Scandinavian Institute for Comparative Vandalism in Silkeborg, Denmark
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Cosmonauts of the Future: Texts from the Situationist
COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere Edited by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen 1 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE 2 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere 3 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE TEXTS FROM THE SITUATIONIST MOVEMENT IN SCANDINAVIA AND ELSEWHERE Edited by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Published 2015 by Nebula in association with Autonomedia Nebula Autonomedia TEXTS FROM THE SITUATIONIST Læssøegade 3,4 PO Box 568, Williamsburgh Station DK-2200 Copenhagen Brooklyn, NY 11211-0568 Denmark USA MOVEMENT IN SCANDINAVIA www.nebulabooks.dk www.autonomedia.org [email protected] [email protected] AND ELSEWHERE Tel/Fax: 718-963-2603 ISBN 978-87-993651-8-0 ISBN 978-1-57027-304-9 Edited by Editors: Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen | Translators: Peter Shield, James Manley, Anja Büchele, Matthew Hyland, Fabian Tompsett, Jakob Jakobsen | Copyeditor: Marina Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen Vishmidt | Proofreading: Danny Hayward | Design: Åse Eg |Printed by: Naryana Press in 1,200 copies & Jakob Jakobsen Thanks to: Jacqueline de Jong, Lis Zwick, Ulla Borchenius, Fabian Tompsett, Howard Slater, Peter Shield, James Manley, Anja Büchele, Matthew Hyland, Danny Hayward, Marina Vishmidt, Stevphen Shukaitis, Jim Fleming, Mathias Kokholm, Lukas Haberkorn, Keith Towndrow, Åse Eg and Infopool (www.scansitu.antipool.org.uk) All texts by Jorn are © Donation Jorn, Silkeborg Asger Jorn: “Luck and Change”, “The Natural Order” and “Value and Economy”. Reprinted by permission of the publishers from The Natural Order and Other Texts translated by Peter Shield (Farnham: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 9-46, 121-146, 235-245, 248-263. -
Constant Nieuwenhuys-August 13, 2005
Constant Nieuwenhuys Published in Times London, August 13 2005 A militant founder of the Cobra group of avant-garde artists whose early nihilism mellowed into Utopian fantasy Soon after the war ended, the Cobra group burst upon European art with anarchic force. The movement’s venomous name was an acronym from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, the cities where its principal members lived. And by the time Cobra’s existence was formally announced in Paris in 1948, the young Dutch artist Constant had become one of its most militant protagonists. Constant did not hesitate to voice the most extreme beliefs. Haunted by the war and its bleak aftermath, he declared in a 1948 interview that “our culture has already died. The façades left standing could be blown away tomorrow by an atom bomb but, even failing that, still nothing can disguise the fact. We have lost everything that provided us with security and are left bereft of all belief. Save this: that we live and that it is part of the essence of life to manifest itself.” The Cobra artists soon demonstrated their own exuberant, heretical vitality. Inspired by the uninhibited power of so-called primitive art, as well as the images produced by children and the insane, they planned an idealistic future where Marxist ideas would form a vibrant union with the creation of a new folk art. Constant, born Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys, discovered his first motivation in a crucial 1946 meeting with the Danish artist Asger Jorn at the Galerie Pierre, Paris. They exchanged ideas and Constant became the driving force in establishing Cobra. -
How Language Looks: on Asger Jorn and Noël Arnaud's La Langue Verte*
How Language Looks: On Asger Jorn and No ël Arnaud’s La Langue verte* STEVEN HARRIS In November 1968, the Paris publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert brought out Asger Jorn and Noël Arnaud’s La Langue verte et la cuite , an event accompanied by a banquet for 2,000 at a Danish restaurant in Paris, and a considerable response from the press, though the book has largely dropped from view since. 1 Initially titled La Langue crue et la cuite , the book was written in French by artist Asger Jorn, founding member of Cobra and of the Situationist International, and revised by Arnaud, member of the Surrealist “Main à plume” group in occupied Paris, founding member of the Revolutionary Surrealist group in postwar Paris (with which Jorn was also involved), and later regent in the Collège de ’Pataphysique. 2 Jorn, in addition to writing the text, also chose the illustrations, while Arnaud added sections of his own and reordered the material in collaboration with Jorn. It is thus the collective labor of two individuals who had first met in Paris in 1946, and who were both involved in the Revolutionary Surrealist group, a splinter group of Communist persuasion that had seceded from the main body of the Surrealist group shortly before the opening of its exhibition Le Surréalisme en 1947 , at the Galerie Maeght. If Cobra was very much ori - ented against Arnaud when it was first formed in 1948, the paths of the two men crossed numerous times in subsequent years. Jorn turned to Arnaud as a trusted friend who was in in sympathy with his aims, who corrected Jorn’s rather casual French, and who in general was willing to lend a hand to the enterprise. -
