The SI's Publications

Michèle Bernstein's article, The Situationist International, published in September 1964 in a special issue of Times Literary Supplement devoted to the avant-garde, ended as follows:

In a short space it is obviously impossible to develop any argument about situationist principles, or even to explain them with the necessary precision . . . Among the first intellectual groups who have so far had a chance to get to know these theses, the usual reaction is to ask if the situationists are serious, or if they are utterly mistaken and destined for unparalleled depths of stupidity. The situationists can guarantee that none of these doubts about them will be tenable in a hundred years' time.

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Upon the appearance in London in fall 1964 of the first publications by Alexander Trocchi's ‘Project Sigma,’ it was mutually agreed that the SI could not involve itself in such a loose cultural venture, in spite of the interest we have in dialogue with certain of the individuals who may be drawn to it, notably in the United States and England. It is therefore no longer as a member of the SI that our friend Alexander Trocchi has since developed this activity, several aspects of which meet our complete approval.

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Also in 1964, the notes and texts of three films Guy Debord were collected in the book Contre le Cinéma [Against Cinema], which was published in Aarhus by the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism. It should be noted that despite the laudatory character of this edition, no truly sufficient means of cinematic self-expression has ever presented itself to the situationists (it's still the age of Godard, you know).

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In Denmark in February 1965, J.V. Martin published his comments — weighed down by worsening conditions — on the proceedings instituted against the SI by the local branch of "Moral Rearmament" (Im Namen des Volkes). Danish translations of these texts were published by the Left socialist journal Aspekt: in its first issue, under the title To Realize Philosophy, To Realize Art, the "response to a questionnaire" from I.S. #9; and in issue 3, Theses on the Paris Commune from the tract Into the Trashcan of History. The same journal published some of the Spanish comics, reproduced many times in the European press, that gave rise to Moral Rearmament's charges.

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On 17 March 1965, situationists in Strasbourg interrupted a conference that attempted to honor the cyberneticist [Abraham] Moles and the sculptor [Nicolas] Schöffer. Our comrades used this occasion to distribute the pamphlet The Tortoise in the Window (Dialectic of the Robot and the Signal), as well as a reprinted Correspondence with a Cyberneticist, which featured in I.S. #9. According to the local paper of 28-3-65 (which must have expected an execution), "a tomato thrown in pure wastefulness at the beginning of the evening by a mentally limited situationist commando failed to disrupt the course of the conference . . ."

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Also in March, Uwe Lausen was excluded from the SI when he informed us of his intention to organize a happening in Munich.

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In July 1965, the SI clandestinely published a mimeographed Address to Revolutionaries, describing Boumedienne's recent putsch.

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The SI has not had the material capacities to continue publishing either the German language journal Der Deutsche Gedanke or the Danish Situationistisk Revolution, although a forthcoming issue of the latter is now on the drawing board. The much postponed project of a Dictionary of Situationist Concepts is currently underway in a more expanded form, under the direction of Mustapha Khayati (see his Preface published this issue).

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In November, the SI reissued the text of the Address in French, German, Spanish, English and Arabic. The following month, two supplements reprinted in the present issue were produced separately: The Class Struggles in Algeria, distributed in pamphlet form in that country; and an analysis of the Los Angeles riots, the English language brochure The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy.

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All correspondence for the journal Internationale Situationniste should now be directed to Boîte Postale 307-03, Paris. For the journal Acción Comunista (cf. our Contribution to a Program . . .): c/o F. Lardinois, 13 rue de Géron, Liège, Belgium. For the Zengukaren Federation: Hirota Building, 2-10 Kandajimbo-cho, Chiyoda Ku, Tokyo, Japan.

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