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Proposals for Rationally Improving
the City of Paris(1)
The Lettrists present at the September 26
meeting jointly proposed the following solutions to the various urbanistic
problems that came up in discussion. They stress that no
constructive action was considered, since they all agreed that the most urgent
task is to clear the ground.
The subways should be opened at night after
the trains have stopped running. The corridors and platforms should be poorly
lit, with dim lights flickering on and off intermittently.
The rooftops of Paris should be opened to
pedestrian traffic by modifying fire-escape ladders and
by constructing bridges where necessary.
Public gardens should remain open at night,
unlit. (In a few cases, a steady dim illumination might be justified on
psychogeographical grounds.)
Street lamps should all be equipped with
switches so that people can adjust the lighting as they wish.
With regard to churches, four different
solutions were proposed, all of which were considered defensible until
appropriate experimentation can be undertaken, which should quickly
demonstrate which is the best.
G.-E. Debord argued for the total destruction
of religious buildings of all denominations, leaving no trace and using the
sites for other purposes.
Gil J Wolman proposed that churches
be left standing but stripped of all religious content. They should be treated
as ordinary buildings, and children should be allowed to play in them.
Michèle Bernstein suggested that churches
be partially demolished, so that the remaining ruins give no hint of
their original function (the Tour Jacques on Boulevard de Sébastopol being an
unintentional example). The ideal solution would be to raze churches to the
ground and then build ruins in their place. The first method was proposed purely
for reasons of economy.
Lastly, Jacques Fillon favored the idea of
transforming churches into houses of horror (maintaining their current
ambience while accentuating their terrifying effects).
Everyone agreed that aesthetic objections should
be rejected, that admirers of the portals of Chartres should be silenced.
Beauty, when it is not a promise of happiness, must be
destroyed. And what could be more repugnant representations of unhappiness than such
monuments to everything in the world that remains to be overcome, to the
numerous
aspects of life that remain inhuman?
Train stations should be left as they are.
Their rather poignant ugliness contributes to the feeling of transience that makes
these buildings mildly attractive. Gil J Wolman proposed removing or
scrambling all information regarding departures (destinations, timetables, etc.) in
order to facilitate dérives. After a lively debate, those opposing this
motion retracted their objections and it was wholeheartedly approved. It was
also agreed that
background noise in the stations should be intensified by broadcasting recordings from
many other stations, as well as from certain harbors.
Cemeteries should be eliminated. All corpses
and related memorials should be totally destroyed, leaving no ashes and no remains.
(It should be noted that these hideous remnants of an alienated past constitute
a subliminal reactionary propaganda. Is it possible to see a cemetery and not be
reminded of Mauriac, Gide or Edgar Faure?)
Museums should be abolished and their
masterpieces distributed to bars (Philippe de Champaigne’s works in the Arab
cafés of rue Xavier-Privas; David’s Sacre in the Tonneau
on Rue
Montagne-Geneviève).
Everyone should have free access to the prisons.
They should be available as tourist destinations, with no distinction between
visitors and inmates. (To spice things up, monthly lotteries might be held to see
which visitor would win a real prison sentence. This would cater to those
imbeciles who feel an imperative need to undergo uninteresting risks:
spelunkers, for example, and everyone else whose craving for play
is satisfied by such paltry pseudogames.)
Buildings whose ugliness cannot
be put to any good use (such as the Petit or Grand Palais) should make way for other
constructions.
Statues that no longer have any meaning, and
whose possible aesthetic refurbishings would inevitably be condemned by
history, should be removed. Their usefulness could be
extended during their final years by changing the inscriptions on their pedestals,
either in a political sense (The Tiger Named Clemenceau on the Champs
Élysées) or for purposes of disorientation (Dialectical Homage to Fever and Quinine
at the intersection of Boulevard Michel and rue Comte, or The Great Depths in the
cathedral plaza on the Île de la Cité).
In order to put an end to the cretinizing influence of current street names,
names of city councilors, heroes of
the Resistance, all the Émiles and
Édouards (55 Paris streets), all the Bugeauds and
Gallifets,(2) and in general all obscene names (Rue de l’Évangile) should be
obliterated.
In this regard, the appeal launched in
Potlatch #9 for ignoring the word “saint” in place names is more
pertinent than ever.
LETTRIST INTERNATIONAL
October 1955
[TRANSLATOR’S NOTES]
1. The title echoes “Proposals for Irrationally Improving a City” (Le Surréalisme
au Service de la Révolution #6, 1933).
2. Of the various persons disdainfully
mentioned in this article, Clemenceau
and Edgar Faure were politicians, Gide and Mauriac were writers, and
Bugeaud and Gallifet were nineteenth-century generals (the first responsible for
the conquest of Algeria, the second for the crushing of the Paris Commune).
“Projet d’embellissements
rationnels de la ville de Paris” originally appeared in Potlatch #23
(Paris, 13 October 1955). 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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