Guy Debord

The essay concentrates on the Martyrdom of Polycarp, a script largely believed to contain the earliest extant occurrences of a Christian technical martyrdom vocabulary. On the one hand, we will lay bare the distinctively urban character of this death performance by showing how and to what extent all the components of the martyrdom apparatus relate to the city as socio-spatial condition of production and consumption, textualisation and memorialisation of an ‘urban religious event’. On the other, we will look at how the text manages to turn a Roman death spectacle into a Christian propaganda event by hijacking practices and re-routing sequences of a public urban show. For both purposes, the critical conceptual toolkit will be provided by the most quintessentially urban among the 20th-century artistic-cum-political avant-gardes: the Situationists.

The periphery of the Situationist International is in danger of coming to look more interesting than the main event. Jacqueline de Jong—whose condensed but potent retrospective Imaginary Disobedience was on view at the Los Angeles gallery Château Shatto—belonged to the group from around 1960 to 1962, when she was either expelled or resigned (the difference appears to be academic).

Vladimiro Giacché, La fabbrica del falso. Strategie della menzogna nella politica contemporanea, 3a ed., Reggio Emilia, Imprimatur, 2016, rist. 2018.

I diritti di pubblicazione appartengono esclusivamente all’autore.
È consentita la riproduzione del testo o di sue parti solo a fini non commerciali.

Indice:
7    Premessa

11  Parte prima. Guerra alla verità:
15  1. Fenomenologia della menzogna
71  2. Menzogna, ideologia, informazione: iluoghi comuni della «guerra al terrore»
101 3. La Democrazia in ostaggio
131 4. La Sicurezza al primo posto
153 5. Mercato: i mille volti di un prestanome
175 6. Totalitarismo: triste storia di un non-concetto
199 7. Dialettica del Terrorismo

229  Parte seconda. La verità del falso:
233 8. Uomini e merci. Cronache dal mondo alla rovescia
261 9. Potere e regressione
291 10. La fabbrica del falso

315  Parte terza. Strategie di resistenza:
321 11. Spiragli
343 12. Dire la verità
365 13. Smascheramenti
385 14. La verità ricordata
405 15. Parliamo di noi

One of the presuppositions of this paper is that is indeed possible to conceive of Bowies death as an ‘event’ that was staged, mediated and performed by means of the Blackstar-album, and more particularly, by the song Lazarus. To further support that claim, I situate the Bowie case within a scholarly discourse on the representation and framing(s) of death in contemporary Western societies. Following the work of the Danish sociologist Michael Hviid Jacobsen (2016), I argue that we can further interpret and conceptualize the death of David Bowie through the lens of what Jacobsen coined ‘Spectacular Death’, a term that designates a ‘’revival of interest in death, dying and bereavement’’, in which we ‘’see the rise of new rituals and the reappearance and reinvention of old ones in many ceremonial practices [and] media representations’’.  Central to these media representations is a globalized culture of digital media, which makes it increasingly difficult to draw any spatial or geographical boundaries whatsoever.

In this roundtable from the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, we get a variety of religious studies approaches to subject of manifestos and their creators. Join Carole Cusack, Alana Louise Bowden, Ray Radford, Sophie Roe, and Anna Lutkajtis as they unpack the discourses surrounding manifestos and topics ranging from the consumerization of religion and Anders Breivik to the Unabomber manifesto and Artaud's theatre of cruelty. It's a fascinating conversation from a great group of scholars, so have a listen! Not convinced? Try a sneak peak!

