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

artificial hells
the constructed situation was its participatory structure, devised in deliberate
opposition to spectacle’s principle of ‘nonintervention’ and its
corollary, alienation. This emphasis on collectivity was, from the beginning,
conceived as politicised: as Debord explains, the very idea of a
collective avant- garde involves the transposition of organisational methods
from revolutionary politics into art; inevitably, the latter activity ‘is
henceforth inconceivable without some connection with a political
critique’. 38 Collectively realised ‘constructed situations’ were fi gured as
oppositional to capitalism in their sublation of individual authorship, but
primarily in their refusal of bureaucracy and consumerism through the
free activity of the game. The notion of constructed situations was
indebted to the writings of Henri Lefebvre, specifi cally his ‘theory of
moments’: perishable instants that intensify ‘the vital productivity of
everydayness, its capacity for communication, for information, and also
and above all for pleasure in natural and social life’. 39 The SI viewed
constructed situations as a halfway point between the Lefebvrian ‘moment’
and the everyday ‘instant’, more particularised than the former yet also
less clearly demarcated.
As the group admitted, one of the diffi culties with the ‘Situationist
moment’ was identifying its precise beginning and end. In this it had much
in common with other forms of post- Brechtian theatre, such as Happenings.
Tellingly, it is hard to fi nd informative examples of constructed
situations in the I.S.; emphasis is continually placed on the structure and
rationale for a situation, rather than reporting specifi c examples. This aversion
to documentation presumably stands as a deliberate ploy to avoid
imitation, as well as reifi cation as a work of art. The emphasis was on instaneity
and rupture (in comparison to the purportedly eternal beauty of
traditional art), immediacy (directly organising sensation rather than just
reporting on it) and self- determination (‘producing ourselves, and not
things that enslave us’). 40 Most importantly, it ascribed importance to fi nding
spaces of play in the urban environment, understanding play as
non- alienating human activity available to all. 41 Ultimately, life could be
conceived as a series of constructed situations.
It is telling that the constructed situation had a specifi c relationship to
hierarchy: each situation required the temporary leadership of an individual
who would play the role of director. In an anonymous essay from 1958,
entitled ‘Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation’, the example is
given of a research team seeking to arrange ‘an emotionally moving gathering
for a few people for an evening’. 42 Within the group, certain roles would
be parcelled out: a director or producer who coordinated the basic elements
necessary for the décor and certain interventions in the event; ‘direct agents
living the situation’, who collaborated on devising its ambiance; and ‘a few
passive spectators who have not participated in the constructive work, who
should be reduced to action’. 43 In other words, rather than attempting to
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