“Modern technology, they argued, had made it possible today for people to forgo work by necessity and to spend their life in activities they would choose freely. But the established powers did not allow this to happen. To insure the continuous expansion needed to maintain their hold, they created artificial scarcity by incessantly promoting new cravings and aspirations.”(Maayan)
How prescient the Situationists were! In the new millennium more than ever do people feel the iron hold that consumerism has over their lives. How often are we counseled by doctors against the negative effects of stress? Yet, such stress is a natural reaction to the unnatural position people of the contemporary world that requires constant competition to reach the top of the social ladder. Though I am certain many students of the School of the Arts change their minds about their career path after graduation, I think that the majority of us come to school having already rejected the possession-centered lifestyle peddled by society (at least in theory). This is because we students have found something we love to do. The Situationists are highly preoccupied with having people find what they love without being tempted by the bait put forth by corporations and governments. To do this, they suggest solutions such as psychogeography, the concept of which gives me the warm fuzzies, and self-managing groups.
The idea of psychogeography could also be applied to education. The idea of exploration as the primary source of knowledge is not a new thought, but its connection to Situationism is. If somehow this idea had been put into practice in the education system during the 1950s and '60s, I think the Situationists would have found a population more responsive to their ideas and, therefore, a foundation upon which to build a new kind of society.
Ideas such as self-managing groups are, I feel, only possible as an alternative to government if the current government is overthrown while, simultaneously, peoples' ability to make their own decisions is bolstered through an educational system derived from the concept of psychogeography. To overhaul the government/corporations is not enough; people must be taught how to work together to solve problems that would have been otherwise solved without their input by those in power.
“In their view, art's ability to isolate aspects of existence and to highlight their quality of the absolute made it easier for people to overlook the misery of everyday life. And even if occasionally art conveyed that misery, or through innovations in style or content challenged prevailing values, it always ended up by being assimilated into mainstream culture and by having its nonconformist works transformed into commodities.”(Maayan)
I have to agree with with Maayan deems the artistic wing of the early Situationist movement. Debord himself claimed that the group wished to “extend the nonmediocre part of life,” yet he denies art as a nonmediocre aspect of life. I think the mistake that the Situationists made was to assume that art could not be part of everyday living, when I believe it not only can be part of everyday living but should be a part of it. Because art is seen as something to be contemplated, it should be right up the Situationists' alley to promote life being contemplated in the same way. Through ideas like dérive, the Situationists approach the idea of teaching the public to be open to the emotional aspects of their surroundings, but to me, they fall short in their specificity. Should the Situationists have adopted the promotion of the arts in addition to their other concepts, I think they would have found art to be an excellent tool for reminding people how to evaluate their lives. Art could be seen as a practice run for the real world.
And who cares if it gets co-opted? Make something new. The constant pressure to stay ahead of the mediocritizing effect of advertising and government slogans would have kept the Situationists on their toes and forced them to evolve ahead of the established ideas that they fought. While I appreciate their intense desire to avoid being assimilated into the machine of modern society, the Situationists seemed naïve to not recognize just how good that machine is at removing all meaning and replacing it with dollar signs. It is too idealistic to expect to be able change society without resistance from those profiting from the status quo, so why not make use of that resistance? Deny the artworks once they have lost their value. Take such opportunities to show the public the difference between that which is significant and that which is nothing more than a contrived product.
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