ÖSSZEFOGLALÓ A tanulmány kiindulópontja szerint a radikális társadalomkritika napjainkban tapasztal-ható elbizonytalanodásának okai között központi helyet foglal el a " valóság válságának " problematikája. A radikális társadalomkritika egyik első számú politikaelméleti pillére az ideológia látszat/valóság-modellje volt. A látszat eszerint ideológiakritikai fogalom: erede-tileg azokat a tapasztalatokat, gondolatokat, képeket és érzületeket jelenti, amelyekre az adott kor önmagával kapcsolatos illúziói épülnek. Ez a szemléletmód nagy népszerűségre tett szert a szélesebb társadalomtudományi értelmiség és a politikával foglalkozó elméle-tek körében is. Vonzerejét az adta, hogy radikális reményei a valóság intellektuális feltér-képezéséhez, annak leleplező erejéhez kapcsolódtak, vagyis ahhoz a feltételezéshez, hogy a nagybetűs Valóság tényeinek és folyamatainak előbb-utóbb meg kell törniük a látszat nevében épülő közös társadalmi illúzió, a " látszat valóságának " uralmát. Az elmúlt évti-zedekben az ideológia látszat/valóság-modelljének vonzereje látványosan csökkent a tár-sadalomtudományokban, aminek véleményem szerint három oka van. Először: a posztmo-dern ismeretelméleti szkepszise a valóság megismerhetőségével kapcsolatban. Másodszor: a társadalomelmélet interpretatív fordulata, amely az ideológiaelmélet középpontjába a valóság elfedése és konstrukciója helyett a realitástól " független " diszkurzív, imaginárius és jelentésformációk (meaning formations) elemzését állította. A tanulmányban az ideo-lógiakritikai látszat/valóság-modell elbizonytalanodásának harmadik fő komponensét kí-vánom a középpontba állítani. Eszerint napjainkra a valóság leleplező erejébe vetett álta-lános hit veszett el, vagyis megerősödött az a meggyőződés, hogy a későkapitalizmusban/ posztmodern társadalmakban a valósággal " valami történt ". Írásomban Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard és Douglas Kellner teoretikus innovációit kívánom bemutatni a valóság prob-lémássá válásának kérdésköre kapcsán. Arra a kérdésre keresem a választ, hogy elgondo-lásaik szerint napjainkban hogyan fogalmazható újra a valóság és a látszat viszonya. Első-sorban elemzéseik politikaelméleti vonatkozásaira koncentrálok: a tanulmány fő tézise szerint ugyanis Debord, Baudrillad és Kellner elsődleges célja, hogy alkalmassá tegyék az ideológia látszat/valóság-modelljét a politika folyamatainak és működésének megértésére saját korukban, illetve lehetővé tegyék a radikális politizálás újraalapozását ennek alapján. Az elmúlt közel két évszázad radikális társadalomkritikái intellektuális és im-pulzív erejüket sok esetben kétségtelenül a leleplezés aktusából, a valóságnak a látszattal szembeni bemutatásából merítették. Ez elsősorban egyfajta realis-ta tudományos irányultságot jelentett: az egyre inkább teret nyerő, a felszíni

Özet Postmodern dönemde sanat yapıtının müze ve sanat galerilerinden dışarıya çıkmaktadır ve gündelik yaşantıya nüfus etmektedir. Muhalif toplumsal hareketlerin ve Avangart sanat akımlarının etkisiyle birlikte sokak sanatı ortaya çıkmaktadır. Bu yeni sanat biçimi yenilikçi teknikleri, radikal eserleri, eleştirel üslubu ve farklı dallarıyla günümüzde dikkat çekmektedir. Sokak sanatı içerisinde kültür karıştırması da bulunmaktadır. Kültür karıştırması, tüketim toplumu ve onun yaratmış olduğu kültüre karşıt sosyal bir hareket olarak, medya ve onun yaratmış olduğu reklam kurumları gibi ana akım kültürel oluşumları yıkmayı ve bozmayı amaçlayan, şiddet içermeyen, yenilikçi ve alternatif bir sanatsal ifade biçimidir. Kültür karıştırması eylemleriyle tanınan sanatçılar, kamusal alanlarda reklam amacıyla bulunan görselleri çalıp değiştirerek, bağlamından kopartmaktadır ve farklı anlamların ortaya çıkmasını sağlayarak muhalif bir dil geliştirmektedir. Kültür karıştırmasının hedefinde sokakta bulunan reklam görselleri vardır ve böylelikle bu görsellerin temsil ettikleri şirketlerin, kapitalist kültürün ve tüketim toplumunun eleştirisini yapmaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Kültür karıştırması, sokak sanatı, çalıp değiştirmek, reklam, tüketim toplumu.

