[Internationale Situationniste] PLANKTON The Quarterly Bulletin of the Plankton Society / Driemaandelijks tijdschrift van de Vereniging ter Bestudering van het Plankton / Revue trimestrielle de la Societe d’Etudes du Plancton, Vol. XXVIII, no.3, Aout-Septembre 1969 [wrappers]. Internationale Situationniste – Revue de la Section Francaise de l’I.S., Numero 12 [title page]. Paris: Internationale Situationniste, September 1989. 120 p.; ill.; 24.5 x 16 cm; beige/off-white wrappers with text printed in black.
Twelth and last issue of Internationale Situationniste, which was characterized by its length (at 120 pages, vs. 34-83 pages for earlier issues) and had a larger print run (10,000 according to Rapaud & Voyer). This was also one of only two issues (the other being no.10) to have some copies bound in fictitious, beige/off-white wrappers – in this case those of an apocryphal Plankton Society – instead of the typical glossy, SI-branded wrappers.
Shall we read into this substitution a clever form of detournement? Was this a way for the S.I. to mock its own “flashy” wrappers? Evidence points to a much more pragmatic reasons: such precautions were taken to facilitate clandestine distribution in Eastern Europe, where the S.I.’s subversive political writings may have elicited an undue amount of interest from the authorities. Specifically, the article “Reforme et contre-reforme dans le pouvoir bureaucratique” (translated by Ken Knabb at “Reform and Counterreform in the Bureaucratic Bloc) – an account of the USSR’s brutal intervention in Czechoslovakia – would likely have proven problematic.
We locate a single OCLC copy at the International Institute for Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam.
NOTE: 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.