Conversation opened. 1 read message. Skip to content Using Gmail with screen readers in:sent 118 of 1,130 Situcratic + co-ritus kac attac Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 6:53 AM to Stefan 89 THE STRUGGLE OF THE SITUCRATIC SOCIETY: A SITUATIONIST MANIFESTO Modern industrial society has so far been organised along classical lines as developed in Greece and Rome. During the industrial period following the French Revolution there have been cycles in which all the different forms of such a method of government have been explored. This has been a valuable experience. It has shown that the enlightened autocracy of Plato and the more or less aristocratic military dictatorship which replaced the legal government as well as the various forms of democracy (including the latest edition, the so-called people's democracy) - that none of these have been capable of creating a form of government to meet and satisfy human needs, much less to allow life to flourish and prosper. The new phenomena which dominated industrial society from the beginning, despite some pioneer romanticism, is the growing socialisation of all the means of life which is itself the ineluctable consequence of ma- chine techniques. By socialism we understand the inclusive principle which makes society the centre, meaning and purpose of all human activity. It is all the same whether one takes this evolution to mean progress or whether one interprets it as a growing threat to human freedom. Both attitudes amount to the same thing. Socialisation will spread in one way or another. Man can only dominate his future environment if we face this fact. We must use this knowledge to evolve the means of liberation. In order to win, it is essential for us to extricate ourselves from the principle of fatalistic necessity and to regain a new potential of choice and self-determination. The social structure which fulfills the conditions for freedom is what we have termed the situcratic order. The point of departure is the de-christianisation of Kierkegaard's philosophy of situations. This must 90 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere be combined with British economic doctrine, German dialectics and French social action programmes. It involves a profound revision of Marxist doctrine and a complete revolution whose growth is rooted in the Scandinavian concept of culture. This new ideology and philosophical theory we have called situology. It is based on the principle of social democracy inasmuch as it excludes all artificial forms of privilege. It is the only existing guarantee which ensures that human life can develop in all its cultural variety and without crushing the special abilities of the individual in an anonymous society designed for the unfit. Sartre says that we should always ask what would happen if everyone acted like me. Our answer is that we should all die of boredom. We want to make it possible for man to be able to gamble his life. This can only happen if everyone is allowed to have indvidual freedom of action. The first Situationist International was founded in Paris in 1957. Its function was to formulate and develop Situology. During the last five years some serious differences of opinion have arisen. These have led to the pro- gressive exclusion of many Situationist comrades in Great Britain, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Needless to say this continual up and down has imperilled the movement. It looks like it might be becoming an international training college for avant-gardists, a sort of finishing school for serious artists. It was not for this that the Situationist movement was founded. All the various tensions came to a head in Paris on February 10th 1962. At that council meeting the Parisians excluded the German Situationists of Gruppe SPUR (Munich). They did this at the very moment when the group was being tried by neo- Nazi authorities in West Germany: charged with producing degenerate art (entartete kunst). It is with great regret that we have to place it on record that the Paris declaration came as a stab in the back to our comrades; it was used by the German authorities as a weapon to discredit Gruppe SPUR in court. Only after the verdict had been announced did Paris sud- denly declare its solidarity with the German Situationists. A meaningless gesture rather late in the day. This sort of vacillation shows that the Situationists' action pro- gramme - at the intellectual level - is suffering from a cancer. The root of The Struggle of the Situcratic Society: A Situationist Manifesto 91 this cancer lies in the adherence to old-fashioned, classical and ultra-rigid patterns of organisation. To avoid the disruptive consequences of this disease, the Dutch rep- resentative Jaqueline de Jong proposed in The Situationist Times to go ahead with the Situationist programme of anti-organisation by dissolving the central organisation. Now anyone is free to become a Situationist with- out the need for special formalities. It is up to the individual to fulfill the Situationist ideology in the best way that seems fit. This does away with all problems of inclusion and exclusion. The Franco-Belgian group of Situationists answered the above proposal with a categorical No. Articles published in Internationale Situationniste and the Copenhagen journal Information declared that the Scandinavian group of Situationists around Drakabygget (Secretary: Jorgen Nash) had been excluded from the Situationist International. They also saw fit to level a stream of querulous accusations against us which we reject out of hand. Whatever happens we shall adhere to our role in the Situationist revolution. We shall continue to do our duty. Here and now this document is our witness: we proclaim the foundation of the 2nd Situationist International. We look upon this action in the light of historical necessity. The action has been forced upon us. At the same time we trust that the split will only be temporary. We foresee that our own Situationist evolution and that which has its roots in Paris will be followed by an East European Situationist Movement. The three groups each evolv- ing from its own set of problems and attitudes shall one day unite into a Situationist International. For the sake of Europe it is very important that genuine differences and variants should not be suppressed. On the contrary these characteris- tie differences have a vital part to play in the development of a Situcratic community. Oddly enough Situcratic history has followed the same trend as the Communist International during the last century. The latter separated into the 2nd Social Democratic and later into the Communist International. With us the process has been speedier. Our experience throws new light on the way in which socialist splinter movements come about. The process 92 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere cannot be explained merely in terms of internal self-criticism as has usu- ally been done in the past when people have looked for an explanation for changes in social structure. Yet there is clearly a parallel between the two movements. Niels Bohr's complementary theory is based on the observation that one cannot give a simultaneous description of position and movement. This is more than a purely abstract scientific observation. Indeed some- thing of the same incompatability between position and movement under- lies Bohr's own scientific methods and procedures. Let us for the moment disregard the overtones of recrimination and abuse in our present contro- very. Let us assume that the Scandinavian and French programmes are both equally well-meaning, intelligent and correct. We shall then find that there is a fundamental difference of assumption between us. If we discard all prejudice we shall see that the problem, as seen by Guy Debord from a Paris point of view, is purely a matter of position. This same applies to this analysis of situation. The Scandinavian outlook is completely different. It is based on movement and mobility. Once we understand this difference the split between the two groups seems natural and inevitable. We must agree to differ in order to let the two opposing tendencies work out their own salvation. Any attempt to force them both into the same mould will lead to frustration and further conflict. Therefore the creation of a 2nd Situationist International is not a matter of progress or regression. It is the natural result of Situationist dichotomy which operates from two funda- mentally