Den uundgåelige opløsning af afsavnets verden: Situationisterne som manifestskrivere

Resumé

The Inevitable Liquidation of the World of Privation: The Situationists as Manifesto Writers:

The article presents a reading of the short, four-page manifesto written in 1960 by the Situationist International and published in the fourth issue of the situationist journal Internationale situationniste. Through an analysis of both the text and the glossy cover of the issue it is argued that the situationists sought to subvert the spectacle while coming dangerously close to staging this subversion as yet another spectacle to be consumed. According to the situationists’ ultra leftist approach, modern capitalist society was characterized by alienation and boredom but held together by images and representations that prevented people from realising another life and taking matters into their own hands. The situationists tried to attack this repressive image-world, drawing on both the historical avant-garde and the revolutionary tradition advancing an all-encompassing revolutionary approach that could not take place as an isolated artistic gesture or as a political action but had to address all of human existence. This total-istic approach for better or worse no longer seems to be an option for present artistic and activist projects.