The legacy of the Situationist International: the production of situations of creative resistance.

Introduction

This article explores the contribution made by the theory of the Situationist International. The initial section provides a history of the organisation, followed by a discussion of its main concepts in the second section. The third section examines the S.I.'s concept of the 'situation', arguing that this undergoes a reorientation towards the construction of situations as political and contested acts, rather than as architectural situations, and the fourth section examines the nature and content of these situations. The concluding discussion suggests some of the directions that the Situationists' theory offers by examining their contribution to acts of resistance, creativity and participation, and ways in which creative cultural production is prefigured by the S.I.'s work. Its continuing legacy is considered through an exploration of its contemporary resonance, and the cultural politics of new social movements and DIY aspects of cultural production are, finally, highlighted as sharing a similar trajectory to the S.I.'s.

History

The S.I. was established in 1957, bringing together four European avant-garde groups. These founder members would collaborate for over a decade until the organisation's dissolution in 1972.

The organisation published twelve issues of its journal, Internationale Situationniste, which acted as the central venue for Situationist ideas. 1969 saw the publication of the journal's last issue. The S.I. fused pre-existing groups together, combining elements of thought and significant members into a loose political coalition that would have a fluid and fluctuating membership.

The most significant pre-Situationist International group was the Dada-inspired Lettrist International. This group was mostly composed of artists and poets, and included the prominent members Guy Debord, Gil Wolman, Michele Bernstein and Jean-Isidore Isou. Their journal Potlatch developed a number of positions that were to form the basis for the establishment of the S.I.

During the years 1952-1957, the most fundamental concepts of the S.I. had been conceived and developed, often under the influence of the Lettrists. This group was principally concerned with artistic experimentation, the production of film and the use of poetry to challenge dominant artistic forms of production. Their organisation was a loose coalition of hard drinkers and thinkers that circulated through the Saint-Germain-des-Pres district of Paris (Mension, 2002).

The second group was the anti-functionalist International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (IMIB), with Asger Jorn as its most prominent member.

The IMIB developed a critical approach to the functionalism and industrial orientation of the neo-Bauhaus. Jorn preferred free experimentation in art to address the question 'where and how to find a justified place for artists in the machine age' (Jorn, 1957: 16).

The third organisation, with which Join had a close association, was the Scandinavian COBRA movement (derived from copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam), which was concerned with artistic development. The fourth ensemble was the London Psycho-Geographical Society. Prominent members associated with this English contingent were Ralph Rumney, Donald Nicholson-Smith (later Debord's translator in English) and T. J. Clarke. All were to leave the S.I. by 1962, when the group underwent a re-orientation in its views on art and politics, but in 1957, a new and critical organisation was founded by the combination of these groups and the collection of significant players.

Held in a small Northern Italian town, the 'Alba Platform' details the grouping and members of this new organisation. Representatives from eight countries (Algeria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Holland and Italy) were present. These included J. Calonne, Constant, G. Gallizio, Asger Jorn, and Gil J. Wolman. The foundations for a united organisation were laid, and resolutions drawn up for a statement of intent of the newly-founded fraternity.

Home (1991) (1) makes a distinction between the 'heroic' phase of the S.I. from 1957 to 1962 and later periods, and sees the latter date as significant in the factions that developed around the artistic Nashist Second International on the one hand, and the political 'specto' Situationists on the other. The 'specto' prefix denotes the regrouping of the S.I. around Debord, the acceptance of his spectacle thesis, and a political focus--as opposed to an artistic focus--to the S.I.'s activities and theory.

The Nashist faction contains the original S.I.'s artistic 'wing', and would result in a de-politicised, aesthetic vision of the S.I.'S original project. Nash was excluded in March 1962. This scission sheds light on the S.I.'s theoretical reorientation, and the 1962 round of expulsions marks it as a significant year. Tensions with Nash were expressed at the 5th Conference of the Situationist International in Gotenborg, Sweden, 28-30 August 1961. Kotanyi, responding to Nash, stated:

   Since the beginning of the movement there has been a
   problem as to what to call the artistic works by members
   of the S.I. It was understood that none of them was a
   situationist production, but what to call them? I propose
   a very simple rule: to call them 'antisituationist.' (Kotanyi,
   1961: 88)

The statement against the artistic wing of the S.I. is clear. Their productions, by 1961, were running against the S.I.'s grain. From this conference, a new term entered the S.I.'s lexicon: 'Nashism'. It was used as a critique of those Situationist and broader trends that ranked political concerns below artistic considerations. By 1963, the S.I. was evoking Nashism as a term 'derived from the name of Nash', who was principally known for his attempt to betray the revolutionary movement and theory of that time.