different assumptions and programmes. We want to steer clear of Parisian problems of position at least until such time as these problems have been clarified to the point where they become amenable to systematic and rational discussion. Positional Situationism starts out by making projects. This is a typically Latin pattern whereas Scandinavian Social Democracy is called reformative because its plans arise out of the situation itself. This method seems to be quite alien to the French way of thinking at the present time and they therefore regard it as taboo. These differences automatically preclude any form of close Franco-Nordic co-operation. In this argument neither side can claim to have a monopoly of the right ideas. The Struggle of the Situcratic Society: A Situationist Manifesto 93 Greco-Roman thinking is rooted in political and social theory. It is opposed to our own way of thinking because we believe that man as a hu- man being and individual stands at the centre of all worthwhile activity. Sartre's scholasticism has been called humanistic but in fact this human being is a socio-centric creature. The Franco-Belgian Situationists base themselves on the same principles as Pascal, Descartes, Grace and Gide. Action precedes emotion. Emotion is a primary, non-reflective intel- ligence: passionate thought/thinking passion. We are not saying that the French method is wrong or that it cannot be used successfully. We merely say that our two outlooks are incompatible, but they can be made to sup- plement one another. Lastly this: Scandinavian politicians who chose to ignore these fundamental differences will do so at their own peril. They will get an unpleasant surprise at the Nordic emotional reaction. The 2nd Situationist International is a freely organised movement. It is a voluntary association of autonomous work groups, whose programme as agreed in Stockholm is briefly as follows: A. Freedom for science and intellectual life. Scientific knowledge shall be pooled. The achievements of science belong to society as a whole. A world organisation must be set up to ensure that scientific discoveries are made to benefit all mankind. Scientific inventions shall not be sequestered by individual states or departments of state. Science shall not be used as an instrument of repression or terror. The new world organisation will resemble UNESCO, but without being dominated by any single political power group or alliance. It shall be based in Prague. But Czechoslovakia must be released from its satellite attachment to the Soviet Union. This is a perfectly feasible demand. It is inevitable that scientific knowledge and technological skills should be unevenly distributed throughout the world. It is therefore impossible to socialise science on a global scale. But the achievements of science can and shall be made available to all. B. Art shall be for the benefit of mankind. Art and culture can only function properly when they are free from political interference. It is nec- essary to establish autonomous centres of cultural activity and colleges for 94 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere the people. Such institutions will come under the protection of the new UNESCO in Prague. C. The labour movement was once considered to be the salt of the earth. Today it is more like a milk cow whose udders are being pumped in an ef- fort to get more and more material benefits at the expense of the mind. All the same our material standards have not risen to such great heights when seen overall. We have the spectacle of society which, on the one hand, is consumer-minded but on the other hand is controlled by shopkeepers of every kind. They are in charge of business, politics and cultural affairs. The Situationist movement wants to achieve freedom of the mind. D. We shall work towards the accomplishment of the MUTANT pro- gramme of interplanetary economic expansion: the abolition of military designs, the destruction of all atomic weapons. If mankind is nevertheless doomed, we prefer that we should all perish together. We are opposed to any plan which favours the survival of a bunker aristocracy. Situationists and nordic rebels We admit that Scandinavians are feeble planners and probably even feebler at carrying out other people's plans. We do not always distinguish between theory and practice. We intend to produce our theories after the event. Now that we have become involved in a Situationist evolution we are planning towards feasible objectives. The French work exactly the other way round. They want everything straight before they start and everybody has to line up correctly. With them it is fall in or get out. As for strategy, they believe in frontal attacks regardless of the costs. They do not seem to realise that by making weak frontal attacks they are playing into the hands of the enemy and wasting their own strength. It pays the enemy to provoke such attacks. We do not believe in this strategy. Another important difference is this. The Scandinavians strive to- wards reform whereas the French aim at Revolution. We build on the past and we let new ideas grow out of past experience. This can be called an organic principle, it can also be called ultra-conservatism. The Struggle of the Situcratic Society: A Situationist Manifesto 95 Today terms like conservatism, progress, revolution and reaction- ism have become meaningless. The terminology of liberalism is equally fatuous and played out. There is no point in using phrases of this kind for the Nordic philosophy of situations which is essentially tradition-directed Herein lies our strength. On this we base our ideology and our working principles. If the French Situationists cannot accept our view, they must make their own plans and go ahead independently. There are some people who will fail to grasp the significance of the Situationist struggle. The head-on collision in which we are involved will strike them as inexplicable. But we are convinced that one day this phase will be seen as an event of primary importance for Europe: the moment before a decisive breakthrough. To those who think that a verbal battle is not worthwhile, we would like to say this: A word war is better than a world war. SIGNED: Jorgen Nash (Denmark); Jens Jorgen Thorsen (Denmark); Gordon Fazakerley (Great Britain); Hardy Strid (Sweden); Staffan Larson (Sweden); Ansgar Elde (Sweden); Jacqueline de Jong (Holland); Patrick O'Brien (Eire) (Members of the Stockholm Conference in August 1962). "The Struggle of the Situcratic Society: A Situationist Manifesto", The Situationist Times, no. 2, 1962, and Drakabygget, no. 2-3, 1962. 125 CO-RITUS MANIFESTO Jens Jorgen Thorsen, Jorgen Nash & Hardy Strid 1 The Renaissance is irrevocably over. And if we did not work on eradicating it, one day it would eradicate itself. 2 With an enormous bang. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0... 3 In the European cultural tradition there is an insurmountable barrier be- tween performer and audience. This barrier is blocking cultural evolution and threatens to make all of us into twaddling fools in the supermarket of the culture industry and victims of an anonymous repression on an unheard-of scale. 4 We want to create new rituals. Rituals are human thinking shaped in so- cial patterns. Every cultural pattern is a ritual. 5 'The European cultural tradition is as one-eyed as the individualised cen- tral perspective of the Renaissance. From here there is only one position to View things from at a time: the position of the artist or the audience. The cultural ritual created in this way by the Renaissance made the exhibition a confining trap, which Tinguely, Happenings, Fluxus and the Nouveau Realists are still helplessly caught in. 126 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere 6 Individualism is utopian. However, it became the defining perspective of European culture and it produced the divide between the individual and the group, between the ideal and the banal, between art and anti-art, be- tween the creator and the sheep. It produced the spectator, the consumer. It produced Communism, Cubism, Liberalism, Fascism. Now the utopian epoch is over. No more utopias can be produced. Time has run out. 7 The perspective of the Renaissance became the leap of technology, but at the same time it became the pretext for doing nothing in cultural life. 8 Tradition tells us that when it comes to the artist or the spectator it is sub- lime or banal. We say: from our point of view art is happening in the space between. In the space between people, in the space between the sublime and the banal. It is the very functioning of art we want to change. It is here and now it is happening. 