In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni

In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni
Author: Centraal Museum (Utrecht, Netherlands)
Publisher: Jrp Ringier
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2006
Genre: Art
ISBN:

A precursor to Arte Povera, Fluxus and Punk, the Situationist International has bequeathed a uniquely complex and conflicted legacy to contemporary art-making. Led by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, it initially favored the production of art objects; by 1962, collective debate on the role of art had caused the expulsion of its fine-artist members, including Asger Jorn, other members of Cobra and the entire Munich-based Gruppe SPUR. The revolution envisaged by the Situationist International demanded creativity in everyday life, the constructing of situations or the "fashioning of a temporary micro-environment and series of events for a single moment in the life of several individuals." The Situationist International (1957-1972) (the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at Centraal Museum, Utrecht, and Museum Tinguely, Basel) is the first publication to evaluate the creative contributions of the SI. It addresses three areas of Situationist practice: firstly, anonymous and communal artistic production (e.g Cobra, Asger Jorn's folk art research and the "Bauhaus Imaginiste"); secondly, "détournement," variously translated as "diversion" or "subversion," a key SI strategy in which extant works such as advertisements, comics, paintings or films are politically reconstituted by collage or other means; and thirdly, the practice of "dérive"--"drift" or purposeless wandering in an urban milieu--which generated the now widely known phenomenon of "psychogeography" and led to radical reassessments of architectural practice. The Situationist International includes new unpublished SI documents and essays by Giorgio Agamben, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Peter Sloterdijk and Philippe Sollers.

Guy Debord and the Situationist International

Guy Debord and the Situationist International
Author: Tom McDonough
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2004-02-27
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780262633000

Critical texts, translations, documents, and photographs on the work of the Situationist International. This volume is a revised and expanded version of a special issue of the journal October (Winter 1997) that was devoted to the work of the Situationist International (SI). The first section of the issue contained previously unpublished critical texts, and the second section contained translations of primary texts that had previously been unavailable in English. The emphasis was on the SI's profound engagement with the art and cultural politics of their time (1957-1972), with a strong argument for their primarily political and activist stance by two former members of the group, T. J. Clark and Donald Nicholson-Smith. Guy Debord and the Situationist International supplements both sections. It reprints important, hard to find essays by Giorgio Agamben, Libero Andreotti, Jonathan Crary, Thomas Y. Levin, Greil Marcus, and Tom McDonough and doubles the number of translations of primary texts, which now encompass a broader and more representative range of the SI's writings on culture and language. In a field still dominated by hagiography, the critical texts were selected for their willingness to confront critically the history and legacy of the SI. They examine the group within the broader framework of the historical and neo-avant-gardes and, beyond that, the postwar world in general. The translations trace the SI's reflections on the legacy of the avant-garde in art and architecture, particularly on the linguistic and spatial significance of montage aesthetics. Many of the translated works are by Guy Debord (1932-1994), the impresario of the SI, especially known for his book The Society of the Spectacle.

At Night We Walk in Circles

At Night We Walk in Circles
Author: Daniel Alarcón
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101622989

A breathtaking, suspenseful story of one man’s obsessive search to find the truth of another man’s downfall, from the author of The King Is Always Above the People, which was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. Nelson’s life is not turning out the way he hoped. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man, his brother has left their South American country, leaving Nelson to care for their widowed mother, and his acting career can’t seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of The Idiot President, a legendary play by Nelson’s hero, Henry Nunez, leader of the storied guerrilla theater troupe Diciembre. And that’s when the real trouble begins. The tour takes Nelson out of the shelter of the city and across a landscape he’s never seen, which still bears the scars of the civil war. With each performance, Nelson grows closer to his fellow actors, becoming hopelessly entangled in their complicated lives, until, during one memorable performance, a long-buried betrayal surfaces to force the troupe into chaos. Nelson’s fate is slowly revealed through the investigation of the narrator, a young man obsessed with Nelson’s story—and perhaps closer to it than he lets on. In sharp, vivid, and beautiful prose, Alarcón delivers a compulsively readable narrative and a provocative meditation on fate, identity, and the large consequences that can result from even our smallest choices.

Starsdown

Starsdown
Author: Jasper Bernes
Publisher: In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2007
Genre: Poetry
ISBN:

Poetry. Jasper Bernes's magnificent and multi-layered first book, STARSDOWN, emerges as a record of Los Angeles as its physical space collapses into specters and marks, where "the sky is a swimming pool" and the signs and stars keep switching places. Beneath the glittering surface of the last American city, this book animates the profusion of irreconcilable vernaculars and histories that the city's "pastel-washed meta-burglaries" have contrived to make disappear. An archaeology of futures past and futures to come, STARSDOWN improvises a poetry which stands finally as actual invention and possibility.

