polis: a collective blog about cities worldwide

Situating the Situationist International

by Hector Fernando Burga



From the effervescent streets of Paris 1968, to the reverberating image in the Television of cinema screen - and arguably the I-phone nowadays - the possibility of escaping the throes of capitalism and its omnipresent pulsating spectacle became a call to arms for a group of young thinkers. To carry out their project of critique a multiplicity of methods were employed, among them the Derive and the Detournment as methods of estranging space and place and opening up new doors perception, political positionality and radical possibility.

But as soon as the movement was born, it expired. Leaving behind a provocative set of actions, writings and statements for interpretation. Contradictions abound in the nature and composition of this group of privileged thinkers, who nonetheless were able to capture the imagination of radical change for the future.

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