The construction of an international: Debord, Jorn, and situationist praxis

Abstract

ABSTRACTThough the Situationist International (SI) was a network connecting artists and theorists across Europe, scholars have mainly focused on its Paris branch. Guy Debord, its leading French member, has been cast as the undisputed author of situationist praxis and his ‘Rapport sur la construction des situation’ (1957) understood as the SI’s launching manifesto. By situating Debord’s ‘Rapport’ in its original context, this paper argues that the ‘Rapport’ should be seen less as an articulation of the SI’s aesthetic project than as the conceptual basis for an incipient transnational co-operation between the movement’s branches. Engaging the thought of the Danish artist Asger Jorn, who organised the conference at which the ‘Rapport’ was first delivered, Debord started a conversation in which the non-French participants were invited to be critical interlocutors. Through their discussion, I suggest, these theorists and artists not only together brought the SI into existence as a continental formation but also, by moulding the ‘Rapport’s’ concepts to new ends, shaped its organisational praxis. I conclude by considering how this reading of the SI’s emergence recasts our understanding of later situationist developments and theory.