To cite this article: Alastair Bonnett (1999) Situationist strategies and mutant technologies, Angelaki: Journal of the
Theoretical Humanities, 4:2, 25-32
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Angelaki: journal of the theoretical humanities 4:2 1999
25
situationist strategies
forms should be used to undermine and expose the Prefiguring the activities of the Association of
socio-economic conditions which had enabled such Autonomous Astronauts, members of the
forms to come into existence and/or limited their Situationist International saw space travel as
social use. Thus, for the Situationist International, another site ripe for ideological exposure and
detournement as the "paradoic-serious expresses the subversion. In 1969 Eduardo Rothe wrote in
contradictions of an era in which we find ouiselves Internationale Situationniste of the "sexless super-
confronted with both the urgent necessity and the bureaucratised neuters" now seizing, and soon to be
near impossibility of bringing together and carrying commodifying, space. The
out a totally innovative collective action."4 The
detoumed object should "be experienced not as a first men to go beyond the atmosphere are the
thing at all, but as possibilities."5 stars of a spectacle that hangs over our heads
day and night... As an example of survival in
Thus, detoumement was used simultaneously to
its highest manifestation, the astronauts make
adopt and adapt, to devalue and revalue, the ma-
an unintentional critique of the Earth:
terial possibilities of late-twentieth-century life.
condemned to an orbital trajectory - in order
Some exercises evoke the situationists' surrealist
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- Open the metro at night after the trains stop Man will enter space to make the universe the
running. Keep the corridors and tunnels playground of the.last revolt... We will enter
poorly lit by means of weak, intermittently space not as employees of an astronuatic
functioning lights. administration or as "volunteers" of a state
- End the cretinisation of the public by exist- project, but as masters without slaves review-
ing street names. Erase the names of local ing their domains: the entire universe pillaged
councillors, the street plaques, the "Emiles" for the workers' councils. (292)
and the "Edouards" (55 streets in Paris).6
However, it would be misleading to conclude that
A similar programme of urban reuse was the issue of technology was approached in a consistent
advanced by the Algerian situationist Abdelhafid fashion by the situationists, or, indeed, that they
Khatib. In the wake of his "drift" (a situationist always approached it through the theory of detourne-
technique of geographical defamiliarisation) ment. Two contradictory tendencies may be seen
around Les Halles in 1958, Khatib reported on weaving their way through situationist propaganda,
ways that this environment could be appropriated tendencies that are particularly apparent within the
and reconstructed in such a way as to expose past area on which the situationists focused much of their
limitations and present possibilities.7 The activism, namely city life: first, an almost aristocratic
supposed ambience of the existing landscape, contempt for urban modernisation and a related cele-
which included a "depressing zone" of prostitutes bration of the more medieval and baroque qualities of
and cripples and a "bizarre zone" of mixed usage, the city; and second, a faith in technology and scien-
are drawn by Khatib into a plan for the organisa- tific progress as offering the possibility of creating
tion of the area into a kind of labyrinth of perpet- new cities, cities that would enable the kind of ludic,
ually changing and individually stimulating creative communism that the situationists desired.
"situations." Khatib included a questionnaire at These tendencies may be found together in much situ-
the end of his study so that readers could comment ationist work. Again Khatib's plans for Les Halles
on his findings and contribute their own ideas provide a good example. Khatib's report calls for the
about the future of Les Halles. area's complete transformation through the insertion
26
bonnett
into, or imposition upon, it of a "park for the ludic particularly powerful amongst those architects asso-
education of travellers" (17). However, his focus on ciated with the SI, but it permeated many other
Les Halles is also indicative of the way that those situ- elements of the movement. It is almost as if, every
ationists associated most closely with Debord, such as so often, the situationists simply got bored with
Khatib, tended to find a certain enchantment within playing with the detritus of capitalism and authori-
older urban forms and, conversely, saw modern city tarianism; that they longed to start afresh. The tech-
planning as less amenable to the process of mutation. nological determinism of Constant's "New
It is important to recall that the place where and Babylon" project provides a stark example.15 The
period when the SI were most active - Paris in the multiple models (constructed in the late 1950s) for
1950s and 1960s - was witness to a huge programme New Babylon show a city of movable, nomadic,
of rebuilding. Massive new office and residential megastructures, a vast arena of play; a city where
complexes were being planned and constructed (it disorientation is not a technique of subversion but
was in this period that a third of the old Ville de a nauseous game without end, to be overseen by
Paris was demolished9). Les Halles was one of the what Constant called "professional situationists":
few areas that had remained "untarnished" by the
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tide of change. Khatib was attracted there because In such huge constructions we envisage the
