Thomas McDonough // THE DERIVE AND SITUATIONIST PARIS

In: Andreotti, Libero- Costa, Xavier : SITUATIONISTS- Art, Politics, Urbanism

Museo d’Art Contemporain de Barcelona 1996

In 1957, on the eve of the founding of the Situationist International, Guy Debord produced two unusual maps of Paris. Published with the help of his friend, the Danish painter Asger Jorn, Discours sur les passions de l’amour was an independent, folded map, while The Naked City was included in Jorn’s tract Pour La forme of 1958. Their production coincided with one of the high points of situationist intervention into the spheres of visual culture. Debord and Jorn composed the collage novel Fin de Copenhague in the same year, and the more ambitious Memoires in 1958. Debord’s second film, Sur le passage de quelques personnes a travers une assez courte unite de temps, also dates from this period. Like the maps, these works had something of a retrospective character, summarizing past activities and concerns and assessing their future relevance for the Situationist International.

I was born in Gothenburg in 1961. In 1961 also the so called First Situationist International had a meeting in Gothenburg. A meeting which divided the movement and in which the politicizing branch with Guy Debord at the head emerged victorious from the battle. The artistic branch, lead by Danish artist Asger Jorn, had no choice but to create a Second Situationist International. In the two books Fin de Copenhague (1957) and Mémoires (1958) Guy Debord and Asger Jorn had been in close cooperation. I was in Gothenburg 14-16 of June 2001 during the riots and police fire in connection with the visit of George W Bush and the summit meeting of the EU.

Moist dusty air bed-smellgood against lips. Inside the classroom with the lamp in the ceiling and the air bed. In a cupboard in the classroom T-Yellow finds some food which he splits with the others on other air beds in the classroom. T-Yellow is autonomous. He leaves the description of himself to others. He doesn’t care. He leaves the precedence of interpretation open. He says what he wants to say. He dresses like he wants to dress. He has the opinions he wants to have. He is autonomous. This is the very secret of the autonomous. This is the very secret of Antifascist Action. They can be for non-violence or for violence. They can be for masking or for non-masking. They can have series of different opinions. They can be a part of a range of different organisations. It is a mode of action. They are autonomous. What they have in common is action. They are autonomous and they gather for a united action and then become autonomous again or they are autonomous all the time and gather for a for the time being united action during which they continue to be autonomous and become after completed action autonomous in the way they certainly have been all the time. T-Yellow is autonomous. He does what he wants to do. Antifascist Action is against sexism, homophobia, racism, capitalism and fascism. T-Yellow is autonomous. He lets nobody represent him and he neither represents nobody else. Antifascist Action was founded in the beginning of the nineties after the RAF and it was something new and totally different and the triple oppression theory was new and now you couldn’t just derive racism and patriarchy from capitalism but also capitalism and patriarchy from racism and capitalism and racism from patriarchy. Consequently they are detached phenomena. And people are too. Autonomous. They only represent themselves and can only represent themselves. T-Yellow is autonomous.