This is a Persian translation of "Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle" by Douglas Kellner.

During the past decades, the culture industries have multiplied media spectacles in novel spaces and sites, and spectacle itself is becoming one of the organizing principles of the economy, polity, society, and everyday life. The Internet-based economy deploys spectacle as a means of promotion, reproduction, and the circulation and selling of commodities. Media culture itself proliferates ever more technologically sophisticated spectacles to seize audiences and increase their power and profit. The forms of entertainment permeate news and information, and a tablodized infotainment culture is increasingly popular. New multimedia that synthesize forms of radio, film, TV news and entertainment, and the mushrooming domain of cyberspace, become spectacles of technoculture, generating expanding sites of information and entertainment, while intensifying the spectacle-form of media culture.

La teoría crítica rechaza el mundo dado intentando ver más allá. Al reflexionar sobre el arte tenemos también que distinguir entre una teoría acrítica, esto es, afirmativa, y una teoría crítica que rechaza el arte dado para mirar más allá. La teoría crítica del arte no se puede limitar a recibir e interpretar el arte, siendo ésta la forma que la teoría del arte adopta bajo el capitalismo. Debe reconocer que el arte, tal y como se institucionaliza y practica hoy día-bussines as usual, en el actual "mundo del arte"-, es, en el sentido más profundo e inevitable, "arte bajo el capitalismo", esto es, arte bajo el dominio capitalista. La teoría crítica deberá orientarse en cambio hacia una ruptura clara con el arte que el capitalismo ha sometido. La primera tarea de la teoría crítica del arte es comprender cómo el arte dado sirve de apoyo al orden dado. Debe exponer y analizar las actuales funciones del arte bajo el capitalismo. ¿Qué hace toda la esfera de actividad que llamamos arte? Cualquier teoría crítica del arte debe comenzar entendiendo que la actividad del arte en sus formas actuales es contradictoria. El "mundo del arte" es el espacio donde tiene lugar una enorme movilización de creatividad e invención que se canaliza a la producción, recepción y circulación de obras de arte. Las instituciones artísticas manejan el conjunto de esta producción de varias maneras, aunque dicha conducción, por lo general, no es directamente coercitiva. El mercado del arte ejerce, ciertamente, una fuerte presión mediante formas de selección que el artista o la artista no pueden ignorar si desean forjarse una carrera. Pero, en tanto que individuos, el artista o la artista son relativamente libres de elegir qué quieren hacer de acuerdo con su concepción de lo que es el arte. Son libres de hacer lo que les plazca, aun al precio de no vender ni alcanzar la fama. El arte, por tanto, no ha abandonado su pretensión histórica de ser autónomo en el seno de la sociedad capitalista; aún hoy día podemos comprobar por doquier, empíricamente, la manera en que opera esta autonomía relativa. Por otra parte, quien ejerza la teoría crítica está obligado a observar que el arte, visto como un todo, es un factor de estabilización en la vida social. La existencia de un arte que se produce con apariencia de libertad y en gran abundancia acredita el orden dado. El arte sigue siendo una joya en la corona del poder, y cuanto más rico, espléndido y exuberante es, tanto más afirma el status quo. Puede que la realidad material de la sociedad capitalista consista en una guerra de todos contra todos; en el arte, empero, los impulsos utópicos cuya realización se ve bloqueada en la vida cotidiana encuentran una formalización social ordenada. Las instituciones artísticas son capaces de articular una gran variedad de actividades y agentes en una unidad sistémica compleja; el sistema-arte capitalista funciona como un subsistema del sistema-mundo capitalista. No cabe duda de que alguna de estas actividades y productos artísticos son abiertamente críticos y políticamente comprometidos. Pero si se lo considera como un todo, el sistema artístico es afirmativo[1], en el sentido de que convierte la totalidad de las obras y prácticas artísticas-la suma de todo lo que fluye a través de estos circuitos de producción y recepción-en "legitimación simbólica" (por tomar en préstamo la adecuada expresión de Pierre Bourdieu[2]) de la sociedad de clases. Lo consigue alentando los impulsos autónomos del arte mientras simultáneamente neutraliza políticamente lo que esos impulsos producen. Modernismo francfortiano Los teóricos de la Escuela de Francfort fueron los pioneros en la elaboración de una comprensión dialéctica del arte. Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer y Theodor W. Adorno nos mostraron cómo el arte bajo el