9 We are de-christianising the idea of the Folk High School. We are de- animising the African tradition. We are stealing and borrowing as we feel like. We are using the heritage. Moreover, we allow ourselves to play with it. 10 This is the first time it has been said to the audience: Come and join us. Get down to it. Everybody has right of appeal, Jens Jorgen Thorsen, Jergen Nash & Hardy Strid CO-RITUS Manifesto 127 11 CO-RITUs is washing art shining clean. It is the bomb under cultural life. But we do not need to attempt assassination. Cultural life has been at a standstill since 1850. "CO-RITUS Manifest", leaflet written for the CO-RITUS show at Galerie Jensen, 1962. Translated by Jakob Jakobsen. Conversation opened. 1 read message. Skip to content Using Gmail with screen readers in:sent 115 of 1,130 Jorn etc.—the rest kac attac Thu, Sep 21, 2023, 6:48 PM to Stefan 206 CO-RITUS INTERVIEW: ART IS POP - CO-RITUS IS ART DIVIDED WE STAND Jorgen Nash & Jens Jorgen Thorsen Nash: Situationism is not a new 'ism' in art - it is a form of action and a way of life. A command of the moment and a utilization of its possibilities. Situationist art does not yet exist, but there are situationists working artistically with the problems of life, attempting to find a new and more living art. When situationists are being lumped together with people who set up new art movements it is because the Situationist International has been attractive for people from three categories: namely, image makers, writers and architects. This had to do with the situationists' attempt to change the conformist and sterile environment in which we live, for in- stance in the cities. Q: What is the situationists' relationship to society? Thorsen: Any potential change of society is conditioned by the cultural possibilities. A classical example is Marx and Hegel. The essential in situ- ationism is the relationship of human beings to the forces of creativity; it is the intention to realize these forces through moments of creativity. The situationist idea is based on the use of art and the forces of creativity directly in the social environment. There is both a French and a Scandinavian Situationist International: the First and Second Situationist International. The First International wanted a unitary organization of the city and believed that they through a Freudian method could create the possibilities for a new urban plan; an architecture constructed according to the inner desires of human beings desires they believed could be evoked by a quick passage through various unfamiliar environments. They claimed that there was no situationist art. Jorgen Nash and Jens Jorgen Thorsen CO-RITUS Interview 207 We believe that situationism is art and the creative human being (the art- ist) has to get involved in the social situation. We do not believe that the organization of life is a matter of statisties (statistics are also used within advertising), but a question of artistic creation - the re-organizing of the situations. That is why we claim that situationism is art. Art can only be produced through an experimental activity (CO-RITUS, the concert in the spiral maze at Malmo Town Hall, CO-RITUS at Aarhus Student Society and various wall painting actions are some of our experiments). The Parisian Situationists believed in accordance with their dia- lectical materialist perspective that human beings are produced by their environment. Contrary to this we believe that the source of life is the continuous realization of new possibilities of inter-human activity. Our re- lationship to Marxism and the radical-liberal Western concept of society is that we are at the same time reconstructing both systems from the inside. This is because both systems are on the threshold of entering the same phase, which consists of two elements: 1. A conformization, which in the East takes the form of a political and cultural regimentation, and in the West manifests itself as a schematic commercialized consumerism. 2. An increasing wealth that sets human beings free, economically speaking. (This development is neither a result of Marxism nor Liberalism, but a result of the technological progress). Q: You are publishing a magazine Drakabygget for art against atom bombs, popes and politicians? Nash: It is an organ where the anti-authoritarian tendencies within situ- ationism are expressed. It has been said that we have turned against the Catholics and the welfare state. That is not the case. We have been fighting the enemies of total freedom of expression within culture. By popes we mean not only Pope Paul in Rome - the guy with the piles pillow - but also Pope Knud at Louisiana in Humlebaek - the guy with the big soft cheese. The Scandinavian version of the welfare state has the social sympathy of the situationists. It is wholly a good thing that the work hours are being shortened. The grotesque thing is that this development has created a new problem: the problem of free time. According to the situationists this is 208 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere a result of the monopolization of both the artistic freedom of expression and the human freedom of expression. In the communist countries the workers did take over the means of production, but the free artists got kicked in the ass by the commissioners. In Western Europe and America it is the cultural entrepreneurs (the pop cultural stronghold of Gutenberg House and its cultural commissioners at the police station in Antoniegade, Jens Frederik Don't [Lavar] from the television and the careerist Peder Norgard with his top job at the National Radio Centre), who are control- ling the publishing houses, film production, newspapers and art exhibi- tions. These latter are again categorized into those authorized by the state and those which do not suit the authorities. We have asked who is going to take over the artistic means of produc- tion? All the wonderful technological innovations such as radio, TV, film, rotary press, off-set printing machines, etc. They should not exclusively become the artists' toys. All these things have been invented to be utilized by the spiritual intelligence, and not by a bunch of cultural entrepreneurs or commissioners, which both in the East and the West are mouthpieces for an enormous control apparatus filled with mentally deaf-mute and col- our blind fools. Our recent action at the pedestrian street in Copenhagen Stroget had the motto 'the uncontrollable art' and it shows what potentials there are when artists utilize those rights which are normally wielded by advertising. Erik Knudsen's campaign against Radio Merkur, the adver- tising industry, etc. was an indication of sympathy towards everything authoritarian, e.g. the State Radio. I believe if an artist is not allowed to express himself through a programme in the monopolized state radio, then it should be possible for him to work with the technological intelli- gence - the radio amateur - as a pirate on the air. And if he cannot express himself in the authorized magazines without being subject to censorship, then he must start his own magazine. It is of utmost importance that he does not give up, which is to say, that he doesn't shut up with what he wants to communicate. Q: What role has the audience in CO-RITUS? Thorsen: The position of the audience is impossible within CO-RITUS. CO-RITUS wants to abolish the notion of audience - not like Fluxus that Jorgen Nash and Jens Jergen Thorsen CO-RITUS Interview 209 bores them into leaving or makes fools of them by making dry caricatures of European theater - but by making the audience co-creators. By real- zing the idea that art is not something which unfolds either inside the artist or inside the spectator, but is a game unfolding between people, we are contributing to the renewal of the terms of art, the process of creation and social construction. The basis of art at present makes it a more ad- vanced evolutionary step than pop. That is the reason why we have made the controversial slogan (which of course is not totally correct): Art is Pop - CO-RITUS is Art. To make a human being into a spectator is like cutting off his balls. We have nothing against pop or advertising. I love milk even though it is promoted in advertising. We are against those forms which are allowing freedom to pop and not