Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...

notes to pages 83– 6
29 Debord’s denunciation not just of contemporary art but also of art criticism
as a mode of spectacular consumption is a wake up call to the critic;
however, it is a reproof that could only be issued by a wealthy intellectual
dandy able to survive on parental handouts (even if this privileged
distance was formative for his critical acuity). See Andrew Hussey, The
Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord, London: Jonathan
Cape, 2001, p. 131, p.144. Hussey notes that Michèle Bernstein, by
contrast, earned a living by writing advertising copy, along with horoscopes
for horses, which were published in racing magazines.
30 ‘The artist relinquishes the lived intensity of the creative moment in
exchange for the durability of what he creates, so that his name may live
on in the funeral glory of the museum. And his desire to produce a durable
work is the very thing that prevents him from living imperishable
instants of real life.’ (Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life,
London: Aldgate Press, 2003 [fi rst published in French 1967], p. 113.)
31 Debord, ‘The Situationists and New Forms of Action in Politics or Art’,
p. 148.
32 Ibid., p. 150.
33 The SI organised an exhibition ‘to salute and extend this fi rst attack
against the ruling organisation of social space’ in Denmark, reissuing the
Danger! Offi cial Secret tract alongside a theoretical text, ‘The Situationists
and New Forms of Action in Politics or Art’. See Internationale
Situationniste, 9, 1964.
34 See Marcus, Lipstick Traces, pp. 422– 45.
35 These are reproduced in Internationale Situationniste, 9, 1964, p. 21 and p.
36. Another example, also from I.S. 9, alludes to current affairs, namely
the marriage of Princess Anne- Marie of Denmark to King Constantine II
of Greece. Lewis Morley’s celebrated photograph of Christine Keeler is
captioned with the following: ‘As the SI says, it’s a far far better thing to
be a whore like me than the wife of a fascist like Constantine.’
36 Chtcheglov describes the dérive as being akin to psychoanalysis: ‘Just
abandon yourself to the fl ow of words, the analyst says . . . The dérive is
really a technique, indeed almost a therapy. In any case, it can have a
therapeutic effect.’ (Chtcheglov, Ecrits Retrouvés, reprinted in Imus Nocte
et consumimur Igni, n.p.)
37 Unsigned, ‘Defi nitions’, in Internationale Situationniste, 1, 1958, p. 13.
38 Guy Debord, ‘Report on the Construction of Situations’ (1957), translated
in Knabb (ed.), Situationist International Anthology, p. 18.
39 Lefebvre, La Somme et le Reste (1960), cited as the epigraph to the
unsigned article ‘The Theory of Moments and the Construction of Situations’,
Internationale Situationniste, 4, 1960, pp. 10– 11.
40 Guy Debord, ‘Theses on Cultural Revolution’, Internationale Situationniste,
1, p. 21.
41 Here we can note the SI’s debt to J. Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1944), with
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