing movement that is growing transforms life into a commodity. The danger in system that exploits man and Earth and control of individuals and society by an economic RV rebuilt. to be destroyed, subjected to deciphering of what in our environment needs raphy is really about: a passionate and critical own daily existence. That is what psychogeog hand with the rebuilding by individuals of their market. Such a rebuilding effort goes hand in fabric, so damaged by the stranglehold of the was about the urgency of rebuilding our social RV I love wandering through Venice and Do you agree with Cage? tion is in constant unpredictable change.” of shapedness or finishedness. The situa that, like nature, “one never reaches a point is static in Oarystis. John Cage once said world of childhood and femininity. Nothing Oarystis takes its inspiration from the city? You call the future of cities? What is your favorite the third millennium? How do you envision 2009? What kind of unitary urbanism for HUO Urbanism is the ideological gridding and as urbanism? HUO That was an idea more than a project. It Bureau of Unitary Urbanism? urbanism. Could you tell me about the urbanism, or literature and architecture/ connections between art and architecture/ HUO How do you see cities in the year In your view there is no such thing My interviews often focus on the Oarystis the city of desire. détournement , - - 2

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 Hans Ulrich Obrist 036 / In Conversa-tion with Raoul Vaneigem imaginary to childhood and the child within us. Let us entrust the boundless freedoms of the lives and environment through direct democracy. ment by individuals and councils of their own inventiveness is self-management: the manage say, what allows for genuine rupture and ecstatic vention of individual and collective life. That is to technical inventiveness must stem from the rein be decisive. So it is useful to remember that and the reinvention of sensual form is going to natural power, self-built housing techniques, that the old world is collapsing, the fusion of free projects of a new generation of builders. Now rightly criticized me for ignoring the imaginative Brussels’ Architecture Museum at the time, Philippe Rothier and Diane Hennebert, who ran RV see New Babylon today? dialogues with Constant and how do you Constant on New Babylon. What were your HUO When Is Oarystis a Metabolist city? the floating cities, Kikutake’s water cities. that movement from the 1960s, especially derful text on Oarystis, I was reminded of nese Metabolists. When I read your won and I are working on a book on the Japa like the Metabolist cities? Rem Koolhaas HUO Oarystis Several years ago I interviewed Is Oarystis based on natural power, was published, the architect - - - - Forgiveness Nor Retribution]: “duty of memory” in past? I attempted to answer the question of the it? A museum of horrors, of the barbarism of the dross of our inhumanity. What should we do with creation. But the past also carries with it all the intelligence. Nothing is more contagious than privilege of irrigating and fertilizing our sentient learning is a continuous flow that enjoys the to life when we greet them. Like life and love, façades that contemplate us and come back sculpture, music belong to the street, like the space in which works waste away. Painting, RV games of death. games of life, and prevents their inversion into as an analogy or echo of sorts—one that favors conjure up the possible courses of our futures, nal space-time could offer meanders that could alertness, harmony, and happiness if only exter Minotaur. Our it, each of us is at once Theseus, Ariadne, and RV walks, eat, and live! us some hanging gardens where we can go for is useful to all. Architects and squatters, build wait to give way to fertile, pleasant land that bureaucratic and parasitical buildings that can’t inside urban space. After all, there are so many farming, gardens, vegetable plots, and farms infiltrate the city. By creating zones of organic Allais, by encouraging the countryside to RV about the construction of daily life. An architectural project only interests me if it is necessary basis of any architectural concept. of an individual and collective way of life—the that it privileges technology over the formation association with the SI. New Babylon’s flaw is mistaken had been expelled before my own RV and hagiographic literature is a model of in schools and peddled by an overflowing cynical or sly murderers. History as taught up to worship were nothing more than Most of the great men we were brought The museum suffers from being a closed A protestation against oblivion? you discuss the amphitheater of memory? HUO Our internal space-time is maze-like. In the form of Oarystis? its public piazzas. Could you tell us about but it is also influenced by Venice and HUO By drawing inspiration from Alphonse contribute to biodiversity? HUO I never met Constant, who if I am not Will museums be abolished? Could Oarystis is in the form of a maze, How can the city of the future dérives Ni pardon, ni talion would gain in awareness, [Neither -

