Situationist International

The Situationist International’s (1957) practice seems a part of its own historical time, and responds more to a political environment then an art movement. By all accounts in ‘Constructing The Situation’ the continuum from Avant-gardist methods of Futurism, Dada, Agi-Theater seamlessly take root with all the elements of rebellion and anti authority. More perversive though is its power to provoke and disrupt the dictate of the order of that time. Art in a political guise or art responding to society and demanding change; itself becoming the propaganda machine in its dissemination of its theoretical views in the form of magazines, posters and film. There is a strong sense of its intent to wake up the passive observer and turn him into an active participant (Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle). The Situationists’ ideas are immortalized in their posters and cartoons and ultimately the art giving way to the theoretical writing and political organising culminating in the French general strike in of May 1968