it was a place that still retained qualities of histori- possibility of conquering nature and subjugat-
cal resonance and organic, street-scale human inter- ing to our will the climate, the lighting and the
action; qualities that many of the situationists felt sounds in these different spaces... The future
were being obliterated in other parts of Parish0 For cities that we envisage will offer an unprece-
Debord and his followers, urban detournement dented variability of sensations in this sphere,
could not survive the imposition of modern plan- and unforeseen games will become possible
ning's urban spectacles. Indeed, the Internationale through the inventive employment of the
Lettrist consistently attacked Le Corbusier as some- material conditions.16
one who wished to "suppress the street," to remove
Constant's resignation from the SI in 1960 testi-
the possibility of "open creation" and to build cities
fies to the conflict between his own orientation and
where "lives are separated-onto closed islands in a
the situationist leadership, who claimed to be more
society of surveillance."11 An anonymous contribu-
concerned with the politics of the everyday than
tor to Internationale Situationniste offered the
Utopian blueprints. However, the latter were never
following explanation of the relationship between
entirely extricated from the former: the spectre of
conservation and detournement:
the "professional situationist," mapping out a futur-
istic world of permanent play, weaved its way
The employment of detournment in an archi-
through many varieties of situationist work. It is a
tecture for the construction of situations marks
tendency that, as we shall see, continues to be a site
the reinvestment of products that it is necessary
of debate within contemporary, situationist-influ-
to protect from the existing socio-economic
enced, cultural production.
system, and the rupture with the formalist
concern of abstractly creating the unknown.12
mutant situationism
In The Situationist City Simon Sadler argues
Situationist ideas and practices have been adopted
that the situationists developed a sensibility of
and adapted in numerous ways since the early 1970s.
"technological baroque," an attitude marked by its
As the situationists themselves predicted, the
openness to the hidden and the extraordinary, to
commodification of their ideas and practices has
"romance, dynamism, participation, and passion."13
proceeded apace. Thus, for example, detournement
However, as Sadler points out, it was an attitude
has been incorporated as a standard practice within
that existed alongside, and in contradiction to,
another sensibility, namely Utopian mpdernism. It the advertising industry, as well as within youth
was the latter spirit that informed and produced culture.1? Situationism, shorn of its libertarian
audacious blueprints for the construction of entirely communist intent, has been integrated into a post-
new "situationist cities."14 This tendency was modern sensibility that privileges surface and
27
situationist strategies
irony.18 However, the ostensibly apolitical nature of as an interior and exterior designer for nightclubs,
this appropriation means that its ironic content cafes and boutiques. The first phase of his built work
carries little punch. Situationist detoumement was, is heavy with post-industrial irony - a plane wing
after all, designed to expose the limitations of exist- thrust around the roof of a cafe; rusted iron clothes
ing social practice; it acted to reveal the inadequacy rails - but it is the pretensions of anti-capitalism, of
of the present. If this moral intent is abandoned, then the possibility of even detritus escaping the
mutation becomes an end in itself, a process that commodity system, that appear to be being mocked.
reifies detoumement, transforming it from something More recent commissions have cemented this chain
explosive to something leaden and ritualistic. of association. In the national design "showcase"
This trajectory may be discerned within some of powerhouse: :uk, as well as within his work for the
the most seemingly innovative adoptions of situ- Millennium Dome, Coates's mutant aesthetics have
ationist strategy. The work of Narrative been comfortably integrated with the ambitions of
Architecture Today (NATO) at the Architectural the British government to project an entrepreneurial
Association in London may be taken as an exam- and fashionable image of the country.23
ple. 19 The NATO group, formed in 1983, was led by However, situationist ideas have also been
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Nigel Coates. Their chaotic urban redevelopment adopted and adapted amongst those activists
plans (such as Albion, a subversive reconstruction concerned to use detoumement for explicitly politi-
of London's Docklands, and Gamma City, a selec- cal ends. The Association of Autonomous
tion of anarchic assaults on urban space20) evidence Astronauts sustain the situationists' interest in
a commitment to the emergence of flexible, "do-it- mutating technology in order to expose the social
yourself' spontaneous city space that subverts and conditions of its current deployment. However, they
mutates existing usages in order to create an archi- have jettisoned the situationists' attempts to plan
tecture that, as Coates expresses it, "question[s] the out Utopia. Their focus is upon the political possi-
solidity of walls as well as wills. We search for an bilities that lie latent in the present; more specifi-
architecture fluid enough for the rules to change, cally upon the harnessing of technology to an
hard enough for continuing challenge."21 Coates ultra-left project of working-class liberation.
