Talk to the Anarchists
King Mob and the Situationist International
Whitechapel Gallery 12 October 2024
King Mob and the Situationist International
Good morning. My name is David Black and I run a shoestring publishing operation called BPC, which stands for the Barbarism of Pure Culture, inspired by the words of Theodor Adorno:
'Whether art is abolished, perishes, or despairingly hangs on, it is not mandated that the content of past art perish. It could survive art in a society that had freed itself of the barbarism of its culture.'
BPC as a publisher is interested in historical events and persons whose legacy has been ignored, marginalised or distorted by historians, especially - as regards the case in hand - 'cultural historians'.
BPC has published:
Red Antigone, the first biography of the Scottish Hegelian, Helen Macfarlane, 1818-60.
Red Chartist, Helen Macfarlane’s a collected works and translation of the Communist Manifesto for the Chartists in 1850.
LSD Underground: Operation Julie, the Microdot Gang and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love
This year (2024) BPC has published no less than four books by David Wise (whose absence today is due to illness) and Stuart Wise (who died in 2021).
The four books are:
*Lost Texts Around King Mob (which I'll come back to)
*Dialectical Butterflies: Ecocide, Extinction Rebellion, Greenwash and Rewilding the Commons – an Illustrated Dérive. This is especially prescient today considering the current collapse of the butterfly population.
*King Mob: The Negation and Transcendence of Art: Malevich, Schwitters, Hirst, Banksy, Mayakovsky, Situationists, Tatlin, Fluxus, Black Mask.
*A Newcastle Dunciad 1966-2008: Recollections of a Musical and Artistic Avant Garde plus Bryan Ferry and the Newcastle Arts Scene
Hegelian Dialectic
Twins David and Stuart Wise were born in Jesmond, Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1943. In the mid-1960s, as students at Newcastle University School of Art, they were associated with what they later called ‘the often confusedly anti-art magazine’, Icteric. It was at this time that Wises got hold of a volume of Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics. The influence of Hegel, who Karl Marx called that 'mighty thinker' he was a lifelong 'disciple' of, stayed with the Wises. And that's where I'll start, with my own ideas on why it might have impressed them as much as they say it did. More recently the Wises, always open to new ideas, have praised Anselm Jappe's book, Guy Debord, (1999) which says 'Debord’s theory is in essence the continuation of the work of Marx and Hegel and that its importance inheres for the most part precisely in this fact.'
In 'essence', so-to-speak, Hegel, post-French Revolution, argued that in bourgeois civil society the abstract principles of law and economics negate the organic unity of life. German Romanticism of the late-18th century saw the the art of Greek Antiquity as representing the unity of subject and object. But such organic unity had become impossible for a society in which, as Hegel saw it, the 'lower world' of economic nature promoted a 'bestial contempt for all higher values', tossed all sense of the divine into the world of 'superstition' and 'entertainment', and reduced the temple to 'logs and stones' and 'the sacred grove to mere timber'.
What then was left for art? Hegel said that 'as regards its highest vocation, art is and remains for us something past. For us it has lost its genuine truth and vitality; it has been displaced into the realm of ideas…' Hegel did not doubt that works of art would continue to be produced and that artists would strive for perfection with new imaginative techniques. We are, after all, a species of story tellers, scibblers and makers of sounds.
However, what is aroused in us by art beyond immediate enjoyment is ‘the judgment that submits the content and medium of representation of art to reflective consideration.' Think of Andy Warhol's Brillo Box (as interpreted by Arthur Danto), made in his New York ‘Factory’ in 1964; only curated as a work of art — as opposed to just a box made in the Brillo factory — because of the art critics' 'reflective consideration'.
