ExpEct anything FEar nothing The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere Edited by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen 1 ExpEcT AnyThing Fear noThing 2 ExpEcT AnyThing Fear noThing The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere 3 ExpEcT AnyThing Fear noThing ThE SiTuaTionist MovemenT in Scandinavia and Elsewhere ExpEcT AnyThing Edited by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen Fear noThing Published 2011 by nebula in association with autonomedia Nebula Autonomedia ThE SiTuaTionist MovemenT læssøegade 3,4 Po Box 568, williamsburgh Station dK-2200 copenhagen Brooklyn, nY 11211-0568 denmark uSa in Scandinavia www.nebulabooks.dk www.autonomedia.org [email protected] [email protected] and Elsewhere Tel/Fax: 718-963-2603 iSBn 978-87-993651-2-8 ISBn 978-1-57027-232-5 Edited by Editors: Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen | Copyeditor: Marina vishmidt | design: Åse Eg | Inserts: Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen | Proofreading: Mikkel Bolt rasmussen Matt Malooly | Printed by: naryana Press in 2,000 copies | web: destroysi.dk & Jakob Jakobsen Thanks to: The Situationists Fighters (Mie lund hansen, anne Sophie Seiffert, Magnus Fuhr, Robert Kjær clausen, Johannes Balsgaard, Samuel willis nielsen, henrik Busk, david hilmer Rex, Tine Tvergaard, anders hvam waagø, Bue Thastrum, Johannes Busted larsen, Maibritt Pedersen, Kate vinter, odin Rasmussen, Tone andreasen, ask Katzeff and Kirsten Forkert), Peter laugesen, Jacqueline de Jong, Gordon Fazakerley, hardy Strid, Stewart home, Fabian Tompsett, Karen Kurczynski, lars Morell, Tom Mcdonough, Zwi & negator, lis Zwick, ulla Borchenius, henriette heise, Katarina Stenbeck, Stevphen Shukaitis, Jaya Brekke, James Manley, Matt Malooly, Åse Eg and Marina vishmidt. cover images: detourned photo by J.v. Martin of François de Beaulieu, René vienet, J.v. Martin, claudio Pavan and Robert chasse at the viii conference of the Situationist international in venice, September 1969, photo of Jørgen nash, Jens Jørgen Thorsen, hardy Strid and dieter Kunzelmann in Møntergade, december 1962, and photo from the streets of copenhagen, March 2007. This book may be freely pirated and quoted. however, please inform the authors and publishers. The publication is supported by the danish arts council and ny carlsbergfondet a huge effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the very first opportunity. 4 ExpEcT AnyThing Fear noThing The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere 5 contents 7 inTroducTion Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen 15 SiTuation Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen 20 WhAT ThE SiTuATIONIST INTERNATIONAL COULd hAVE BEEN Peter laugesen 29 ThE drAkabygget Films carl nørrested 46 opEn copEnhAgEn Fabian Tompsett 75 To AcT in culturE While BEing AgAinst All culturE: ThE SiTuationists And ThE “DestrucTion oF rSg-6” Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen 114 drAkabygget: A SiTuationist UtopiA or Meeting PlacE For diSplacEd PerSons Gordon Fazakerley and Jacqueline de Jong in conversation with Jakob Jakobsen 129 EveryonE cAn be A SiTuationist hardy Strid 131 Red HerringS: EccEnTric MorphoLogies in ThE SiTuationist Times Karen Kurczynski 183 A MAxiMuM oF opEnness Jacqueline de Jong in conversation with Karen Kurczynski 6 ExpEcT AnyThing Fear noThing The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere 7 205 ThE SELF-MyTHOLOGISATION oF ThE SiTuATIONIST INTERNATIONAL Stewart home inTroducTion 215 ThE ArTistic revoLuTion: on ThE Mikkel Bolt rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen SiTuationists, gAngsterS And falsiFiErS FroM drAkabygget Jakob Jakobsen It was as late as the end of the 1980s before the Situationist International went from being a relatively mysterious object to becoming a signifier to a 276 Fear everyThing ExpEcT noThing broader intellectual and cultural public. Although the group experienced a short period of public interest in France following their participation 286 conTriBuTorS in the occupation of the Sorbonne in May ‘68, which helped to spark the dissatisfaction that threatened to overturn France, it took another 20 years before Situationist theory and activities became the object of both intense study and casual entertainment. In Scandinavia, Asger Jorn, Jørgen Nash and Jens Jørgen Thorsen were all well known artists and enfants terribles but their affinity to and inspiration from the Situationist legacy was rarely made explicit. For instance, it has remained something of a secret that the well-known poet Peter Laugesen was a member of the Situationist group under the auspices of J.V. Martin, who has simply been written out of Danish art history. Since 1989 when the first big exhibition featuring the Situationist