elucidated his point by noting that the "The new Launched in 1995, the AAA is a federation which
city must use every conceivable technique and by 1998 consisted of thirty groups, based mostly in
throw the control of events back to the people Britain but also in France, Italy, Denmark, New
performing them."22 The models and plans NATO Zealand and Austria.24 The avowed intention of the
produced displayed their situationist influences organisation is to build a "world-wide network of
through evidencing a desire for the ludic reordering local, community-based groups dedicated to build-
of everyday space. Buildings are absorbed into an ing their own space ships." Refashioning the situ-
"industrial baroque" sensibility; they are made ationist slogan "Below the Paving Stones: The
labyrinthine, designed to create a disorientating and Beach!," the AAA proclaims "Above the Paving
playful relationship to landscape. However, as with Stones: The Stars!,"25 explaining that
the New Babylon project, Coates's claims that such
cities would enable people to take control of The AAA has formed an approach to technol-
"events" must be set against their display of a some- ogy that is primarily concerned with investi-
what megalomaniacal architectural authority. gating how a specific technology is used and
who gets to use that technology... Autonomous
The architect, Coates asserts, must be
Astronauts create a complex interactive project
"moviemaker, social forecaster, artist and inhabi-
that anyone can participate in, and which
tant." As with Constant and the commercial re-
completely changes existing notions of space
cuperation of situationist ideas, play becomes the
travel.26
whole point, the means and ends of an apolitical
aesthetic programme rather than a strategy of popu- This orientation is also indicative of the AAA's
lar resistance. NATO were fixated by the pleasures hostility to technological utopianism: it is the possi-
of mutation, its transgressive charm. Perhaps not bilities of social conduct and relationships, rather
surprisingly, Coates soon found himself in demand than technological progress, that stimulates its
28
bonnett
explorations. "The AAA is the world's only space European radical cultural milieu of which the AAA
program," notes Skeet, "that makes technological is a part. In Guy Debord is Really Dead, published
issues secondary to the concern with what we will be in Italy immediately after Debord's suicide in 1994,
doing when we form autonomous communities in the AAA associate Luther Blissett pours scorn on his
outer space."27 "canonical" and arrogant approach to political organ-
The AAA draws together investigations of a rela- isation, an approach which he charges "fostered a
tively orthodox variety, with self-consciously out- contemplative attitude and resulted in passivity" and
rageous attempts to ignite a new, subversively symbolised Debord's faith in "the old idealist fallacy
imaginative, discourse on the possibilities of space of Holy Sprit descending into unconscious matter, of
travel. Thus, for example, as well as encouraging and "consciousness being brought in from outside."3!
reporting community-based rocket experiments (of There, standing against the light, is the decrepit
which there appear to be a considerable number), figure of the "separate intellectual" who "goes
and addressing the role of women in governmental forward towards the people" (20). In self-conscious
space programmes,28 AAA members claim to have opposition to anything resembling a "canonical"
researched the possibilities of sadomasochism and style, AAA groups adopt an open and plural attitude
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masturbation in zero-gravity: "The AAA is eagerly to membership of the Association, as well as an acces-
awaiting the chance to take their bodies to new peaks sible, populist style of address: "We are not leaders
of pleasure in the depths of space."29 or experts - and never will be... We cherish the learn-
Clearly influenced by Rothe's essay, the AAA ing process, the dialogue between interested individ-
evidence an eagerness to insist on the value of uals ... our trajectories must be open to all."32
detournement as simultaneously politicising and This democratic, pluralist orientation has the
enjoyable. Spurning the kind of avant-garde arro- effect of ironising the AAA's avant-gardist sloga-
gance that enabled the situationists to conjure up neering, of introducing a reflexive element into
the spectre of the "professional situationist," they their work that was unavailable to the more doctri-
use humour to reinforce their political message and naire SI. The flipside of this playful quality is that
undercut the idea that they themselves may form the AAA may be cast as being merely another
some kind of libertarian elite. This emphasis is instance of postmodern nihilism, of a withdrawal
indicative of a wider tendency in situationist-influ- from serious politics (a charge voiced by the so-
enced radicalism to attempt to distinguish itself called "Men in Red" at the AAA-organised Bologna
from the vanguardism and elitism perceived within Intergalactic Conference in 199833). To some
traditional forms of avant-garde activity, not least extent, the AAA manage to avoid this pitfall by
within the SI itself. The AAA constantly affirms drawing on the rhetoric of class-struggle anarchism
that theirs is a "locally-based" and "community- to link togther their community-based politics, anti-
based" mission. Thus, for example, it is claimed authoritarianism and anti-capitalism.3* By placing
that the Vienna Intergalactic Conference (organised themselves in this tradition of organic, grassroots
by the AAA) in June 1997 radicalism, the AAA appears intent on further
distinguishing itself from the aristocratic Marxism
enabled the AAA to involve local communities of their situationist antecedents.