In 2016 Instagram integrated personalization algorithms into its system, promising to show the moments they believe we will care about the most. The platform's personalization logic and its commercial nature raise concerns regarding the emergence of filter bubbles and "individual realities", privileging topics that reflect a firm market logic and represent a reality where capitalism dominates. The present study aims to investigate the existence of a filter bubble on Instagram, posing the following questions: Do filter bubbles exist on Instagram? Do Instagram algorithms favor commercial soft topics? The study employs the algorithm auditing method, impersonating a user interested in soft-topics and another one involved in public-oriented topics by creating fake accounts. Both accounts' recommendations were collected and analyzed qualitatively. The analysis shows that Instagram algorithms render certain topics much more salient, generating a filter bubble of soft topics that closely resembles what Debord introduced as the spectacle.

No major professional sports league epitomizes Guy Debord's idea of the spectacle more than the NBA. The league was the first to understand the importance of highlights and global expansion, and participated in creating the first branded superstar in Michael Jordan. Naturally there are some controversies surrounding the rise to its present-day status, like the (supposedly) fixed 1985 draft or Michael Jordan's (supposedly) enforced first retirement. One of the most controversial events in recent league history took place during Game Six of the 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings. A lot of controversial calls by the referees allowed the Lakers to win the game and eventually the series. As the Lakers were about to get eliminated, the league officials allegedly encouraged referees to force a Game Seven. The problem with the allegations was that they were made public by former referee Tim Donaghy, who himself used to bet on games. David Stern, the league's former commissioner was referring to Donaghy's gambling addiction as the reason for the falsity of his statements. My paper uses the game in question as a case study in order to present the spectacular aspects of the
NBA.

Resumo: O presente trabalho consiste numa reflexão sobre a presença da cosmovisão barroca na teoria crítica de Guy Debord sobre a sociedade moderna como espetáculo. Para o teórico francês-que propôs o conceito de espetáculo para definir o estágio da civilização no qual a economia passou a determinar todos os aspectos da vida-, a temporalidade, a finitude de todas as coisas e a banalidade da vida se mostraram fatores decisivos para sua compreensão da sociedade capitalista moderna. Procuramos destacar que a crítica de Debord ao capitalismo é orientada por uma perspectiva da realidade profundamente influenciada pelo barroco.

Abstract: The present work consists of a reflection on the presence of the baroque worldview in Guy Debord's critical theory about modern society as a spectacle. For the French theorist-who proposed the concept of spectacle to define the stage of civilization in which the economy began to determine all aspects of life-, the temporality, the finitude of all things and the banality of life proved to be decisive factors for its understanding of modern capitalist society. We try to highlight that Debord's critique of capitalism is guided by a perspective of reality deeply influenced by the Baroque.

L’artiste donne-t-il plus à la communauté lorsqu’il élabore des stratégies d’attaque d’un ennemi identifié (le détournement du spectacle, selon Debord) ? Lorsqu’il met directement en circulation des images « émancipées » (le partage du sensible, selon Rancière) ? Ou lorsqu’il réfléchit sa propre projection fantasmatique de l’autre dans le regard – et la voix  – qu’il reçoit (la traduction de la parole des subalternes, selon Spivak) ? Ses trois esthétiques et leur circuit du don respectif peuvent bien sûr se compléter l’une l’autre. Ainsi, chercher à conjoindre une stratégie de reconfiguration sensible et politique à long terme et à portée globale à de nouveaux partages du sensible hic et nunc semble un projet intéressant à soutenir. Ou encore, développer des scènes d’échange où le « recevoir » de l’autre – sa réception – est toujours attendu comme un contre-don qui permettra au donateur de se « revoir », de réfléchir son propre regard et d’amender ses jugements, semble un défit important à relever. D’autant que ce dispositif du « re-se-voir » ne vient pas remplacer les deux autres, mais, à certains égards, intègre le don par détournement, par négation de la négation, et le don par mise à disposition d’un tissu sensible égalitaire.

