Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

36 Jelena Stojanović
collective owners. 72 It was Bakhtin who described the festival that is a carnival
as the ultimate grotesque celebration producing a truly radical dislocation
of social roles, the upturning of class structure, and “the suspension
of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions.” 73
The events of May 1968 brought collective subjectivity once again
to the center of the group’s concerns. Declaring that museums are morgues
and storage depots they organized with the other artists and students a
march to the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. As if to Wnally put into practice
one of the Wrst unitary urbanist events and slogans, they proclaimed
“Art is the Opiate of People!” 74 As the Wrst Parisian factories were occupied
by striking workers the SI called for the creation of workers’ councils: decentralized
collectives based on self-management and direct democracy. Days
and nights blurred together into one uninterrupted sequence of assemblies
including the printing committee, the liaison committee, the requisition
committee, and so forth as a sense of internationalism sprang up virtually
overnight, with workers and intellectuals from all over Europe, as well as
many other parts of the world, suddenly echoing such internationaleries ideas
as “Power to the Imagination.” 75 Meanwhile the SI set to work frantically
FIGURE 1.7.
Sorbonne, Paris, May
1968. Internationale
Situationniste, no. 12
(September 1969).
Copyright Librarie
Arthème Fayard, 1997.