The Situationist Times, 4-5 (1963-64)

13 January 2016, dusan

The Situationist Times was an international, English-language periodical created and edited by Jacqueline de Jong, of which six issues were published between 1962 and 1967. A radical compendium using such Situationist tactics as détournement and a printed form of dérive, the journal included essays, artwork, found images, and quotations concerned with such issues as topology, politics, and spectacle culture.” (Beinecke’s Postwar Culture)

“In 1959 Jacqueline de Jong became involved with Danish artist Asger Jorn. Through him she became involved with the Gruppe Spur, the German section of the Internationale Situationniste. Meeting Guy Debord in 1960 in Amsterdam.

Jacqueline de Jong had in 1958 become acquainted with the artist Constant and other Dutch members of the Situationist International – Armando and the architect Har Oudejans – while working for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. From 1957 until 1962 the role of the artists in the S.I. was of great significance, particularly Jorn and Constant, the Belgian Maurice Wijckaert, the Italian Pinot Gallizio, German “Gruppe Spur”, Jacqueline de Jong, the Brits Ralph Romney and Gordon Fazekerly, and the Scandinaians Ansgar Eelde, J.J. Thorsen, Jørgen Nash.

In 1960, there was a conflict between Debord and the Dutch section after being expelled, Debord to write to her: “La Hollande est à vous”.

In Paris, in February 1962, Jacqueline de Jong was herself expelled after defending the Gruppe Spur. Who had been expelled earlier. In May that year she launched the magazine The Situationist Times. The first two issues were edited with Noel Arnaud. The launch of the Magazine had been announced and agreed upon at a meeting of the S.I. in Brussels the previous year. The students uprising in Paris May 1968 was supported by Jacqueline de Jong with posters.” (CCIndex)

Number 4 deals with labyrinths and Number 5 takes up the theme of rings and chains.

Edited and published by Jacqueline de Jong, Paris, Oct 1963 & Dec 1964
Printed in Copenhagen
184 & 219 pages

Editor

Number 4 (PDF, 33 MB)
Number 5 (PDF, 47 MB)

See also research notes for SI4 and maquettes for SI5 at Beinecke.
The full run is available on Monoskop wiki. (added on 2021-11-1)

Mikkel Bolt, Jakob Jakobsen (eds.): Cosmonauts of the Future: Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere (2015)

12 June 2015, dusan

“This is the first ever English-language anthology collecting texts and documents from the still little-known Scandinavian part of the Situationist movement.

The book covers over three decades of writing, from Asger Jorn’s Luck and Chance published in 1953, to the statements of the Situationist Antinational set up by Jens Jørgen Thorsen and J.V. Martin in 1974. The writings collected gravitate around the year 1962 when the Situationist movement went through it’s most dynamic and critical moments, and the disagreements about the relationship between art and politics came to a culmination, resulting in exclusions and the split of the Situationist International.

The Situationists did not win, and the almost forgotten Scandinavian fractions even less so. The book broadens the understanding of the Situationist movement by bringing into view the wild and unruly activities of the Scandinavian fractions of the organisation and the more artistic, experimental, and actionist attitude that characterised them. They did, nevertheless, constitute a decisive break with the ruling socio-economic order through their project of bringing into being new forms of life. Only an analysis of the multifaceted and often contradictory Situationist revolution will allow us to break away from the dull contemplation of yet another document of Debord’s archive or yet another drawing by Jorn.

There is a lot to be learned from the history of revolutionary failure. It is along these lines that this book points forward beyond the crisis-ridden capitalist order that survives today.”

Texts by Asger Jorn, Jørgen Nash, Jens Jørgen Thorsen, Bauhaus Situationniste, Jacqueline de Jong, Gordon Fazakerley, Gruppe SPUR, Dieter Kunzelman, J.V. Martin, and Guy Debord.

Translated by Peter Shield, James Manley, Anja Buchele, Matthew Hyland, Fabian Tompsett, and Jakob Jakobsen
Publisher Nebula, Copenhagen, in association with Autonomedia, New York, May 2015
This book can be freely pirated and quoted except for the texts covered by copyrights.
ISBN 9788799365180 (Nebula), 9781570273049 (Autonomedia)
304 pages

Publisher (Nebula)
Distributor (Minor Compositions)

PDF, PDF, PDF (2 MB)
Scribd

See also Bolt, Jakobsen (eds.), Expect Anything Fear Nothing: The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere, 2011.
More on Situationists

Ken Knabb (ed.): Situationist International Anthology (1981/2006)

27 January 2014, dusan

“In 1957 a few experimental European groups stemming from the radical tradition of dadaism and surrealism, but seeking to avoid the cooption to which those movements succumbed, came together to form the Situationist International. The name came from their aim of liberating everyday life through the creation of open-ended, participatory “situations” (as opposed to fixed works of art) — an aim which naturally ran up against the whole range of material and mental obstacles produced by the present social order. Over the next decade the situationists developed an increasingly incisive critique of the global ‘spectacle-commodity system’ and of its bureaucratic leftist pseudo-opposition, and their new methods of agitation helped trigger the May 1968 revolt in France. Since then — although the SI itself was dissolved in 1972 — situationist theories and tactics have continued to inspire radical currents in dozens of countries all over the world.

The SI Anthology, generally recognized as the most comprehensive and accurately translated collection of situationist writings in English, presents a chronological survey of the group’s activities and development as reflected in articles from its French journal and in a variety of leaflets, pamphlets, filmscripts and internal documents, ranging from their early experiments in urban “psychogeography” and cultural subversion to their lucid analyses of the Watts riot, the Vietnam war, the Prague Spring, the Chinese “Cultural Revolution” and other crises and upheavals of the sixties.

A greatly revised, and expanded edition, with over 100 pages of new material.”

First published in 1981
Translated by Ken Knabb
Publisher Bureau of Public Secrets, Berkeley, CA, 2006
No copyright. Any of the texts in this book may be freely reproduced, translated or adapted, even without mentioning the source.
ISBN 0939682044, 9780939682041
532 pages
via quackalist

Reviews: Libero Andreotti (J Architectural Education, 1996), Not Bored! (2007).

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