movement took place at Centre Pompidou in Paris and toured to London and Boston, and with the publication of several books in French, English and German on different aspects of the group’s œuvre, the Situationist International has become a constant reference for con- temporary art and political thinking, creating a veritable exhibitions and publishing industry. The radical stance of the Situationist International is now no longer allowed to remain in the shadows but has been given its place in the spectacle. Confronted with this development, a first reaction would perhaps be to abandon the Situationist corpse and let bourgeois academics, writers and artists fight over the remains but perhaps it is also possible to just use it today against/within capital’s subsumption of society. Against ‘debord and the Situationist international’ So far the reception of the Situationist International has for a large part been focused on the figure of Guy Debord, who was the only member of 8 ExpEcT AnyThing Fear noThing The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere Introduction 9 the group who was present both in 1957 when the new International was mainly due to his idiosyncratic style, allowing both politicos and academ- founded and in 1972 when the group dissolved. There is no doubt that ics to placidly claim that he was not a true theorist. That there was an Debord played a seminal role in the Situationist experiment and helped anti-specialist point in his style of writing is less interesting, because it develop many of the concepts most relevant to analyzing the new forms makes the representation within the specialised fields of politics and of capitalist dominance. Yet the emphasis on Debord has overshadowed academia more complicated and because it actually destabilises the role the existence of other Situationists and the different praxis they developed of the specialist. Although the members of the SI often signed their work within the broader Situationist project. The intense interest in Debord’s with their own names, the Situationist movement was a collective thriving life and work has tended to reduce the Situationist International to just on the dialectics of the various positions of the group. All these claims for one signature enabling Debord to emerge as a great melancholic political correct and incorrect readings of the canonical texts are making us tired. writer. This development is not without reason as Debord increasingly What we find interesting about the Situationists is the contradictions and romanticized himself and selected episodes in his life, all the while dis- thus the openness that the totality of the project is offering which has the tancing himself from the established artistic and political spheres. But this potential to inspire people who still want to use words and images in the transfiguration of the Situationist International and Debord into a lone struggle against the prevailing forms of life. voice of virtue needs to be disrupted and dismissed. Luckily, Debord was not just that and the Situationist International was not just Guy Debord. Situationisms In fact, the very selective focus on Debord not only tends to distort the In most presentations of the history of the Situationist group the split in history of the Situationist International but it also results in a rather tidy the group which took place in 1961 and 1962 and which resulted in the history of the group’s development which leaves out some of the more in- exclusion of most of the Scandinavian and German members is presented teresting inconsistencies and paradoxes that characterised the Situationist as a cleaning-up operation removing more unruly members still attached movement and continue to give it importance in any fight against the to a no longer viable notion of art. But actually the split did not mean that ruling powers. The relationship between art and politics and how both the Situationist International simply left behind art and the art world, as the relationship and the terms might be superseded not being the least the exhibitions organized by J.V. Martin in 1963, “Destruktion af RSG-6”, interesting of these. and in 1967, “Operation Playtime”, show. In Denmark, at the margin of the art world, Martin was allowed to stage two manifestations in which The collective the ‘original’ Situationists tried to use an art exhibition as a heavy-handed With the recuperation of the Situationist International, Asger Jorn has vehicle for their critique of the spectacle, “working within culture against entered the race with Guy Debord. However, it is different segments of the the whole of culture”. Martin’s role within the Situationist group has cultural industry which aim for their canonisation. With Debord as the been completely overlooked by all previous