Plankton... Vol. XXVII #3 (1969)

An undercover Situationist International publication disguised as an interdisciplinary journal of plankton studies, in order to facilitate clandestine distribution in Eastern Europe. (The regular edition of this number being rather flashy, with its metallic purple wrappers).

The cover features an imaginary table of contents for the journal of the fictional Plankton Society, wrapped-around the original text-block of the lengthy August/September 1969 issue of the Internationale Situationniste (No. 12).

The rear wrapper keeps-up the stunt, with mention of the annual fees for the Society, along with the theme of an upcoming special issue.

"Le revue trimestrielle de la Société d'Études du Plancton publie les résultats des recherches contemporaines, universitaires et industrielles, sur l'écologie, la biologie, la chimie biologique, les problèmes économiques etc., du plancton."

Or:

"The quarterly journal of the Plankton Studies Society publishes the results of contemporary academic and industrial research on the ecology, biology, biological chemistry, economic problems, etc., of plankton."

Contributors to the fake journal include:

"E. Pouget" which is presumably a reference to Émile Pouget, a French journalist, anarchist pamphleteer and trade unionist.

"Pr Parvus" which may be a reference to Alexander Parvus, a prominent 19th- and 20th-century Russian Marxist theorist, journalist, and revolutionary who famously aided Lenin during the 1917 Russian Revolution.

"M Jacob" could be Marius Jacob, a French anarchist and "illegalist" or perhaps Mathilde Jacob, a German typist, translator, and devoted confidante of the prominent Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg. as well as a founding member of the German Communist Party (KPD).

It is less clear who (if anyone) "G. Van Vollenhoven" was a reference to. Their article "gregarious behaviour in the I.CO. zone" is presumably a reference to Informations et Correspondance Ouvrières, a prominent French council communist group established in 1958 following a split from the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.1

According to Situationniste Blog:

This was also one of only two issues (the other being no.102 ) to have some copies bound in fictitious, beige/off-white wrappers.

Specifically, the article “Reforme et contre-reforme dans le pouvoir bureaucratique” (“Reform and Counterreform in the Bureaucratic Bloc) – an account of the USSR’s brutal intervention in Czechoslovakia – would likely have proven problematic [when distributed openly within Eastern Europe].

The owner states that, in this case, some copies would cross into Francoist Spain via networks of Spanish anarchist militants (from the C.N.T./F.A.I.) exiled in Northern (French) Catalonia.