[Situationistisk International] Supplement Til Situationistisk Revolution 2. Randers (Denmark): Situationistisk International, March 1969. 4 p.; ill.; 21 x 59 cm.; black ink on brown newspaper stock.

Two years after NY-Irrealism (see https://situationnisteblog.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/ny-irrealisme-specialudgave-situationistisk-revolution-2-1967/ for more info), this supplement to Situationistisk Revolution provides an illustrated account of the May 68 riots. As Shigenobu Gonzalvez notes, it reproduces excerpts and documents from Enrages et Situationnistes dans le Mouvement des Occupations (Paris: Gallimard, 1968). The editorial committee includes Bernstein, Debord, Khayati, Vaneigem and Vienet.

Gonzalvez 93. Raspaud & Voyer 125.

We have yet to see this item in the trade, and we cannot locate a copy through OCLC. As such, we have chosen to reproduce it in full.

 

Laboratorio Sperimentale Del Movimento Internazionale per una ‘Bauhaus Immaginista’. Primo Congresso Mondiale Degli Artisti Liberi. Alba: n.p. [M.I.B.I.], September 1956. 6 p. (1 x 21 x 29.5 cm sheet folded into a six-page mini-brochure); 12 x 23.5 cm.; black ink on thin white stock.

This unassuming document serves as the program of the First World Congress of Free Artists, which was held in Alba on September 2-9, 1956. Participants include “Enrico Baj (Nuclear Art Movement, Milan; excluded in the course of the conference on the Lettrist delegate’s demand), Jacques Calonne, Constant (ex-Cobra; Christian Dotremont does not attend, ostensibly because of illness), Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio, Asger Jorn, Piero Simondo, Ettore Sottsass Jr, Elena Verrone (International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus), Gil J. Wolman (Lettrist International/Potlatch), Sandro Cherchi, Franco Garelli (Turin), Jan Kotik, Pravoslav Rada (Czechoslovakia), Charles Estienne, Klaus Fischer, several others.” (http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/1956.html).

From the same source: “Two exhibitions are held simultaneously: Futurist Ceramics 1925-33, organized by Jorn and Gallizio, at Alba town hall; and an exhibition by the experimental laboratory at Corino cinema, involving Constant, Gallizio, Garelli, Jorn, Kotik, Rada, Simondo and Wolman. Wolman’s ‘Address’ is accepted by the congress as its final resolution. Jorn is appointed committee director of Potlatch, while Wolman is added to the editorial board of Eristica.”

The First World Congress is critical in that it cements relationships between key avant-garde artists and emerging movements of the time. In many ways, it lays the ground for the Founding Conference of the Situationist International (SI), which takes places in Cosio d’Arroscia, Italy, the following July. Many of the participants were the same as in Alba, and the “complete unification of the groups represented and…the constitution of a Situationist International” (Potlatch #29) should then be viewed as something that was long in the making.

Rare. Not in the trade or in OCLC.

 

[Groupe Lettriste]. La Nuit du Cinema. n.p. [Paris]: n.p. [Groupe Lettriste], n.d. [1952]. 1p. leaflet (single-sided); 21 x 29.5 cm.; black text on off-white/grey stock.

Issued by the Groupe Lettriste (the Internationale Lettriste was only founded in June 1952), this single-sided leaflet promotes Lettrist experimental films, including Jean-Isidore sou’s “Traite de Bave et d’Eternite” (Treaty of Slime and Eternity) from April 1951, Gil J Wolman’s “L’Anticoncept” (The Anticoncept) from February 1952, and Guy-Ernest Debord’s “Hurlements en Faveur de Sade” (Howlings in Favor of Sade) from June 1952. Forthcoming films by Jean-Louis Brau and Serge Berna are also announced. The leaflet closes with the following sentence: “Nous faisons la revolution a nos moments perdus” (We engage in revolution in our spare time). A criticism of Chaplin (which will be further developed in the leaflet “Fini les Pieds Plats!”) can also be found in the first paragraph

Scarce in the trade, with two OCLC copies (Yale, BnF).