Literature and art have always depended on imitation, and in the past few decades quotation and appropriation have become dominant aesthetic practices. But critical methods have not kept pace with this development. Patrick Greaney reopens the debate about quotation and appropriation, shifting away from naïve claims about the death of the author. In interpretations of art and literature from the 1960s to the present, Quotational Practices shows how artists and writers use quotation not to undermine authorship and originality, but to answer questions at the heart of twentieth-century philosophies of history.

Greaney argues that quotation is a technique employed by art and philosophy to build ties to the past and to possible futures. By exploring quotation’s links to gender, identity, and history, he offers new approaches to works by some of the most influential modern and contemporary artists, writers, and philosophers, including Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Michel Foucault, Marcel Broodthaers, Glenn Ligon, Sharon Hayes, and Vanessa Place.

Ultimately, Quotational Practices reveals innovative perspectives on canonical philosophical texts as well as art and literature in a wide range of genres and mediums—from concrete poetry and the artist’s book to performance, painting, and video art.

The British artist Ralph Rumney never adhered to a fixed sense of self. Of the little documentation that exists of his life and work, most is comprised of his own disparately collected thoughts, letters, notes, interviews, images and recollections. Born in Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1934, he experienced an unsettled and repressive childhood in Wakefield, prompting him to leave home ‘by stages’. His adolescent years were spent lodging with the ‘notorious communist’ Edward Thompson, hitching to London in 1951 for the Festival of Britain, and then travelling around Cornwall meeting ‘all those Cornish artists like Pat Heron and Terry Frost and Brian Winter — and Barbara Hepworth’, until, in order to avoid arrest as a conscientious objector, he moved where the currents bore him, between London, Paris, Milan and eventually settling for a time in Venice. The writer, painter and only member of the British branch of the Situationniste International, was often the one behind the Rolleiflex camera.

In his latest book Andy Merrifield does what he is the master at: briefly observing the urban world and reflecting on it through the lenses of urban history and theory. He draws primarily on the urban theory of the usual suspects: Lefebvre, Harvey, Debord, Castells, Berman and Benjamin, along with some Althusser, Eric Hazan and Ray Pahl. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Paris is the book’s major point of geographical
reference (albeit augmented with a few exceptional examples drawn from the UK and the US).

J.G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition can easily be classified as his most experimental novel, one that, more than any other of his works, succeeds in presenting, or perhaps representing, the fragmented condition of a media-saturated Western culture. On the surface, it does appear to be a postmodern and seemingly chaotic bricolage of pop iconography, landscapes, and medical references arranged non-linearly and without plot, and yet there is a unifying principle at work, anchoring the texts in a specific ideological context of 1960s Western culture. The main argument of this paper expands on Debord’s study of spectacle and regards The Atrocity Exhibition as a work that not only attempts to frustrate reading expectations, but also addresses the cultural shift towards spectacular society.

With reference to Walter Benjamin’s work on nineteenth-century Paris, and Debord’s work on the spectacle, this article argues that the depiction of ruined cities in video games – as virtual ruins of the present – simultaneously reproduces the empty novelty of the commodity (the phantasmagoria of progress-oriented civilization), and offers a vision of failed progress through counter-spectacle. One means of understanding Benjamin’s dreamworld of modernity is through ruins and rubble – not only as material remnants, but in other visual or artistic forms that might reveal the illusion of progress as a fallacy, particularly in contrast to an urban-focused commodity capitalism. With an emphasis on Fallout 3, Hellgate: London and The Last of Us, and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series this article argues that, if cities can be read as dreamworlds, and films, art and ruination as the means for awakening, then urban destruction in the virtual sphere can provide a counter to the collective dream of eternal progress.

