Situationist Documents
"I'm proud
you call us gangsters, nevertheless you are wrong. We are
worse, we are Situationists" Jacqueline de Jong in Situationist
Times no 1, 1962
Thursday October the
2nd the exhibition Situationist Documents opens at the Copenhagen
Free University. Reception at 7pm. At 8pm there will be a screening
of the film La Dialectique peut-elle casser des Briques (Can
dialectics break bricks?), a revolutionary Kong Fu film created by René
Viénet in 1973.
The exhibition presents material from Jacqueline de Jong, J. V. Martin, Gordon Fazakerley and Peter Laugesen. We have asked for and collected material that in one way or another touch or interpret their engagement with the situationist movement. We treat this material as documents, as material expressions of a diffuse social movement stretched between revolutionary art and revolutionary politics. And this irrespective of whether it is a painting, printed matter, a pair of slippers, a texts etc. The exhibition does not attempt to construct a general pattern or produce an unambiguous reading of history. It has, however, appeared more interesting to us to speak to persons on the periphery of the situationist movement, than to those at the 'Central Committee'. In the exhibition there are also some documents we have produced ourselves, and a collection of publications from the situationist movement.
Jacqueline de Jong joined the Situationist International about 1960 as a young painter. She was excluded in 1962 and was co-signatory of the manifesto from the 2nd Situationist International later same year. At that time she also began to edit and publish the magazine The Situationist Times.
J. V. Martin, a painter who lived in Randers, Denmark. He became a member of the SI about 1960 through Jørgen Nash. Martin was from 1962 the editor of the Danish language magazine Situationistisk Revolution and was the organiser of several 'collective manifestations of the Situationist International' in Denmark, among those was the exhibition 'Destruction of RSG#6' held in Odense in 1963. He remained a member of the SI after the split in 1962 and until its dissolution in 1972. He died in 1993.
Gordon Fazakerley is a painter and co-signatory of the manifesto from the 2nd Situationist International in 1962. Together with Nash etc he took part in the establishment of the artist community of Drakabygget in the early 1960s, he produced the book Poems, Drawings, published by Bauhaus Situationiste and participated in the show Seven Rebels with de Jong, Nash, Thorsen etc. in Odense, Denmark, 1962.
Peter Laugesen approached in 1962 J.V. Martin at his farm in Randers, and in that way he became a member of the Situationist International. At several occasions he was in Paris to take part in the on-going debating and drinking sessions that took place in Debord and Bernstein's flat. He was excluded in 1963 because he chose to defend a text by Attila Kotanyi that was not liked by the central committee of the SI and resulted in the exclusion of both of them.
The exhibition is open on appointment and in relation to future events at the Free U. Call +45 3537 0447 to make an appointment.
Come and look.
Henriette Heise and Jakob Jakobsen
Thanks to all involved and the DCA that paid the translation and printing of Howard Slater's text 'Divided we stand'.