The full text is available at http://debordiana.chez.com/francais/cannes.htm

 

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Olmo, Walter. Rapporto informativo su : Comme non si comprende l’arte musicale. Morte e trasfigurazione dell’Estetica. n.p. [Alba?]: n.p. [self-published], n.d. [1957]. 10 single-sided,stapled sheets; 33 x 22 cm; black ink on white stock.

Mimeographed report produced by Walter Olmo, a member of the the SI from its creation in Cosio in July 1957 until his exclusion in January 1958. It was presented to the Experimental Laboratory for an Imaginist Bauhaus in Alba, and deals with death and aesthetic transfiguration in music. This is one of a very small number of documents by SI members on the topic of music.

Rare. Not in Raspaud & Voyer or other bibliographies. We cannot locate a copy on OCLC, but we do find one on MACBA’s website.

In light of this scarcity, and so that scholars and enthusiasts may readily access its content, we have thus chosen to showcase the full document below.

[Internationale Situationniste] Laboratoirio Situazionisti di Alba / Gruppo S.p.u.r. Difendiamo la libertà. Alba: Laboratorio Situazionista di Alba, November 1959. 1 p. leaflet (single-sided); 15 x 24 cm.; black ink on thin white stock.

“Tract by Pinot Gallizio, Eisch, Fischer, Nele, Prem, Sturm and Zimmer advocating public execration of the Spanish painter Cuixard, who, in order to increase his chances of securing the Grand Prize for painting at São Paulo, did not shrink from denouncing the communism of his compatriots Saura and Tapiés, at the risk of putting them ‘in grave danger with political organizations in their country.'” (Situationist International Online, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/1959.html)

Reproduced (alongside a French translation) by Gerard Berreby in Textes et Documents Situationnistes 1957-1960” (Paris: Allia, 2004). Raspaud & Voyer 109-110.

Scarce in the trade, with two copies found on OCLC (Yale, the Getty Museum)

[Sanguinetti, Gianfranco]. Giovannelli, Gianni (pseud). Le Secret c’est de tout dire! Paris: Allia, 1989. 141 p.; 14 x 22 cm.; off-white wrappers with text in black and grey. First published in Italian as Il Segreto e dirlo (Verone: Scriberus Club, 1983). Trans. Monique Baccelli.

“This book is the fictional autobiography of Salvatore Messana, a clever; determined and financially successful enemy of salaried work, bosses and bureaucrats. Written by Gianna Giovannelli, it was first published in Italian in 1983 & translated into French in 1989” (AK Press).

Gianna Giovannelli is believed to be a pseudonym for Gianfranco Sanguinetti. In a letter to Charles Vincent from 25 February 1991, Guy Debord writes: “Did you know of this recent book by Gianfranco? There are a few nice things in it” (Correspondance Vol. VII, p. 262). As Bill Brown notes in the introduction to his English translation of the text (under the title Never Work: The Autobiography of Salvatore Messana): “Note that the identification of ‘Giovannelli’ as a pseudonynm used by Sanguinetti – which is something that Gianfranco himself has denied – is repeated by the index included in the very last volume of Guy Debord’s Correspondance, published by Librairie Artheme Fayard in 2010. Under “Giovannelli, Giovanni” it says ‘see Sanguinetti, Gianfranco'” (Brown, p. v)

Scarce in the trade with 8 copies on OCLC.

Renoir, Alexis (pseud?). Papillons de Paris: quinze papillons autocollants a decouper. Paris: Rendre la honte plus honteuse, Mars 2016. Edition of 50 (ours no. 39). 15 self-adhesive stickers (various formats) printed on 9 thick pages (21 x 30 cm.), loosely laid inside a black enveloppe  (23 x 32 cm.).Also includes an explanatory statement, printed on a single semi-transparent sheet of paper.

As the author indicates, these stickers were posted across Paris (as well as distributed through the internet) in late 2015 and early 2016. The self-proclaimed objective was to publicly denounce Jean-Marie Apostolides’ biography of Guy Debord, released by Flammarion in 2015 under the title Debord, le naufrageur. Apostolides’ biography was indeed divise – lauded by some, it was severely denounced by others. As usual, this blog takes a strictly bibliographical stance and the choice to present this document does not reflect any ideological positioning.