Nashism could be used as 'a generic term applicable to all traitors in struggles against the dominant cultural and social conditions' (Editorial, 1963a: 112). Nash was further criticised for pretending to have a relationship with the S.I. (Editorial, 1964b: 141), and for producing 'falsifications' (Debord, 1963: 317). How should the S.I. respond to Nashism? 'We must simply be in a position to destroy them' (Canjeurs & Debord, 1960: 305; Debord, 1971: 369). Nash's expulsion marks a reorientation in the Situationist International.

Central concepts

The early, heroic phase of the S.I. saw key ideas on production and consumption developed. The initial resolutions set out at Alba contained the embryonic versions of key concepts in Situationist political theory. The most significant of these were the spectacle, derive, detournement, psychogeography and unitary urbanism.

Debord's (1995 [1967]) concept of the 'spectacle' is defined as unity versus separation, and 'a tendency to see the world by means of specialised mediations' (Debord, 1995: 16, [section]20). In Debord's scathing critique and analysis, modern consumer society is seen as the accumulation of images and the domination of images in modern life. 'The spectacle is capital accumulated to image' (Debord, 1995: 24, [section]34). The spectacle is the notion that all human relations are mediated by images from advertising, film and other sections of the mass media, driven towards controlling people's activities and consciousness. The need for the production and consumption of commodities (both material and cultural) is ensured by the reign of the spectacle, which is the enemy of a directly-lived and fully human life. 'The whole of life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that was once directly lived has now become mere representation.' (Debord 1995: 12, [section]1)

People have become divorced from authentic experience, are passive spectators of their own lives and no longer communicate or participate in the society of the spectacle. The dominant form of spectacular commodity production and consumption ensures that people do not engage in self-directed or autonomous activity, but answer the needs of the spectacle. The nexus of images and signs extends across all social relations, and leads to the wholesale 'colonization of daily life' (Hussey, 2001: 52).

For Debord, the spectacle has thoroughly penetrated everyday life. The illusionary and the real, the fragmented and unified experience of modern life, are experienced as something separated, distanced and passive. A highly mediated society loses the direct qualities and experiential conditions that characterised the urban districts in Paris frequented by the Situationists.

For the S.I., the issues of the Cold War and the two monolithic blocks of the Soviet Union and Western capitalism are conceived in terms of the underlying dynamic of capitalism. In Internationale Situationniste (I.S.) no. 12 (Editorial, 1969a: 264) they refer to the 'two capitalisms'. They identify the Western, 'private-bourgeois' capitalism that characterises the United Sates and Western Europe, and the 'state-bureaucratic' capitalism characteristic of the Soviet bloc.

Debord develops this analysis in terms of the 'concentrated' spectacle of the Soviet system, and the 'diffuse' spectacle of Western capitalism. In a continuation and refinement of this analysis, Debord (1988) suggests that the 'integrated spectacle' has come to dominate social, cultural and political life. France and Italy served as the model for the integrated spectacle, but it was a model that had become generalised to a world-wide scale and to the whole of social life.

The possibility of artistic expression, experimentation and a fully-lived human life, rich in experience, communication and participation, is blocked by the spectacle. Debord developed this view in his The Society of the Spectacle of 1967, which culminated in the argument that a new form of art and culture needed to be created. 'We place ourselves beyond culture. Not before it, but after. We say it is necessary to realize culture by transcending it as a separate sphere.' (I.S. vol. 3, no. 8, in Jappe 1999: 69)

The Situationists' act of transcendence developed in the form of the strategic practices of derive--aimlessly drifting through urban environments--and detournement, the ironic 'rearrangement of pre-existing elements' (Editorial, 1958: 45). Together, these practices are used to challenge and subvert art, forms of cultural expression and the urban environment. They are usefully deployed in a nocturnal, urban environment to challenge the emotional, physical and experiential planning of cities.

