Cosmonauts of the Future: Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere

308 Pages·2015·1.944 MB·English

by  Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen (ed.), Jakob Jakobsen (ed.)

COSMONAUTS
OF THE FUTURE
Texts from The Situationist Movement
in Scandinavia and Elsewhere
Edited by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen

1
COSMONAUTS
OF THE FUTURE
2 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere
COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE
TEXTS FROM THE SITUATIONIST MOVEMENT IN SCANDINAVIA AND ELSEWHERE
Edited by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen
Published 2015 by Nebula in association with Autonomedia
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ISBN 978-87-993651-8-0 ISBN 978-1-57027-304-9
Editors: Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen | Translators: Peter Shield, James Manley,
Anja Büchele, Matthew Hyland, Fabian Tompsett, Jakob Jakobsen | Copyeditor: Marina
Vishmidt | Proofreading: Danny Hayward | Design: Åse Eg |Printed by: Naryana Press in
1,200 copies
Thanks to: Jacqueline de Jong, Lis Zwick, Ulla Borchenius, Fabian Tompsett, Howard Slater,
Peter Shield, James Manley, Anja Büchele, Matthew Hyland, Danny Hayward, Marina
Vishmidt, Stevphen Shukaitis, Jim Fleming, Mathias Kokholm, Lukas Haberkorn, Keith
Towndrow, Åse Eg and Infopool (www.scansitu.antipool.org.uk)
All texts by Jorn are © Donation Jorn, Silkeborg
Asger Jorn: “Luck and Change”, “The Natural Order” and “Value and Economy”. Reprinted
by permission of the publishers from The Natural Order and Other Texts translated by
Peter Shield (Farnham: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 9-46, 121-146, 235-245, 248-263. Copyright
© 2002
Asger Jorn: “On the Triolectical Method in its Applications in General Situlogy”. Translated by
Peter Shield. Copyright © 2015
Cover images: Press Release by J.V. Martin, 1962; Jørgen Nash: Det naturlige smil, 1964;
Jacqueline de Jong: “Critique of the Political Practice of Détournement”, 1962
Distributed in Denmark by Antipyrine | Distributed in the UK by Minor Compositions |
Distributed in Europe by Motto | Distributed in the US and Canada by Autonomedia
This book may be freely pirated and quoted except for the texts covered by copyrights.
However, please inform the authors and publishers.
The publication is supported by Ny Carlsbergfondet
A huge effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, but if any have been inadver-
tently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the
very first opportunity.
3
COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE
TEXTS FROM THE SITUATIONIST
MOVEMENT IN SCANDINAVIA
AND ELSEWHERE
Edited by
Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen
& Jakob Jakobsen
4 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere
CONTENTS
7 INTRODUCTION Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen
19 LUCK AND CHANGE DAGGER AND GUITAR Asger Jorn
44 SPUR MANIFESTO Gruppe SPUR
47 SITUATIONIST MANIFESTO
51 TRACT Gruppe SPUR
52 OUR REPLY Gruppe SPUR
57 CANON OF THE REVOLUTION Dieter Kunzelmann
59 HOMAGE TO C.G. JUNG Dieter Kunzelmann
62 DRAKABYGGET Dieter Kunzelmann
65 MUTANT Guy Debord & Asger Jorn
69 NICHT HINAUSLEHNEN!
71 NICHT HINAUSLEHNEN!
73 PROCLAMATION FROM THE FIRST SITUATIONIST
INTERNATIONAL
77 CRITIQUE OF THE POLITICAL PRACTICE OF
DÉTOURNEMENT Jacqueline de Jong
85 PRESS RELEASE FROM THE SITUATIONIST
INTERNATIONAL, SCANDINAVIAN SECTION
89 THE STRUGGLE OF THE SITUCRATIC SOCIETY:
A SITUATIONIST MANIFESTO
97 ANTIPOLITICAL ACTIVITY J.V. Martin
5
102 ON THE SPUR TRIAL Jacqueline de Jong
106 THE FREEDOM OF ART Jørgen Nash
115 SEVEN REBELS Jørgen Nash, Jens Jørgen Thorsen,
Gordon Fazakerley, Jacqueline de Jong, Ansgar Elde,
Hardy Strid & Hans Peter Zimmer
116 FUCK OFF! Gordon Fazakerley
118 BLAB BLAB BLAB Gordon Fazakerley
121 DRAWINGS, POEMS Gordon Fazakerley
122 ATOMIC BOMBS FOR THE CULTURE INDUSTRY
Gruppe SPUR
125 CO-RITUS MANIFESTO Jens Jørgen Thorsen, Jørgen Nash
& Hardy Strid
129 SLOGANS Jørgen Nash, Jens Jørgen Thorsen & Dieter Kunzelmann
130 LUXURY AND MARTYRDOM Jacqueline de Jong
133 THE NATURAL ORDER Asger Jorn
177 CRITIQUE OF ECONOMIC POLICY Asger Jorn
206 CO-RITUS INTERVIEW: ART IS POP – CO-RITUS IS ART
– DIVIDED WE STAND Jørgen Nash & Jens Jørgen Thorsen
211 LABYRINTH PROJECT Gordon Fazakerley
215 THE SITUATIONISTS AND THE NEW ACTION FORMS
IN POLITICS AND ART Guy Debord
222 HOMO LUDENS Else Steen Hansen
226 RE: “DESTRUCTION OF RSG-6”
228 WHO ARE THE SITUATIONISTS? Jørgen Nash
232 THE NATURAL SMILE Jørgen Nash
6 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere
236 POP J.V. Martin
238 ON THE TRIOLECTICAL METHOD IN ITS APPLICATIONS
IN GENERAL SITULOGY Asger Jorn