to art. This is our weapon against pop, which the anti-pop people do not have, and it became clear at Stroget and in Montergade where the police used all their powers to stop us. The anti-pop people are lame theoreticians and the advertising business, eg. the newspaper Politiken, have cashed in on them. Q: Should art be ethical, aesthetic or activating? Thorsen: The term ethics is part of a problematic about ways to activate oneself and, at times, activate other people. The term aesthetics has been discussed in so many versions that it could mean either ethics or a way to activate. I can only understand the question as meaning that the interviewer himself believes that art is a way to activate. I agree: Art is simultaneously an ethical and an aesthetic way to activate human beings. Nash: Divided we stand. It is important in culture that there is space for people with alternative ideas. Other rules apply to art than to the world of unions. On the trade union banners it said: 'United we stand'. This led to victory in many areas. If we are to produce a prosperous cultural lite, and not the present-day version limited by the authorities, then the slogan must become 'Divided We Stand. "CO-RITUS interview. Kunst er pop - CO-RiTUS er kunst - Uenighed gor stark", Aspekt, no. 3, Translated by Jakob Jakobsen. THE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS NOT FOR SALE Ladies and Gentlemen! We believe you agree with us in that you yourselves, much more than the police, are able to decide whether or not you want to listen to our music. Furthermore, I believe that our voices are not much more noisy than the various bands from the Royal Guards. We want a lively pedestrian street for the people. We are therefore making this protest against the patronizing attitude of the police to the citizens. - Flemming Quist Moller We, folk musicians, fiddlers and street painters wish hereby to express our disapproval of the ministry, the police or any law which prevents the freedom of expression from unfolding itself. We believe that folk art is the art of the people and it has the right to be among the people. Our opinion is that the people love their own art and want it to be performed in an unofficial manner without the artists being stopped by the authorities. Folk musicians and street painters work with and need the contact with the people in order to be able to find new ways in Danish folk art. Therefore, ministers, mayors and police chiefs: Stop the persecution of the artists when they work in the streets. The streets are just being transformed into what they are meant to be - festive streets for the people. - Bjarne Casar Rasmussen The Freedom of Expression is not for Sale 251 Through this protest, art enters its communicative phase. The artists are taking over their natural field of activity. Opponents are trying to stop this phase by means of film censorship, image control and musie prohibition. They attack art's freedom of expression with their art placed on pedestals and their bourgeois music. We answer this attack by placing art where it belongs and can live. We encourage artists, architects and city planners to take over their natural field of activity, in order to work out the problems through unitary urbanism, CO-RITUS and integrated art. These are the current methods of changing the conditions of life, the possibilities for self-expression through a revision of the environment. Today, in the period where poetry is approaching picture making, where pictures are approaching theatre, where the theatre is approaching action. Today we urge: Let us make the city into a radiant workshop for the new art. Art will get new power with CO-RITUS - The Örestad Experimental Laboratory: Thorsen, Nash, Strid & O'Brien "tringsfriheden ikke til salg", leaflet from the street festival and occupation of Streget. Copenhagen 1965. Translated by Jakob Jakobsen. THE COMMUNICATIVE PHASE IN ART: AN ESSAY ON THE DEATH OF ANTI-ART Jens Jorgen Thorsen The Absence of God is not a limitation anymore. It is the threshold to Infinity. God's absence is greater. This is more divine than God. Night is a sun too, the absence of myth is a myth too. The coldest, the most pure, the only genuine. Georges Bataille The communicative phase in art consists in establishing communica- tive fields. CO-RITUS is such an establishment of a field of communication. The basis of this phase is the disappearance of the spectator (which isn't the same as the disappearance of the audience) and his replacement by the participator. A communicative art is an art which lives between. In the space between people. From that point of view art is no longer just a form of the aesthetic, of the philosophical, of the chronological or of mental space. Art becomes a function in the social conception. The social space. Looked upon this way through the communicative glasses (Fjord), the organisation of society, the social patterns, town-complexes, business companies, production companies, stock-car racing traffic, toilet draw- ings, dancehall life, farming and festivities all become manifestations of artistic value or at least have artistic possibilities. The tradition of exhibiting art is in this case a work of art as are the paintings in themselves. So the communicative phase of art shows up when you take the consequences of this conception. Today I recommend: Take the step now. Join CO-RITUS. Hans Jorgen Thorsen The Communicative Phase in Art: An Essay On The Death Of Anti/AM 257 In the CO-RITUS manitesto of 1961 you will find fundamental state- ments on this point. Anti-art is moralisation The Karl Marx and Hegel theories on alienation. The theory of alienation is based upon the idea that man is fundamentally good. But made evil, alienated from his actions by evil surroundings. An assembly-line worker is alienated from the results of production. In a bad State the human be- in is alienated. These theories pushed forward the Bert Brecht theatre. The epic theatre. As a contrast to the dramatic theatre, where one is only able to iden- tify oneself with the action. Cry when the hero cries (Brecht). The epic theatre leaves the spectator free to choose because it tells a story. According to Brecht you have the possibility to laugh while the hero is crying. The epic theatre inherently creates estrangement, the dialectical opposite to alienation. This means that people put into a position as alien- ated from the story on screen are not alienated from themselves anymore. They get back the possibility of judging and thinking. Being able to choose whether to be a 'yes-man' or a 'no-man'. Mixing the epic theatre with the dramatic one, the absurd theatre was born. Intended progressively, it was an answer to Brecht from the side of free art. Containing its seducing cock- tail of emotions. Mixing the absurd theatre with Zen Buddhism, Happenings rose, growing into environments, Fluxus, etc. The method of Zen is to create alienation by means of nature itself, observing the universal auto-motion long enough to be able to attain Satori, the highest knowledge. Inspired by Zen, which refuses all books, formulations and pictures (they got the nickname the 'stink of Zen'), anti-art tried to push back art in tavour of morals. Tried turning the artist into an anti-artist and the anti- artist into a moraliser. According to the Zen sentence which goes If you meet the Buddha, Will him and if you meet the patriarchs slay them at your feet: The anti-art 258 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Tents from the Situationist Mowement in Scandinovic and Ebsentere was born in the late 1950s because of this myth about the disappearance of contents in favour of a basic conception. If you happen to meet the fine arts: kill them. Anti-art is art too. The absence of art is not a limitation anymore. It is the threshold to art itself. Anti-art is greater. It is even greater than art itself. A Goodyear tire by Oldenbourg, a can by Kaprow, a pair of blood- stained trousers presented by Nam June Paik, a card game by Dick Higgins, a burp from Vostell or the empty space pointed out by Eric Ander-Zen. All these are things of beauty. Poems transformed into action, exhibited in- stead of painted. Each detail a thing from the surroundings placed on the screen with some purpose or after a certain plan. Exactly as La Gioconda (Mona Lisa) or another object from somewhere painted on the canvas in the traditional way. So Art in the classic tradition leaves the spectator just as open as does the so-called open performance. Because of that the salt-dealer Marcel Duchamp and Picabia were able to give her the official name LHCOQ (her ass is hot) and a little mous- tache a la Strid. Volf Vostell for instance would never allow you to put a moustache on him during a performance. An audience at a Happening is still sitting gazing as if it were in a theatre or in front of a painting looking for the true basic conception. The conclusion: is open art any different from basic conception? Is it still art? Jorn Zorn Silkeborg. Using the theory of complementarity by Niels Bohr, my colleague and former co-operator Asger Jorn attacks me because of my theory concern- ing the disappearance of the spectator (in the Copenhagen paper Politiken and later on in English in The Situationist Times). As he at the same time attacks the Bohr theory calling it a blind road (in his book De Division Naturae) I must confess that I find this without consequence. 