Black Mask
The purported aim of the Wises' Icteric magazine in 1966 was the ‘fusion’ of ‘art and life’. It was mainly the brainchild of Ronald Hunt of the Department of Fine Art at Newcastle University, who had been appointed as librarian courtesy of lecturer and pop artist, Richard Hamilton. Hunt was familiar with the more marginal publications of the international art scene. It was he who first acquainted future Situationist member Donald Nicholson-Smith with the theoretical journals of the French Situationists. Hunt also learned of the activities of the Black Mask group in New York, such as their intervention at a meeting in a plush art gallery shouting, ‘burn the museums baby’, ‘art is dead’, ‘Museum closed’ etc. Dave Wise recalls:
‘Soon letters were sent out to New York and we got replies immediately: “brothers/sisters come and join us”! So two of us (Dave Wise and Anne Ryder) went from Newcastle to New York via London, and in the summer of 1967 engaged in some of the activities of Black Mask...
Dave recalls handing out anti-police leaflets out a Black Power meeting on Lower East Side:
‘With my heart in my mouth I started handing out the Captain Fink leaflet together with other Black Mask stuff. Suddenly two cops jumped me, one thrusting a gun in my ribs whilst the other shoved the barrel of his gun against my forehead. They seized what I was carrying and slyly pilfered personal belongings though they stopped short of doing anything else. At the same moment another cop sidled up to Anne, who was wearing a mini-skirt, (English mini-skirts were still much shorter than their American counterparts) kissing her full on the lips… Ben Morea came running up just as the cops were moving on. He shook his head and said; ‘Dave, you shouldn’t have let them take the leaflets!’ It was then the difference between Newcastle and New York really struck home.
Ben Morea gave them the personal addresses and telephone numbers of Situationist sympathisers who resided in London. We duly contacted on them on our return to England.
The Construction of Situations
The Situationist International was founded in July 1957, at a conference in Cosio d’Arroscia, Italy by Guy Debord and Michèle Bernstein of the Paris-based Letterist International; painter Guiseppe Pinot-Gallizio and fellow Italians, Walter Olmo, music composer, and Piero Simondo and Elena Verrone of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus. Two other painters attended: Ralph Rumney from England; and Asger Jorn from Denmark.
Debord argued in his Report on the Construction of Situations that 'the problems of cultural creation can now be solved only in conjunction with a new advance in world revolution.' In order to combat the passive consumption he saw defining spectacular culture, Debord called for the international to organize collectively towards utilizing all of the means of revolutionizing everyday life, 'even artistic ones.'
'We need to construct new ambiances that will be both the products and the instruments of new forms of behaviour. To do this, we must from the beginning make practical use of the everyday processes and cultural forms that now exist, while refusing to acknowledge any inherent value they may claim to have... We should not simply refuse modern culture; we must seize it in order to negate it. No one can claim to be a revolutionary intellectual who does not recognize the cultural revolution we are now facing... What ultimately determines whether or not someone is a bourgeois intellectual is neither his social origin nor his knowledge of a culture (such knowledge may be the basis for a critique of that culture or for some creative work within it), but his role in the production of the historically bourgeois forms of culture. Authors of revolutionary political opinions who find themselves praised by bourgeois literary critics should ask themselves what they’ve done wrong.'
In the world theorized as the 'Society of the Spectacle-Commodity', Debord argued that art could no longer be justified as a 'superior activity' or as an honorable 'activity of compensation.' In the new conditions of the culture industry only 'extremist innovation' was 'historically justified'. The 'literary and artistic heritage of humanity' could however, still be used for 'partisan propaganda' because its artifacts could be deflected or 'détourned' from their 'intended' purposes.
The Situationist concept of Unitary Urbanism sought to transform existing buildings and whole neighbourhoods into places for play and enjoyment – rather than what they have now become, deserts of dystopian high rise atrocities inspired by the finest postmodernist educations (don't look up) and gentrified hubs of alienation now imposed by the developers (welcome to Whitechapel).
