(This is the second part of a two part text. In part one the author angrily surveys the current state of performance activity and sets up the need for a politicized performance practice. - Ed.)

Part Two: The Exemplary Action and Interventionism
By the early sixties the International Situationist group (Situationist Internationale, I.S. in this text) had already developed strategies for continuing the critique of bourgeois society begun by the surrealists, but their revolution was to be very different from the "revolution of the mind" established by Andre Breton and his followers in the late twenties and early thirties. Theirs was to be a permanent revolution in daily life (a widely used I.S. slogan), one which could not occur in the absence of the destruction of capitalism and its institutions, or at the very least, their radical transformation. The I.S.'s welding together of the writings of various theorists: from Marx and Engels, to Fourier, Reich, Lenin, Mao... even Diderot and the Marx Brothers, which today seems so appallingly eclectic, allowed them to develop a highly original and persuasive analysis of the forms of social life under capitalism, and more important from the perspective of today, they theorized the means to resist absorption. (1)
The Situationist problematic is based on the Debordian description of the society of the spectacle which finds its correlative in the term consumer capitalism. From the very beginning of its use in the writings of the I.S. in early 1958, the spectacle was used metaphorically to designate a "one way transmission of experience; a form of 'communication' to which one side, the audience can never reply; a culture based on the reduction of almost everyone to a state of abject non-creativity: of receptivity, passivity and isolation." (2) In his book Debord describes spectacle more specifically as representation (and represented ideology).
The entire life of societies in which modern conditions of production reign appears as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was expressed directly has been distanced in a representation" (thesis I)
and later:
Spectacle in general, as the concrete immersion of life is the autonomous movement of the non-living.
Spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation between people mediated through images. (thesis 4)
The I.S. applied the term in its various uses as defined by Debord to all aspects of social relations under capitalism. At its most incisive the term represented the hegemonic tendencies subsumed under capitalist ideologies. The I.S. antidote was the "construction of Situations," which from the outset involved the notion of intervention.
The construction of situations can only begin to be effective as the concept of the spectacle begins to disintegrate. Clearly the basic principle of the spectacle-non-intervention - is at the heart of our alienated social life (emphasis added) And equally clearly, all the most vital features of revolutionary experiment with culture have stemmed from the attempt to break the psychological identification of the spectator with the hero; to sting the spectator into action... Thus the situation is made to be lived by those who made it. The role played by a passive or merely bit playing "public" must steadily diminish while that played by people who cannot be called actors but rather [those who live] must equally steadily augment.
(rapport sur la construction des Situations) (3)
In the first issue of the Revue I.S., the character of the situation is described in terms which reveal the fundamental importance of intervention as post-theoretical and practical aspect of their critique. The writers) proceeds to explain the features of the hypothetically constructed Situation.
The constructed Situation is bound to be collective both in its inception and in its development. However it seems that at least during an initial experimental period, responsibility must fall on one particular individual. This individual must, so to speak, be the "director" of the Situation. For example, in terms of one particular Situationist project - revolving around an emotionally charged meeting of several friends one evening - one would expect (a) an initial period of research by the team, (b) the election of a director responsible for co-ordinating the basic elements necessary for the construction of the decor, etc., and for working out a number of interventions during the course of the evening (alternatively several individuals can work out differing series of interventions, all of them unaware of all the details planned upon by the others), (c) the actual people living the Situation who have taken part in the whole project both theoretically and practically, and (d), a few passive spectators not knowing what the hell is going on should be reduced to action. (4)
This description reads like Kaprow's minimum definitions for a Happening (5) with two major differences - the emphasis on theory and collectivity. All the other elements: active participation by the spectators, spontaneity, "set" construction, discontinuity, the presence of the auteur/director who "manages" the event and so on. Yet the intentions and essentially non-hierarchical structuring of the situation reveal its absolute political character. This is no “simple” transformation of art into life or vice-versa; in fact the word “art” is not even mentioned in this Situationist tract.
The given condition for the construction of situations is the transcendence of art, for art is, in Debordian terms, a representation, which by its very nature reinforces the spectacular nature of commodity capitalism, distancing the spectator from the phenomenal (and critical) experience of living. Hence the emphasis on the notion of reducing, by way of several interventions, the spectators to action. The Situationists also did not want the relationships between the "actors" and the "director" to become permanent; rather they planned for the temporary subordination of the team to ensure the success of the Situation.Direction itself was suspect, turning potentially active participants into passive ones. Total democracy was the object of the exercise; active participation by all, the desired result.It may be apparent from the quoted description that the context for this hypothetical situation seems innocuous enough; after all the "meeting of several friends on one evening," even when such a meeting is "highly charged" does not in itself constitute a particularly attractive model for a politically effective performance practice. However it is typical of Situationist rhetoric that strategies for disrupting the spectacle or enacting a critique, would be couched in language which was sufficiently opaque, so as not to cause "alarm" or rejection.
