[La Conspiration Depréssionniste] La Conspiration Dépressionniste Volumes I-V (2003-2008). Montreal: Moult Editions / Lux Editeur, 2009. 222 p.; ill.; 31 x 14 cm.; ill. tan wrappers with text in black.
Reprints the first 5 issues of the French-Canadian underground zine La Conspiration Depréssionniste (Trans: the Depressionist Conspiration), originally issued between 2003 and 2008 in 200 (issue #1) to 525 (issue #5) copies. Also includes other ephemeral publications by the group, such as Cahiers 76439 and Bulletin Dépressionniste 1. Three additional issues of La Conspiration Depréssionniste have since been published, and are available at Le Pressier.
La Conspiration Depréssionniste is the work of a small group: Simon-Pierre Beaudet, Jean-Sebastien Coté, Matthieu Gauthier, Yannick Lacroix, Jasmin Miville-Allard and Grégory Sadetsky are members of the editorial committee, with occasional or regular contributions by several others. The periodical takes its name from the group’s belief that late capitalism deliberately imposes an ugly, unassuming landscapes as a way to control the masses. A depressing environment, they theorize, is a way to inject feelings of boredom and resignation into the working class. The depressionist conspiration, then, is the (not-so-secret) attempt to preemptively quash revolutionary aspirations through grey, monotonous urban/suburban landscapes and architecture. The writing is mordant, when not outright scandalous.
The Situationist influence is clear. In a recent article « L’ennui est contre-révolutionnaire » : réappropriation des discours lettriste et situationniste dans la revue « La Conspiration dépressionniste » (2003-2011), Guillaume Bellehumeur demonstrates that “the Québécois journal ‘La Conspiration dépressionniste‘ appropriates the concept of ”détournement” as theorized by the Situationist International in the 1960’s, by employing it on the ideas of the very group who initiated the practice. Furthermore, it explains that the Conspiration forges the notion of ”dépressionnisme” using Guy Debord’s ”spectacle”, thus embodying its paroxysm. Finally, building on a comparative analysis of two Essais de description psychogéographique, the paper comments at length on where the theories of both groups most predominantly overlap – namely urbanism”.
We locate 5 OCLC copies.
Bibliography
Bellehumeur, Guillaume. « L’ennui est contre-révolutionnaire » : réappropriation des discours lettriste et situationniste dans la revue « La Conspiration dépressionniste » (2003-2011). in @nalyses. Revue des littératures franco-canadiennes et québécoise, v13 n2 (20180817): 10-38.
Simon-Pierre Beaudet et al. La conspiration dépressionniste, volumes I-V, 2003-2008. in Recherches sociographiques, v51 n3 (2010): 503.