On 22 March 1968, students occupied the administration block at Nanterre University, leading to weeks of protests and the closure of the University for two days. The closure spread the protests to the Latin Quarter and the Sorbonne, which was also occupied. In the course of three days in occupation of the Sorbonne, the Situationists sent telegrams to every factory and union they could think of. As confrontations with the Paris police soon developed into large-scale street fighting, on May 11 the unions called for a general strike on the May 13. When, on May 14, workers at the Sud-Aviation plant in Nantes occupied the plant, supporters of the Enragés and the Situationists in Paris formed the Council for Maintaining the Occupations (C.M.D.O.). With its aim to promote autonomous “councilism,” the C.D.M.O. organized the printing of large numbers of pamphlets, such as For the Power of the Workers’ Councils, and posters, many of which were printed by workers at occupied print shops. Naturally, not being vanguardists, they didn't credit these artefacts as the work of the Situationists, but they did the work anyway, and the rest, so to speak, is history.
Heatwave, the Situationist International and King Mob
As I said rearlier, in 1967, having heard of the Situationists in New York, Ben Morea gave Dave Wise and Ann Ryder the addresses and telephone numbers of Situationist sympathisers in London. They were the people around the magazine Heatwave. Four of them formed the English section of the Situationist International.
Let's look at who they were (in some cases still are)
TJ Clark, who is today one the world's leading art critics/historians.
Donald Nicholson-Smith, renowned translator of French literature.
Charles Radcliffe, who after the politics didn't work out teamed up with Howard Marks and later was busted when customs in Anglesey seized a boat smuggling a vast quantity of hash, which meant Radcliffe spent much of the 1980s in prison. I recommend his autobiography, Don't Start Me Talkin, which slags off my early efforts to tell the 'secret history' of LSD – and he was right, as I told him shortly before he died.
Chris Gray (1942-2009) edited, in 1974m Leaving the 20th Century, the first collection of Situationist writings in English. This was in collaboration with Jamie Reid, who in turn collaborated with Malcolm McLaren's Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle, i.e. the Sex Pistols. Gray, after a stint with the Orange People sect in India, wrote The Acid Diaries: A Psychonaut's Guide to the History and Use of LSD (2010).
That’s what became of them, but what drew them towards the SI in the first place was involvement in 1966, with Heatwave, the first magazine to put the new revolt of youth into some kind of perspective, with specific reference to Mods and Rockers, Beats, Dutch Provos and the like by Gray and Radcliffe; affirming their vandalistic acts of destruction as something which could have real future consequences. Bernard Marszalek, and Penelope and Franklin Rosemont sent reports on workers' struggles in Chicago. There were numerous article on Dadaism, one on Unitary Urbanism by Attila Kotanyi and Raoul Vaneigem of the SI.
Initially, what resulted was a ‘meeting - if you like – between north and south’: between the Wise twins and friends, and the English section of the Situationists. In this new grouping the ideas of the Situationists and their predecessors were discussed in depth. For a year plans were made and collaborators sought out; things seemed promising. Then after SI member Raoul Vaneigem report to Guy Debord on a trip he made to New York in late-1967, the SI expelled the English Section.
The Wises explain that
'Principally, Vaneigem objected to Alan Hoffman, a kind of mystical but political acidhead who’d started to show an interest in Black Mask... Also, Ben had a serious liver complaint and he couldn’t touch alcohol, thus acid went down very nicely... Ben was inevitably very upset... and started raving on in letters about the man-of-letters disposition Vaneigem put across, accusing him of not knowing anything about those at the bottom of the pile and street life in general. This created quite a dilemma in London as Chris Gray and Don N Smith in particular wanted to keep all the newfound friendships here alive and kicking. Knowing our friendliness with Ben Morea, they didn’t want to cause too many upsets before things could really kick in in terms of doing something together. Presumably because of their prevarication, they were excluded from the Situationists and the rest, so to speak [again], is history... Out of this lacunae and initial disorientation followed by a kind of re-think, King Mob developed.’
The BPC book, Lost Texts around King Mob features some of the writings of this milieu:
Ronald Hunt, art historian, The Arts in Our Time: A Working Definition; The Great Communications Breakdown, (1968)
John Barker, Art+Politics = Revolution in1968, which he wrote just before he became an Angry Brigade urban guerrilla.
Fred Vermorel, music writer who collaborated with Malcolm McClaren in formulating Punk Rock.
Chris Gray and Dave Wise, Balls! - a spoof sociological analysis of radicalism in Notting Hill.