Realization and Suppression of Situationism
Library.Anarhija.Net The Realization and Suppression of Situationism Bob Black “For our time — I think every statement should be dated” — Alexander Trocchi1 “The Situationists, whose judges you perhaps imagine yourselves to be, will one day judge you. We are waiting for you at the turn- ing.” On this vaguely threatening note Maurice Wyckaert, speaking for the Situationist International, wrapped up a rant at London’s In- stitute for Contemporary Arts in 1961. One baffled member of the audience (or was he a shill?) asked just what was “Situationism” all about? Guy Debord arose to announce, in French, “We’re not here to answer cuntish questions,” whereupon the Situationists walked Bob Black out. The Realization and Suppression of Situationism 1 Retrieved on April 22, 2009 from primitivism.com Alexander Trocchi, Cain’s Book (New York: Grove Press, 1960), 59. This book — an autobiographical novel of heroin addiction — is very unlike other Sit- uationist texts in its Beat affinities (Internationale Situationniste No. 1 [1958], for lib.anarhija.net instance, complaining that “the rotten egg smell exuded by the idea of Goden- velops the mystical cretins of the American ‘Beat’ Generation”). After resigning In a publicity brochure issued several years ago, the ICA recalled the event as “a conference whose chairman was stone deaf, whose main speaker spoke no English, and whose participants denied that the meeting existed.” (Actually they only denied that its topic ex- isted, since the Situationists defined “Situationism” as a nonsense word coined by anti-Situationists.) The ICA, as we shall see, has taken its revenge. The Situationist International (1957–1972) was an international but Paris-based formation which recreated the avant garde tradi- tion on a high plane of intelligence and intransigence. -
Insinuation: Détournement and Gendered Repetition
Patrick Greaney Insinuation: Détournement as Gendered Repetition Actif, passif, vieilles conneries. —Guy Hocquenghem, “Les culs énergumènes” The Gendered Concepts of Détournement and Spectacle Détournement is the Lettrist and Situationist term for a specific kind of montage or appropria- tion; it might seem to be a form of quotation, but it is “the antithesis of quotation, of a theoretical authority invariably tainted if only because it has become quotable.”1 Examples of détournement projects suggested by Guy Debord and Gil Wol- man in their 1956 “User’s Guide to Détourne- ment” include modified pinball machines and a new version of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation that would accompany the film’s images with a voiceover narrating the history of the Ku Klux Klan.2 One of the better-known completed works that relies on détournement is René Viénet’s redubbing of a martial arts film with a voice track about the proletarian struggle, titled Can Dialec- tics Break Bricks?3 Debord also uses the term to describe his use of phrases from G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Georg Lukács, and others in The Society of the Spectacle. The South Atlantic Quarterly 110:1, Winter 2011 DOI 10.1215/00382876-2010-023 © 2010 Duke University Press 76 The South Atlantic Quarterly • Winter 2011 Debord’s Society of the Spectacle presents détournement as a “device” in the struggle against the spectacle (§206). There are many definitions of the spectacle in The Society of the Spectacle, but this temporal description is one of the most useful: “The spectacle, being the reigning social organi- zation of a paralyzed history, of a paralyzed memory, of an abandonment of any history founded in historical time, is a false consciousness of time” (§158; translation modified). -
Détournement
Defacement, curated by Amanda accompany the exhibition, Defacement Schmitt July 14 - August 31, 2018 Location: The Club L u c a s GINZA SIX Ajemian 6F, 6-10-1 Richard Ginza Aldrich Chuo-ku, Maria Tokyo, Eichhorn Japan Brook Hsu Susan Howe Dates: N i c o l a s 2018, July Guagnini 15 Jacqueline de Jong Leigh Ledare Artists: RH Quaytman Stan Brakhage Gerhard Richter Aleksandra Domanovic Betty Tompkins Storm de Hirsch Andy Warhol Isidore Isou Video Screening: Gordon Matta-Clark A video Pilvi Takala screening Naomi to Uman INTRODUCTION In 1961, Asger Jorn and Jacqueline de Jong (artists and original members of the Situationist I n t e r n a t i o n a l ) b e g a n working on a multi-volume publication of photographic picture books called the Institute for Comparative Vandalism which aimed to understand how the evolving defacement of Northern European c u l t u r a l o b j e c t s a n d edifices could alter and supersede the meaning of the artifacts that were vandalized (per se). The Institute was focused on illustrating how this vandalism was driven by aesthetic, artistic forces without any concrete reasons: an artistic vandalism without political, violent, dictatorial or r e v o l u t i o n a r y motivations. In Jorn's purview, this concept is aligned w i t h t h e c l a s s i c situationist strategy of détournement, the “integration of p r e s e n t o r p a s t artistic production i n t o a s u p e r i o r construction of a milieu,”1 and was further explored in the publication The Situationist Times (published and edited by de Jong from 1962-67). -