O presente artigo faz uma revisão bibliográfica para compreender quais os motivos que levam
o sujeito contemporâneo a expor-se, cotidianamente, em selfies – autorretratos postados nas
redes sociais digitais. A hipótese sustentada é de que as selfies são um caminho pelo qual o
sujeito contemporâneo passa para consolidar seu próprio Eu. O trabalho baseia-se nas teorias
dos regimes de visibilidade e discussões acerca dos regimes disciplinares, da sociedade do
espetáculo e da visibilidade midiática. Nos apontamentos finais, em oposição à compreensão
das selfies como patologia psicológica, apreendemos o fenômeno como marca de nosso
tempo – como possibilidade de exibir um Eu construído em uma sociedade sem regras
definidas e em que a mediação é feita por imagens, ou seja, onde apenas o que se mostra
existe. Não se trata, portanto de um sujeito em busca de atenção, mas de um sujeito que
acredita ter prosperado no seu processo de subjetivação.

Mapping, in the hands of Guy Debord and his Situationist colleagues, could become a paranoiac-critical approach to contesting the urban realities of postwar Paris. A paranoiac vision of the city was evident in the “psychogeographic” maps Debord made toward the end of the 1950s. Originating in the interwar practices of Surrealism, this psychogeography of the modern city was, however, not only an instrument of critique, but also a utopian suggestion of the “great game” that for the Situationists would be the collectively organized space of the revolutionary city. Although Debord later pessimistically dismissed the city as the very space where history might be made, these maps remain suggestive.

Guy Debord byl francouzským spisovatelem a marxistickým teoretikem, filmařem s  experimentálním přístupem a především aktivistou vymezujícím se proti konzumní společnosti. Následující text se snaží přiblížit jeho ideje, okolnosti, za kterých žil a tvořil a kolektivy, ve kterých působil. Dále se práce věnuje aspektům současné sociální reality rezonující s Debordovou interpretací vývoje společnosti, ale také kritikou, kterou Debordovi oponují jiní intelektuálové.
Guy Debord vydal svoje stěžejní dílo s  názvem Společnost spektáklu v druhé polovině 60. let ve Franci. Kritizoval boom masové zábavy a komercionalizace kultury. Pozoroval, jak začalo sílit podřizování se kulturní estetiky a způsobu prezentace událostí ve společnosti v médiích tržním mechanismům. Kultura se stala zbožím a hybnou silou v oblasti ekonomiky a vykořisťování lidí  přešlo z
materiální roviny do roviny psychologické. Kapitalistickou degradaci lidské existence maskuje spektákl - vykonstruovaná falešná realita, kterou většina lidí slepě přijímá za  danou.
Debord se snažil narušit stabilitu spektakulární společnosti nejen na papíře, ale i v rámci  aktivit lettristického a situacionistického hnutí, kde se bojovalo s urbanizovaným konzumním prostorem hravými přístupy a dehonestovaly se projevy spektáklu obracením jejich poselství naruby.
Kritický přístup Guye Deborda dodnes rezonuje ve společnosti, stejně jako lettristé a situacionisté mají svoje následovníky mezi současnými angažovanými lidmi, kteří  kreativně zabydlují městský prostor a sabotují spektakulární slogany na všudypřítomných reklamních plochách.  Proto je pro čtenáře pokládají si otázky o směřování kultury v současné společnosti nebo pro aktivisty, kteří hledají inspiraci, je Debordovo dílo a život stále aktuální.

In the Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord explores the idea that in a consumer society, social life is not about living but about having and appearing. I will discuss how photography in advertising works to encourage us to consume, and the importance of appearance.

This book explores Andy Warhol’s creative engagement with social class. During the 1960s, as neoliberalism perpetuated the idea that fixed classes were a mirage and status an individual achievement, Warhol’s work appropriated images, techniques, and technologies that have long been described as generically “American” or “middle class.” Drawing on archival and theoretical research into Warhol’s contemporary cultural milieu, Grudin demonstrates that these features of Warhol’s work were in fact closely associated with the American working class. The emergent technologies which Warhol conspicuously employed to make his work—home projectors, tape recorders, film and still cameras—were advertised directly to the working class as new opportunities for cultural participation. What’s more, some of Warhol’s most iconic subjects—Campbell’s soup, Brillo pads, Coca-Cola—were similarly targeted, since working-class Americans, under threat from a variety of directions, were thought to desire the security and confidence offered by national brands.