Phil Meyler, Dublin associate of King Mob, publisher of Gurriers magazine (1968) and Notes from the Survivors of the Late King Red (1972); later chronicler of the Revolution in Portugal..
As regards King Mob practice:
'Bit by bit we hoped through weaving in and out that we’d begin to encounter the forces which could materially realise the dreamt-of real potlatch of destruction as daily we contributed our small offerings to the process of furthering decomposition. Some of us almost on a daily basis kept gate-crashing the offices of the burgeoning underground press slagging them off for their lack of any theoretical grasp as well as their failure to get involved in any form of cutting-edge direct action. It was also hardly surprising that we tried to turn ritualised demonstrations into orgies of generalised destruction. On March the 17th, 1968 we started to turn over cars in Oxford St, getting quickly pushed aside rather heavily by demo stewards. Obviously we were nervous anyway about provoking such a break in England’s recent tradition of peaceful protest and thus connecting again with its distant but deep riotous past! By October of the same year such assaults had become easier to carry out (in the meantime, insurgents had quite magnificently smashed up a lot of cars in France) and we were a lot less fearful as we contributed to violent disorder, smashing showroom windows and trashing the regalia of the rich near the Hilton Hotel in Hyde Park as well as giving many a camera a good seeing to when those stupid idiots within our own ranks of protestors started clicking shutters. (The latter tactic seems much in need of revival when nowadays there are often more cameras than demonstrators on demonstrations).'
Of course it's gone beyond that now; and indeed, rioting isn't what it used to be. Consider the fate of the rioters up north this past August; we despise their bullying violence and pity them for falling for social media lies promoted by the fash; but the really sad fact is that they didn't twig that they were carrying enough damning information on their cell phones to get themselves and their mates banged up by the hundreds in His Majesty's hellholes.
In fact, the question now is to what extent real direct action has now, short of actual insurrection, become gaol bait for activists, now the reality of surveillance capitalism is beginning to kick in. The recent mass assassinations by Israel demonstrates to the world the sinister and deadly capabilities of coordinated surveillance technology that only comes to light when it is used.
As Guy Debord put it back in 1988, reflecting on new developments in the Spectacle:
'A GENERAL working rule of the integrated spectacle... is that... everything which can be done, must be done... New machinery everywhere becomes the goal and the driving force of the system... continual technological innovation. This law must also thus apply to the secret services which safeguard domination. When an instrument has been perfected it must be used, and its use will reinforce the very conditions that favour this use. Thus it is that emergency procedures become standard procedures.'
How 'Integrated' can the Spectacle get?
To conclude...
As the Wises put it:
‘It could be said that King Mob had created an opening out of nothing in these islands and that is something that adds up to la gloire! Aggressive tactics had split something asunder as basically we were absolute beginners without any immediate reference points to hand. It’s like as though we were forced into the quasi-terrorist address against a back drop of quite terrifying incomprehension. Hardly surprising therefore that it was followed by direct action terrorism in the form of the Angry Brigade even though both were heading clean up the wall. By 1972, we realised we had nothing to fall back onto. Nobody would possibly publish anything we’d done or would even propose to do so.’
After the Tate Modern acquired the archive of King Mob in 2008, Hari Kunzru wrote a piece for the Tate website, entitled condescendingly 'The Gang who Really shouldn't be here', in which he protested:
'But these posters and magazines are just detritus, the record of past struggles. In the present day, the real action is elsewhere.’
Whatever ‘real action’ consists of, and wherever the ‘elsewhere’ might be, are best left to Kunzru to explain. As for ‘detritus’ of ‘past struggles’, perhaps the detritus has more claim to relevance than what is today claimed in the ‘art world’ (and politics) to be ‘substantial’ (the opposite of detritus is ‘substance’); and perhaps past struggles have more to teach us than present-day capitulations to capital and its culture industry. In the age of culture wars, real or imagined, I recall an old King Mob Echo cover which quotes Antonin Artaud: 'Question: What is Culture? Answer: Shit'. A proposition in the true Hegelian sense, worthy of discussion as to its validity, now more than ever.