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 Hans Ulrich Obrist 07 / 12 In Conversa-tion with Raoul Vaneigem condemning a bunch of undesirables who calling for a tribunal of the mind to begin ing stratification of prejudice. I am not generation after generation, by the unceas daylight facts that have been obscured, of a knowledge that scoops out into broad We are not in need of a purged history, but history and pave the side alleys instead. we should unpave the avenues of official ness, and abjection. I am not suggesting renown carved from baseness, wicked by religions and ideologies; so much high diplomats, rapists and killers contracted judges, Javerts of every ilk, conniving tyrants of the city or the state, torturer– of generals, slaughterers of peoples, petty Khan, Tamerlane, Napoleon, the throngs proudly intoned—Julius Caesar, Genghis Great—whose mentor was Aristotle, it is brutish conqueror: Alexander, called the Hitler, but it persists in celebrating the monuments to the glory of Stalin, Mao or of gas chambers, it might no longer erect is negationist. It might not deny the reality falsehood; to borrow a fashionable term, it him. This is a call to Belgian and Congolese chisel away the inscriptions that celebrate is a not a call to blow up his statues or to has so far bothered nary a conscience. This and more recently by Adam Hochschild— this with his life), by Edward Dene Morel, Twain, by Roger Casement (who paid for “red rubber” policy—denounced by Mark criminals of the nineteenth century, whose King Leopold II, one of the most cynical are still avenues and monuments honoring crushing of the Commune. In Belgium there whose execrable architecture glorifies the ing in the sky of Paris, that Sacré-Coeur by fascism, we somehow tolerate, tower and rescinded the street names imposed has now toppled the effigies of Francoism of such an unworthy worship? While Spain resolve to destroy the emblems and signs to Sébastien Castellion, would one day tator of Geneva, whose citizens, in tribute Jacques Gruet and Michel Servet and dic and freethinkers? For Calvin, murderer of of peasants and persecutor of Protestants death of millions, for Louis XIV, slaughterer respect for Bonaparte, responsible for the both. How dare textbooks still cultivate any at the very least everything be known of that of his murderer, Alfonso XIII, but that that the name of Francisco Ferrer wipe out unsavory eulogies. I am not suggesting them added to the inventory of their the recollection of those who confronted their crimes, the mention of their victims, official memory. I just want to see the list of and celebrated in the motley pantheons of have been bizarrely put up on pedestals - - - - free water, air, electricity, free power, all through buses, subways, free healthcare, free schools, scamming multinationals and states. Free trains, should public services, currently prey to the and culture should be free, for sure, but so financial gain, profit, and predation. Museums a deadly gas, bottom-line mentality, cupidity, society, whose implosion is still releasing, like destruction machine set in motion by consumer capable of shattering the mighty self- RV but a pale travesty. a universal learning of which it has always been liquidated by the quest for and daily practice of RV we must invent nomadic learning. barrack in the past, a slave market nowadays), itself. Against school as a closed-off space (a everywhere this poetry of knowledge that gives science it ought to be. We want to disseminate learning away from life, whose creative con it flows. Economic totalitarianism has ripped power relation, it is pure gift, like life, from which transmitting life: neither an imposition nor a The call to teach stems from the pleasure of less of age. Curiosity feeds the desire to know. RV Freeness is the only absolute weapon Gilbert and George put it). museums should be free—Art for All, as this; as a curator I have always believed principle (I am extremely interested in HUO The demise of the university: it will be first-century university? HUO Learning is permanent for all of us regard schools. What and where is learning today? belt used abandoned railroads for pop-up Thinkbelts? Cedric Price’s Potteries Think going to the streets. Are streets becoming HUO of the criminal. memory of the crime obliterate the memory buried in the shroud of their wrongs. Let the for the instigators of past brutalities to be been exposed for their inhumanity, I wish droppings on the sidewalk. Once they have sion, like a last-minute pivot to avoid dog rather from a spontaneous feeling of revul enforceable judgment, but that proceeds does not blue-pencil memory, that is not an that does not eradicate remembering, that the perpetrators of inhumanity. A forgetting getting can be productive, when it comes to Paradoxically, I do tend to believe that for the worst sponsors of colonial savagery. places of this stain, the stain of one of citizens to cleanse and disinfect public Could you tell me about the freeness How do you foresee the twenty- Learning is deserting schools and 3 - - - - -

