ARTIFICIAL HELLS

notes to pages 100– 3
89 Lebel, interview with the author, Paris, 22 July 2010. Debord and Lebel
had met as early as 1952 (both having relatives who lived in Cannes) and
Lebel was sympathetic to all SI activities, even though Debord did not
attend any of his events: ‘He relied – can you believe this – he relied on
newspapers! How warped can your perception be? Actually I met him on
Boulevard Saint Germain one day in the ’60s and I said, “What are you
writing about? You never came to see one of my Happenings nor
anybody else’s Happenings” and I realised that he and his friends were
talking through newspapers. How can you do that? He laughed and said
“Who cares”. He was being dogmatic. So it doesn’t matter. He was being
dismissive, but I just took it as a joke.’
90 ‘The Happening is the materialisation of a collective dream and the vehicle
of an intercommunication.’ (Lebel, Le Happening, p. 36.)
91 Lebel, ‘On the Necessity of Violation’, p. 103.
92 Lebel, in Lebel and Michaël (eds.), Happenings de Jean- Jacques Lebel, p.
184, my translation. See also Kaprow: in 1958 he argued that ‘objects of
every sort are materials for the new art: paint, chairs, food, electric and
neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies, a thousand other
things’. By 1966, he also regarded ‘people’ to be materials of the work,
with a consequent elimination of the audience; the viewer’s role thus
moved from a formal element in the work (providing colour and movement)
to one of completing the work as a ‘co- creator’. (Kaprow, ‘The
Legacy of Jackson Pollock’, p. 9.)
93 Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, p. 114.
94 Unsigned, ‘L’avant- garde de la presence’, p. 17, my translation.
95 Jean- Paul Sartre, in Le Nouvel Observateur, 18 January 1967, quoted in
Jean- Jacques Lebel: Retour d’Exil, Peintures, dessins, collages 1954– 1988,
Paris: Galerie 1900/ 2000, 1988, p. 76.
96 ‘We were not the only ones – I am not saying May ’68 happened because
of us – I am saying that we were a little movement of all those little tiny
movements that concurred towards that aim.’ (Lebel, interview with the
author, Paris, 22 July 2010.)
97 Jean- Jacques Lebel, ‘Notes on Political Street Theatre, Paris: 1968, 1969’,
TDR, 13:4, Summer 1969, p. 112– 13.
98 Constant, interview in Imus Nocte et consumimur Igni, p. 100.
99 Guy Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, ‘Theses on the SI and its
Time’, The Real Split in the International, p. 11.
100 Guy Debord, ‘Notes to Serve Towards the History of the SI from 1969–
1971’, in The Real Split in the International, pp. 93– 4.
101 In an interview with the group in 1970, GRAV ascribe various reasons to
their disbanding: the tension between individual and collective efforts,
economic inequalities between members, differences of responsibility,
opinion, and the will to work as a team. See Caramel (ed.), Groupe de
recherche d’art visuel 1960– 1968, pp. 130– 6. Stein also noted that ‘Once
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