ARTIFICIAL HELLS

artificial hells
then this also required the rejection of recognised art forms, their institutions,
and the concept of a mass audience. The paradox of this position
is that the SI rejected art but continually invoked it as the benchmark
for non- alienated life: art is at once a privileged zone of non- alienated
activity and an alibi for the continued alienation of life in all other
activities. The contradictory logic of this position is nevertheless
generative, and easily surpasses the technophilic interactivity of
GRAV, whose insistence on first- hand physical and sensorial experiences
suffers from a certain oversimplification of the work of art’s
agency. Lebel, by contrast, created quasi- therapeutic collective rites
where societal taboos and inhibitions could be expressed and challenged.
His work sought to surpass the established binaries that
structured the thinking around participation, such as the distinction
between artist and audience, and between active and passive spectatorship
– although arguably this idea was more vivid as a goal than as a
reality. All three tendencies should be viewed as contributions paving
the way for the largest social (and theatrical) refusal of the 1960s,
May ’68. 96
The extent to which May ’68 could be seen as the culmination of
these multifarious experiments in art and theatre was the focus of an
article by Lebel in 1969. In it, he connected the radicalism of Paris
Dada and Happenings to the recent effusion of politicised street theatre
both during and after May ’68, and presented its events as a form of
Happening:
The May uprising was theatrical in that it was a gigantic fiesta, a revelatory
and sensuous explosion outside the ‘normal’ pattern of politics . . .
The results of this individual as well as social change were immediate:
human relations were freer and much more open; taboos, self- censorship,
and authoritarian hangups disappeared; roles were permutated;
new social combinations were tried out. Desire was no longer negated
but openly expressed in its wildest and most radical forms. Slavery was
abolished in its greatest stronghold: people’s heads. Self- management
and self- government were in the air and, in some instances, actually
worked out. The subconscious needs of the people began to break
through the ever present network of repressive institutions which is the
backbone of capitalism. Everywhere people danced and trembled.
Everywhere people wrote on the walls of the city or communicated
freely with total strangers. There were no longer any strangers, but
brothers, very alive, very present. I saw people fucking in the streets and
on the roof of the occupied Odeon Theatre and others run around naked
on the Nanterre campus, overflowing with joy. The first things revolutions
do away with are sadness and boredom and the alienation of the
body. 97
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