From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Fri Jun 08 2007 - 19:10:17 EDT
Off-topic, to be sure. Yet, some of you may find the following article by Bob Black to be as interesting as I did. In solidarity, Jerry >rest of article is at: >http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/242 > > > > >The Realization >and Supression of Situationism > >Bob Black > > > >No avant garde tendency ever tried harder, fully aware what was at >stake, to escape the curator's clutches than did the Situationists, >even in their initial phase of intervention in the art scene. They >knew that their Futurist, Dadaist, Surrealist and Lettrist forebears >had been, in their word, recuperated, that is, recovered by and for >the existing order. An order which showed itself as the spectacle, the >"organization of appearances." Art - already image - is the >easiest of all specialties to recuperate. All you have to do is ignore >it or, if that doesn't work, buy it. > > > >The Situationists conceptualized recovery and diversion as polar >types, as of course they are, but forgot that they are ideal types, >abstractions from the concrete actuality of experience - aids to >interpretation, ladders (in Wittgenstein's metaphor) to be climbed up, >then thrown down. All forms are mixed. Recovery and diversion are >abstractions just like the points and the lines of geometry which have >never been found in the wild, only approximated there. To complicate >matters still more, recovery and diversion (unlike points and lines) >form a continuum, not a dichotomy. Neither the Situationists nor the >managers of the spectacle ever had full control over their >manipulations of ideas and images. Nobody does. Diversion can also >recuperate, recuperation can also divert. And so the recuperation of >Situationism which is unmistakably occurring at an increasing pace is >not necessarily entirely anti-Situationist. > > > >Since 1972 unchaperoned by any organization, situationism has been >available for various uses, some dubious. Punks pilfered it for >subliminals. Museologists curated it. Marxist academics at Telos >explained it away as Frankfurt School philosophy as harmless as they >are. Pro-situ hustlers like Tom Ward traded on their expertise in it. >SI veterans reminisced about it, but only the ones who'd been >excluded. Anarchists either maligned it or miscegenated with it. >Poseurs congratulated each other for having heard of it. Somewhere, >workers might have appropriated it, although this is sheer >speculation. > > >It is all over - >and at the same time it is all over the place. Situationism is dead. >Long live situationism!
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