Architecture and Modernity : A Critique

urbanism. This causes a subversion of its power of persuasion and a diminishing of
the resulting conditioning. The appropriate strategy for achieving this goal of destruction
is the creation of situations. These can liberate currents of energy that will
permit people to make their own history. Unitary urbanism is therefore indissolubly
linked with the revolution of everyday life: “We have invented the architecture
and the urbanism that cannot be realized without the revolution of everyday life—
without the appropriation of conditioning by everyone, its endless enrichment, its
fulfillment.” 19
This evolution within unitary urbanism, from experiments in the visual arts to
an involvement with agitational literature and activities, formed part of the general
trend in the Situationist International. The movement was becoming increasingly
preoccupied with political and socially subversive actions and was distancing itself
from any artistic practice. Right from the start of the movement, it was already argued
that the individual practice of art should be rejected in favor of a collective approach.
At that moment, however, the conclusion was not yet drawn that all artistic
activity was reactionary. This notion only began to get the upper hand after 1960
when artists who had doubts about this strategy, such as Constant, were expelled
from the movement. From 1962 onward the situationists were dominated by activists
such as Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, whose contribution to the revolutionary
struggle took the form of articles and pamphlets. Vaneigem stated explicitly:
It is a question not of elaborating the spectacle of refusal, but rather of
refusing the spectacle. In order for their elaboration to be artistic in the
new and authentic sense defined by the SI, the elements of the destruction
of the spectacle must precisely cease to be works of art. There
is no such thing as situationism or a situationist work of art or a spectacular
situationist. . . . Our position is that of combatants between two
worlds—one that we don’t acknowledge, the other that does not yet
exist. 20
The argument behind this statement goes as follows: the whole social system
is organized in such a way that people are reduced in every way to being passive consumers,
alienated from their own needs and desires. In order to maintain this generalized
impoverishment, people are offered solace in the form of leisure activities.
These are organized in a “spectacular” fashion; in other words, they are conceived
of in such a way that people partake in them passively, without genuinely participating.
This system, which is totalitarian and hierarchical, prevails in every area of social
existence, including the art world. This can be seen in the commercial organization
of the art market, where the work of artists who have made a name can be sold for
a great deal of money. Artists who collaborate with this circuit are surrendering to the
system and are therefore guilty of an antirevolutionary attitude. The simple fact of
creating products that are labeled as “art” and that are marketable means that artists
4 Architecture as Critique of Modernity