The world we live in is governed by unexamined and unrecognized
cultural forces, which can only be undone through engineering
radically different situations from which to reflect. This was the key
concept behind the Situationist International.
The IS developed a
critique of capitalism based on a mixture of Marxism and surrealism.
Leading figure of the movement Guy Debord identified consumer society
as the Society of the Spectacle in his influential 1967 book of that
title. In the field of culture situationists wanted to break down the
division between artists and consumers and make cultural production a
part of everyday life. It combined two existing groupings, the
Lettrist International and the International Union for a Pictorial
Bauhaus. As well as writer and filmmaker Guy Debord, the group also
prominently included the former CoBrA painter Asger Jorn, and the
former CoBrA artist Constant. British artist Ralph Rumney was a
co-founder of the movement. Situationist ideas played an important
role in the revolutionary Paris events of 1968. The IS was dissolved
in 1972.