The construction of situations was not, of course, always directed towards such political "ends." The implicit anarchy implied in these life constructions was usually mediated by other intentions. Nihilism was not perceived to be an end result of the Situationist projects; rather the intent was to restore the situation, whatever it may be, to the praxis of life.
Elsewhere in this "Introduction to Situations" text, the authors distinguish their project from the development of theater, acknowledging that Brecht and Pirandello "have analyzed the destruction of the theatrical spectacle and pointed to the direction in which'post theatrical' demands must lie." Beyond the reformist tendencies of the historical avant-gardes, the I.S. position was premised on the destruction of the institution of theater itself.One of the great slogans to emerge during the events of May 68 "Culture is the Inversion of Life," stands as one of the ultimate Situationist negations. For them culture had to be subverted in order to become life; and in a less ideal sense subversion and intervention strategies enabled social life (under capitalism) to be understood and acted upon in a critical manner. The most successful examples of this subversion may be seen in the many popular media forms: comics, posters and advertisements, which the Situationists appropriated, altered with their own critical texts and allowed to re-enter the public domain as highly charged vehicles of dissent. In this, the axiom - how can one criticize culture without taking for one's own (critical) use the objects of culture? - became the basis upon which the interventionist model could successfully convey a critique of the spectacular form of commodity consumption.
In his book, The Action-Image of Society: On Cultural Politicization, Alfred Willener notes the correspondence between the activist positions adopted by the Situationists and the initial negative projects of the Dadaists and Surrealists, which because of their
The given condition for the construction of situations is the transcendence of art, for art is, in Debordian terms, a representation, which by its very nature reinforces the spectacular nature of commodity capitalism, distancing the spectator from the phenomenal (and critical) experience of living. Hence the emphasis on the notion of reducing, by way of several interventions, the spectators to action. The Situationists also did not want the relationships between the "actors" and the "director" to become permanent; rather they planned for the temporary subordination of the team to ensure the success of the Situation. Direction itself was suspect, turning potentially active participants into passive ones. Total democracy was the object of the exercise; active participation by all, the desired result. It may be apparent from the quoted description that the context for this hypothetical situation seems innocuous enough; after all the "meeting of several friends on one evening," even when such a meeting is "highly charged" does not in itself constitute a particularly attractive model for a politically effective performance practice. However it is typical of Situationist rhetoric that strategies for disrupting the spectacle or enacting a critique, would be couched in language which was sufficiently opaque, so as not to cause "alarm" or rejection.
The construction of situations was not, of course, always directed towards such political "ends." The implicit anarchy implied in these life constructions was usually mediated by other intentions. Nihilism was not perceived to be an end result of the Situationist projects; rather the intent was to restore the situation, whatever it may be, to the praxis of life.
Elsewhere in this "Introduction to Situations" text, the authors distinguish their project from the development of theater, acknowledging that Brecht and Pirandello "have analyzed the destruction of the theatrical spectacle and pointed to the direction in which 'post theatrical' demands must lie." Beyond the reformist tendencies of the historical avant-gardes, the I.S. position was premised on the destruction of the institution of theater itself. One of the great slogans to emerge during the events of May 68 "Culture is the Inversion of Life," stands as one of the ultimate Situationist negations. For them culture had to be subverted in order to become life; and in a less ideal sense subversion and intervention strategies enabled social life (under capitalism) to be understood and acted upon in a critical manner. The most successful examples of this subversion may be seen in the many popular media forms: comics, posters and advertisements, which the Situationists appropriated, altered with their own critical texts and allowed to re-enter the public domain as highly charged vehicles of dissent. In this, the axiom - how can one criticize culture without taking for one's own (critical) use the objects of culture? - became the basis upon which the interventionist model could successfully convey a critique of the spectacular form of commodity consumption.