Drift, change, chance, encounter and adventure underpin the Situationists' techniques for integral art on a human scale. These techniques are linked to psycho-geography--the study of the physical effects of the geographical environment on individuals' emotions and behaviour (Editorial, 1958: 45)--which were mapped using collage, poem, photography or prose.

The final Situationist contribution is the concept of 'unitary urbanism'. This perspective of action in the environment is defined 'first by the use of the ensemble of arts and techniques as a means of contributing to an integral composition of the milieu in dynamic relation with experiments in behavior [sic]' (Editorial, 1958: 45). The environment is explored and challenged, using various strategies and techniques in order to highlight the spectacle's dominance and to provide alternative ways of using and living in the environment.

It goes beyond architecture, art, urbanism, scientific investigation and the specialised mediations of experts such as town planners, artists and sociologists. Unitary urbanism is a new form of urbanism that combines acoustics, food, drink, architecture, poetry and cinema into a superior construction, to enrich everyday life in the city. Unitary urbanism is 'in close relation to styles of behaviour' (Debord, 1957: 23). It allows and demands the possibility of creating new ways of living and working within urban environments that are guided by human need and the passional qualities of people.

In 1958, Debord and Constant attempted to pull together the principles of unitary urbanism, but the inherent tension between their views is apparent. On the one hand, Constant appeals for a 'striving for a perfect spatial art' and the joining of 'artistic and scientific means' for a 'complete fusion'. Debord's focus is different, demanding a unitary urbanism 'independent of all aesthetic considerations', as a 'result of a new kind of collective action' based on a revolutionary praxis (I.S. no.2 [1958]: 31, quoted in Sadler, 1998: 121).

Constant's resignation from the S.I. in the summer of 1960 was a result of the tension between these two visions of unitary urbanism (Sussman, 1989: 179-80; Raspaud & Voyer, 1972: flyleaf). By September 1961, the Fourth International Conference of the Situationist International would found a central council and propel the quest for creative expression in a different direction.

The aesthetic and destructively creative totality of Constant had been transcended by the political and creatively destructive totality of Debord. Anyone wishing to remain true to the meaning of culture could only do so by negating culture as a separate sphere, and realising it through the theory and practice of the critique of society (Debord, 1995: 147; 211).

Constant's project for New Babylon was flawed from the beginning. This was a large-scale utopian vision, based on the possibility of constructing a new city guided by the concepts of unitary urbanism. He worked from the perspective of a flaneur (Sadler, 1998: 123; Tester, 1994), celebrating the free-floating and bourgeois circulation of commodities--anathema to the Situationists.

There was an implicit technological determinism in his work. He was impressed by the post-war reconstruction of Paris, where mechanised technological environments emerged, and celebrated 'building technology' and the 'great public building' (Sadler, 1998: 125).

In this way, Constant's mega-structures create a totality under one roof, but one that reproduces the same alienating conditions of the given urban landscape. They may have been big and futuristic, but they lacked a critical coherence and were not commensurate with social practices.

These mega-structures became the overly-rationalist and functionalist decorated aircraft hangers of which the Situationists were so critical. Sadler (1998: 130) makes a similar point when he suggests that Constant was 'a situationist adopting a solution that originated in the much maligned Le Corbusier, pioneer of pilotis (grids of supporting columns) and deck structures'.

Functionalist architecture is smuggled back into the work of Constant. In addition, Constant suffered from the reproduction of a mechanistic metaphor--a by-product of cybernetic culture--for the working of New Babylon. Constant conceives of his new city as a machine working on the emotions of its inhabitants (Sadler, 1998: 148).

By 1960, the relationship between Constant and Debord was clear. Constant was called the ex-Situationist, and described as building 'models of factories, agreeing to construct a church and integrating the masses into capitalist technological civilization' (I.S. no.6 [1961], in Knabb 1989: 373, n113).

