Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

32 Jelena Stojanović
still ambiguous, is cohesive enough in structure to invite special scrutiny.
Offering yet another oxymoronic turn of phrase as its title, this ultimate experiment
in intervention was Wrst fully formulated in the early Wfties through
common activities of MIBI and LI members. Unitary urbanism meant to
examine the extraordinary mix of art, aesthetics, collective utopianism, and
radical politics that grounded the work of these groups. It was a tactic that
became especially prominent after a particular moment of political rupture
within the cold war that was described by the internationaleries as “the general
revolutionary resurgence characterizing the year 1956.” 59
This is why one of the Wrst unitary urbanist events took place in
December 1956 at the Unione Culturale center in Turin, Italy. For this
occasion LI members Guy Debord, Gill Wolman, and Michele Bernstein
traveled to Italy and joined the members of the MIBI. A Xyer was produced
with the title “Manifestate a Favore Dell’Urbanismo Unitario” (Act in a
Favor of Unitary Urbanism). The language was of course hyperbolic. It promised
“a big modern adventure” that would lead toward a “general revolution.”
It also emphasized another reframing tactic, that of psychogeography,
FIGURE 1.5. Détourned diagram of a baseball stadium in Milwaukee; in SI rhetoric, a perfect picture
of a spectacularly colonized free time (the caption reads, “Social space of a leisure consumption”).
Internationale Situationniste, no. 4 (June 1960). Copyright Librarie Arthème Fayard, 1997.