Having propelled himself from an impoverished childhood in Pittsburgh to the heights of Madison Avenue, Warhol knew both sides of this equation: the intense appeal that popular culture held for working-class audiences and the ways in which the advertising industry hoped to harness this appeal in the face of growing middle-class skepticism regarding manipulative marketing. Warhol was fascinated by these promises of egalitarian individualism and mobility, which could be profound and deceptive, generative and paralyzing, charged with strange forms of desire. By tracing its intersections with various forms of popular culture, including film, music, and television, Grudin shows us how Warhol’s work disseminated these promises, while also providing us with a record of their intricate tensions and transformations.

Delivered in the Feminism and Embodiment Session (chaired by Susanneh Beiber) on 1 November 2014 at the 5th Annual Feminist Art History Conference at the American University, Washington, DC (31 Oct - 2 Nov 2014). This paper considers a still under-examined work by Martha Rosler, one which Rosler produced for a live televised performance for public-access Paper Tiger Television’s ‘…Reads…’ series in December 1982, recorded as it was broadcast. The product was subsequently distributed in video format as a performance work: Martha Rosler Reads Vogue. The performance deconstructs the aspirational identifications and false class-consciousness engendered by Vogue magazine, dissecting it as an ideological vehicle tied to particular histories, producers, consumers and industries. Utilising a number of poetical / incantatory tropes, along with her usual deadpan delivery, Rosler misappropriates images from the then current and back issues of Vogue magazine. The real critical jolt, however, is...

The following article is dedicated to the analysis of the revolutionary posture exemplified by Guy Debord in « Panégyrique », the first volume of his autobiography. A radical artist and theorist of the second half of the twentieth century, Debord uses the memoir genre to depict the ideal revolutionary claiming that, in his time, only he truly opposed without any compromise the society he rejected. In doing so, he corroborates the saying of Saint-Just who, during the French Revolution, wrote that ‘’ those who make halfway revolutions only dig their own graves ‘’. We argue that, by attempting to show the only true way to rebel against the world order, « Panégyrique » may be seen as a call made by Debord upon future generations to follow his footsteps.

After the Great Refusal offers a Western Marxist reading of contemporary art focusing on the continued presence (or absence) of the avant-garde’s transgressive impulse.

Taking art’s ability to contribute to a potential radical social transformation as its point of departure, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen' analyses the relationship between the current neoliberal hegemony and contemporary art, including relational aesthetics and interventionist art, new institutionalism and post-modern architecture.


In a time of headlong social and biophysical 'dissolution into capital', social reproduction crashes and dark political phenomena spring up on all sides. Friendly phantoms of reform surface here and there with their jolts of short-lived radical affect, while fascist libidinal economies go to work on everything from urban cultural life to state power. Meanwhile art institutions mind the crisis by widening the sphere of representation without traction that has long been the modus operandi of their stability. Rather than deploy cultural theory's well-worn genres of determinist allegory or fractal anecdote, Mikkel Bolt offers precision analysis grounded in the constitutive contradictions of the fact that art is a form of autonomy derivative of the value form, yet a space which can still figure social experience that goes through and past it into a non-capitalist time. Surveying art, architecture and revolutionary theory from the past half-century, After the Great Refusal makes a strikingly historical and sharply material argument in favour of negation and abolition as the only imperatives that still make any sense. ~ Marina Vishmidt, author of Reproducing Autonomy: Work, Money, Crisis and Contemporary Art

As much as I hate art, I really loved reading the book. That may have been the point. Could also be my blurb. ~ Joshua Clover, author of Riot. Strike. Riot

Informed by Western Marxism and the avant-garde and combining in-depth analysis of specific cases with historical insight and theoretical rigour, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen thinks through contemporary art’s manifold and deepening contradictions. Art’s promesse de bonheur has been coopted and corrupted to an extent that likely would have horrified even Adorno and Marcuse - though it would not have surprised Debord, while the revolutionary Long March Through the Institutions has become a series of desperate compromises. Refusing to be satisfied with mourning a radical past and condemning a dismal present, Bolt sounds out how contemporary practice and theory can offer openings and create forms with a future - forms of futurity. ~ Sven Lütticken, author of Cultural Revolution: Aesthetic Practice after Autonomy

