#guydebord

MAPPING - PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC MAP OF PARIS, Guy Debord.....mapping of atmospheric unities of a city, based on the Situationist movement.

The first of the preceding images is a collage of the Franco Manca floor-plan and a Paul-Henri Chombart de Lauwe style plotting of my movements within the span of a week. The plotting displays a whirring triangular circuit between front desk, bar, and kitchen porter. I have taken aesthetic properties from Wyndham Lewis’ BLAST: War Number in order to convey the narrow and mechanical quality of my traversing. With no deviations, only iterations, my activity stands in stark contrast to the whimsical premise of the Dérive. The hand of the Vorticist opposes sentimentality. The serrated edges of the woodcut are designed with sheer violence. Lewis desires to convey an exact quiddity of the modern world. The Vorticist does not pursue simulacra, only aggressive substantiality.

To some degree, the restaurant emulates battle. The serving hatch defines two separate spheres: Front of house and Back of house. The two parties are kept in a state of near conflict. When carrying the collage to photograph at an upstairs window, the pieces reconfigured to form alternative compositions. The two latter images depict the collage’s resultant organisations. Without manipulating the shapes myself, the collage reverted to a vortex.

20:07

PROVOCATION PIZZA : BIN BAG BANALITY

FORMULARY IN THE SPIRIT OF IVAN CHTCHEGLOV

Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Sanitation Celebrations: Grand Finale of the First NYC Art Parade, Part I: The Social Mirror, 1983, garbage collection truck.

I tie the bags, carry them out into the rain, and drop them at the curb. ‘Presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit.’ Whilst maintenance is a fundamental fixture of Capitalism, it is a facet carefully concealed. This heaped street-side installation only appears at night - only at closed-doors.

One Autumn night when the collection truck didn’t show and foxes chewed through the bin bags, the morning’s passersby were enraged. They stopped at the curb, looked down into the spilled contents of chewed crusts and beer bottles, and went online to write their martyred diatribes. Faced with the messy by-product of consumerism, the people responded with pointed fingers. They recognised their reflection in Franco Manca’s glass front but not in the littered gutter.

If a new pizzeria were to be formulated, one might forefront and hijack the establishment’s hidden maintenance and service work. In Chtcheglov’s sardonic tone, I might announce the appointment of a new management team. Staff would no longer serve under the elusive figure of Franco but instead the transparent moniker Frankie - Manky Frankie. Inside the restaurant, entropy would reign supreme. Fungi would grow in thick shelves from the walls but also the tables, stairs, and utensils. Bouts of watercress, spinach, and peas would grow in deep-set, water-logged motes running along each wall.

The menu would solely list produce cultivated and foraged within the restaurant. Neighbourhood rodents must be caught and carved if a customer has a preference for meat. A single septic tank and a simple hydroponic system would keep all nature in balance. The menu would move with the seasons. In winter, the interior’s crop might entirely perish. This would reintroduce the acumen of the hunter-gatherer, a ‘forgotten desire’. Everybody pitches in, society thrives. Customers would no longer sit down to their private dinnertime spectacles but would engage in a situation of invigorating, albeit nauseous, uncertainty.  

Artist Zeger Reyers engages in a near identical form of Situationism. With a desire to humanise the domestic sphere, Rayers planted mycelium within everyday objects. The mushrooms were then prepared and served during the exhibition finissage. Through consuming from the furniture, the objects were reestablished as secondary - as tools and accessories. The furniture became wood, glue, and damp again - No longer confined to the trappings of a feminine realm.

The Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord

Talking back has undesirable consequences.

The Spectacle is reducing everyones concrete life to a universal speculation.

“You (the corporations) don’t ask me if I want a billboard in every part of where I live. You don’t ask me if I want to hear music everywhere I go and in every restaurant I eat in. So why do I have to ask you to take a little bit of it and make something out of it, make fun or critique you” - Mark Hosler from Negativland

This quote alone shows that our world is controlled by a smaller world of which dictates every image we see. It is up to us to standby and absorb this careful dispersion of information or to take it and respond to it, creating our own noise.

It is the artists who have the ability to sharpen out perception. As artists we see our environments for what they really are. Now more than ever, with the COVID-19 global Pandemic, we are all being made to isolate to one single environment, to entertain ourselves, by ourselves for ourselves but really for the protection of others.

We as artists have the ability to use the spectacles own weapons against it by jamming the system. Right now our means of production are limited to what we have in our environments but our capabilities are limitless through the power of technology, which not only stands a huge advance in the spread of art and ideas but currently during COVID-19, technology stands as the only means of spreading information both non essential social and consumer communication and essential government and ministerial broadcasts.

I found Debords analysis of the spectacle especially significant during these unprecedented times. As I try to adapt to a remote version of Art College and Printmaking, I am learning more about the power of art, critique and the spread of ideas through imagery.

No riáis, no bromeo. A mí no me gusta, yo no quiero compartir mi vida con tanta gente. ¿Qué coño es eso? Es puro narcisismo. "Mirad qué vacaciones he pasado, mirad qué hijo más guapo tengo". ¿Y a mí qué me importa? ¿No tenéis nada mejor que hacer que fotografiar vuestra vida y enseñársela a todos? ¿De qué sirve que todos estemos permanentemente informados de todo lo qué hacemos, ¿qué cojones es eso? ¿Dónde ha quedado nuestra privacidad, por qué tenemos que enseñar nuestras intimidades como si fuéramos monos de feria pelándonosla ante el público?

- "Es verdad, hay gente que hace fotos hasta del plato que se está comiendo"