A survey on revolt and anti-government movement in the sixties by Bamber Gosling [Jens Jorgen Thorsen]

Jena-Louis Brau quotes In his book on the new generation revolt "Cours, Cammarade, the vieux monde est apres toi" the following list of important high points in the evolution of european re-volt from which we here show three years:

1955
Apparition of the rock end roll in USA
Macuse publishes Eros and Civilisation

1956
Madrid: fightings in the rooms of the student syndicates
17/6 20th party congress in USSR
Summer Italy: Congress in Alba between the leading groups of european avant-garde
Oct. Hungary: Uprising inn Budapast
31/12 Sweden: Trouble Night in Stockholm by Raggare
USA: Start of the beat generation (Howl by Ginsberg)

1957
28/6 Italy: Congress in Cosio d'Arroscia. Foundation of the Internationale Situationiste 1958
13/5 France: The Gaullist party comes to power etc...

There is absolutely no doubt that the Situationists have formed the first and one of the most important avant-garde groups among the various sorts of revolting and anti conformist groups in the sixties: the undergrounds, the student revolutions, and the Situationists have as well established a very advanced pattern for creativity in the late sixties and in the comming seventies as well.

The scism in February 1962 between the little group of situationists around the French situa-tionist general de Bord and the rest of the movement is pretty badly documentated. Having only gotten his information from the de Bordists in Paris J. L. Breau seems rather badly informed about this. He writes:

"August 1961 in Gothenbourg the fifth Conference was held (earlier conferences annually in re-spectlvely: Cosio d'Arroscia, Paris, Munich, and London). On this conference the question of the artistic activity of the members was raised. A great number of the Dutch, Scandinavian and German members were more or less arrived avant-garde artists especially the dane Jørgen Nash and the German group SPUR ... Kottany proposed ... to call their works "antisituationistic".

"The Crise exploded in 1962 with the spilt in which Nash took with him alI Scandinavians and the German grew more and more political which attracced the eyes of the police upon them ..."

It is right when M. Brau states that the French Bordists always tried to exclude activists. And it a fact that the majority of the situationists whom general de Bord with his tiny little group always tried to pretend to have excluded, always have stressed experiments through action, through creating or interviening in situations.

This rigid hate of action was exactly the thing the Bordists were critisised for during the may events 68 when they like technocrats spent their time on a restaurant far awey from the battlefields handing out pieces of good advice.

After the schism when Nash and Thorsen grouded the Second Situationist International every new-commer among situationists who tried to do independent action was excluded. The students who started the student revolt at the Strassbourg University in May 1966 were excluded and so was the new Mexican group and some of the USA groups (Black Mask and "Up against wall, Motherfuckers", who all started on the basis of the very first collectively made theories. It is remarkable that none of these groups ever really wanted or demanded to be included in the French de Bordist section. Anyhow general de Bord stated that they were excluded.

All these groups are now uniting in a THIRD SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL.

In Holland, as both Mr. Brau and Mr. Landsmann tells, the PROVO was started by and excluded situationist. The name of this guy seems obviously a secret. (Two authors must refer to Constant Niewenhuis or one in the cirde around him). In Germany through the Commune 1 created by later situationists and others inspired by Wilhelm Reich the German youth revolt started burning.

In Scandinavia the situationists carried on their aims, destructing the consumerist society and the consumerist culture through experimental actions, CO-RITUS, demonstrations etc., and their experiments are on the most important points documented by this book [Situationister 1957-70].

These experiments have formed the bridge to the THIRD SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL which is now in its primary shape.

In thit book Mr. Brau claims five groups to be responsible for the mai revolt ifl Paris, namely 1) The University Syndicates, 2) The Situationists, 3) The Externists (Lettrists), 4) the young communists, 5) the Anarchists, 6) The Trotzkists and the Maoists.

In his book Mr. Brau seems very badly informed on what is going on outside France. A pity.

But even in a material like his in which 3/4 of the situationist groups are missing, the documentation of the basic part the situationists have played in the subversive and creative evolution in the sixties is very stressing.

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