THE SITUATIONIST CITY SIMON SADLER The M IT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England First MIT Press paperback edition, 1999 © 1998 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Trade Gothic by The MIT Press and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sadler, Simon. The situationist city / Simon Sadler. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-19392-2 (he: alk. paper), 0-262-69225-2 (pb) 1. Architecture-Philosophy. 2. Avant-garde (Aesthet­ ics)— Europe— Histay— 20th century. 3.lntemationale situationniste— lnfluence. I. Title. NA2500.S124 1998 ' 720'.l—dc21 97-31783 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 £r : T 9 - CONTENTS Acknowledgments viii A Note on Translations ix Introduction 1 More about less 1 The poverty of modernism 4 The organization of this book 12 1 THE NAKED CITY: REALITIES OF DESIGN AND SPACE LAID BARE 15 Nurturing the “ real life" of the city 15 Beyond the rational city 22 From “ plenty" to “excess" 33 Carving out the spaces of culture and politics ' 40 Urbanism and power 47 Defending urban mix 55 2. FORMULARY FOR A NEW URBANISM: RETHINKING THE CITY 69 From the rational to the sublime 69 Making sense of psychogeography 76 A passion for maps 82 Drifting as a revolution of everyday life 91 Language, time, and the city 95 3. A NEW BABYLON: THE CITY REDESIGNED 105 Constructing situations 105 A “detourned" city 108 A technological baroque 110 Unitary urbanism 117 Constant's New Babylon 122 The structure of New Babylon 127 New Babylon's utopian fun 132 Disorientation 138 A cybernetic architecture 147 The debate over technocracy 151 Conclusions 157 Notes 165 Bibliography 201 Illustration Credits 209 Index 211 Acknowledgments H. Josephus Jitta, Pier Terwen, and Tineke Griffiaen; of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, I have shamelessly invested the tim e, energy, and in particular Paul Kempers; of the Rijksbureau wealth of almost everyone I know (and many I voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, don’t) in the making of this book. The least I can in particular Marcia Zaaijer; of the Huntington do is thank some of them here: Museum and Library, San Marino, in particular Mum and Dad, foryears of tea and sympathy; Alan Jutzi; of the Bibliothfeque Nationale, Paris; of Rebecca Gadd, for being fabulous; the Pavilion de I'Arsenal, Paris; of the British Alexis Lachfeze-Beer and Benjamin Franks, Architectural Library, RIBA, London; and of the mind motivators; Library at the Architectural Association, London; Tim Benton and everyone at the Faculty of Michael Webb, Peter Cook, Cedric Price, Arts at the Open University, Milton Keynes, whose Yona Friedman, Alex Moulton, Tim Benton, Roberto patronage has enabled me to finish th is book; Ohrt, the Louvre (Paris), Presses Universitaires de Everyone at The School of Theoretical and France (Paris), the Brazilian Embassy (London), Historical Studies at the University of Central and especially Constant, for their generous permis­ England in Birmingham, in particular my first sion to reproduce illustrations for this book; supervisor Pauline Madge and former boss Kenneth All at VMC Photo in Hackney, London, for Quickenden; their photographic wizardry; My wonderful hosts in France, Henri and Robert Grose, fo r legal advice; Marie Lachfeze, and in th e Netherlands, Sabrina R. K. and T.A., for the loan of materials; Dey and Harold Vreeburg; And to anyone whom I have inadvertently The staff of the MIT Press, for making this omitted. book a possibility; Any errors and oversights in the book are, of Those who helped me to get started— course, entirely my own. Alastair Bonnett, Andy Lowe, Sadie Plant, and David Stoker; Lucy Forsyth, for taking an interest in my work, and likewise Jonathan Hughes; Staff of the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in particular Simon Ford; of the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, in particular John van der Ree, Mariette A Note on Tran&ations Wherever possible I have drawn upon the excel­ lent translations of French situationist documents in Ken Knabb, ed., Situationist International Anthology (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), and by Thomas Y. Levin in Elisabeth Sussman, ed., On the Passage o f a Few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International, 1957-1972 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989). Where no source for a translation from French is given, it is by Alexis Lacheze-Beer and myself. Harold Vreeburg inter­ preted documents in Dutch, and Bogislav Winner interpreted documents in German and Italian. Any emphasis contained within a quotation is integral to the original. Frontispiece Guy Debord, “ Life continues to be free and easy," c. 1959, Constant, the piece was a tiny gem of situationist pot­ collage of text, postage stamp, and hand-colored figures of latch (artcreated as a gift) and detournement (art com­ soldiers pasted over a portion of Guy