A Professor of French emeritus at Stanford University, J-M Apostolides is also the author of Les Tombeaux de Guy Debord, précédé de “Guy-Ernest en jeune libertin. Paris:Exils, 1999 ; Paris: Flammarion, 2006. He has edited or co-edited numerous works on “minor” figures of the Internationale Situationniste, such as Ivan Chtcheglov or Patrick Straram.

While many of the stickers rely on puns and detournements (and are thus difficult to translate), we have attempted to transcribe the meaning of the first half below:

1) Marc Dachy is dead, Apostolides is alive…It’s a double tragedy for honest thinking

2) If you read Jean-Marie Apostolides out loud for ten minutes, you will get a bad breath

3) She had Apostolides from behind

4) Mr. Jean-Marie Apostolides is an old fart

5) Against Jean-Marie Apostolides’ stupidity, the Gods themselves struggle helplessly

6) Mr. Jean-Marie Apostolides is a pig

7) Shige Gonzalvez, Jean-Marie Apostolides. These are public men: they have left the shadows to be dragged into the mud

 

Debord, Guy. La Société du Spectacle. Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1967. First edition, first printing (4eme trimestre 1967). 176 p.; 20.5 x 14 cm; White cover with text in black. Pierre Ansart’s working copy. The text is heavily underlined and annotated throughout, with several indications of Debord’s philosophical sources (e.g., pp. 58 & 149: “Hegel”).

Below are translated excerpts from the Wikipedia entry on Pierre Ansart: Born in 1922, Pierre Ansart is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Paris and one of the world’s leading scholars on (pre-)anarchist thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. After a dissertation on “Marx and Anarchism” (1967), Ansart becomes an Assistant Professor at University of Paris – Sorbonne and then at the University of Paris – Denis Diderot. His research centers around ideologies like Marxism, Proudhonism and Anarchism, particularly in their emotional and affective dimension. He has written extensively on Proudhon, Saint-Simon, Freud, Marx, Balandier, Weber.

Provenance: Pierre Ansart, through the trade.

 

Dear readers and subscribers,

My apologies for the current lack of posts/updates. Due to unforeseen personal circumstances, the blog is on a temporary hiatus. I expect to resume posting in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for new and exciting items, including some not listed in the current bibliographies.

Cheers

Situationnisteblog

[Internationale Situationniste] PLANKTON The Quarterly Bulletin of the Plankton Society / Driemaandelijks tijdschrift van de Vereniging ter Bestudering van het Plankton / Revue trimestrielle de la Societe d’Etudes du Plancton, Vol. XXVIII, no.3, Aout-Septembre 1969 [wrappers]. Internationale Situationniste – Revue de la Section Francaise de l’I.S., Numero 12 [title page].  Paris: Internationale Situationniste, September 1989. 120 p.; ill.; 24.5 x 16 cm; beige/off-white wrappers with text printed in black.

Twelth and last issue of Internationale Situationniste, which was characterized by its length (at 120 pages, vs. 34-83 pages for earlier issues) and had a larger print run (10,000 according to Rapaud & Voyer). This was also one of only two issues (the other being no.10) to have some copies bound in fictitious, beige/off-white wrappers – in this case those of an apocryphal Plankton Society – instead of the typical glossy, SI-branded wrappers.

Shall we read into this substitution a clever form of detournement? Was this a way for the S.I. to mock its own “flashy” wrappers? Evidence points to a much more pragmatic reasons: such precautions were taken to facilitate clandestine distribution in Eastern Europe, where the S.I.’s subversive political writings may have elicited an undue amount of interest from the authorities. Specifically, the article “Reforme et contre-reforme dans le pouvoir bureaucratique” (translated by Ken Knabb at “Reform and Counterreform in the Bureaucratic Bloc) – an account of the USSR’s brutal intervention in Czechoslovakia – would likely have proven problematic.

We locate a single OCLC copy at the International Institute for Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam.

NOTE: The owner states that, in this case, some copies would cross into Francoist Spain via networks of Spanish anarchist militants (from the C.N.T./F.A.I.) exiled in Northern (French) Catalonia.