Qu’est-ce que le “situationnisme” [1966]

[BODSON, Guy] ANTOINE, Guy (pseud). “Qu’est-ce que le “situationnisme” in Le Monde Libertaire: Organe de la Federation Anarchiste. Paris, December 1966. 16 p.; ill.; two-sided printed on newspaper stock

This article, authored by Guy Bodson and published in Le Monde Libertaire, is the opening salvo of an internecine war within the Federation Anarchiste. Written under the pseudonym of Guy Antoine, the article offers a panegyric of the Situationist movement just a few months after the publication of De la Misere en Milieu Etudiant and the “Strasbourg scandal” in the Fall of 1966. The Situationist brochure had openly criticitzed the Federation Anarchiste: ““These people actually tolerate everything because they tolerate each other. ” Bodson, who was then a member of the editorial committee of Le Monde Libertaire, was quickly rebuffed by his colleagues. In the January 1967 issue of Federation Anarchiste, C-A Bontemps responds to Bodson in the most direct terms (translation is mine)

Guys your age are, in fact, unable to read the anarchist newspapers and pamphlets of the various tendencies that flourished during the 1900s. Because of this, they do not realize that they are discovering America. The texts of the brochure in question, I read them verbatim (style, intentions, insults) dozens of times before 1914. The Provos replace, less well, the activists of direct action. The Beatniks have replaced the individualists who wanted to be anti-social and, like many of these, they fall into line at age 25. "Situationist theory is therefore not as novel as it is said."

Early in 1967, the editorial committee of Le Monde Libertaire is dissolved by Maurice Laissant. This leads to allegations of authoritarianism on the one hand, and the fear of a Situationist plot against the Federation Anarchiste on the other. Ultimately, this will lead to a split in the Federation Anarchiste. This story is discussed at length in La FA et les Situationnistes

Perhaps more importantly, Qu’est ce que le “situationnisme” is viewed by Debord as “the best article ever written on the subject” (Letter to Guy Bodson dated 11 Decembre 1966, see Correspondance vol. 3, p.180), and is thus worth a read.

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Note pour la reunion du 12 Mai 1970 [1970]

[VIENET, Rene] RENE-DONATIEN. Note pour la réunion du 12 mai 1970. n.p. [Paris], May 1970. 2 pp. (single sided); 21 x 27 cm. Black ink on thick white stock; two small edits in blue ink.

Important internal document that documents changes to be made to Internationale Situationniste ahead of issue #13 (which would never be released). Specifically, the issue was to open with a warning (Avertissement) penned by Debord. Includes a draft of the table of contents.

Original preparatory material to this last issue – including a draft of both the Avertissement and an (earlier / different) table of contents – can be found as part of the Gianfranco Sanguinetti archive (box 50), held at the Beinecke Library of Yale University.

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A l’occasion de son soixantième anniversaire, hommage à André Breton…C’était un mensonge [1956]

[LEVRES NUES and INTERNATIONALE LETTRISTE]. [A l’occasion de son soixantième anniversaire, hommage à André Breton…C’était un mensonge]. n.p. [Bruxelles, Belgium], n.d. [February 1956]. 1 p.; 14.5 x 11 cm.; black and red ink on cream stock.

Invitation card to a (fake) reception, to be held on the occasion of Andre Breton’s sixtieth birthday. The event was to take place on February 18, 1956 at the Lutetia, a luxury hotel located at intersection of Boulevard Raspail and rue de Sèvres in Paris. Guests who showed up at the agreed-upon date and place (just a handful according to French daily Combat, hundreds according to the weekly l’Express) soon realized they had been duped. Instead of a high-brow celebration of a Surrealist figure they stepped into a get-together of charcoal-wood merchants in Paris…

Marcel Marien and his comrades from les Levres Nues conceived the spoof. Invitation cards were mailed from Paris by members of the Internationale Lettriste. A few days later, a second invitation card was mailed from Belgium to the same recipients. It was identical to the first one, but admitted the wrongdoing (“c’était un mensonge” – “it was a lie”) and revealed its authors (“Les Levres Nues”). This is the one featured here

The spoof is celebrated in Potlatch #26 a few months later: “No one, however, had picked up on this deliberately ridiculous, which announced that Breton would seize this opportunity to discuss “the eternal youth of surrealism”

Referenced in Berreby p.332, BNF p.47, and Wolman (Defense de mourir) p.97. Not in Oeuvres or in Scheppe & Ohrt.

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Livre de Troels Jorn [2020]

JORN. ASGER. [Troels Jorn] Livre de Troels Jorn. n.p.: Les Amis d’Asger Jorn / Edition privee hors commerce, 2020. n.p. [32 p.]; ill.; 32 x 18 cm.; ill. covers with text in black. 4-page presentation brochure (14 x 21 cm.) and bookmark (18 x 4.5 cm.) laid-in

First French language translation of a book composed by Jorn for his youngest son, Troels, in 1949. Troels was only four years old at the time, and Jorn was separating from Kirsten Lyngborg – his wife, former student, and mother of his three children. The artist considered the book too personal, and chose not to publish it in his lifetime. In 1981 – Eight years after Jorn’s passing – a first facsimile edition was released by the Silkeborg Kunstmuseum (now known as the Jorn Museum). The original Danish edition was reprinted a few times, and the book has been translated into both German (in 2016) and English (in 2017).

The book tells the story of encounters between two animals. First, a lion tries (and fails) to eat a giraffe, then a pig, then an elephant. The starving lion ultimately gets help from the Aganaks – small, fantastical creatures imagined by Jorn.

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