RELATED TERMS: Dérive; Détournement; Spectacle – Society of the Spectacle;
Walking;
Of particular interest to design practices, in the context of the relations among art practices, aesthetic practices and everyday action, is the Situationist International and its forerunner, the Lettriste International.
Bonnet (1992: 76) considers that the most determined challenge to the categories of art and everyday space, and their potential interrelationships, has come from the Situationist International, founded in 1957, and its principal forerunner, the Lettriste International, founded 1952.
The Lettriste International was formed as a splinter group of the Lettristes, a surrealist movement formed in Paris in the late 1940s. Its interest lay in developing forms of poetry, painting, and music based on the alphabetical letter.
The members of the Lettriste International were dissatisfied with the conservatism and aesthetism of the Lettristes. Guy Debord was the intellectual leader of both the Lettriste International and the Situationist International. The other main theorist in the Situationist International was Raoul Vaneigem. The two key texts by these radical thinkers, both originally published in French in 1967 are:
Debord, G. (1983). Society of the spectacle. New York, NY: Zone Books.
Vaneigem, R. (2001). The revolution of everyday life. London, UK: Rebel Press.
The film version of The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord, 1973, is viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjF6I6SYjgA
Design and Situationism
From the perspectives of urban design and the design of narrative environments, Situationism, or the Situationist International, may be said to encode two premises, as a specific theory of the urban environment as a series of situations.
First, it encourages wandering in the urban environment, responding in unplanned and unanticipated ways to the opportunities (‘affordances’) that the specific environment offers (the derive). It assumes that one is led by environmental objects and structures, appearing as phenomena in experience that draw attention to themselves, rather than being led by a plan (pre-defined route) or an intention (predefined goal or purpose). It therefore recommends an experiential openness to environmental clues as to where one should proceed and an openness as acceptance to where one ends up (both as destination and as telos or goal). The aim is to experience the phenomena of the urban experience more fully, rather than overriding and ignoring them by adhering to a plan or an intention.
Second, while acknowledging the value of being open to the urban environment, it argues that the urban environment is largely occupied by ‘spectacles’ that deliberately vie for one’s attention. Such ‘spectacles’ are deigned to draw our attention to opportunities for buying and being entertained. Being open to the environment, then, is a troubled experience. If one simply accepted the affordances being offered by the urban environment, one would be trapped in a consumerist and spectator mode of experience. Wandering is curtailed and constrained: it becomes an acceptance of someone else’s plan and intention. The aim here is to critically assess the phenomena of the urban experience, rather than accepting the prevailing spectacles that seek to dominate one’s perception and experience (the detournement).
The two aims are not necessarily compatible.
The Situationist approach may be seen as a response, firstly, to the urban experience in the early 20th century in France, informed by a certain Surrealist understanding of experience – the openness aspect; and, secondly, to the commercialisation and Americanisation of the urban environment in the post-World War Two period after 1945 – the critical aspect. The first Surrealist period is informed by insights borrowed psychoanalysis. The second critical period is informed by insights borrowed from Marxism. As responses to the urban environment, they are specific in many ways to the European experience from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Sources
Bonnett, A. (1989). Situationism, geography, and poststructuralism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 7 (2), 131–146.
Bonnett, A. (1992). Art, ideology, and everyday space: subversive tendencies from Dada to postmodernism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 10 (1), pp.69–86.
Links
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