259 The spectator is anyhow dead, Jorn states in The Situationist Times. In any case it is impossible for the spectator to exist. In this he quotes the Bohr theory stating that observation changes the object you observe. An electronic microscope for instance changes the electronic relations in objects observed through it. I quote Bohr: Studying the primitive tribes the ethnographer is not only aware of the dangerous interruption he can cause to the culture through his touch upon it. He is also very often himself on his own body feeling how deeply his own way of life, his philosophy and mind can be changed through such studies. Especially I am thinking of the well-known observation among explorers, that prejudices they were not even aware of before could be shaken deeply through the harmony human life creates, even under habits and traditions quite different from their own' Stating the death of the spectator four years after it had been stated in the CO-RITUS manifesto, Jorn is rather a little late. We are glad of his agreement. But he does not understand the basics of my argumentation: the death of the spectator is mutually the death of the classic artist. Jorn still works as a classic artist on classic art according to classic perception. Taking the position of the sublime creator he evidently never under- stood the idea nor took the consequences of it. The consequences are taken in communicative art. With the CO-RITUS placing of art in new relations. CO-RITUS is not anti-art. So CO-RITUS is not just another death sentence of art. CO-RITUS only states the conception that the communicative field is not situated where the Renaissance tradition tried to put it. Artists in the Renaissance tradi tion from Zorn to Jorn and from Jorn to Zen have been aiming at another level than the one their works are to be found on. When Jorn tells me (in Luck and Chance 1963 edition) that the spectator shows up because of hunger, I must answer that a spectator cannot be filled up by being in the spectator's position. And when Vostell tells me (Charlottenborg 1964) I want to isolate man from the mass so that he feels lonely and sees himself", then I have to answer that the absolute loneliness is impossible as far as I can see. You cannot mirror yourself without a mirrOr. 260 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere The communicative phase of art is not death of art, but its expansion Nor do we intend to kill traditional art. But we proclaim disappearance of an illusion, a lie. We take the consequences: a) through turning the spectator into a participator b) through turning the artist into an urbanisor c) through turning the possibilities of art into the possibilities of the social space d) through turning the functional urbanism into a communicative one e) through turning the fixed picture into a un-composed one f) through turning communism into communicativism g) through turning passing (derive) into CO-RITUS, etc. Very soon the time will come when work starts moving its wings in order to fly away. A new time is emerging, carried to a new social balance by servo-technology, automatics and cybernetics. Changes which will make possible the disappearance of economical circulation in favour of so- cial circulation of an artistic type. Therefore the old French Situationistic theory on passing (dérive) is now completely worn out. Guy Debord's theory stated that by passing (dériving) rapidly through completely un- known surroundings of labyrinthine character, people should be forced into a 'verfremdungs'-situation wanting to express new wishes for a new urbanism. Labyrinths of this sort were named dérive-labyrinths. To me this theory always seemed nonsense. As a sort of answer we built the Spiral Labyrinth in the Malmö Town Hall (though the French mathematician Max Bucaille in The Situationist Times No.3 tried to prove that a spiral labyrinth is impossible, it is only impossible plane-geometrically). In the CO-RITUS labyrinth it was made possible for the public to participate in various activities: building, painting, playing, etc. The process was not passing (deriving) anymore but communicative creativity. Non-formal The passing (dériving) theory was getting weaker. The idea of commu- nication was growing. This weakening was the real problem behind the many breaks between the Situationist groups. In order to investigate these new fields the Örestad Experimental Laboratory in 1961 started Jans Jorgen Thorsen The Communicative Phase in Art: An Essay On The Death Of Anti-Ar 261 the neo-urbanistic experiments directly in the towns. For instance on the main streets of Copenhagen. Often in open conflict with the police and the academic state-authorised artists. In 1965 eight thousand folk singers, youngsters and our group of artists made the biggest experiment in this field ever. Starting in 1962, CO-RITUS concertos were arranged in such towns as Copenhagen, Göteborg, Lund, Uppsala, Aarhus, Malmö. CO- RITUS-manifestations took place and the results were discussed in the ÖRESTAD-conferences. After three years of eager experimentation, hav- in been through Scandinavia's most-discussed artistic manifestations I must confess that the results are still rather unclear. The possibilities seem endless. We are now just at the starting point. Where else in today's tired art world of stylistic reprises do you find that? This will soon enable us to wave goodbye to anti-art. Anti-art came to Scandinavia after CO-RITUS was started and it will disappear before CO-RITUS. We understand the anti-artists' blaming of the audience, the anti-artists' distaste for discipline and their attempted actions which are a latent longing for new changes. We praise with joy the new signs of understanding which we are finally seeing after many years. Our experimental concertos in the street are starting to gather successors. (Especially we have enjoyed Jean Marc Quineau's cent mille poems, the Vagn Steen osmotic theatre, the Peter Boonéan shooting pictures, the Bengt Rooke Wroom Rooms). So today we recommend, in the period when poetry is getting near to picture making, pictures are getting near to theatre, the theatre is getting near to action. Today I urge: Let us make the city into a radiant workshop for the new art. Art will get new powers with CO-RITUS. "The Communicative Phase in Art: An Essay On The Death Of Anti-Art", Jens Jorgen Thorsen, Hardy Strid & Jorgen Nash (eds): Situationister i Konsten (Orkelljunga: Edition Bauhaus Situationniste,1966). GENERAL REMARKS Bengt Ericson &J.V. Martin 1 After fifty years of permanent counter-revolution, the prevailing world, the society of the spectacle, once more stands face to face with the mortal enemy that it once thought it could defeat with the aid of words with a false face value: the working class. Not once, but many times, the existing spectacular society, with the aid of its epigones - the so-called socialist, communist and trade union bureaucrats - has made the working class understand that it 'exists in reality in a fully modern, classless society'; but this society is no more classless than it is modern - even the use of the word reality' is an abuse and has nothing to do with the conditions of life offered in a society that is at bottom based on an unreal life, and in which the working class is constantly deprived of the huge potential it produces. The revolution-saturated signals which are now flooding over the world at the international level are a clear sign that the international working class is aware not only that it has had enough of these lies, but also that