In his book, The Action-Image of Society: On Cultural Politicization, Alfred Willener notes the correspondence between the activist positions adopted by the Situationists and the initial negative projects of the Dadaists and Surrealists, which because of their anarchistic tendencies forced these groups into the position of adopting or theorizing post-revolutionary "utopias," of dreaming - imagining a better life. And it is this tension between the material present and the imagined future which presented (and still presents), a fundamental problem for cultural producers on the left. Any movement which places action as the a priori condition to social change, irrespective of the means through which change is finally achieved, runs the risk of relegating theory to a minor position in the process. For the Dadaists and later the Surrealists, rejection became the sine qua non of their activist avant-garde positions, and it is in the moment of representation of disgust and rejection that political efficacy may be lost and absorption can begin. For the Situationists, intervention, subversion and succession (the "excision" of those authors who attained heroic or dominant status) allowed them to resist absorption. These strategies, in other words, allowed the Situationists to remove themselves from the cycle through which capitalism "manages" its internal contradictions and "crises" and integrates critiques into its own ideological system.
The Situationists were supremely aware of the problems initiated with the enactment of disgust; of capitulating to the Dada position which puts action first - (Action: "a priori, that is with the eyes closed, Dada puts action first.") (emphasis added); hence their adoption of the guiding ideology of dialectical materialism as a base for their individual programs of theory/action. Their problem was how to wed theory to practice - to achieve a state of praxis, without reducing their critiques to intellectual exercises. Thus the spectacular form of the direct action and other forms of activism: denial, resistance, provocation remained as a central theoretical bind, escape from which seemed impossible. The Situationist dilemma of how to refute the commodification of protest itself and supercede the "failures" of the historical avant-gardes, led them at times to the defence of nihilism:
The active nihilist does not simply intend to watch things fall apart. He intends to speed up the process. Sabotage is a natural response to the chaos ruling the world. Active nihilism is pre-revolutionary; passive nihilism is counter-revolutionary. (6)
However, by 1968, their critique of consumer capitalism had become more refined and had turned away from the slogans of the early sixties. The Situationists could now include themselves in their critique of capitalism and the cultural formations thereof. Ideological hegemony, although it was not described as such by the group, had begun to exercise its power on the intellectual life of the group. (It is no accident that the most resignations and exclusions occurred within the group around 1968 at a time when two of its most intellectually rigorous members, Debord and Vaneigem, were working on their major texts.)Thus in 1968 Vaneigem tacitly acknowledges the power of ideological hegemony (that force which makes-over any form of protest into its own ideological system) and presents a critique of all avant-garde formations as the endless capacity for capitalism to renew itself in its own terms.
What the producers of happenings, pop art and sociodramas are now doing is concealing passivity by renewing the forms of spectacle participation and the variety of stereotypes. (7)
While he did not include the Situationists themselves in his critique, the knowledge that he could have done so is implicit, for by this time the Situationist group, which had extended to the U.S. and England, realized its own capitulation to the ideology of avant-gardism. Their experiment with marginalization was at an end. The ideologies which had sustained the group during its formative years were gradually eroded, the successes of its members and the failure(s) of the "revolution" of 1968 finally signed the Situationist group's death warrant. As Christopher Gray writes:
The I.S. ... finally received the cultural accolade it had always dreaded: it entered “the heaven of the spectacle" by the scruff of the neck, and that was that. (8)
Vaneigem's late texts are in fact not too far removed from the analyses formulated by Peter Bürger and others in the late seventies, and the debates which have continued throughout the early eighties: that the absorption/co-optation dynamic of consumer capitalism quickly renders most forms of autonomous avant-garde activity impotent. However the failure of the Situationists to supercede the limitations of their own critique and ironically their own successes should not deter us from the recuperation of some aspects of their "revolutionary" program which are still tenable today.
The failures of the Situationists can be said to fall into two groups. The first which I have already noted: the successes of some of its members (their exclusion or resignation) and the subsequent "watering down" of the group's original program of criticism. Secondly, the events of May '68 proved the repressive character of the state in removing all «illegitimate" forms of protest from its domains. During the pre-May antagonisms the strategy of intervention was never a problem in that it did not evoke the repressive authority of the state, or the institutions at which it was directed. However the consummation of the interventionary form became the direct action which without fail always breached the "rules of democracy" and precipitated repressive reactions.
EXEMPLARY ACTION
Anarchic/individualistic action
Spontaneous
Dynamic/direct/focused action
Absence of theory
Induces repression/confrontation
Cathartic
Non-dialectical
Provocative
Spectacular
Projective
INTERVENTION
Collective/collaborative or participatory in form
Planned
Exhibits less dynamism / less direct
Theory laden / movement toward praxis
Integrative, mediative/interruptive
Non-cathartic
Dialectical
Attempts to lessen provocation/encourage dialogue
Non-spectacular
Reflective
[Figure 1.]