The Situationists were a political and artistic movement in France in the 1960s.Situationists defined "Situationism" as a nonsense word coined by anti-Situationists.
Situationism has its intellectual origins in the Lettrist movement. The Situationist International was founded in Paris in 1957 by a number of European avant-garde groups, and prominent members included Guy Debord, Asger Jorn and Raoul Vaneigem. During the decade which followed, the International attempted to develop a syncretic viewpoint of society while at the same time savaging it. This development reached its logical corollary in the May 1968 uprisings.
The situationist movement was a strong influence on the punk rock phenomenon of the 1970s, largely due to the situ-literate inputs of Malcolm Mclaren, Vivienne Westwood and Jamie Reid into the marketing and promotion of the Sex Pistols.
Classic Situationist texts include "Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord, "The Revolution Of Everyday Life" and "The Book Of Pleasures" by Raoul Vaneigem, and "The Situationist International Anthology" edited by Ken Knabb. Many of the original Situationist texts tend to be rather dense and inaccesable, however during the early 1980's English Anarchist Larry Law produced a series of 'pocket-books' under the name of "Spectacular Times which aimed to make situationist theory more easily understood.
Ideas central to situationist theory include;
- The Spectacular society
- Recuperation
- Detournment