The Sex of the Situationist International*
The Sex of the Situationist International* KELLY BAUM Today the fight for life, the fight for Eros, is the political fight. —Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization In June 1958, Guy Debord, Gil Wolman, Michèle Bernstein, and other found- ing members of the Situationist International (SI) published the first issue of internationale situationniste (IS). There, interspersed among essays on police brutal- ity, functionalist architecture, and industrialization—essays all invested with a clear sense of import and urgency—are found photographs of sexy, flirtatious women. One stands underneath a shower, smiling as water trickles down her neck, while another wears nothing but a man’s trench coat, an erotic accouterment through which she exposes a thigh and a tantalizing glimpse of décolletage. What are sexually charged images such as these doing in a periodical whose twelve issues published some of the most incisive critiques of alienation, capitalism, and spectacle—along with astute analyses of current events like the Franco-Algerian War and the Watts Riots—to appear after World War II? Readymade photographs of nude and semi-nude women are one of the leitmotifs of Situationist visual production. They embellish everything, from its collages and artist books to its films and publications. Nevertheless, these images have received only cursory attention from historians, and in the opin- ion of those who have addressed them, they constitute little more than a gratuitous sidebar to the group’s more lofty, less compromised pursuits. Susan Suleiman’s view, expressed in a footnote to her 1990 book Subversive Intent, typi- fies the scholarly response to date. “The Situationists appear to have been more of a ‘men’s club’ than the Surrealists,” Suleiman writes. -
Constructed Situations: a New History of the Situationist International
ConstruCted situations Stracey T02909 00 pre 1 02/09/2014 11:39 Marxism and Culture Series Editors: Professor Esther Leslie, Birkbeck, University of London Professor Michael Wayne, Brunel University Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction Edited by Mark Bould and China Miéville Marxism and the History of Art: From William Morris to the New Left Edited by Andrew Hemingway Magical Marxism: Subversive Politics and the Imagination Andy Merrifield Philosophizing the Everyday: The Philosophy of Praxis and the Fate of Cultural Studies John Roberts Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture Gregory Sholette Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism Robert T. Tally Jr. Marxism and Media Studies: Key Concepts and Contemporary Trends Mike Wayne Stracey T02909 00 pre 2 02/09/2014 11:39 ConstruCted situations A New History of the Situationist International Frances Stracey Stracey T02909 00 pre 3 02/09/2014 11:39 For Peanut First published 2014 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © the Estate of Frances Stracey 2014 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 3527 8 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3526 1 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7837 1223 6 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1225 0 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1224 3 EPUB eBook Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. -
Situationists and Architecture, Debord Suggests, Albisola Can Be Seen
peter wollen SITUATIONISTS AND ARCHITECTURE his is not a conventional scholarly essay. Instead I want to discuss a number of topics addressed by the Situationists, Tmaking a kind of collage of commentaries on what seem to me to be key elements of their thought in relation to archi- tecture and the city—which were, indeed, centrally important issues for them. These elements are as follows: 1, the minaret; 2, the gypsy camp; 3, dérive; 4, Mad King Ludwig; 5, the Postman Cheval; 6, the Merzbau; 7, Le Corbusier; 8, Paris; 9, psychogeography; 10, Love on the Left Bank; 11, white bicycles; 12, détournement; 13, the Cavern of Anti- Matter; 14, New Babylon; 15, Watts; 16, the Architecture of Despair; 17, Vienna’s Place—and fi nally: 18, Albisola. 1 I begin with the minaret. In 1948 Asger Jorn wrote an article titled ‘What is an Ornament?’, which was published in an obscure Danish journal. That same year, he had spent time in Djerba, Tunisia, which I believe is the same place that Paul Klee visited and which had such an infl uence on his calligraphic style of drawing. Among the illustrations to Jorn’s essay was one juxtaposing a ‘horsetail’ and a minaret. The horsetail is a kind of plant, whose structure is very similar to that of the minaret depicted next to it—a kind of telescopic series of towers, each with a nar- rower diameter than the last, piled on top of each other, fi nally ending with a tiny little turret at the topmost point. (The picture of the horsetail looks as if it was one of Blossfeldt’s famous series of photographs of plants, but I have not been able to check this.) The point Jorn wishes to make is summed up in his caption: ‘Horsetail and Minaret. -
