Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action [2023]

MILLNER-LARSEN, Nadja. Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 7 March 2023. 288 p.; ill.; 23 x 15 cm.; ill. Cover with text in black and white.

Art Historian Nadja Millner-Larsen authors the first book-length scholarly study of Black Mask.

“”With Up Against the Real, Nadja Millner-Larsen offers the first comprehensive study of the group Black Mask and its acrimonious relationship to the New York art world of the 1960s. Cited as pioneers of now-common protest aesthetics, the group’s members employed incendiary modes of direct action against racism, colonialism, and the museum system. They shut down the Museum of Modern Art, fired blanks during a poetry reading, stormed the Pentagon in an antiwar protest, sprayed cow’s blood at the secretary of state, and dumped garbage into the fountain at Lincoln Center. Black Mask published a Dadaist broadside until 1968, when it changed its name to Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (after line in a poem by Amiri Baraka) and came to classify itself as “a street gang with analysis.” American activist Abbie Hoffman described the group as “the middle-class nightmare . . . an anti-media phenomenon simply because their name could not be printed.” Up Against the Real examines how and why the group ultimately rejected art in favor of what its members deemed “real” political action. Exploring this notorious example of cultural activism that rose from the ruins of the avant-garde, Millner-Larsen makes a critical intervention in our understanding of political art.” (Publisher)

For more on Black Mask, see https://situationnisteblog.wordpress.com//?s=%22black+mask%22&search=Go

Auf der Reise zum Mittepunkt der Geschichte [1973]

PROJEKTGRUPPE GEGENGESELLSCHAFT. Auf der Reise zum Mittepunkt der Geschichte. Dü̈sseldorf : Projektgruppe Gegengesellschaft, n.d.[1973]. 1 p.; 49.5 x 69.5 cm.; ill. B&W comics on white stock

“Detourned comix style design promoting Situationist publications available through the Projektgruppe Gegengesellschaft in Dusseldorf, with prices in German Mark and Dutch Guilders added in blue handwriting. Contains a stamp on lower right corner of Bas Moreel, a publisher/distributor of anarchist literature in Wageningen” (Zwigelaar)

Projektgruppe Gegengesellschaft was a pro-situ German group that translated and published numerous SI and post-SI texts into German. These include Das Elend der Studenten und der Beginn einer Epoche (translation of De la misère en milieu étudiant from 1966 and “Le commencement d’une époque”, in Internationale Situationniste 12, 1969) , Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels (translation of La Société du spectacle, 1967), Handbuch der Lebenskunst fur die jungen Generationen (translation of Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations, 1967), etc. They appear to have published a periodical, Zero : alternativ Zeitung, 11 issues of which were released between 1972 and 1977.

We do not locate any OCLC copies, though Ken Knabb states that a copy is part of his archive at Yale University (see http://www.bopsecrets.org/recent/yale-inventory.htm)

Andre Frankin, Personne et les autres (1960) [2023]

FRANKIN, André. Personne et les autres (1960). Ed. Francois Coadou and Frederic Thomas. Toulon, La Nerthe, March 2023. 116 pages.

We are excited to announce the publication of a previously unreleased text by A. Frankin, one of the most obscure figure of the Situationist movement.

About Andre Frankin.

“André Frankin is not well-known and his impact on the lettrist and situationist movements are hard to measure” states scholar Jean-Marie Apostolides. André Frankin (also know “Robert Rivier” and “Léonard Rankine”) was born on 16 June 1925 in Liege, Belgium and died in the same city on 28 March 1990. Born into a middle class family, he suffered from neurological issues as a child that left him partially disabled – he walked and, at times, spoke with difficulty. Yet, he was viewed as intelligent and well-read. He first met Debord and the Internationale Lettriste through the Metagraphies exhibition in Paris in 1954. He then wrote several articles in Potlatch under the pseudonym “Leonard Rankine”, including “Perspectives of the Paris and London agreements” (Potlatch 15, December 1954). His contributions to the SI include: “Platform for a cultural Revolution” (Internationale Situationniste 3, December 1959), “Programmatic Outlines” (Internationale Situationniste 4, June 1960), and “Preface to the Scenic Unity” (Internationale Situationniste 5, December 1960).

For more texts by Frankin that we have located, see here (“Wilhelm Reich et l’economie sexuelle” in Arguments 18, 1960; and Le parti, le quotidien, in Arguments 25-26, 1962).

About Personne et les autres

From the editor (translation is ours):

The only play written by one of the members of the Situationist International (SI) – André Frankin (1925-1990) from Liège – Personne et les autres (1960) seemed irretrievably lost. We only knew about the play’s introduction, which was published in December 1960 in issue #5 of the Internationale Situationniste, and from a few mentions in the correspondence of Guy Debord. This was all the more regrettable since the play opened up, in Debord’s words, a new domain “for the Situationist scandal”, and because Situationist thoughts has since had a great influence on contemporary theater and performance. .

In 2015, the artist Vincent Meessen borrowed from Frankin’s book in choosing title of the group exhibition he organized for the Belgian Pavilion, during the 56th Venice Biennale. It was also discussed, in 2017, during the symposium The Situationist International and Contemporary Performance, organized at the Théâtre des Amandiers and the Théâtre de l’Échangeur.

Raoul Vaneigem recently found the typescript of Personne et les autres in his archives, and was kind enough to entrust it to us for publication

Publisher’s website:

https://lanerthe.wixsite.com/editionslanerthe

Internazionale Situazionista – Corrispondenza con un’editore [1972]

INTERNAZIONALE SITUAZIONISTA. Corrispondenza con un’editore. Milan: Internazionale Situazionista, n.d. [Feb. 1972]. Broadside; 49.5 x 33.2 cm.; black and red ink on white stock.

Printed and distributed in Italy, this broadside reproduces several letters between Guy Debord, Gianfranco Sanguinetti (from the Situationist International) and Gian Piero Brega (who worked for Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli). Sanguinetti’s Foreign Rights department initiates contact with the SI, with the intent to publish an Italian translation of the 12 issues of Internationale Situationniste. Debord writes back, calling Feltrinelli a “Stalinist reptile” and “formally [denying him] the right to publish, in whole or in part, any SI text”. Brega further responds that Debord’s “letter of the 9th December is overflowing with errors of fact and of argument” then closes with “Good advice: get help. Good wishes: get well soon”. The last letter, penned by Sanguinetti, openly threatens Brega should he or Feltrinelli dare publish any texts from the SI.

The text from this broadside was reproduced alongside Avviso al proletariato italiano ; Gli operai d’Italia e la rivolta di Reggio Calabria by G.d.C in 1973 & 1976. It was translated into French by Luc Mercier and Joel Gayraud, then published in Ecrits complets. Section italienne de l’Internationale Situationniste [1969-1972] (Paris: Contre-Moule, 1988), pp. 133-137. It has also been translated into English by Phil Edwards in 1998 and posted on NotBored! (https://www.notbored.org/feltrinelli.html).

Gonzalvez 130.

We locate a single copy on OCLC at the Biblioteca del Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea (MART) in Italy.