THE ASSAULT ON CULTURE Utopian currents fromLettrisme to Class War STEWART HOME A.K. Press • Stirling • 1991 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Home, Stewart, 1962- The assault on culture: utopian currents from Lettrisme to class war.-2nd ed. I. Avant garde style. History I. Title 700.904 ISBN 1-873176-35-X ISBN 1-873176-30-9 pbk Typeset by Authority, Brixton. First published by Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, I 988. Second edition published by AK Press 1991. This edition published by AK Press, PO Box 12766, Edinburgh, EH8 9YE. "Our programme is a cultural revolution through atotal assault on culture, which makes use of every tool, every energy and every media we can get our collective hands on ... our culture,our art, the music, newspapers, books, posters, our clothing, our homes, the way we walk and talk, the way our hair grows, the way we smoke dope and fuck and eat and sleep - it's all one message - and the message is FREEDOM." John Sinclair, MinistryOf Information,White Panthers. "Frankly, all he asked fornow was an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the Black Panthers and uncover the man behind the scenes. Hartha d been right about this. There were whites actively engaged in supplying facilities, legal advice, aidfor the 'cell'. Liberals theywere called. Some were honest citizens trying to carry throughthe may or's instructions thatpeace depended upon total, unbiased co-operation between New York's polyglot millions. Others had a stake in anarchy - destruction being their aim, civil strife theirimmediate target. And, too, there were theMafia with tentacles waving fora share of the lucrative drug traffic. Pot and acid were not enough for the pushers. They wanted 'H' and coke themainstemming narcotic thatevery militant used." Richard Allen "Demo" (New English Library, London 1971). "It should be re-affirmed that the creation of a counter-culture, in itself a haphazard, chancy and unpredictable affair, has profound political implications. For while the Establishment, with its flair for survival, can ultimately absorb policies, no matter how radical or anarchistic (abolition of censorship, withdraw! from Vietnam, Legalized Pot, etc), how long can it withstand the impact of an alien culture? - a culture that is destined to create a new kind of man?" Richard Neville "Play Power'' (Jonathan Cape, London 1970). CONTENTS Preface 1 Introduction 3 Cobra 8 The Lettriste Movement 12 The Lettriste International (1952-57) 17 The College Of Pataphysics, Nuclear Artand 22 the InternationalMovement for an lmaginist Bauhaus From the "First World Congress of LiberatedArtists" 26 to the foundation of the Situationist International The Situationist International in its heroic phase (1957-62) 31 On the theoretical poverty of the Specto-Situationist� and the 41 legitimate status of the Second International The decline and fall cf the Specto-Situationist critique 45 The origins of Fluxus and the movement in its 'heroic' period 50 Therise of the depoliticizedFluxus aesthetic 56 Gustav Metzgerand Auto-Destructive Art 60 Dutch Provos, Kommune l, Motherfuckers, Yippies 65 and White Panthers MailArt 69 Beyond Mail Art 74 Punk 80 Neoism 87 OassWar 95 Conclusion 102 Afterword 106 Selected Bibliography 108 Index 113 Abbreviations ADA Auto-Destructive Art APT International Neoist ApartmentFestival CP Communist Party DIAS Destruction In Art Symposium IMIB International MovementFor An Imaginist Bauhaus IP Industrial Painting IS Internationale Situationiste (journal) LI LettristeInternational LM LettristeMovement LPA London Psycheogeographical Association MA Mail Art NYCS New York Correspondence School PP Principle Player SI Situationist International (group) SouB Socialisme ou Barbarie Acknowledgements: Gabrielle Quinn for translating research material from Italian. Simon Anderson, D.C., A.O., Mick Gaffney, Rene Gimpel, P.O., PeteHorobin, John Nicholson, Steve Perkins, Paul Sieveking, Stefan Szczelkun, Jayne Taylor, F.T., Michael Tolson, Andrew Wilson, & Tom Vague for making available material I would not otherwise have seen. Ed Baxter, Peter Kravitz & M.S.P.W., for reading the typescript and making numerous suggestions for improvement. Professor Guy Atkins, Vittore Baroni & Ralph Rumney for enthusiastically answering research enquiries. John Berndt, Graf Haufen & Mark Pawson for their general advice and encouragement. The staff of the British Library and the Tate Gallery Library for their invaluable assistance during the course of my research. Several of the authors listed in the bibliography from whom I have shamelesslyplagiarised passages and ideas. PREFACE Those reading this text will better understand it if they bear in mind the audience for whom it was written. The primary audience was seen as those who were already engaged in activities relating to the tradition sketched out in the text. The secondary audience was seen as those who - for whatever reasons - were interested in the tradition described, but played no role in its contemporary manifestations. 