only one kind of society can exist that is at once real and modern: the classless society. The Situationist International which, in the light of the experiences of the past century from the proletarian revolutions, has developed a modern revolutionary theory, has for the last ten years attentively observed the signals of revolt in the period and its new types of subversive action, and has at the same time outlined the potential for an immediate realization of the revolutionary project - that is, the takeover of power by the people. This project involves nothing less than the creation of a classless society through the international realization of the power of the workers' councils. Such a society will form the necessary launching ramp tor the start of new, exciting experiments in the service of the innumerable possibilities for the development of a life that is truly alive. The modern revolutionary movement, which has nothing in common with the array of 278 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere old workers' parties and trade unions, demands everything and permits no limitations or schisms. If the struggle for the modern revolutionary movement at the moment looks the same as the one waged hitherto, this is exclusively because the necessary launching ramp, the classless society, has not been realized anywhere on this planet. 'For the future, all fundamental cultural creativity and every qualitative transformation of society will be deferred until progress is under way in all these areas jointly (Guy Debord in 'Destruction of RSG-6', June 1963). 2 In a situation where one state after another is shaking in its foundations, because the workers reject their own trade unions and make it clear that in future they will be sure to order their own affairs, and where sabotage and wildcat strikes are spreading as never before, one hears the shouts - loud enough even here in the Scandinavian countries - from the last shrivelled remains of a left wing that has long since detached itself from the working class: for a Marxist-Leninist party which will take the lead in the struggle of the working class. Whether they call themselves, in Denmark or Norway, SUF (Young Betrayers of Socialism), or in Sweden KFML (Christian Union of Mediocre Liars) or belong to one or another of the string of neo-, semi- or sub-Stalinist and Bolshevik groups'; they promenade (even on the streets, in transparent form) a purely theoretical 'underdevelopment, and still represent nothing more than the last desperate attempt on the part of individual power to conquer the proletariat's independent efforts (for they can be nothing else) at emancipation, and lead them into a path that can guarantee these groups or these individuals' future position as new capi- talists: state capitalism's 'socialist' bureaucrats. The modern revolutionary movement, on the other hand, is the radical critique of any ideology in the sense of the individual power of ideas and the ideas of individual power, and is thus opposed to the schizoid work of such groups. The only area where such groups can still maintain their illusions is therefore within the so-famous 'underdeveloped countries'; faithful to the idea of individual power they therefore devote all their energy to mobilizing the ecumeni- cal left wing and the Stalinophile bourgeoisie to get them to grant their Bengt Ericson &J.V. Martin General Remarks 279 most unreserved support to the so-called Third World's national liberation movements, and to a grovelling admiration for the world's most gigantic bureaucracy: China. Since the blinkers of their ideology, customized for the purpose, prevent them from seeing what is really happening in the society of the spectacle, they remain blissfully in their belief that the Third World's liberation movements can form models that can be applied to a highly industrialized society, and thus fail to see that what these national liberation movements are working for are societies that are equivalent to the highly industrialized ones, and thus a 'status quo relationship' in which a modern revolutionary and international movement cannot accept involvement. But it is in such situations that the workers in the highly industrialized societies learn to know their enemies, and when these work- ers set their plans in motion, the efforts of the left wing are reduced to a level that can be compared to pure sewing-club blather. In a world without intelligence the working class in fact represents the greatest intelligence; and it thus knows better than anyone that a Marxist-Leninist party or any other party can only stage a new spectacle, a new fabrication in the form of new representations, classifications and ideology - that is, a new carrot that new party bosses can dangle in front of the cart to get the donkey to pull a load that is neither newer nor easier to pull than the old one. Ideology always serves those in power, functioning exclusively as a tool for the use of the new power specialists. Whether they call themselves SUF, KFM-L, FLN ete., etc., these groups are in error: they are no longer living in 1921, and even then the massacre of the Kronstadt Soviet shows that they were wrong. For the modern revolutionary movement it is crystal- clear that such groupings have nothing more to show than the old rags of the fallen revolution; they have nothing to do with the revolution of our time. And just as the workers have already driven out the clergy, the days of specialized activity and the defenders of the false revolution are numbered. Wherever a party exists, there is no freedom! 3 United as they are within the reactionary left wing, these adherents of the pseudo-revolution are the best protective corps and reinforcers of state 280 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere power. Their spectacular falsification of all revolutionary actions and ideas is precisely a necessary guarantee of the continued existence of the state, either in its bourgeois-democratic, its bureaucratic popular-democratic or its explicitly reactionary form. How could it be otherwise, when one knows that the imprint of this or that state in the form of language, mor- als, customs and taste has always been able to constitute fifth columns in the mind of a pseudo-revolutionary. In Greece the seizure of power by the Junta, made possible by the defeat of a genuine revolutionary move- ment after the end of the war, has been a welcome and timely example for all Stalinophiles who labour for the continued persistence of the state. "Serving the interests of the people' is the name of the spectacle with which they can attract applause from hands clapped pale-pink by the 'demo- cratic' powers in other countries. Through its court-jesterish participation in the societal arena of the power elite, such a reactionary left wing serves to confirm the truth of the statement made by the S.I. in 1958: "We are not working for the spectacle of the end of the world; but for the end of the world of the spectacle". 4 Subjected to the prevailing spectacular society of one or another state bureaucracy, the imbecile left wing's well-staged 'demonstrations' demon- strate nothing but their own lapdog mentality. It is through such 'demon- strations' that the left wing's navel contemplation truly comes into its own and proves to us and the whole world that they have allowed themselves to be subjected to state bureaucracy's spectacular society-like demagogic script for mass suggestion - the FLN groups, which are most widespread in countries with the status of welfare societies, openly use the Vietnam War to compensate for their inability to combat the domestic state bureaucracy. Funnily enough, in France and Sweden these groups enjoy a certain good will from the state, which is accepted by these groups. The fact that they are at one and the same time both with and against the state may perhaps explain the groups' schizophrenic relationship with a state that they have never questioned: the Hanoi state. When the chorus therefore invokes its new gods (Mao, Che Guevara, Uncle Ho, ete., etc.) it only confirms what Bengt Ericson & J.V. Martin General Remarks 281 we already know: that those who claim to represent the revolution (which can contain everyone's boundless fulfilment of everyone's boundless de- sire) in reality represent the direct opposite of the revolution: a complete rejection of the realization of the subject and thus a profound contempt for the suffering of the masses. But the modern revolutionary, who is him- self a product of the existing society until he manages to make a future society a product of himself according to his own intentions, has no use for the deployment of martyrs and self-sacrifice, but rejects such things as the foulest type of spectacle which would itself be an impossibility in the spectacle-free society he himself announces. In a world built up through the realization of the subject, self-sacrifice is the only crime. 