September | 2019 | Situationniste Blog

Contemporary artist Vincent Meessen is holding an exhibition (“Blues Klair”) at the Powerplant in Toronto from 21 September 2019 to 5 January 2020. More about the exhibition and artist below.

It’s been our pleasure to lend a number of items related to Fundi (aka Caribbean Situationist) for this show, including the famed LP “None Shall Escape: Caribbean Situationist vs. Trevor Monroe”:

Caribbean Situationist / Fundi (i.e., Edwards, Joseph). Correspondence 1 –
June 1975. Kingston, Jamaica / St. Johns, Antigua / New York NY, USA, June 1975.
Caribbean Situationist / Fundi (i.e., Edwards, Joseph). None Shall Escape: Radical Perspectives in the Carribean. News from everywhere, London, July 1988.
Caribbean Situationist / Fundi (i.e., Edwards, Joseph). Unions versus Menegement (sic). Kingston, Jamaica: Abeng Group, October 1971.
Caribbean Situationist / Fundi (i.e., Edwards, Joseph). None Shall Escape: Caribbean Situationist vs. Trevor Monroe. London: Caribbean Situationist, June 1973
Caribbean Situationist / Fundi, i.e., Edwards, Joseph] Contributions Serving to Rectify the Opinion of the Public Concerning the Revolution in Undeveloped Countries. London: Caribbean Situationist, July 1973.

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Belgian artist Vincent Meessen often works collaboratively, drawing on the combined knowledge of collectives to conceive exhibitions and projects that investigate the construction of colonial modernity and its impact on contemporary experience.

Blues Klair is developed around the newly commissioned immersive film installation Ultramarine, which focuses on a mesmerizing spoken word performance of the self-exiled African-American poet Gylan Kain, whose performances in the late 1960s were a primary influence on the development of rap. Accompanying music is improvised by Belgian jazz drummer and percussionist Lander Gyselinck. In relation to notions of errantry, the blues of exile, belonging and the poetic power of the word, Meessen’s exhibition also excavates the archive of Patrick Straram, an exiled French Lettrist, jazz and film critic, who immigrated to Montreal in the mid 1950s. There, he maintained vigorous exchanges with figures of the French avant-garde and worked on his unfinished literary project “Blues Clair”. The exhibition links the emancipatory nature of these histories to the 1969 occupation of Sir George Williams University in Montreal (now Concordia University) by West Indian students, which marked the struggle for equality of Black and Caribbean people in Canada.

In the blue layered textile structure that frames Ultramarine and multiple references throughout, the colour blue is the chromatic, historical and discursive filter through which Blues Klair is experienced. It is an alternative way to read history through color, ultramarine referring all at once to a pigment, overseas territories, trade, colonial and slave routes.

Vincent Meessen (born 1971 in Baltimore, USA) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. He represented Belgium at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Solo exhibitions include Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse (2018); Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris (2018); BOZAR, Brussels (2017); Kunsthalle Basel (2015); KIOSK, Ghent (2013) and MUAC, Mexico City (2013–14). Meessen has also recently participated in group exhibitions at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2018) and Taipei Biennale (2016). His films have been shown in museums including Kiasma (Helsinki); MUMOK (Vienna); Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid) and Lincoln Center (New York), and in film festivals including IFFR (Rotterdam); IDFA (Amsterdam); Image Forum Festival (Tokyo) and FESPACO (Ouagadougou). Vincent Meessen is founding member of Jubilee, platform for artistic research and production.

[DEBORD, GUY]. Ne Travaillez Jamais! . Paris: Lyna, n.d. [ca. 1965-66]. 15 x10.5 cm.; ill. color postcard. Second printing (following the 1952-53 black & white version by Alaph)

Postcard designed by French postcard maker Louis Buffier featuring a colorized photograph of the famous “Ne travaillez jamais” (Never Work) graffito, for which Debord claims ownership. The slogan was scrawled on a wall on the Rue de Seine in Paris, likely in 1952. The young Debord was possibly influenced by Rimbaud, who wrote in his poem Vierge Folle: “Jamais, jamais je ne travaillerai” (Never, I shall never work). On the bottom-left corner, Buffier added the text “Les Conseils Superflus” (which can translate as “commonsense advice”).

Debord would reprint a photograph of the graffito in issue no.8 of Internationale Situationniste in January 1963. A few months later, he received a letter from the Cercle de la Librairie demanding a payment because of copyright infringement. In his response (found here in translation), Debord clarified that he was the author of the graffito, and sought to understand why the publisher had stolen his work. He received no response to his letter.

We locate a copy at Johns Hopkins University