1 The text is written so as to be clear to the secondary audience if it is understood that the author writes from a position of engagement. It should thus be borne in mind that although certain of the ideas described are relatively obscure, they have had considerable influence within the milieus from which they emerged. The text contains large chunks of quotation, both to give a flavour of the material being discussed - and to save time and effort on the part of the author. It should be understood that these quotations are being used to illustrate a specific argument and that to keep the text as brief as possible the author does not fully explore the contradictions or assumptionsthat any given quotation may contain.2 For example, the Introduction begins with a quotation from the American section of the (specto) Situationist International (SI). The quotation is used because it illustrates that a specto-situationist would dismiss as ridiculous the treatment their movement receives in this text (although such a reaction does not prove that this treatment is ridiculous). The 2 same quotation contains a number of very questionable assertions; for example, the phrase "competes with, and is thereby equal to". To take a different example from the one used by the specto-SI, Ghana competes with the USSR in the Olympic Games, but to deduce from this that the two states are equivalent is to succumb to a gross and ultimately meaningless form of generalisation. 3 Where possible a date and a place of birth has been given for any individual mentioned in the text; the severe difficulty encountered in tracing biographical material on the subjects of this study has meant that the occurrence of such data is somewhat erratic. 1. The first paragraph of this preface is obviously an exception to this rule since it is written forthe benefit of the secondary audience. 2. In particular the ideas of Henry Flynt, Gustav Metzger, COUM Transmissions, Pauline Smith, Vittore Baroni & Tony Lowes could very easily be taken ap art and shown to be contradictoryor ridiculous. 3. As will be demonstrated in the courseof the text, thebasic theoretical technique of the various situationistgroups - and particularlythe Debordist faction - was topresent gross generalisation as incontestable fact. This produced effective propaganda and atrociously poor theory. For example, Debord writes in "The Scoiety of the Spectacle": "Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption, a by-product of the circulation of commodities, is fundamentally nothing more than the lesiure of going to see what has become banal. The economic organisation of visits to different places is already in itself the guarantee of their equivalence. The same modernisation that removed time from the voyage also removed it from the reality of space." 3 INTRODUCTION "This world tries to bring the most radical gestures under its wing: the avant-garde of its subculture serves to make it appear that the S.I. competes with, and is thereby equal to, Regis Debray who equals the Panthers who equal the Peace and Freedom Party which equals the Yippies who equal the Sexual Freedom League which equals the ads on the back which equal the price on the cover. The Barb, the Rat, GoodTimes, and so on - it makes no difference. Same old show, new markets." "The PracticeOf Theory" by theAmerican section of the(specto) Situationist International(included in "Situationist International" 1, New York 1969). If the term 'art' took on its modem meaning in theeightee nth century, then any tradition of opposition to it must date from this period -or later. In ancient Greec e and medieval Europe, the category 'art' covered a multitude of disciplines - many of which are now reduced to the status of 'craft'. Thoseactivitie s which have retained the titleof art are now pursued by men (sic) of 'genius'. Art has taken over the function of religion, not simply asthe ultimate -and ultimately unknowable - formof knowledge, but also as a legitimated formof male em otionality. The 'male' artist is treated as a 'genius' for expressing feelings that are 'traditionally'conside red 'feminine'. 'He' constructsa world 4 in which the male is heroicised by displaying 'female' traits; and the female is reduced to an insipid subordinate role. 1 'Bohemia' is colonised by bourgeois men - a few of whom are 'possessed by genius', the majority of whom are 'eccentric'. Bourgeois wimmin whose behaviour resembles thatof the 'male genius' are dismissed as being 'hysterical' - while proletarians of either sex who behave in such a manner are simply branded as 'mental' . Art, in both practice and content, is class and gender specific. Although its apologists claim 'art' is a 'universal category', this simply isn't true. Every survey of attendances at art galleries and museums demonstrates that an 'appreciation' of 'art' is something restricted almost exclusively to individuals belonging to higher income groups. 2 Since 'art' as a category has been projected back onto the religious icons of the middle ages, it is not surprising that those who oppose it should situate themselves within a 'utopian current' that they, in tum, trace back to medieval heresies.