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen’s After the Great Refusal is a trenchant critique of neoliberal domination of contemporary art. Incisively analyzing relational aesthetics, interventionist art, new institutionalism and postmodern architecture, Rasmussen renews Marxist critical theory and holds open the promise of radical culture “after the self-murder” of the artistic avant-gardes. ~ Gene Ray, author of Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory

RÉSUMÉ (français)
Le XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles voient se constituer la figure urbaine qu’est le promeneur parisien. Rendu possible par la construction de promenades publiques, d’une littérature de voyage qui incite à la promenade et de tout un contexte social qui favorise la déambulation à même à la ville, ce promeneur donne à la Capitale française une part de son identité et, en retour, se définit par elle. Ce que nous proposons d’analyser dans la présente contribution est la fortune de cette figure
urbaine. À travers des textes littéraires, Louis-Sébastien Mercier et Rétif de la Bretonne pour le XVIIIe siècle, Baudelaire pour le XIXe siècle et Pierre Sansot ou Guy Debord pour le XXe siècle, pour ne citer que les plus connus, nous entendons proposer une lecture croisée de l’oeuvre de ces écrivains afin de comprendre comment ils transmettent leur manière de flâner dans la ville. Si on assiste à une individualisation de figure du promeneur au XVIIIe siècle, le flâneur du XIXe siècle penche plutôt vers l’intériorité, il s’éloigne de la foule pour mieux la contempler. Enfin, le personnage du flâneur au XXe et XXIe siècle se conjuge au pluriel puisque cette identité devient multiple, il y a des flâneurs de tout types, de l’homme des foules au penseur solitaire en passant par le militant politique de la marche. Il convient ici de tracer un lien entre ces définitions pour comprendre les transformations qui (re)fondent cette figure du flâneur parisien.

Mots-clefs
Paris, Histoire littéraire, Promeneur, Flâneur

RÉSUMÉ (Anglais)
From the 17th to the 18th century, Paris saw the constitution of the urban stroller. It’s was made possible with new strolling conditions. Unlike the public gardens - closed, gated, and inaccessible - the Boulevards and the Champs Élysées open up, becoming integral parts of the city, open spaces in the urban landscape. By allowing pedestrians to wander in safety, these spaces begin to encourage liberal promenade, unconstrained physically and socially. The following paper aims to shed light on the functions, motivations, and consequences of this new urban promenade in the French capital under the Ancien Régime, but also how this urban figure was transformed throughout the 19th to the 21th century. The works of Louis-Sébastien Mercier and Nicolas-Edmé Rétif de la Bretonne for the 18th century, Charles Baudelaire for the 19th century and Pierre Sansot and Guy Debord for the 20th century are analysed to understand how the urban figure of the stroller became plural. Aside from the individual stroller, there are numerous models of individual stroller troughout the modern period: man of the crowd or the solitary walker. The act of promenading allows the stroller to take in the city all the while granting a sense ofautonomy. There is an individualization of both the practice of promenading and of the urban space. This allows us to understand the genesis of the urban behavior of
the stroller.

Key words: Paris, Walker, Urban sociability, Individual, Publics Gardens

The Situationist Times was a magazine edited and published by the Dutch artist Jacqueline de Jong during the years 1962–67. In its multilingual, transdisciplinary, and cross-cultural exuberance, it became one of the most exciting and playful magazines of the 1960s. Throughout its six remarkably diverse issues, The Situationist Times challenges the notion of what it means to be a situationist, as well as traditional understandings of culture in the broader sense and of how culture is created, formatted, and shared. These Are Situationist Times! provides an in-depth history of the magazine while probing its contemporary relevance. The book also presents the material De Jong assembled in the early 1970s in collaboration with Hans Brinkman for a never realized seventh issue of The Situationist Times, devoted to the game of pinball.
Lavishly illustrated and brimming with previously unseen archival material, These Are Situationist Times! presents new and compelling perspectives on situationism, experimental publishing, and artist-run magazines.