The problem for Constant was that while he was working at the intersection of art and architecture, the Situationists were working at the intersection of politics, art and architecture. Sadler (1998: 158) makes a similar observation, suggesting that Debord is a 'leftist theorist attracted through his romanticism to the cachet of the avant-garde', while Constant is an 'avant-gardist attracted by the fervour of the left'.

After 1962 and a round of expulsions, the Situationists took on a more directly political orientation, and the artistic focus was significantly reduced. Constant's architectural vision was castigated for its 'technocratic concept of a situationist profession' (Editorial, 1963a: 113), and its distinctly heroic vision for the construction of architectural situations.

The later regrouping of the S.I. would modify the use of situations to a more human scale, built into everyday life and having a much more existential understanding of the use of art and culture. This should counter any readings of the S.I. that attempt to suggest a perfect and seamless line of transition throughout its existence. There are lines of continuity, but there are also significant ruptures, scissions and re-orientations.

The S.I. contributions of unitary urbanism, derive, detournement and psychogeography all lead to the construction of situations, as 'a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organisation of a unitary ambiance and a game of events' (Editorial, 1958: 45).The playful and directionless adventures of the S.I. constitute a challenge to dominant forms of behaviour, life and experience.

If there is one central concept to be gleaned from the Situationists, it is to be found in the group's shift from an early incarnation of constructing artistic and architectural situations towards 'the construction of situations' in a much wider political sense.

The construction of situations

Constant's 'architectural situations', in his New Babylon project, are indicative of the attempt to provide a new civilisation by providing the situation for its realisation. This creation of architectural situations marked the first phase of S.I. attempts to create the conditions for a new form of living. This 'situationist mega-structure' route aimed to create a city of the future according to the Situationists' utopian vision, and Constant was the chief architect of this attempt. Levin (1996: 130) correctly argues that this was doomed to failure along three fault lines. Although the project had theoretical appeal and was philosophically urgent in the context of the rapid social change and urban redevelopment underway in post-war France, its internal contradictions, given its scale, reactive politics and determinism, meant that it would never be realised.

The size would require large-scale investment, and would be unavoidably technocratic--a fate that, Levin (1996: 130) suggests, 'becomes a means for the political "Establishment" to maximize returns on urban development'. Levin (1996) relates this reactive politics to the materiality of power in the urban fabric that negates radical projects aimed at transforming the material environment. Finally, mega-structural attempts are predicated on an urbanist determinism that does not have the potential for the fluid and changing urbanism required by the Situationist project, nor for the creation of authentic living and the realisation of art and culture.

The consequence of these large-scale attempts at 'architectural situations' (and the project's three internal contradictions) closely mirrored the modernist large-scale urban re-development so criticised by the S.I. The failure of this project led to Constant resigning from the S.I. in summer 1960 (Raspaud & Voyer, 1972: 11).The absence of Constant's vision of a large-scale reconstruction in order to create a Situationist mega-structure led to a re-orientation of the Situationists' relationship to urbanism and authenticity. Debord was to chastise Constant for his 'naive reformism' and failure to comprehend the 'recuperative' capacities of capitalism (Sadler, 1998: 153). By 1961-62, the focus had changed from the creation of a new city and a new vision of urbanism to the destruction of the ideology of the old city, and a new approach to achieving fully-lived and authentic life through the 'construction of situations'. Situationist architecture allows greater forms of autonomy for an individual but it retains structural imperatives imposed from outside, militating against the creation of one's own existential situation.

Thus the Situationists were no longer interested in constructing architectural situations of destructive creation, but became engaged in constructing situations of creative destruction, which become liberating acts of creativity within the economy of the spectacle. The theme of 'situation' was given a central role in Situationist theory as a possible vehicle for the creation of new forms of living, new social relations and the realisation of new desires. Three lines of argument were developed--first, the post-1962 construction of situations as small scale micro-experiments in different forms of working and living. Second, the values that underpin the Situationist project; and third, resistance to the spectacle.

