Re: [-empyre-] Why US DAT is Virtual

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@techno.ca>]

> while Guy Debord was concerned
> with politically shifting the urban -
> psychological landscape.

I'm curious about this claim, if only because of the apparent heritage being
claimed today by various artists of locative media, mobile media, urban
interventionism, heirs to psychogeography, etc. It seems you can't turn a
corner without encountering it these days.

Does anyone else find the claim often misrepresents the SI's full impact?
Forgive me, for I spent the summer doing some reading .. it seems that after
the early '60s, the artists were excommunicated, along with the earlier
psychogeographical experiments. Although we all know _Society of the
Spectacle_ (film and book), less studied is the decisive step from art to
what can only be called revolution, when Debord's focus shifted quite
squarely to rewriting Marx's theory of value and to confronting capital
beyond artistic intervention. For some this was the beginning of the end for
the SI; for others, its necessary self-critique in the face of inaction, May
'68 notwithstanding.

In considering Debord, do we consider him as an artist, alongside Duchamp,
Beuys, et al? (Are Beuys or Duchamp artists either, come to think?)

Does anyone else see the current appropriation of psychogeography from the
SI arsenal as often quite superficial? As supporting, more often than not,
the continuation of technological fetishism (mobile-this, locative-that)
that Debord so abhorred?

I apologise for this tangent; but it's been bugging me lately, and for good
reason -- I just finished curating an artist's residency of
"psychogeographers" -- and for other reasons too: for the tactics of the SI
are claimed by a widescope of culture jammers, for example, Adbusters.

I'm wondering if anyone else out there thinks about it.

And I am thinking here again of "The Society of the Spectacle Remix" I had
the chance to see in Paris ..  (by Mark Amerika, Rick Silva, Trace Reddell
et al) .. which for me raised these issues in a light I remain perplexed by:
how aforementioned technology relates to the politics of the remix and what
the thrust of the Society of the Spectacle Remix is getting at:
reintroducing art & tech to the SI? Getting the ex-art SI to laugh a little?
Proclaiming that, in the end, Debord lost, technology won? That art wins
over revolution (also reversing Breton, thus)? There is some irony to this
remix, I wonder ...

best,

    tV