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 Hans Ulrich Obrist 08 / 12 In Conversa-tion with Raoul Vaneigem itself anew. ness of nature, where life continuously creates voices of the dead will speak amidst the lush RV societies’ dehumanization. competitiveness, and predation, causes of our will supersede selfish calculation, competition, the new solidarity relations that sooner or later it is simple, will serve as the building block for RV us of. that the market’s vile profiteering alone deprives because life is a free gift, a continuous creation the stranglehold of the commodity. This is spreads, new solidarity networks will eradicate alternative networks to be set up. As freeness short-lived. It was an identical mood that guided of the authentic life, however fragile and oneself because one felt in the air something with a warm atmosphere, havens where one was drinking. Our homeports were pleasant bistros beings and places, and the pleasure of cheerful sentient intelligence, the critical analysis of moments, combining theoretical speculation, Brussels, Beersel, and Antwerp were exceptional dérives of Héron de Villefosse. My psychogeographic the strolls of Léon-Paul Fargue and the learning heart of the Australian bush. And I appreciate of the paths of fate, as though we were in the the most innocuous of walks into an intonation Songlines his break-up with Diotima. I admire Chatwin’s by the long journey Hölderlin undertook following enchanted Kafka. I have always been fascinated as many do. His lucidity and sense of RV tated by the racketeering mafias. day, as we begin reconstructing a world devas projects might mushroom and be realized one RV HUO Yes, a forest, an auditorium in which the forest rather than a cemetery? HUO Everywhere. The love affair, as complex as HUO I hold Robert Walser in high regard, Have other strollologists inspired you? and without Debord? What about Walser’s? something about your urban strolls with by your notion of the stroll. Could you say Switzerland. I have always been fascinated museum, a strollological museum, in HUO No, but I have not given up hope that such utopia in relation to the city? cities apart from Oarystis? Or a concrete with Guy Debord in Paris, Barcelona, , in which he somehow manages to turn Have you dreamt up other utopian Where is the city of the dead? In a Where is love in Oarystis? In 1991 I founded a Robert Walser dérive

- - survival cadenced by work. Replacing the has a density that fractures the temporality of ers. The temporality of desire, love, and creation an activity that dominates and corrupts all oth tiredness, and decay is determined by labor, natural. The temporality of draining, erosion, denatured human behaviors have been deemed and subsistence. For thousands of years such ness, acquisitiveness and the struggle for power nisms: predation, competition and competitive a separate reality structured by its ruling mecha economy has implanted into lived human reality RV profit’s pay. echoes of a discourse in which words are in lived poetry will sweep away the last remaining its mafioso-political hierarchies. The voice of each of us, overriding the fiats of the state and tion councils for the well-being of all of us and invent new solidarity networks and new interven blind withdrawal. As a matter of course, we will individuals and communities into selfish and by organizing chaos, by spreading fear, by forcing desirable. Power has always acted unilaterally, RV and lead to a gift economy. of exchange that will hasten its disappearance concrete. It will gradually give way to new forms all meaning. The absurdity of money is becoming us up, is now doomed to devaluation and a loss of means that this currency, which has so tripped But the implosion of financial totalitarianism of the only value that has prevailed so far: money. are going to have to compensate for the effects material and moral conditions. Human values RV spirit of the joy and the life they once harbored. will one day be rebuilt by their inhabitants in the mann, Pompidou, and the real estate barbarians neighborhoods destroyed by the likes of Hauss it just a little further. I have a feeling that the terms of what it might take to expand and refine pleasure that our every step helped us gauge in and the alleys, through the meanderings of a our wanderings through the streets, the lanes The productivity- and profit-based temporality of happiness, as a notion? one break with this? Could you discuss the homogenize time, and vice versa. How does homogenizing forces of globalization your existence and temporality. The HUO Dialogue with power is neither possible nor isolation? in 2009? Is there a way out of this system of HUO This is a time of unprecedented chaos in disalienation and HUO In your recent books you discuss What are the conditions for dialogue What possibilities do you see for détournement in 2009? - - - - -