Situations

'So far the philosophers and artists have only interpreted situations', they declared, paraphrasing Marx and taking a swipe at Sartre: 'the point now is to transform them' (Editorial, 1964b: 138). 'Since man is the product of situations he goes through, it is essential to create human situations. Since the individual is defined by his situation, he wants the power to create situations worthy of his desires' (Editorial, 1964b: 138). Situations, for the S.I., were about making them by enacting their subjectivity, not merely about recognising them. The 'construction of situations is necessarily collective in its preparation and development' (Editorial, 1958: 44). It is collective, since it requires a group of people. Within that group there is a division of labour, since the experiments on behaviour require three types of participants. The first is a director, responsible for co-ordination and working out interventions for a certain event. The second types are the direct agents or participants, who have collectively agreed a project: they operate like a research team and create the collective project. Defining and assembling, for example, an emotionally-moving gathering, they work on the practical composition of the emotional ambiance in the situation. The third group is made up of passive spectators caught up in the construction of a situation. The Situationists did recognise the danger of these becoming formal roles and specialisations, but suggested that subordination to the director is only temporary (Editorial, 1958: 44). This becomes a transitory stage that creates a situation, and the purpose of the situation is to energise passive spectators into action. No longer can people simply contemplate the world around them and their own lives, but are oriented by the situation to active, creative and participatory acts.

The Situationists suggested that 'real individual fulfillment entails the collective takeover of the world' (Editorial, 1958: 44), and that under present conditions there are no individuals, only spectators, where cultural banalisation and passivity are offered as pseudo-fulfillment. Without conscious direction there are only chance meetings that create situations between separated beings. The moment and creation of situations is transient and random; the reproduction of boredom and the creation of situations stimulate divergent emotions that 'neutralize each other'; without rational direction, situations are chance encounters that temporarily cancel out the emotion of boredom engendered by the spectacle.

The Situationist project was intended 'to undermine these conditions by raising at a few points an incendiary beacon heralding a greater game' (Editorial, 1958: 44). The early Lettrists' intervention at Notre Dame (Gray, 1974; Hussey, 2000: 34-5) engaged spectators and energised them into participation. The disruption of Chaplin's Cannes Festival (Hussey, 2000: ch.3) demanded the participation of the most passive of spectators. Debord's presentation at the ICA (Sussman, 1989) created a situation involving third parties. His films were designed to construct situations, break passivity and stimulate participation.

The S.I. argued that the third parties become '"livers" of the situation' (Editorial, 1958: 44). The 'construction of situations' is the vehicle for the 'real construction of situations' and 'real individual fulfillment [sic] ... entails the collective take over of the world' (Editorial, 1958: 44). 'Until this happens there will be no real individuals--only specters haunting the things anarchically presented to them by others' (Editorial, 1958: 44). 'Every project begins from it, and every realization returns to it to acquire its real significance. Everyday life is the measure of all things: of the fulfillment or rather the non-fulfillment of human relations; of the use of lived time; of artistic experimentation; of revolutionary politics' (Debord, 1961: 69).

Any failure to criticise everyday life is to accept the 'thoroughly rotten forms of culture and politics', and the consequence of failure to criticise is an 'increasingly widespread political apathy and neo-illiteracy' (Debord, 1961: 70).

As such, situations provide a model for new forms of working and living. They engage people in participatory acts of creativity that are not governed by external demands. They become arenas of self-directed activity that fulfil individual and collective needs. Creation is the fundamental principle of such acts, and self-determination the way these acts of creation are organised; and it is just these kinds of principle and organisation that characterise certain aspects of contemporary cultural politics. Art and culture are not always separate realms directed and guided by the spectacle, but can also become essential ingredients in the construction of a milieu to criticise and re-shape society.

Situationist techniques such as the derive and the constructed situation, which use art and culture not to express the passions of the world but rather to invent new passions, are also mirrored in contemporary cultural politics. Instead of merely translating and representing life, art and culture are used to extend life's boundaries in order to create new situations of creative resistance to the spectacle.

Projects

Through their critique of the city, the promotion of different forms of living in the urban environment that are more sensitive to the physical environment, and the fusing of everyday life with artistic expression, the Situationists offer a theoretical resource.

They highlight the possibility of different forms of participation and political action organised around small--scale co-operative, community-based activities. These forms of situ-community would be based on beauty, play, excitement, encounter and art. They would utilise convivial values of self-expression, individual choice, local autonomy, community empowerment and self-subsistence, including new forms of exchange and monetary value, such as the potlatch.

