Situationist News - December 1958

The average age of the SI, which was at the time of its foundation a little over 29 and a half (whereas only four years before, in the summer of 1953, the average age of the Lettrist International was established at slightly below 21), rose in only one year to the current figure of over 32 years.

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The reshuffle that occurred on the editorial board of this bulletin (the replacement of Pinot-Gallizio with Jorn) corresponds only to the fact that Gallizio, who continues to personally direct the production of industrial painting, must temporarily devote all his energy to this immense task.

W. Korun, however, who was not in a position to carry out the complete program of publications for Belgium adopted last May, is discharged until further notice from the responsibilities that he had assumed for the SI in that country.

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The fight against gaullism should not detach us from revolutionary combat in forms other than the economic and political. . . . The situationist enterprise appeals to the function which perhaps best expresses the freedom of man, and which is even the source of artistic creation: play. Such an experiment, placed in the perspective of integral revolution (to transform, indissolubly, all structures, material and spiritual, of collective life), cannot leave us indifferent.
— René Fugler, Le Monde Libertaire, no.41-42 (August-September 1958)

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. . . a self-styled "Situationist International," which imagines it is making a new contribution when in fact it is merely creating ambiguity and confusion. But is it not in such troubled waters that one fishes for a situation?
— Benjamin Péret, Bief, no.1 (November 15, 1958)1

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. . . our ambitions are clearly megalomaniac, but perhaps not measurable with the prevailing criteria of success. I believe all my friends would be content to work anonymously at the Ministry of Leisure in a government that would finally undertake to change life, for a salary commensurate with that of skilled workers.
— G.-E. Debord, Potlatch, no. 29 (November 5, 1957) [One More Try if You Want to be Situationists]

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The SI will study the development, for the purpose of constructing a series of situations there, of the group of buildings designed by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux at Saline-de-Chaux (see the short film by Pierre Kast devoted to the work of this architect).

A plan for the transformation of these buildings, which remain in a state of abandonment, will be developed and carried out as soon as circumstances permit. If the prospect of a ludic transformation of Saline-de-Chaux remains closed, the observations and conclusions of the plan could be adapted for the détournement of other European architecture.

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The refusal of the English ex-situationist Rumney to comprehend the definitive character of his exclusion, as announced in our previous number 2 , obliges us to restate that we have no interest in him whatsoever, neither for his ideas nor for his life. Anything he chooses to publish, on psychogeography or any other matter, in the review Ark or elsewhere, or whatever use to which he wishes to put the names of certain of our members, bears absolutely no relation to the SI.

Translated by Reuben Keehan. From https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/news.html