Debord and Asger posed from "diverted" aesthetic elements). Its layering Jorn's screenprintThe Naked City (1957), Rijksbureau voor of allusions—to colonialism, war, urbanism, situationist Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague. Made as part “psychogeograph/' and playfulness-was dizzying. of Debord's correspondence with his situationist colleague T H E SITUATIONIST CITY INTRODUCTION avant-garde, overturning current practices of histo­ ry, theory, politics, art, architecture, and everyday / life, and my fastidiously academic book can do none of these things. This plain fact will serve to damn it among some “ Pro-situs," the radicals who have carried the candle for situationist ideas since the demise of the Situationist International. Many Pro-situs seem uncomfortable that they and their discourse are largely products of More about less academia, even when they are its anti-products (here one could usefully draw upon sociologist “ It is kn9wn that initially the situationists wanted Pierre Bourdieu's insistence that “the full posses­ t ^ ^ ry least to build cities, the environment sion of academic culture is the precondition for ” e to the unlimited deployment of new pas- going beyond school culture and acquiring a free ff course this was not easy and so we culture").2 They apparently wish to direct the full ourselves forced to do much more. And dur- force of the class war against academics, an atti­ ,the entire course of events various partial proj- tude prevalent in the foreword to a 1996 tribute to had to be abandoned and a good number of the life and work of Debord. “One thing is for r excellent'capacities were not employed, as is sure," the foreword concluded, with a gravity remi­ the case— but how much more absolutely and niscent of Maoism, “ every word uttered by every, sadly—for hundreds of millions of our contempo­ single academic expert on any subject whatever raries."1 So wrote the situationist Guy Debord, with during the present age is nothing more than a lie typical bluster, a couple of years after the dissolu­ paid by a publisher, policed by professors, and for­ tion of the Situationist International (“SI" for tunately not even read by anybody with any other short), which existed in one form or another from expectation."3 Yet for all the woeful inadequacies 1957 to 1972 and whose influence has never of academia, it remains quite as potent—and quite gone away. impotent—a means of distributing ideas as the This book searches for the situationist city claustrophobic world of the revolutionary establish­ among the detritus of tracts, manifestoes, and ment. Strangely, little magazines purporting to be works of art that the situationists left behind. I custodians of a radical vision are not necessarily rummage with a sense of guilt: situationists did not more grassroots, trustworthy, libertarian, or effec­ want to be just another avant-garde, but the last tive than blatantly academic texts. People have to Figure 0 .I A diagram of situationism’s genealogy, showing the princi­ pal groups and journals that formed early situationism. There were two main lines, one expressionist, originating in the COBRA group, the other conceptual, and gathered around lettrism. Lettrist Group COBRA Paris, 1946- Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam, 1948-1951 Journal: COBRA Lettrist International (LI) International Movement for an lmaginist Bauhaus Paris, 1952-1957 (IMIB) Journal: Potlatch Albisola and Alba, 1954-1957 Journal: Eristica First World Congress of Free Artists Alba, September 1956 I Situationist International (SI) various countries, 1957-1972 Journal: /nternationa/e situationniste The Situationist City 2 > take what they can from where they can in con­ the autopsy and preservation of situationism, the structing their interpretation of the world: that, sooner others can make something new from its surely, was one lesson of situationism. corpus. The air of mystique about situationism, Yes, situationism has become the subject of now the reek of decay, has outlived its purpose, to academic study. As Simon Ford has noted in his the extent that it ever had one. One is not even bibliography of The Realization and Suppression of meant to use the word “situationism": “There is no the Situationist International, “ The explosion of such thing as situationism , which would mean a interest that erupted in 1988-1989 [in the wake doctrine of interpretation of existing facts," the sit­ of the Institute of Contemporary Arts/Centre uationist journal Internationale situationniste Pompidou exhibitions on situationism] is in declared in its first edition. “The notion of situa­ abeyance, but this is being replaced by a much tionism is obviously devised by antisituationists.’’5 more deeply rooted academic project; books will Of course, situationists knew full well that appear which say more and more about less and there was such a thing as situationism, just as less."4 This, frankly, is just such a book.