Potlatch was the name of the Lettrist journal comprised of contributions from Debord and other early Situationists. The word refers to the Native American practice of 'gift-giving' as a measure of social prestige and status. The deliberate choice of the term counters the exchange mechanisms of the spectacular commodity society, and offers an alternative way in which to distribute and exchange goods.

This is based on the mutual giving of favours and, as such, it offers an alternative way to conduct productive relations based upon use and social values rather than on an attachment to, and trading in, exchange values. The festival and the commune are exemplars of the alternative modes of living and different social organisations and arrangements put forward by the Situationists.

A democratic nature, horizontal power relations, the equalisation of power, a lack of centralised leadership and organic forms of participation were all central to these experiments in social organisation, valued by the S.I. Vaneigem (1994) highlights a history of such values going back as far as the millennial heretics of the fourteenth century. These dissident and radical groups challenged the hegemonic orthodoxy of the time by creating experiments in alternative ways of living. The idea of the potlatch has growing relevance today within contemporary cultural politics, and particularly in certain aspects of the informal DIY economic exchanges prevalent in some creative communities, and in the independent sector of the creative industries.

These mirror this form of convivial social exchange that is once removed from market mechanisms. The playful intoxication of the festival and the radically democratic organisation of the commune prefigure the values and (anti) organisational structure of DIY aspects of cultural production. Such independent sectors are often organic, fluid, loose affiliations built on co-operation, trust, favours, autonomy and authentic human relations, which attempt to provide new forms of living and working (Leadbetter & Oakley, 1999; Shorthose, 2004).

Resistance to the Spectacle

Vaneigem, writing as Ratgeb (2004: 1), argues that the commodity system produces a 'world of lying representations, where the image takes the place of reality'. Work, under the reign of the spectacular commodity system, appears as useful, necessary and in everyone's interest. It also denies the possibility of 'a radically new society, one based on attractive, collective and universal self-management'. New forms of working are proposed in order for individual desires to be realised, for the collective satisfaction of needs and the free distribution of goods.

The end to spectacular commodity production, and a reexamination of priorities, would end the reign of profit, hierarchical power and universal lies. Vaneigem suggests that the factory is all around us, reducing activity to existence, although acts of resistance and sabotage prepare for a revolution of everyday life. Pleasure and passion can be rediscovered in the glimpses of authentic living distorted by the spectacle, and redistributed. It is these impulses that underwrite the desire for the creation of a new form of everyday life, one where creativity and authenticity are under the direction of self-management and not distorted by the alienating system of commodity production.

In part, the 'DIY' sectors of cultural production can be seen to mirror Vaneigem's analysis. The conditions of workers in these industries do not conform to the alienated working conditions of 'normal' commodity production. They are characterised by small and human scale production, often specifically aimed at the satisfaction of need, or personal artistic inspiration, rather than at the maximisation of profit. Work time and work relationships are governed by social and pleasurable interactions, rather than by formalised and alienated arrangements.

This activity is creative, authentic and self-directed, in contrast to what Vaneigem (2004: 4) describes as, 'all roles and all modes of behaviour which would make the individual act, not in accordance with his [sic] urges and inclinations, but in accordance with images imposed upon him, images which are part of the lie by means of which the commodity expresses itself'. Acts of sabotage, the rejection of images and the spectacle, and the construction of situations are the passionate creations of conditions favourable to the growth of our passions.

It is independence and self-management in creative production that can challenge the dominant forms of work and life under the reign of the spectacle. Debord's last clarion call (1995: 147 [section]211) is for the unified critique of culture (as knowledge and poetry) that is no longer separable from the critique of the social totality. It is this unified theoretical critique that goes alone to its rendezvous with a unified social practice.

Inheritors and trajectories

We are now at a point where it is possible to offer some indicative comments on the future trajectory of the Situationist project, and on the direction in which Situationist theory is articulated in the present day. Two contemporary practitioners, Naomi Klein and Douglas Kellner, perhaps best embody the modern-day intellectual inheritance of Situationist creative theory. Klein offers one direction for a strategic movement against the spectacle with her No Logo and 'culture jamming'.