250 THE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS NOT FOR SALE
253 PAMPHLET NO. 9 FROM THE SECOND SITUATIONIST
INTERNATIONAL Jørgen Nash & Hardy Strid
256 THE COMMUNICATIVE PHASE IN ART: AN ESSAY ON
THE DEATH OF ANTI-ART Jens Jørgen Thorsen
263 NEO-IRREALISM: The decline and fall of the Fourth Reich
J.V. Martin, Raoul Vaneigem, Michèle Bernstein, Guy Debord,
Mustapha Khayati, Donald Nicholson-Smith & René Vienet
273 DECLARATION FOR OUR ITALIAN ARTISTS AND
COMRADES: FOLLOW COURBET Jens Jørgen Thorsen,
Cæsar & Jørgen Nash
277 GENERAL REMARKS Bengt Ericson & J.V. Martin
286 ON KIRUNA
289 EUROPE’S FIRST AVANT-GARDE Patrick O’Brien &
Ambrosius Fjord
294 DRAFT MANIFESTO OF ANTINATIONAL SITUATIONIST
Jens Jørgen Thorsen
300 IS THIS METAVILLE? A PROJECT FOR CREATIVE PLAY
Jens Jørgen Thorsen in collaboration with Hoff & Ussing
304 ALL CULTURE IS COLLECTIVE: NOTES ON COLLECTIVE
CREATIVITY J.V. Martin
7
INTRODUCTION:
TO BE BURIED ALIVE
Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen & Jakob Jakobsen
“Down with art which is complacent and egocentric, which con-
templates its own navel! Up with generating everybody’s art for all!
Long live the popular art of toilet graffiti, where one can be jerked
off at 10pm if you call the right telephone number.”
J.V. Martin
“We do not always distinguish between theory and practice.
We intend to produce our theories after the event.”
Jørgen Nash, Jens Jørgen Thorsen, Gordon Fazakerley, Hardy Strid,
Staffan Larsson, Ansgar Elde, Jacqueline de Jong & Patrick O’Brien
The many realizations of art
In many ways it is difficult today to really comprehend the Situationist
idea of art as a radical, even revolutionary, gesture. Nowadays, it is easier
to see art as a haven for newly accumulated capital and a resource for
regional or national development. The artist has taken on the role of a
celebrity and a much-loved model for entrepreneurs. Today art equals
‘creativity’ and luxury goods. In business schools professors talk about art
as the ultimate result of capitalist production, about companies being ‘art
firms’ that should look upon their products as aesthetic artefacts open to
interpretation and aesthetic judgement. The sad fact is that art during the
last two decades has become increasingly tied to post-Fordist speculation
with bling, boom and bust transforming art into an important economic
resource.
8 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere
For the Situationists, art was something completely different. For them art
was the means to an aesthetic emancipation from capitalist society, an end
to the parcelling out of human existence into compartmentalized sectors
where most people worked and consumed but primarily passively contem-
plated a selected group of people-commodities – politicians or movie stars
or artists but never all at once. The Situationists wanted to realize art. Not
in the sense we have been witnessing for the last twenty-five years where
the relative autonomy of art has come under intense pressure, as art has
fused with the economy, but in the opposite sense of an abolition of capi-
talism and its separate identities, including that of the artist. Art was to
be realized beyond the confines of the art institution where art was safely
locked away from everyday life.
This idea of the ‘realization of art’ was shared by the many differ-
ent Situationist fractions that materialized during the dramatic history of
the Situationist movement as it unfolded from 1957 onwards to the early
1970s. Asger Jorn, Constant, Jørgen Nash, Jacqueline de Jong, but also
Guy Debord, subscribed to the idea of art as a transgression, art as an
attack on the spectacular commodity society. The contemplative viewing
of art was to be replaced by the construction of situations, meaning the
construction of a new life beyond the constraints of capitalism.
Beyond art through art
Of course the Situationists strongly disagreed when it came to the exact
nature of the realization of art. The many exclusions and the split in the
International at the beginning of the 1960s testifies to that disagree-
ment. Beyond the many different ideas of artistic practice, there slowly
emerged an opposition between one group of members, ‘the theoreticians
of an art-of-war’ situated around Debord, that was getting more and more
dissatisfied with modern art, and another group, ‘the artistic front that
wanted to realize art here and now’. Initially this was connected to Jorn,
but as he silently left, the group came to be led his younger brother Nash.
This faction saw the artistic method of experimentation as a means to
the expansion of human existence and as a revolutionary process without
specific political ends.