The (Super Secret) Society of the EXTRAordinary

The (Super Secret) Society of the EXTRAordinary
Author: Melissa de la Cruz
Publisher: Disney Electronic Content
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2023-09-05
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1368083870

This new series from #1 New York Times best-selling author Melissa de la Cruz is The Mysterious Benedict Society for reluctant readers, chockful of humor, adventure and mischief, and set at an exclusive, secluded, high-tech institute everyone wants to get into.A handful of sixth-graders have been chosen to attend an exclusive weekend at the Octagon Valley Institute, the mysterious, high-tech lab of the uber famous multimillionaire, genius, recluse Onassander Octagon. What will they do there? No one is telling. Which just makes everyone want to get in.Edwin Edgefield has high hopes for the weekend—hopes he’ll meet other kids like him—kids who will accept him even though he’s got a photographic memory, genius level math skills and some very specific personality quirks. But when he meets the other kids, he starts to wonder if they’re all in the right place. There’s amateur rapper Kimmy, who’s obsessed with TikTok, violin-player Julie, who has zero social skills, and surfer dude Dilip, who’s well, a surfer dude. And then, strange things start to happen. Things that involve an escape room challenge, a zero-gravity chamber, a river full of piranhas and . . . some ninjas? Turns out the Octagon Valley is all about using teamwork to make the dream work, and these normally isolated kids might not all survive. But those who do will be treated to the greatest prize—and the biggest surprise—of their lives—a chance to be truly EXTRAordinary.

The Flamethrowers

The Flamethrowers
Author: Rachel Kushner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2014-01-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439142017

* Selected as ONE of the BEST BOOKS of the 21st CENTURY by The New York Times * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * New York magazine’s #1 Book of the Year * Best Book of the Year by: The Wall Street Journal; Vogue; O, The Oprah Magazine; Los Angeles Times; The San Francisco Chronicle; The New Yorker; Time; Flavorwire; Salon; Slate; The Daily Beast “Superb…Scintillatingly alive…A pure explosion of now.”—The New Yorker Reno, so-called because of the place of her birth, comes to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity—artists colonize a deserted and industrial SoHo, stage actions in the East Village, blur the line between life and art. Reno is submitted to a sentimental education of sorts—by dreamers, poseurs, and raconteurs in New York and by radicals in Italy, where she goes with her lover to meet his estranged and formidable family. Ardent, vulnerable, and bold, Reno is a fiercely memorable observer, superbly realized by Rachel Kushner.

Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit

Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit
Author: James Trier
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2019-07-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9004402012

Winner of the 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award Guy Debord, the Situationist International, and the Revolutionary Spirit presents a history of the two avant-garde groups that French filmmaker and subversive strategist Guy Debord founded and led: the Lettrist International (1952–1957) and the Situationist International (1957–1972). Debord is popularly known for his classic book The Society of the Spectacle (1967), but his masterwork is the Situationist International (SI), which he fashioned into an international revolutionary avant-garde group that orchestrated student protests at the University of Strasbourg in 1966, contributed to student unrest at the University of Nanterre in 1967–1968, and played an important role in the occupations movement that brought French society to a standstill in May of 1968. The book begins with a brief history of the Lettrist International that explores the group’s conceptualization and practice of the critical anti-art practice of détournement, as well as the subversive spatial practices of the dérive, psychogeography, and unitary urbanism. These practices, which became central to the Situationist International, anticipated many contemporary cultural practices, including culture jamming, critical media literacy, and critical public pedagogy. This book follows up the edited book Détournement as Pedagogical Praxis (Sense Publishers, 2014), and together they offer readers, particularly those in the field of Education, an introduction to the history, concepts, and critical practices of a group whose revolutionary spirit permeates contemporary culture, as can be seen in the political actions of Pussy Riot in Russia, the “yellow vest” protesters in France, the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and the striking teachers and student protesters on campuses throughout the U.S. See inside the book.

The Pac-Man Principle

The Pac-Man Principle
Author: Alex Wade
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Total Pages: 85
Release: 2018-07-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785356062

In spite of being well into middle-age, Pac-Man's popularity shows no sign of decline and the character has appeared in over sixty games on virtually every games platform ever released. According to the David Brown celebrity index, in 2008, nearly three decades after initial release, 94% of Americans were able to recognise Pac-Man, which gave the character greater brand awareness than Super Mario. Pac-Man, with its avowed commitment to non-violence was a videogame of many firsts, including being designed to appeal to children and females and providing the first narrative interlude in a videogame. Although iconic, Pac-Man has not been subject to sustained critical analysis. This book helps to fill that gap, providing an extensive, sophisticated, but accessible analysis of the influence of Pac-Man on the way that we live in contemporary western societies.

The Spectacle of Disintegration

The Spectacle of Disintegration
Author: McKenzie Wark
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-03-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1844679578

Following his acclaimed history of the Situationist International up until the late sixties, The Beach Beneath the Street, McKenzie Wark returns with a companion volume which puts the late work of the Situationists in a broader and deeper context, charting their contemporary relevance and their deep critique of modernity. Wark builds on their work to map the historical stages of the society of the spectacle, from the diffuse to the integrated to what he calls the disintegrating spectacle. The Spectacle of Disintegration takes the reader through the critique of political aesthetics of former Situationist T.J. Clark, the Fourierist utopia of Raoul Vaneigem, René Vienet’s earthy situationist cinema, Gianfranco Sangunetti’s pranking of the Italian ruling class, Alice-Becker Ho’s account of the anonymous language of the Romany, Guy Debord’s late films and his surprising work as a game designer. At once an extraordinary counter history of radical praxis and a call to arms in the age of financial crisis and the resurgence of the streets, The Spectacle of Disintegration recalls the hidden journeys taken in the attempt to leave the twentieth century, and plots an exit from the twenty first. The dustjacket unfolds to reveal a fold-out poster of the collaborative graphic essay combining text selected by McKenzie Wark with composition and drawings by Kevin C. Pyle.