She argues that it 'was Guy Debord and the Situationists ... who first articulated the power of a simple detournement, defined as an image, message or artifact lifted out of its context to create and give new meaning' (Klein, 2000: 282). She goes on,

   For years, we in this movement have fed off our opponent's
   symbols--their brands, their office towers, their photoopportunity
   summits. We have used them as rallying cries,
   as focal points, as popular education tools. But these
   symbols were never the real targets; they were the levers,
   the handles. The symbols were only ever doorways. It's
   time to walk through them (Klein, 2001: 32).

The Situationists use detournement as a strategic, artistic and linguistic intervention against the spectacle. The point is to change artistic and linguistic expression in order to create new avenues of life. Klein's (2000) focus is on the branded commodities that have introduced some of the worst working practices under the reign of the spectacle. Her critique is an example of the spectacle's continuing relevance and explanatory power. Culture-jamming and 'adbusting' is the strategic response identified by Klein (2000) that parallels the Situationists' response to the spectacle, and embodies the contemporary forms of detournement that are the positive legacy of the S.I. Culture-jammers hacking into corporate advertising and corporate speech make 'pointedly political' messages. These alternative messages are Situationist tools, 'used, loaned and borrowed and in a much broader political movement against branded life' (Klein, 2000: 309).

That political movement is the resistance to the contemporary spectacle of globalisation. Klein concludes with a statement that might have been made by Debord: 'the demand ... is to build a resistance--both high-tech and grassroots, both focused and fragmented--that is as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinationals it seeks to subvert' (Klein, 2000: 446).

In the age of the integrated spectacle, the work of the Situationists is an essential resource, and part of a subversive current of continuing relevance that opposes the 'brand' and tends towards localised, DIY cultural production that interfaces with new creative technologies and has an eye on wider issues (Schwarz & Schwarz, 1998; Watters, 2004). From making unbranded clothing out of recycled or organic materials to the slow food movement; from local suppliers to independent creative artists; these creative activities all find an early expression in the Situationists' work.

The second inheritor of Situationist politics is found in the voices of authors such as Douglas Kellner and Steve Best. Kellner is at the forefront of positive and progressive uses of Situationist theory. In the stage of the spectacle that was theorised and criticised by the Frankfurt School, Sartre, and the Situationist International, the media and technology were powerful control mechanisms keeping individuals passive and serialised, watching and consuming, rather than acting and doing. The advance that Kellner makes is to use the internet to provide a critical resource for critical political theory. His website is a potlatch of Situationist-inspired political theory. Kellner (2000) extends Debord's insights by examining the advent of the 'the interactive spectacle'.

All forms of social life--schooling, education, entertainment, leisure, politics, and everyday life--are increasingly spectacularised: banal, passive and unfulfilling. The advent of new technologies--the internet, video games and multi-media--will do nothing to abate the relentless march of the spectacle.

In order to criticise spectacular relations, Kellner (2000) highlights the potential in the construction of 'cyber-situations': making political and artistic internet situations for convivial or potlatch ends. The proliferation of websites dedicated to the Situationists (e.g. nothingness.org, nothored.org, psychogeography.org.uk, the London Psychogeographical Association and The Situationist International Online) demonstrates the contemporary relevance of politics and artistic production informed by the ethos of the Situationists. The internet has become a central tool in the development and promotion of alternative forms of production and consumption, as well as offering the possibility of new and exciting forms of artistic and cultural developments.

Graffiti artists, anti-globalisation protestors, guerrilla gardeners, allotment owners, co-operatives, community projects, small-scale producers and independent creators all embody a creative impulse that is not mediated by the spectacle. They aim at forms of creative and artistic expression on a human scale, to challenge dominant forms of consumption and to produce cultural, artistic and political forms of resistance.

Experimental behaviour; a critique of consumer society; new forms of living around the grammar of life; different uses of urban space; a hijacking of capitalist culture: these are the contributions of the Situationists that find a ready constituency in the current 'globalised' spectacle.

