Comment by r277986140 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by r277986140 | Hacker News Reader

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in retrospect we consider automatism surrealist, but historically and from the consideration of situatonists' relationship with surrealists i think it would be fairer to say that both borrowed from the same origins. les champs magnétiques is 1919, how to write a dadaist poem is 1920, but surrealism manifesto is 1924. but the techniques involved predate both. and situationists themselves would've rejected the debt you're asigning them, on principles, and from the perspective of the historic development of the relevant techniques it would be hard to catch them in a lie.

i'm not missing the political dimension of surrealism, i'm deliberately ignoring it. there's two of us in these comments who are aware of these political dimensions, where's society's perspective on surrealism is duchamp's fountain and dali's persistence of memory. surrealist art is a one trick pony, that is at fault for how easily it was recuperated. situatonists argued that this dimension was built in from the very beginning.

In Debord's explicit engagement with surrealism, he admits its influence. Detournement, for example, draws equally from Asger Jorn's technique of "modification" and Surrealist collage.

Furthermore, as a Marxist, he'd have to admit the dialectical (material) influence of surrealism and its offshots, including his.

Also - Situationist tactics are just as prone to recuperation as Surrealism. Anti-advertising, street art, etc. are totally integrated.

To add further nuance, Surrealism continued after Breton, et al. Surrealist groups still exist and were acting in parallel to the Situationists in the late '60s. For example, the Chicago group emerged from the Industrial Workers of the World/SDS, staged interventions (a la situations) and were among the first to distribute Situationist literature through their bookshop.

your point is well taken, and we've already achieved sufficient subtlety. situatonists would've rejected the idea that they owe debt to an -ism, which is where we started, but debord would've freely acknowledge an influence of specific surrealists.

surrealist groups keep dragging a dead corpse around. there's nothing wrong with that, in same way as improv clubs are a perfectly acceptable leisure activities for the laptop class.

we can definitely agree that both surrealist and situationist tactics are at this point fully integrated. but then traditional protest tactics have been at this point fully integrated: you know si celebrating watts riots, but the covid riots might as well be a perfect case study on the nature of recuperation. i doubt op new york times writer thinks she's being anything but clever, but you know everything about it is a neat little mockery of our collective impotence.

there are lessons that we can derive from si writing AND surrealist works, but i don't think goofy "one simple hack the spectacle hates!" are it.

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