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 Hans Ulrich Obrist 09 / 12 In Conversa-tion with Raoul Vaneigem state of survival, by means other than through on the world and on myself, to pull me out of my I was feeling at the time for a new perspective RV endpoint considerably. would surely achieve enough vitality to delay its vates its full potential for passion and creation by premature death, a renatured life that culti survival is nothing but permanent agony relieved RV uncharted territories. of desire, a beyond-the-mirror, an opening to temporality of money will be a temporality to Christianity The Movement of the Free Spirit and correct the historical elements included in complete a Dictionary of Heresies, so as to clarify RV Between Mourning the World and Exuberant Life. RV principle: desire everything, expect nothing. nor an optimist. I try to remain faithful to a for?,” Scutenaire wrote. I am neither a pessimist RV concerns echoed there. that many readers were finding their own major that this wasn’t a purely solipsistic project, life drive. And it became clear to me very quickly lessly made me aware and conscious of my own that was corrupting and destroying life so relent suicide. This critical take on a consumer society The book was prompted by an urgent need doing previously? course of your work? What had you been book an epiphany? How did it change the that you are continually rewriting. Was the in other interviews that it is your key book a trigger for May ’68, and you have stated HUO I don’t claim that life is ageless. But since HUO in 2009? What might your definition of happiness be brings us to Proust and his questionnaire. HUO I would love to have the resources to the moment? HUO Entre le deuil du monde et la joie de vivre the book? HUO “Pessimists, what is it you were hoping boredom.” pleasures to win, and nothing to lose but on an optimistic note: “We have a world of HUO The Revolution of Everyday Life Is life ageless? The question of temporality also What book are you working on at What is the most recent version of The Revolution of Everyday Life . 4 Are you still an optimist today? and Resistance ends was - — - Mozart, Boccherini. Who are your favorite composers? Little Kaethchen of Heilbronn. Who are your female heroes in literature? Hyperion. Who are your male heroes in literature? Villon, Blake, Hölderlin, Nerval, Fourier. Who are your favorite poets? Artaud, Benjamin, Orwell, Zweig. Montaigne, La Boétie, Shakespeare, Diderot, Kafka, Who are your favorite writers of prose? blackbird that sings in the evening. All of them, with a special fondness for the What is your favorite bird? All of them, with a soft spot for the rose ancienne. What is your favorite flower? Everywhere genuine humanity prevails. Where would you like to live? Myself, more and more alive. Who would you have wished to be? Failing to contribute to the happiness of all. What would your greatest misfortune be? loved ones. Realizing my desires by fulfilling those of my What is your dream for happiness? Opening myself to life so life can open in me. What is your favorite activity? My lack of self-confidence. What is your main shortcoming? Creativity. What is your favorite virtue? Love and love of life. What quality do you appreciate most in a woman? Generosity coupled with human awareness of life. What quality do you appreciate most in a man? Laziness. What is your main personality trait?

Proust Questionnaire,

Raoul Vaneigem

answered by

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 040 / Voluntary servitude. What do you hate above all else? Ariane, Chiara, Ariel, Tristan. What are your favorite names? Qurratulain. Olympe de Gouges, Claire Démar, Louise Michel, Who are your female heroes in history? Magón, Alexandre Marius Jacob, Jan Valtin. Carouy and André Soudy, Albert Libertad, Flores Eloi Pruystinck, Sebastian Castellio, Edouard Who are your male heroes in history? Giorgione, Turner, Goya, Van Gogh. Who are your favorite painters? Desire everything, expect nothing. What is your motto? There are no wrongs, just mistakes to rectify. Which wrongs do you tolerate the best? I wish to be. A precarious balance between what I am and what What is your present state of mind? Peacefully, at the hour I choose. How would you like to die? awareness of life. The ability to better disseminate the human to have? Which natural talent would you have wished Those that humanize man. Which reform do you hold in highest regard? None. Which military feat do you admire the most? of human suffering and those who honor them. All tyrants, slaughterers of the people, perpetrators Which historical figures do you despise the most?

