Situationists

The Situationist International was a revolutionary avant-garde group active between 1957 and 1972, whose ideas and practices have proved influential and provocative in the decades since. The situationists are best known for their critique of the alienating and image-saturated conditions of ‘the society of the spectacle’, as most fully articulated by Guy Debord. They are also renowned for their role in the movements and occupations in France of May 1968. Their theoretical perspectives owed much to Marx, Hegel, Lukács, Lefebvre and earlier avant-gardes, especially dada and surrealism, but they were forged out of attempts to change everyday life and its situations. As such their activities cut across boundaries between politics, art and theory. The diverse, collective and changing nature of the situationist project continues to raise profound questions about the relationships between art and politics, and about political organisation; it also continues to inspire efforts to transform social life and space.