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The Fourth SI Conference
in London
(excerpts)
The 4th Conference of the Situationist International was held in London, at a secret
address in the East End, 24-28 September 1960, seventeen months after the Munich
Conference (April 1959). The situationists assembled in London were: Debord, Jacqueline de
Jong, Jorn, Kotányi, Katja Lindell, Jörgen Nash, Prem, Sturm, Maurice Wyckaert and H.P.
Zimmer. [...]
The discussion of these perspectives leads to posing the question: “To what extent
is the SI a political movement?” Various responses state that the SI is political,
but not in the ordinary sense. The discussion becomes somewhat confused. Debord proposes,
in order to clearly bring out the opinion of the Conference, that each person respond in
writing to a questionnaire asking if he considers that there are “forces in the
society that the SI can count on? What forces? Under what conditions?” This
questionnaire is agreed upon and filled out. The first responses express the view that the
purpose of the SI is to establish a program of general liberation and to act in accord
with other forces on a social scale. (Kotányi: “To rely on what we call free.”
Jorn: “We are against specialization and rationalization, but not against them as
means. . . . Movements of social groups are determined by the character of their
desires. We can accept other social movements only to the extent that they are moving in
our direction. We are the new revolution . . . we should act with other
organizations that seek the same path.”) The session is then adjourned.
At the beginning of the second session, on September 26, Heimrad Prem reads a
declaration of the German section in response to the questionnaire. This very
long declaration attacks the tendency in the responses read the day before to
count on the existence of a revolutionary proletariat, for the signers strongly
doubt the revolutionary capacities of the workers against the bureaucratic
institutions that have dominated their movement. The German section considers
that the SI should prepare to realize its program on its own by mobilizing
avant-garde artists, who are placed by the present society in intolerable
conditions and can count only on themselves to take over the weapons of
conditioning. Debord responds with a sharp critique of these positions.
An evening session resumes discussion of the German declaration. Nash
speaks against it, asserting the capacity of the SI to act directly on the
terrain of social and political organizations, and advocating the systematic
infiltration of clandestine situationist elements wherever they might prove
useful. Nash’s statement is approved in principle by everyone, with minor reservations. But
the debate on the German positions continues, brought back to its central
core: the hypothesis of contented workers. Kotányi reminds the German delegates
that even if since 1945 they have seen apparently passive and satisfied workers
in Germany and legal strikes organized with music to divert union members, in
other advanced capitalist countries “wildcat” strikes have multiplied. He adds
that in his opinion they vastly underestimate the German workers themselves.
Jorn responds to Prem, who had made a distinction between spiritual and material
questions, that it is necessary to put an end to this distinction, that “material
values must reacquire a ‘spiritual’ significance and that spiritual capacities
must be
valued only insofar as they are materially realized; or to put it in other terms, that the world
must become artistic in the sense defined by the SI.” Jacqueline de Jong
asks that in order to simplify the discussion, which has become obscure in
addition to being complicated by certain translations (the dominant language of the Conference
being
German), each member declare whether or not he approves of Jorn’s statement.
Everyone agrees with it. Debord then proposes that the
majority openly declare that it rejects the German theses. It is agreed that the
two tendencies will separately decide on their positions. The German minority
withdraws to an adjoining room to deliberate. When they return Zimmer announces,
in the name of his group, that they retract the preceding declaration, not
because they think it unimportant, but in order not to obstruct current
situationist activity. He concludes: “We declare that we are in complete
agreement with all the acts already done by the SI, with or without us, and with
those that will be done in the foreseeable future. We are also in agreement with
all the ideas published by the SI. We consider the question debated today as
secondary in relation to the SI’s overall development, and propose to reserve
further discussion of it for the future.” Everyone agrees to this. Kotányi and
Debord, however, ask that it be noted in the minutes that they do not consider the question discussed today
to be secondary. The German situationists agree
to delete their reference to it as such. The session is adjourned, very late at
night. [...]
SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL
1960
“La quatrième conférence de l’I.S.
à Londres” originally appeared in
Internationale Situationniste #5 (Paris, December 1960). This translation by
Ken Knabb is from the Situationist
International Anthology (Revised and Expanded Edition, 2006). No copyright.
[Other Situationist Texts]
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