in the process of exploring the possibilities that
open when we go into outer space. Prior to the
conclusions
conference, the AAA had run a highly success-
ful spaceship building project with groups of Mutation may appear a modest political project. The
Viennese school children.30 adaptation of the existing, its refashioning and reor-
ganisation, makes no necessary demands on the
The attempt to form a political relationship with
radical imagination. It is somewhat ironic, then, that
local communities stands in stark contrast to the
mutation, as metaphor and as praxis, has became
conduct of both the Debord and Constant tendencies
intellectually institutionalised as a dominant para-
within the SI. Indeed, over recent years, the aloof,
digm within the avant-garde politics of the twenti-
authoritarian style cultivated by the situationists has
eth century. Indeed, as one of the leitmotifs of the
come in for fierce criticism from those within the
29
situationist strategies
post-modem, mutation has been reduced to a stock- 5 Marcus 1989: 164.
technique of contemporary cultural production.
6 Lettrist International 1985a: 177-80.
The importance of the situationists' contribution
to this narrative lies in the way they reinterpreted 7 Khatib 1958.
mutation and turned it from a symbol of aesthetic
8 Rothe 1981:291.
complexity into a political tool. Detoumement has a
particular function within the theory of the spec- 9 see Sadler 1998.
tacle; it is not designed as a vehicle for directionless
10 The market halls (demolished in 1971) were
spontaneity or chance but as a purposeful strategy.
eventually replaced by the Centre National d'Art
Although this departure within avant-garde theory
et de Culture Georges Pompidou. The Centre
was not applied with consistency by the situation-
housed a retrospective exhibition on the
ists, it has proved influential within late-twentieth-
Situationists in 1989.
century art and activism. The work of the
situationists is drawn on, cited, garbled, in numer- 11 Internationale Lettrist 1985b (first published
ous spheres; it has permeated the atmosphere of
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1954): 35.
contemporary cultural experimentation. Rather
than presenting a compendium of such influences, I 12 Anonymous 1960:9.
have drawn attention to a few examples that testify 13 Sadler 1998: 110.
to the diversity of ways the notion of detoumed
technologies has been developed. What distin- 14 See also Andreotti and Costa 1996.
guishes these various forms is their political will. 15 See Constant 1962, 1964, 1996; also Burch
For although some contemporary cultural workers 1995; Lambert 1996.
adopt mutation as an end in itself,
others continue to insist that its 16 Constant 1959:38-39.
meaning, its interest, lies in what it
l7 See Bonnett 1989, 1991.
can reveal about the possibilities of
human social organisation. 18 See Plant 1992; Bonnett 1992.
30
bonnett
26 Skeet 1997: 6. Annual Report of the Association of Autonomous
Astronauts. Ed. Association of Autonomous
27 Skeet 1997: 6.
Astronauts. London: Radio AAA, 1998. 26-29.
28 see Chanel 1998.
Blissett, Luther. Guy Debord is Really Dead. London:
29 Blissett 1997: 21. Sabotage Editions, 1995.
31
situationist strategies
Eden, John. " O n Becoming an Autonomous Plant, Sadie. The Most Radical Gesture: The
Astronaut." Moving in Several Directions at Once! Situationist International in a Postmodern Age.
The Third Annual Report of the Association of London: Routledge, 1992.
Autonomous Astronauts. Ed. Association of
Poyner, Richard. Nigel Coates: The City in Motion.
Autonomous Astronauts. London: Radio AAA,
London: Fourth Estate, 1989.
1998. 9-11.
Radio AAA. " W h o Owns Outer Space?"
Frampton, Kenneth. "Place-form and Cultural
Dreamtime is Upon Us! The Second Annual Report of
Identity." Design After Modernism: Beyond the
the Association of Autonomous Astronauts. Ed.
Object Ed. John Thackara. London: Thames &
Association of Autonomous Astronauts. London:
Hudson, 1988.51-66.
Inner City AAA, 1997. 24-26.
Glancey, Jonathan. "Bring on the Clown."
Rothe, Eduardo. "The Conquest of Space in the
Guardian, 6 April 1998.
Time of Power." Situationist International Anthology.
H o m e , Stewart, ed. Mind Invaders: A Reader in Ed. Ken Knabb. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets,
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