5 As a guarantee that crucial questions will not be asked, the assembly line of power produces an endless succession of pseudo-problems such as the problems of the negroes, women, youth, drugs, abortion and sport. Immediately the imbecile left wing goes tilting at these windmills, thus evoking gaping admiration from all sociologists, professors, 'intellectuals' and priests. But the fact is that these pseudo-barricades, all of which can be swept into the dustbin of history by direct revolutionary action, are de- liberately built up by state power and its fawning supporters so that no one will have the time to deal with the main issue, which is the removal of state power itself. This means that in these latitudes state power, because of the intelligence of its opponents, is permitted to engage in partisan tactics. The reactionary left wing's acceptance of the battleground marked out by state power for the solution of a left wing's leisure problems, where they fight on the half of the pitch where power wants them to (that is, its own half), can only be seen as an attempt to hide the truth that is so uncomfort- able to so-called socialists: their own fear of socialism. 6 From the computer for the preservation of class society, certain words have been retrieved: "democracy in the workplace' and co-determination The confusion that has arisen from the emergence of such placebos can 282 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere presumably be seen most clearly in the way the whole Springer press, from the far left wing to the right wing in international politics, wants the implementation of such an illusion; thereby also best hiding the real problem, which is WORK itself. It can come as no great surprise that all existing parties and parties under formation that have taken out a patent on the working class want to preserve this class for purposes of continued extortion, even if it means that the workers must be allowed to manage their own alienation. The party does not exist anywhere that will supersede the working class, along with work considered as work. The supersession of work is no 'utopian' idea (see SR 2); 'on the contrary it is the first condition for an effective supersession of the market-controlled consumer society and its splitting of every single human being's life into enforced leisure time' and working hours' These complementary sectors of an alienated life must naturally prompt a revolutionary working class to abolish all alienating work, thus enabling its own supersession considered as a working class. The external contradiction between leisure time' and working time' also involves an internal contradiction, where the relation- ship between utility and exchange value is endlessly reflected. Only beyond these oppositions can humanity create from its activities a goal for its will, its consciousness, and enter into a society that it has itself created. The total and direct democracy of the workers' councils is the solution to all the present schisms' (Supplement to SR 2). 7 If it were only a matter of replacing those in power with new powers, the status quo would be maintained; one does not abolish oppression with a few changes in the details, as patent left-wing bureaucrats apparently believe. The object is to abolish the powers that colonize daily life, thus creating the potential for a total transformation of everyday life through a permanent revolution of the everyday, such that a new day will truly be experienced as a new day. Instead of new masters we now demand that we become masters ourselves: masters without slaves, masters of our own lives. Here lies one of the main problems for a modern revolutionary mass movement. However, no such movement exists today; but the very fact of calling for it here creates the potential for its foundation. Bengt Ericson &J.V. Martin General Remarks 283 8 clearly bedazzled by its own parliamentarism-accepting party apparatus, a statement from the executive committee of an alienated organization that works with alienating means, Venstresocialisterne (The Left Socialists) in Denmark, reproduced in VS/BULLETIN 33, is revealing. Here we have a striking proof of the inviolability of the left-political' parties. The statement says: 'HB [the executive committee] rejects the idea of a new and better workers' majority without fundamental changes in the power structure in the form of the establishment of organs for workers' power. This workers' power cannot be delegated out to members of parliament and union representatives, but must be established and remain in the worleplace (emphasized by SR). Since we know that the experience of workers' councils and their power is greatly limited against the background of the bureaucrats' fantas- tic downplaying of this - the only, purest form of total democracy (which would after all also render them superfluous) - we must here present a minimum definition of the power of the workers' councils: Annihilation of all other powers. Direct and total democracy. Practical unification of decisions and their implementation. Delegates can be dismissed at any time by those who have elected them. The abolition of the pecking-order of the farmyard (the hierarchy) and individual specializations. cipated life. The conscious mastery and transformation of all the conditions of eman- The constant, creative, active participation of the masses. Internationalist dissemination and coordination. 284 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere 9 Since the Situationist International's construction of a situation that led to the coup against the student union UNEF in Strasbourg and its continu- ation in Nanterre and the Sorbonne, which triggered the whole French spring revolt in 1968, many sympathizers have succeeded in implement- ing similar situations elsewhere in the world. But in contrast to these places, in Scandinavia they encounter a compact mass of stupidity in a left wing that wears the mask of the false revolution. If a truly revolution- ary element were to try to develop a demonstration beyond the plans of a self-proclaimed demonstration leadership, such a revolutionary element - which in itself knows that it is not enough to rediscover radicalism in our time if it is not readjusted to correspond to the existing material equip- ment - will be regarded by the nobodies of an impotent left wing as provo- cateurs. Action thus ends not in creation, but in reaction, and it therefore risks being subjected to the 'fixers' of the 'demonstration leadership' who do not protect the demonstration from the police but the police from any revolutionary elements in the demonstration, who are then removed from the demonstration by these 'fixers' This corresponds precisely to what the CGT stated about the spring revolution in France: 'Firm action must be taken against all attempts to lead the workers' movement astray. Realizing the CGT's blunder would be the same as realizing one's own. Since no one will defend the revolutionary elements that are proclaimed provocateurs by the avant-garde of stupidity - well, we will do it. We will designate such a revolutionary element as Situationist - and this despite the fact that it may not be fully aware of the modern revolution's theoretical develop- ments and its future flexible reference point. 