The growing wave of anti-globalisation protest rejects the economic rationality of governmental agencies and multinational corporations, and their questionable regulation, accountability and scrutiny. The events of Seattle in 1999 were micro-experiments in alternatives that express different values and articulate simple, sustainable and convivial ways of living.

Debord's contribution of the spectacle thesis posits a thoroughgoing critique of contemporary forms of production and consumption. It was principally a rage against the rise of 'consumer' society in the post-war period, and the explosion of mass-produced consumer durables. The Situationists prefigured attempts to produce on a more human scale, using more sensitively-sourced materials from local environments.

As such, they offer a resource to those creative enterprises that resist globalised sourcing and the manufacture of standardised products. They help to advocate an alternative vision, oriented towards need and the satisfaction of human desires. These creative and participatory forms of activity easily find expression in community-based projects, artistic production through independent, DIY artists and loose, small-scale coalitions of producers. For the Situationists, these creative situations were some of the vehicles with which the dominance of the spectacle might be challenged, and offered the possibility of production and consumption on a different level.

Unitary urbanism provides a critique of contemporary forms of urbanism that are driven by the imperatives of profit, speculation and accumulation. It focuses on the sensuous, emotional and passionate qualities of an environment in order to reinvigorate urban space. In it, the inner-city redevelopment of planners and speculators is rejected in favour of the recolonisation of cities and urban centres by creative endeavours that enrich the urban fabric, and offer vibrant and exciting possibilities for new ways of using, working and living in cities.

The hero of the original unitary urbanists was 'Le Facteur', a humble postman who would spend his working day collecting materials for the creation of a dream-like grotto in his modest back garden. Its labyrinthine qualities offer chance, encounter and participation, and in it, independent artistic and political creativity emerges to speak to the Postman's vision of a playful space.

New psycho-geographical maps of the city can define space and environments according to peoples' needs and emotions, rather than as the functionalist city vision of planners and architects, and of its systems requirements such as traffic and commodity circulation. An infusion of poetry, artistic and cultural production within the city accompanies the development of certain cultural quarters (Bell & Jayne, 2004; Florida, 2002).

The construction of situations, with a little initial direction, can fuse groups and communities into a wider game of events. Communication and participation define new forms of artistic and cultural activity. The techniques of derive and detournement offer the possibility to explore spaces in new ways, and to rearrange existing aesthetic elements into new forms of expression. Such cultural quarters often recycle and transform existing structures and materials in exciting and innovative ways, through artistic expression and transformed human experience.

Murals, artwork, independent film-makers, emerging bands, garden projects; all challenge the use of space and provide a rich and varied alternative to the sanitised and planned experience of shopping malls, luxury flat conversions and inner-city living.

The Situationists' values of communication, participation, self-realisation through chance, encounter, play and gift-giving provide alternative sets of values, which can guide and inform this creativity. The construction of situations drew these values together with a desire for different organisational arrangements in order to achieve equal power relations, greater democracy and informal communication. Contemporary cultural politics and certain artistic and political aspects of independent, DIY cultural production may form a vanguard of different and experimental forms of behaviour, values and organisation of which the Situationists would be proud.

Despite limitations in its theory, the S.I. retains a vital currency of which the last has not been heard. At a time when the integrated spectacle is at war with itself, it is time, in Debord's (1995:154 [section]221) words, for a Situationist dialogue to 'take up arms to impose its own condition upon the world'.

Notes

I. The most insightful and accurate reading of the Situationists, to date in English, is Gardiner (2000). The superiority of this account is in that Gardiner uses everyday life as the central element in his discussion of the Situationists. This is developed within a general framework of utopianism that sees the Situationists as the most uncompromising critics of modern society. Everyday life is a core theme that runs through the Situationists' work, and is a pivotal point of the S.I.'s political theory.

Gardiner (2000) argues for a direct lineage of Situationist ideas that avoids an overly artistic reading, or a merely cultural reading: it is a political reading, which allows an understanding of artistic and cultural elements in their work. Viewed in this way, forerunners to Situationist ideas are the humanism of the early Marx, the existentialist notion of authenticity, and the neo-Hegelianism of Lukacs.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article for their constructive and insightful comments.

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