Disruptive Monsters

The chapter Disruptive Monsters: From Representing to Constructing Situations from Gerald Raunig’s book Art and Revolution gave me an understanding of the work of Situalionist International. S.I., formed in 1957, considered the experiences of life in the realm of globalized capitalism. Through the construction of partly arranged situations the group created social experiments in order to investigate and expose ideas of art and life.
Covered in the chapter are some of the pre-situationist works which led to the happenings of S.I. Guy Debord, one of the leading participants in S.I.’s theoretical work, created films in the early 50’s (prior to S.I.) which I found helpful in understanding the concepts involved in their later works. The aim of his films was to create art which takes the viewer from a passive spectator to an active participant with power over the outcome of the plot. An example of this is Hurlements en faveur de Sade, where fragments of text were shown on the screen, intermittently interrupted by black, soundless pauses which increased in duration until a final pause of 24 minutes. The audience objected to the film during the first pause and under their direction the film was stopped, a reaction Debord may have hoping for.
This interaction forced from the audience can also be recognized when considering the happenings instigated by the S.I. Through organized occurrences the relationship between action and representation can be questioned and pulled apart. This can occur because, through activating these occurrences, one can contemplate how situations can be constructed in today’s social spaces.
Some of the things which are raised by the situations include the expansion of the art form and the closed art spaces into the setting of urban city space. The space is made anew, creating an “active formation of environments, a free play with urban space as playing field”. Like Debord’s film’s the comfortable stage setting is expanded into everyday life, disrupting what is familiar.
The S.I. activities also questioned the role of the participant and the viewer by creating a context in which making something and receiving something becomes the same thing. The S.I. made situations that were intended to be lived by the people who came together to construct it. Therefore there was no passive “public” but rather “viveurs”-a termed used to describe those who were living the situation.
The situations seem to quickly flow from the control of the fabricator of the situation to that of the viveurs, however it certainly didn’t occur naturally in the first place. Is it this construction which gives the situation its significance and power to break down traditional experience? Or is it merely pointing out the fact that no experience, natural or otherwise, is really what it seems?