Scandinavian Institute for Comparative Vandalism in Silkeborg, Denmark
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by St Andrews Research Repository Niels Henriksen – Asger Jorn Article 5, Inferno Volume VIII, 2003 1 Asger Jorn and the Photographic Essay on Scandinavian Vandalism Niels Henriksen n the last few years the Danish painter, potter and sculptor Asger Jorn (1914-1973) has had a revival. He has been the subject of several publications and large exhibitions at The National Museum in ICopenhagen and Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen. Although Asger Jorn is sometimes presented as the Scandinavian exponent of post war Abstract Expressionism, he was really a movement of his own, consciously working against such categorisations, and arguing against abstraction in art. The artistic practices of Jorn are perhaps so defiant of categorisation because they rely on and exist in constant dialogue with a quite original theoretical framework, which evolved with the artist throughout his life. From the beginning of the 1940s onwards Jorn was the initiator of periodicals and movements and always an ardent supplier of manifestos and articles. The best known of these movements are the COBRA-group and the Situationist International. The Situationist movement has, like Jorn, although rather independently of him, recently received a revival or interest, especially in the fields of architecture and urban planning, but also in literature and art. The first SI (Situationist International) was held 1957 at Cosio d’Arroscia in Italy, with participation of the LPC (London Psychogeographic Committee), LI (Lettrist International), the LPI (Potlatch LI) and IMBI (International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus). -
The Cavern of Antimatter: Giuseppe "Pinot" Gallizio and the Technological Imaginary of the Early Situationist International
The Cavern of Antimatter: Giuseppe "Pinot" Gallizio and the Technological Imaginary of the Early Situationist International The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Nicola Pezolet, "The Cavern of Antimatter: Giuseppe "Pinot" Gallizio and the Technological Imaginary of the Early Situationist International," Grey Room, Winter 2010, No. 38, Pages 62-89. (doi:10.1162/grey.2010.1.38.62) © 2010 by Grey Room, Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology As Published http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/grey.2010.1.38.62 Publisher MIT Press Journals Version Final published version Citable link http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/55965 Terms of Use Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. Pinot Gallizio, Asger Jorn, Piero Simondo, and friends working outside the Alba Experimental Laboratory, 1956. Courtesy of the Gallizio Archive, Turin. 62 The Cavern of Antimatter: Giuseppe “Pinot” Gallizio and the Technological Imaginary of the Early Situationist International NICOLA PEZOLET Perhaps the machine is the only instrUment qUalified to create that is inflationary and indUstrial and therefore based on the anti-patent; the new indUstrial cUltUre will only be “Made by the People,” or it will not be. —GiUseppe “Pinot” Gallizio, 1959 DUring its formative years (1957–1960), the SitUationist International (SI) charted a paradoxical relationship between an enthUsiasm -
Introduction: from the Notion of Spectacle to Spectacle 2.0: the Dialectic of Capitalist Mediations Marco Briziarelli and Emiliana Armano
CHAPTER 2 Introduction: From the Notion of Spectacle to Spectacle 2.0: The Dialectic of Capitalist Mediations Marco Briziarelli and Emiliana Armano 1. Context and Purpose Sometimes the literary fortune of a book can almost be unfortunate. We think this is the case of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, which on the one hand succeeded where most of our scholarship concerned with the production of critical knowledge tends to fail, by going beyond the constraining walls of aca- demic discourse and inspiring human emancipation. On the other hand, while the idea of the Spectacle has infiltrated the collective imagery, it has most fre- quently done so through the popularization of its most glaring surface, thus limiting its overall significance. It is indeed easier to think of the Debordian notion as spectacularly medi- ated content – such as media images and extravagant events – rather than the general process of mediation that for Debord propels the Spectacle. That is because we do live in a media saturated environment, but to the point in which How to cite this book chapter: Briziarelli, M. and Armano, E. 2017. Introduction: From the Notion of Spectacle to Spectacle 2.0: The Dialectic of Capitalist Mediations. In: Briziarelli, M. and Armano, E. (eds.). The Spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the Context of Digital Capitalism. Pp. 15–47. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi. org/10.16997/book11.b. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 16 The Spectacle 2.0 the mediation logic that drives current conditions of life in many societies has gone beyond spectacular images, and is increasingly subsuming more spheres of social life to the total and integral Spectacle: capitalism.