last sovereign. The only homeland is a humanity that is at long democracy. I feel neither Belgian nor European. are experiencing self-management and direct they are stripped of their regionalist ideology and democracies. And regions only interest me once by racketeering bureaucracies and corrupt RV enjoy excellent artisanal beers. of a good dozen wonderful cafés where one can few districts suitable for nice walks. I am fond paid by real estate developers. There are still a destroyed by urbanists and architects who are retained its beauty. Brussels as a city has been woods where the rhythm of the seasons has RV art of living. soms as a true aspiration, the intuition of a new it; when it nurtures a trace of life that blos- its own overcoming, something that goes beyond point to it. Art moves me when, in it, I can sense as a commentary on their work but as a counter I have offered a few texts to artist friends, not RV financial crash a minute later. finance the project only to lose everything to the Palais Royal, for some billionaire to decide to I’m not just waiting patiently, like Fourier at the to build the “urban countryside” of Oarystis, but world that is more and more human. I would love RV other life is that life already.” that brings me great comfort: “The desire for an sneer at my ecstatic candor, I reply with a phrase ately in an ever more intense world. To those who RV find or choose pseudonyms? How many Je est un autre HUO I am not interested in this Europe ruled twenty-first century? that Europe is the big concern of the HUO I live in the country, facing a garden and you write? What does Brussels mean to you? Where do HUO I don’t collaborate with anyone. At times ers, filmmakers? other artists, painters, sculptors, design HUO My priority is to live better and better in a architectural projects? in fields other than writing, unrealized Unrealized books, unrealized projects HUO Living ever more intensely and passion You have used a lot of pseudonyms. Do you agree with Geremek’s view Could you tell me about Brussels? What about your collaborations with Do you have unrealized projects? [I is an other]? How do you 5 - - -

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 Hans Ulrich Obrist 11 / 12 In Conversa-tion with Raoul Vaneigem publishing house. Drachline, who works for the Cherche Midi RV compromising with the world of the spectacle. ties, which I have always refused to resolve by while alleviating my enduring financial difficul missioned work. This allows me to have some fun is about creating a distance, most often in com ing secret about using a pseudonym. Rather, it to the inspiration of the moment. There is noth RV heart, of what is most alive in him. displays in his work. To follow the path of the RV of work. our own existence first. Only creativity will rid us natural power for our use means reclaiming als and their state vassals everywhere. Claiming themselves from the control of the multination own energy and food independence so as to free It will be up to the communities to secure their they must be made to serve the freedom of life. Natural resources belong to us, they are free, are the areas where intervention is possible. without any advantage to the consumers. Those of our biosphere. Windmill farms are being built ing. Eco-tourism will accelerate the plundering condition we agree to transgenic rapeseed farm RV HUO It was a suggestion from my friend Pierre did that idea come from? ment and Intelligence of Our Time]. Where [Dictionary of Quotations for the Entertain divertissement et a l’intelligence du temps Dictionnaire de citations pour servir au artists and architects has been your HUO I don’t keep any kind of score. I leave it up complete list? pseudonyms have you used? Is there a To apply to his own life the creativity he philosopher-writer in 2009? poet. What would your advice be to a young wonderful little book of advice to a young HUO We are being “offered” biofuels on the movement do you support? Beuys? What non-capitalist project or different type. What do you think of Joseph existing capitalism with capitalism of a mental movements who try to replace Translated from the French by Eric Anglès You have often criticized environ A book that has been used by many Last but not least, Rilke wrote that ------

- the Spectacle year as fellow situationist Guy Debord’s of Everyday Life 1970. His most well-known book, in the Situationist International from 1961 to siteit Brussel) from 1952 to 1956, he participated Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Univer Free University of Brussels (now split into the pher. After studying romance philology at the Raoul Vaneigem Projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London. and Programmes and Director of International presently serves as the Co-Director, Exhibitions roving European biennial of contemporary art. He he co-curated Manifesta 1, the first edition of the served as a curator for contemporary art. In 1996 Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris where he and began to run the Migrateurs program at the In 1993, he founded the Museum Robert Walser Hans Ulrich Obrist . , was published in 1967, the same is a Belgian writer and philoso

is a Swiss curator and art critic. The Revolution Society of - -

e-flux journal #6 — may 2009 Hans Ulrich Obrist 12 / 12 In Conversa-tion with Raoul Vaneigem 119–121 (2008): 193–194. Cahiers internationaux de symbolisme vie autre est déjà cette vie-là,” See Raoul Vaneigem, “Le désir d’une 5 Rebel Press, 2001), 279. Nicholson-Smith (Welcombe, UK: of Everyday Life Raoul Vaneigem, 4 Editions La Découverte, 2009). crimes contre l’humanité La question de l’impunité dans les Raoul Vaneigem, 3 York: Routledge, 2003), 34. Conversing with Cage Quoted in Richard Kostelanetz, 2 Press, 1998). first Century Or, Historical Choices of the Twenty- See Immanuel Wallerstein, 1 (New York: The New , trans. Donald The Revolution Ni pardon, ni talion: , 2nd ed. (New (Paris: Utopistics: