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. Copyright © 2002 Asger Jorn: “On the Triolectical Method in its Applications in General Situlogy”. Translated by Peter Shield. Copyright © 2015 Cover images: Press Release by J.V. Martin, 1962; Jørgen Nash: Det naturlige smil, 1964; Jacqueline de Jong: “Critique of the Political Practice of Détournement”, 1962 Distributed in Denmark by Antipyrine | Distributed in the UK by Minor Compositions | Distributed in Europe by Motto | Distributed in the US and Canada by Autonomedia This book may be freely pirated and quoted except for the texts covered by copyrights. However, please inform the authors and publishers. The publication is supported by Ny Carlsbergfondet A huge effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, but if any have been inadver- tently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the very first opportunity. 4 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere 5 102 ON THE SPUR TRIAL Jacqueline de Jong CONTENTS 106 THE FREEDOM OF ART Jørgen Nash 115 SEVEN REBELS Jørgen Nash, Jens Jørgen Thorsen, 7 INTRODUCTION Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen Gordon Fazakerley, Jacqueline de Jong, Ansgar Elde, Hardy Strid & Hans Peter Zimmer 19 LUCK AND CHANGE DAGGER AND GUITAR Asger Jorn 116 FUCK OFF! Gordon Fazakerley 44 SPUR MANIFESTO Gruppe SPUR 118 BLAB BLAB BLAB Gordon Fazakerley 47 SITUATIONIST MANIFESTO 121 DRAWINGS, POEMS Gordon Fazakerley 51 TRACT Gruppe SPUR 122 ATOMIC BOMBS FOR THE CULTURE INDUSTRY 52 OUR REPLY Gruppe SPUR Gruppe SPUR 57 CANON OF THE REVOLUTION Dieter Kunzelmann 125 CO-RITUS MANIFESTO Jens Jørgen Thorsen, Jørgen Nash 59 HOMAGE TO C.G. JUNG Dieter Kunzelmann & Hardy Strid 62 DRAKABYGGET Dieter Kunzelmann 129 SLOGANS Jørgen Nash, Jens Jørgen Thorsen & Dieter Kunzelmann 65 MUTANT Guy Debord & Asger Jorn 130 LUXURY AND MARTYRDOM Jacqueline de Jong 69 NICHT HINAUSLEHNEN! 133 THE NATURAL ORDER Asger Jorn 71 NICHT HINAUSLEHNEN! 177 CRITIQUE OF ECONOMIC POLICY Asger Jorn 73 PROCLAMATION FROM THE FIRST SITUATIONIST 206 CO-RITUS INTERVIEW: ART IS POP – CO-RITUS IS ART INTERNATIONAL – DIVIDED WE STAND Jørgen Nash & Jens Jørgen Thorsen 77 CRITIQUE OF THE POLITICAL PRACTICE OF 211 LABYRINTH PROJECT Gordon Fazakerley DÉTOURNEMENT Jacqueline de Jong 215 THE SITUATIONISTS AND THE NEW ACTION FORMS 85 PRESS RELEASE FROM THE SITUATIONIST IN POLITICS AND ART Guy Debord INTERNATIONAL, SCANDINAVIAN SECTION 222 HOMO LUDENS Else Steen Hansen 89 THE STRUGGLE OF THE SITUCRATIC SOCIETY: 226 RE: “DESTRUCTION OF RSG-6” A SITUATIONIST MANIFESTO 228 WHO ARE THE SITUATIONISTS? Jørgen Nash 97 ANTIPOLITICAL ACTIVITY J.V. Martin 232 THE NATURAL SMILE Jørgen Nash 6 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere 7 236 POP J.V. Martin 238 ON THE TRIOLECTICAL METHOD IN ITS APPLICATIONS IN GENERAL SITULOGY Asger Jorn INTRODUCTION: 250 THE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS NOT FOR SALE TO BE BURIED ALIVE 253 PAMPHLET NO. 9 FROM THE SECOND SITUATIONIST Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen INTERNATIONAL Jørgen Nash & Hardy Strid 256 THE COMMUNICATIVE PHASE IN ART: AN ESSAY ON THE DEATH OF ANTI-ART Jens Jørgen Thorsen “Down with art which is complacent and egocentric, which con- templates its own navel! Up with generating everybody’s art for all! 263 NEO-IRREALISM: The decline and fall of the Fourth Reich Long live the popular art of toilet graffiti, where one can be jerked J.V. Martin, Raoul Vaneigem, Michèle Bernstein, Guy Debord, off at 10pm if you call the right telephone number.” Mustapha Khayati, Donald Nicholson-Smith & René Vienet J.V. Martin 273 DECLARATION FOR OUR ITALIAN ARTISTS AND COMRADES: FOLLOW COURBET Jens Jørgen Thorsen, “We do not always distinguish between theory and practice. Cæsar & Jørgen Nash We intend to produce our theories after the event.” Jørgen Nash, Jens Jørgen Thorsen, Gordon Fazakerley, Hardy Strid, 277 GENERAL REMARKS Bengt Ericson & J.V. Martin Staffan Larsson, Ansgar Elde, Jacqueline de Jong & Patrick O’Brien 286 ON KIRUNA 289 EUROPE’S FIRST AVANT-GARDE Patrick O’Brien & The many realizations of art Ambrosius Fjord In many ways it is difficult today to really comprehend the Situationist 294 DRAFT MANIFESTO OF ANTINATIONAL SITUATIONIST idea of art as a radical, even revolutionary, gesture. Nowadays, it is easier Jens Jørgen Thorsen to see art as a haven for newly accumulated capital and a resource for regional or national development. The artist has taken on the role of a 300 IS THIS METAVILLE? A PROJECT FOR CREATIVE PLAY celebrity and a much-loved model for entrepreneurs. Today art equals Jens Jørgen Thorsen in collaboration with Hoff & Ussing ‘creativity’ and luxury goods. In business schools professors talk about art 304 ALL CULTURE IS COLLECTIVE: NOTES ON COLLECTIVE as the ultimate result of capitalist production, about companies being ‘art CREATIVITY J.V. Martin firms’ that should look upon their products as aesthetic artefacts open to interpretation and aesthetic judgement. The sad fact is that art during the last two decades has become increasingly tied to post-Fordist speculation with bling, boom and bust transforming art into an important economic resource. 8 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere Introduction 9 For the Situationists, art was something completely different. For them art As is well-known from the by now fairly comprehensive literature was the means to an aesthetic emancipation from capitalist society, an end on the Situationist International, during the first years of the group’s ex- to the parcelling out of human existence into compartmentalized sectors istence it was deemed possible to engage in experiments with art, using where most people worked and consumed but primarily passively contem- artistic means to different ends within the overall horizon of critiquing plated a selected group of people-commodities – politicians or movie stars bourgeois capitalist society. It was in this period from 1957 to 1960 when or artists but never all at once. The Situationists wanted to realize art. Not Jorn made his modified kitsch paintings, Pinot Gallizio worked on his in the sense we have been witnessing for the last twenty-five years where industrial painting and Constant started his New Babylon project that the relative autonomy of art has come under intense pressure, as art has envisioned a Situationist city. fused with the economy, but in the opposite sense of an abolition of capi- A range of diverse but complementary activities were going on at talism and its separate identities, including that of the artist. Art was to the same time in several places in Europe. Jorn was busy exhibiting in be realized beyond the confines of the art institution where art was safely galleries in Paris, Milan and Copenhagen. Gallizio also started mount- locked away from everyday life. ing exhibitions with his industrial painting. In Paris the Internationale This idea of the ‘realization of art’ was shared by the many differ- Situationniste journal was put together. Jorn toured Europe getting into ent Situationist fractions that materialized during the dramatic history of contact with like-minded artists who all wanted to participate in the the Situationist movement as it unfolded from 1957 onwards to the early development of the Situationists’ new radical artistic plasticity and experi- 1970s. Asger Jorn, Constant, Jørgen Nash, Jacqueline de Jong, but also mentation. Old comrades like Constant who had been in Cobra and new Guy Debord, subscribed to the idea of art as a transgression, art as an ones like the German Gruppe SPUR and the Dutch painter Jacqueline attack on the spectacular commodity society. The contemplative viewing de Jong joined the Situationist avant-garde. The members of this diverse of art was to be replaced by the construction of situations, meaning the group of avant-garde artists were all in agreement that it was necessary to construction of a new life beyond the constraints of capitalism. continue and even accelerate artistic development with a view to destroy- ing post-war Fordist society where people were reduced to workers and Beyond art through art passive consumers living in sterile and boring urban environments while Of course the Situationists strongly disagreed when it came to the exact watching images glorifying that life.