Description
Book SynopsisA ground-breaking rethink of the radical Situationist art movement drawn from a life's worth of research.
Trade Review'Frances Stracey was an original and committed interpreter of the Situationist International, who saw their work not just as art history but as contributing to an ongoing challenge to commodified life, down into our own times' -- McKenzie Wark, author of The Beach Beneath the Street
'The most penetrating inquiry into Situationist strategy yet to appear' -- Times Higher Education
'Fuelled by her remarkable insights into the work of the image in an image-culture, Frances Stracey offers a ground-breaking and timely account of Situationist 'situations'. Not only does she restore a place for women as radical subjects within the movement but she fearlessly shows us what is at stake in living such a project now' -- Briony Fer, Professor of Art History, University College London
'Stracey returns the SI to a living tradition of critique and negation in art. It is her work on women in the SI and the debate on gender and class, identity and the universal, though, that defines her investigation of the 'situation'' -- Professor John Roberts, author of The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday
'Challenging the prevalent woolly and dehistoricised readings, Frances Stracey advances a powerful and incisive reconstruction of SI practice' -- Gail Day is senior lecturer in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds and author of Dialectical Passions: Negation in Postwar Art Theory
'Stracey does not reduce the Situationist movement to a form of art praxis or media theory. She takes the Situtationist's claim to have developed a modern approach to revolution seriously and focuses on the 'construction of situations' as a practical alternative to the spectacle. She addresses the difficult problem of assessing what parts of the Situationist legacy may still inspire contemporary critical cultural forms' -- Anselm Jappe, author of Guy Debord
Table of ContentsList of Figures
Series Preface
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Lessons in Failure
Excursus I: The Society of the Spectacle
Excursus II: Constructed Situations
Reconstructing Situations
1. Surviving History: A Situationist Archive
2. Industrial Painting: Towards a Surplus of Life
3. Destruktion af RSG-6: The Latest Avant-Garde
4. Consuming the Spectacle: The Watts Riot and a New Proletariat
5. Situationist Radical Subjectivity and Photo-Graffiti
6. The Situation of Women
Coda: Learning from the SI
Notes
Index
