Detournement

art

The Situationists under the guidance of Guy Debord originally included a number of artists who sought to explore a neo-dada style of rebellious anti-art. These experiments were eventually expunged from the movement by Debord in 1962 in favor of a focus on revolutionary writing and group actions with the purpose to make everyday life into Art. Art making was always problematic for the Situationists because it often became the sort of capitalist spectacle they opposed. Debord famously wrote in 1967, the work of art, like the spectacle, is nothing but “capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image” (thesis 34). By repurposing common popular media, such as comics and tabloids, they avoided the ambitions of creating high art objects in favor of a more subversive variety of art making that employed the spectacle of the original image against itself. Situationists became masters of quotation, altering an original work just enough so that it remained in conflict with the new detourned meaning. The beauty of détournement was that it required no external theoretical construct for interpretation. The altered images were self-contained critiques of the spectacle that, as Debord noted, undermined the “passive acceptance [spectacle] demanded,” and broke down “its manner of appearing without allowing any reply.” Artists who have continued to work in this manner have sought to introduce a dialog with the spectacle of modern popular culture and pushed back against passive reception.