Gerald Raunig: Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century (2005–) [DE, SR, EN, RU]

“Gerald Raunig has written an alternative art history of the ‘long twentieth century,’ from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the turbulent counter-globalization protests in Genoa in 2001. Meticulously moving from the Situationists and Sergei Eisenstein to Viennese Actionism and the PublixTheatreCaravan, Art and Revolution takes on the history of revolutionary transgressions and optimistically charts an emergence from its tales of tragic failure and unequivocal disaster. By eloquently applying Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the “machine,” Raunig extends the poststructuralist theory of revolution through to the explosive nexus of art and activism.

As hopeful as it is incisive, Art and Revolution encourages a new generation of artists and thinkers to refuse to participate in the tired prescriptions of marketplace and authority and instead create radical new methods of engagement. Raunig develops an indispensable, contemporary conception of political change—a conception that transcends the outmoded formulations of insurrection and resistance. Too much blood and ink has been shed for the art machines and the revolutionary machines to remain separate.”

Originally published in German as Kunst und Revolution. Künstlerischer Aktivismus im langen 20. Jahrhundert by Turia+Kant, Vienna, 2005. New edition by transversal texts, Vienna, 2017.

English edition
Translated by Aileen Derieg
Publisher Semiotext(e), 2007
Active Agents series
ISBN 1584350466, 9781584350460
319 pages

Reviews and commentaries: Marco Meseriis (Mute, 2008), Rob Myers (Furtherfield, 2009), Nettime discussion (2008), Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (Culture Machine), Beatrice von Bismarck (Texte zur Kunst, DE). Reuben Fowkes (Art Monthly), Karl Reitter (Grundrisse, DE), Ivan Pravdić (Filozofija i društvo).

Author, more
Editor (SR)
Publisher (EN)

Kunst und Revolution. Künstlerischer Aktivismus im langen 20. Jahrhundert (German, new ed., 2005/2017, added on 2024-1-5, EPUB)
Umetnost i revolucija. Umetnički aktivizam tokom dugog XX veka (Serbian, trans. Relja Dražić, ed. kuda.org, 2006, updated on 2015-8-30)
Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century (English, trans. Aileen Derieg, 2007, updated on 2017-6-26)
Iskusstvo i revoluciia: khudozhestvennyi aktivizm v dolgom dvadcatom veke (Russian, trans. Eugenia Shraga and Alexander Skidan, 2012, DJVU, 28 MB, updated on 2017-6-26)

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Jakob Jakobsen (eds.): Expect Anything Fear Nothing: The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere (2011)

“This volume is the first English-language presentation of the Scandinavian Situationists and their role in the Situationist movement. The Situationist movement was an international movement of artists, writers and thinkers that in the 1950s and 1960s tried to revolutionize the world through rejecting bourgeois art and critiquing the post-World War Two capitalist consumer society.

The book contains articles, conversations and statements by former members of the Situationists’ organisations as well as contemporary artists, activists, scholars and writers. While previous publications about the Situationist movement almost exclusively have focused on the contribution of the French section and in particular on the role of the Guy Debord this book aims to shed light on the activities of the Situationists active in places like Denmark, Sweden and Holland. The themes and stories chronicled include: The anarchist undertakings of the Drakabygget movement led by the rebel artists Jørgen Nash, Hardy Strid and Jens Jørgen Thorsen, the exhibition by the Situationist International “Destruction of RSG-6” in 1963 in Odense organised by the painter J.V. Martin in collaboration with Guy Debord, the journal The Situationist Times edited by Jacqueline de Jong, Asger Jorn’s political critique of natural science and the films of the Drakabygget movement.”

Contributors: Peter Laugesen, Carl Nørrested, Fabian Tompsett, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Jacqueline de Jong, Gordon Fazakerley, Hardy Strid, Karen Kurczynski, Stewart Home, Jakob Jakobsen.

Publisher Nebula, Copenhagen; in association with Autonomedia, New York, 2011
Open access
ISBN 879936512X, 9788799365128
288 pages

Reviews: Kim West (Kunstkritikk, 2011), Lugo (2011).

Publisher

PDF, PDF (9 MB)

See also Bolt, Jakobsen (eds.), Cosmonauts of the Future: Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere, 2015.
More on Situationists

McKenzie Wark: The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (2011)

“Over fifty years after the Situationist International appeared, its legacy continues to inspire activists, artists and theorists around the world. Such a legend has accrued to this movement that the story of the SI now demands to be told in a contemporary voice capable of putting it into the context of twenty-first-century struggles.

McKenzie Wark delves into the Situationists’ unacknowledged diversity, revealing a world as rich in practice as it is in theory. Tracing the group’s development from the bohemian Paris of the ’50s to the explosive days of May ’68, Wark’s take on the Situationists is biographically and historically rich, presenting the group as an ensemble creation, rather than the brainchild and dominion of its most famous member, Guy Debord. Roaming through Europe and the lives of those who made up the movement—including Constant, Asger Jorn, Michèle Bernstein, Alex Trocchi and Jacqueline De Jong—Wark uncovers an international movement riven with conflicting passions.

Accessible to those who have only just discovered the Situationists and filled with new insights, The Beach Beneath the Street rereads the group’s history in the light of our contemporary experience of communications, architecture, and everyday life. The Situationists tried to escape the world of twentieth-century spectacle and failed in the attempt. Wark argues that they may still help us to escape the twenty-first century, while we still can …”

Publisher Verso, London, 2011
ISBN 1844677206, 9781844677207
224 pages

Reviews: Christopher Collier (Mute), Anthony Hayes (Marx&Philosophy), Ian Birchall (Review31), Brettany Shannon (Society&Space), Ben Brucato (Humanity&Society), Karl Whitney (3AM), Vince Carducci (PopMatters), Andrew McCann (Sydney Review of Books), Gary Pearce (Steep Stairs), Jonathan Derbyshire (The Guardian), Andrew Blake (The Independent), Edwin Heathcote (Financial Times).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2019-2-9)