The Making of Fin de Copenhague & Mémoires: The tactic of détournement in the collaboration between Guy Debord and Asger Jorn

The Making of Fin de Copenhague & Mémoires: The tactic of détournement in the collaboration between Guy Debord and Asger Jorn

Lans, B.

Macel, O. (mentor)

Architecture

2009-01-27

In the works of Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, durnement played an essential role in the construction of art during the early stages of the SI (Situationist International). For the Situationists durnement was used to create political statements rather than art. In order to explain this topic I will start with a brief description of both Guy Debords and Asger Jorns histories prior to their union in the SI. The construction of a time line will help to illustrate the sequence of events that eventually lead up to the student revolts in 1968 in the streets of Paris and other parts of France. This thesis will be concerning the formation years of the SI, in particular the events surrounding Debord and Jorn from the late 1940's just after WWII, until about 1960 when the SI had been formed. Th e people they worked with prior to meeting each other very much defined the directions they were to take. Although their interests were very similar, the forms of expression that each of them gave to them were quite different. Debord's more theoretical and textual approach complemented Jorn's more artistic approach to finding a new form of expression and communication. Debord was a strategic man; he always thought everything through, theorizing before acting. Jorn was just the opposite and believed that the theory would get in the way of his artistic spirit; instead he would work in concentrated intervals on a project or series, only to try and understand it and theorize it afterwards. His written contribution to the art world and the SI is not to be neglected. Each of these men was in search of a world, they dreamt of it, and attempted to show what it could look like, in their joint work. More than art, their work became, or essentially was a political message. Against a changing society that induced passiveness, they attempted to stage a revolt from within. They were aware that the medium they needed to communicate their message was the same medium that was the cause of this state of mind. They experimented with new implementations for media. Jorn worked with painting and collages in search of meaning in primitive and folkart together with numerous groups and movements, many of which he initiated. Debord investigated the textual and cognitive aspects of language, coming in contact with the Lettrists Movement early in his life. These events made their awareness of the medium all the greater, combined with their theories and conception of a new world they paired up (along with others) to form the SI, which built on concepts developed by the Lettrists as well as the many artists active in the Avant-garde at the time. This paper comments on and illustrates the use of media by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn during the founding period of the Lettrist International (LI) and the Situationist International (SI). The maps they made together based on their theories of the dve, durnement and psychogeography, and in particular they way in which Fin de Copenhague (Copenhagen: 1957) and Mires (Copenhagen: 1959) have come into being.

history paper
situationist
Guy Debord
Asger Jorn
détournement

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:210726aa-afba-4096-8bad-be964bc9d2eb

TU Delft, Architecture, Architecture

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2009 Macel, O.