10 The sociology that analyses pseudo-life becomes a pseudo-science itself as a result, and can probably muster a whole army of pseudo-avant-gardes in the attempt to refute us. It is clear that we can be censured on the basis of traditional legalities, but since it is just as clear that an avant-garde can only have its field of action in the present, this will also mean that from the point of view of the history to come it will far more accurately represent this Bengt Ericson & J.V. Martin General Remarks 285 present than its censurers, whereby its criteria for the judgement of this epoch, contrary to the official values and in favour of the true values, will turn out to be correct. We are of course fully aware that such a theoretical development will mean that we have sentenced all those who thought they were our judges to exist in a delayed and therefore inauthentic present. When the last sociologist dangles from the guts of the last bureaucrats and capitalists, the world will probably have no more problems. Don't you think? since our theories are nothing more than the mini-life we are all forced to live and the possibilities of supersession that our world creates, the only critique of our activity that we can accept is a critique that arises out of the independent creation by the masses of the conditions of a liberated life. The revolutionary outbreaks of recent years have only been a confirmation of the rightness of our theory - now we wait impatiently for the realization of this critique to render the Situationist International superfluous. "Almene betragtninger", Situationistisk Revolution, no. 3, 1970. Translated by James Manley. IS THIS METAVILLE? A PROJECT FOR CREATIVE PLAY Jens Jorgen Thorsen in collaboration with Hoff and Ussing. Is this METAVILLE what the Situationists dreamed of for ages? The realisation of the Situtionists thesis of 1961 that the city and people's sur- roundings must be receptive to playful creative activity. Is it the decisive crystallisation of the Situationist desire for the people themselves to con- trol their surroundings and experiment with them? Is this the collective city we have wished for? Initial theory City planners are unable to identify with the real needs of the local envi- ronment. They cannot because it is not a question of their own needs. This is why they must base their theses on a simulated standard family and by this pretence have created the 'standard family. This typical family doesn't exist and never has existed, neither the Jensens, the Svenssons nor the Joneses. The major reason for the meagre potentials of surroundings and of life in modern residential areas is that the individual has no influ- ence upon his own residence or upon the communal surroundings. Man is cut off from his surroundings, even the local ones, and is isolated from his fellow man even in crowded cities. People are made helpless by unshake- able schemes in property rights. If we restore to people the right to plan and control their local sur- roundings and the larger environs, we will provide the basis for a great, new birth of cooperation, liberation through teamwork, a perpetual CO-RITUS. We will shape a constant party out of what was called everyday life. If we wish to provide an escalation of all this, we should at the same time cause a decline in its contraries. We need to diminish in order to cre- ate an escalation. Jens Jergen Thorsen Is this Metaville? 301 WE WILL DIMINISH: Planning from above, e.g. planning on behalf of others. WE WILL ESCALATE: The possibility of everyone's participation in the planning, the occupants' takeover of the planning. WE WILL DIMINISH: The responsibilities and authority of owners and housing boards. WE WILL ESCALATE: The responsibilities and authority of the occu- pants, the responsibilities and authority of the occupants' district. WE WILL DIMINISH: The monotony of high standards of materialism and the reign of mass products. WE WILL ESCALATE: Materials and building techniques which provide for flexibility and a wide range of choice in the areas of utility and planning. The basic idea 1: the technology In order to reach these goals, we have created a basic procedure which has two aspects: the one purely technical and the other concerned with developing and evolving various forms of governing. On the technical level, our plan is to provide a basic construction which the occupants themselves can continue and complete as they see fit. The main idea is to erect a skeleton, a main structure, a sort of landscape on which various sorts of construction can take place. The skeleton consists of two- or three-story platforms of concrete assembled from modular units, fully or partially manufactured, depending on which method is cheaper at the moment. On these platforms one can create apartments, institutions, shops, playgrounds, workshops at liberty. Flexibility has been ushered in by completely avoiding stable walls and by horizontal modular power lines in the installation's centre with variable connections. The high degree of repetition, combined with well-established build- ing methods, permits cheap construction and in stages, so that financing will not vary greatly between larger- and smaller-scale units in the build- ing process. 302 COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere Housing will fall into three categories: Category A: a complete house. The occupant designs the house, which is delivered fully constructed. Here there is little real chance of ad- ditional development other than joining and dividing, and creating life, and creating sheds and greenhouses on the terrace. Category B: a partially built house. What is delivered is a rough con- struction, with facade and bathroom. The occupant completes the house himself. Category C: is made by the occupant. He installs everything himself in the rough house. The basic idea 2: democracy The other basic point is occupant takeover of the control of the housing project at all levels. Governing has two aspects, private and communal. On the level of private control the occupants decide how their houses should look and how they should be built and equipped, what sort of con- struction materials should be used, etc. On the communal level, occupant democracy will grow in the most simple and natural way if it is allowed to echo the growth of the city. The occupants will create their surroundings together and they will themselves organise the services to be provided. It appears that the structure of government we suggest will be enable a form of organisation which is built from the bottom up. We conceive of an initial phase with the following groups: Group A: Street groups, approximately 100 of them. The street groups consist of about 15 to 20 housing units on both sides of a street. They are in charge of the common areas in the con structions around stairs, landings and indoors for active purposes. Group B: Cell groups, approximately 25 of them. The cell groups consist of from 40 to 70 housing units in a joint building unit. They are in charge of vegetation within their unit, a total of about 5,000 square metres which can be used for anything from swimming pools to animal quarters, open-air theatres or roller coasters. Jens Jorgen Thorsen Is this Metaville? 303 Group C: Neighbourhood groups, approximately 5 of them. The neighbourhood groups consist of about 300 housing units in the same geographical unit of construction. They are in charge of the streets, squares, and the common ground of about 5% of the housing area which contains nursery schools, kindergartens, meeting rooms, playgrounds, workshops, etc.. They decide how streets and squares should be designed and utilised. Group D: Landscape Government. There will only be one. The landscape government consists of representatives from all the neighbourhoods. It is in charge of nature, sports, and entertain- ment. It controls the entire housing area regarding the sale and rental of apartments, hotel operation, rental of the larger stores and the operation of the institutions of a more permanent and communal nature, for example, schools. A housing laboratory By these means the project permits the occupants themselves to partici- pate in the planning, construction and day-to-day direction of their areas to the greatest degree. But into the project is also built the possibility of providing a labora- tory where specific housing experiments can be made. In this lab it will be possible to analyze the experiments, as well as the whole building process as it proceeds, so that the direction and development of the process can be changed if the occupants see fit and in accordance with the results. These analyses will contribute to keeping the small stages in the black and the risks connected with popular ownership to a minimum. Investments in construction need only depend upon market demand, and one can elimi- nate faulty investment and the pressures on small investors' budgets which arise as a result of rental losses and empty apartments. The analyses from this lab, combined with the experiences and deci- sions of the occupants, will provide the best foundation for change and improvement during the process of building this project. "Is this Metaville?", Antinational Situationist, no. 1, 1974.