Issue 6: Winter 2010
A New Script For Guy Debord's 'CRITIQUE OF SEPARATION'
Christopher Clarke
"We don't know what to say. Words form themselves into sequences and
Tracking shot over a group of people on a café terrace. The
camera, hand-held as if in a news report, moves toward Debord
gestures recognize each other. Outside us. Of course some methods are
who is talking to a very young brunette.
mastered, some results verified. It's often pleasant. But so many things we
General view of the two of them walking off together.
have wanted have not been attained; or only partially and not like we
Another girl, blonde.
thought. What communication have we desired, or experienced, or only
Cartoon strip: Blonde-haired girl looking exhausted. Caption: "But it
simulated? What true project has been lost?"
had failed, the jeep was too deeply bogged down in the liquid mud
of the swamp..."
This statement opens Guy Debord's film, ‘Critique of Separation'. At the same
360 degree panorama shot from the Saint-Merri plateau.
Sub-title: Halfway on the path of life I found myself again
(Couperin: March of the Champagne Regiment)
time a space opens between text and image, sound, sub-title, where
in a dark forest where the right the right way had been lost.
these questions, ostensibly about the breakdown of a relationship,
(End of the March)
suggest the end of meaning itself. One picture slides into another, and
Cartoon strip: A diver thinks: "Without the lifeline and without air
I won't last long. If only I could free myself from these weights..."
alters the interpretation of the other, and the original commentary takes
High angle shot in a bar. A couple enter, shut the door, and
advance.
an abrupt turn. Only a few lines later, Debord insists on the need to dissolve the film's subject matter, to change the meaning. The image floats there, open to a range of subjective, even contradictory, readings, detached from the original narrative. In the variability of possible responses, there is
A still shot taken from a film: A US Marine radio operator. Behind
no clear-cut answer, only a series of equivalent guesses. The only honest
him stands an officer and the heroine.
Sub-title: Do you read me? Do you read me? Come in,
come in...
explanation is the one offered at the beginning of the film:
...Over and out:
"We don't know what to say."
This time and place is already lost. The moment the image is taken, it
View over Place de la Concorde from a helicopter.
disengages from that context, is ready to be taken up, re-written, re-made.
The Seine running through the centre of Paris.
And yet this what Debord wanted. This is where the build-up of détourned images expresses only indifference to an already forgotten original.
Close-up of a rocket taking off.
The movements and gestures of modernity, and their trajectory towards
General view of the take-off.
an eventual, illusory ideal, have been absorbed into the spectacle. "What true project has been lost?" asks the commentator, answering his own question. It is truth as a project which has disappeared, or rather,
A pilot equipped for the stratosphere. An officer with drawn sabre.
been made questionable, suspect, "truth which has almost everywhere ceased to exist or, at best, has been reduced to the status of pure hypothesis."
Shot of the cover of a science-fiction book.
Truth as (an) aesthetic.
The straight line towards the apex of modernity diverts and repeats back upon
A pinball machine; the movement of the ball.
itself, reenacting the experiments and trials of the past, under the aegis of the spectacle. History unfolds, rewinds and re-plays its significant moments as entertainment, as a distraction. What about 1968? The situationists? Debord himself?
A still from a film: A king and knights around the Round table.
(Bodin de Boismortier: Allegro movement, Op. 37 - Concerto in E
Minor in five parts)
They have been integrated into the system, as the spectacle's shorthand for
Sub-title: To give every person the social space essential
‘subversion', and as an example of its inherent harmlessness and egalitarian
Two situationists
for the expression of life.
nature. Yet it is also an implicit demonstration of its authority. The negative
One knight defies another in a picture from a Hollywood-style film.
gesture is allowed, only through the good will of the spectacle, which refuses
A situationist drinking a glass of wine.
to take sides in politics. There is no outside the system; everything is subsumed within its permeable, pluralistic structure.
General view of a group sitting at a table in a café in Montagne-
Sainte-Geneviève.
Sub-title: If man is created by circumstance, one must create
human circumstances.
Sub-title: Comrades, unitary urbanism is dynamic, that is to
say it is in direct relationship with modes of behaviour.
This movement, this ‘ism' (despite their insistence on being known only as
Other situationists
Sub-title: Passions have been interpreted enough. It's a
question now of finding new ones.
situation-‘ists', never as situation-‘ism') cannot escape the inevitable process of absorption into the spectacle. It has become petrified, as a lost opportunity
The girl from the opening shot passes by.
to be re-played once again, as farce. Despite the gradual purification of the
Panoramic aerial view of the centre of Paris.
Situationist International, the purging of artists and the visual image (itself particularly susceptible to re-contextualization), and the withdrawal of Debord's films from circulation; all these attempts to evade the spectacle overlook the unavoidable concretization of the temporal moment and the
re-imagination of this ‘historical' past in the present.
You can't destroy all the evidence. There will always be some piece of
The quarreling knights again.
The same girl again.
(The music dies away)
writing, a drawing, photograph, script, rumour, anecdote, memory.
The separation of the image from the original moment, and its placement
Alternating tracking shots: the face of the girl; an aeroplane gets
in another context, against other images, ensures the loss of that original
further away after taking off from the snow-covered countryside
value. Debord recognizes this, and realizes that the détourned image could still become another weapon in the spectacle's arsenal. In this light, the self-imposed banning of his films in France, apparently as a gesture of protest against the lack of any serious police investigation into the assassination of his friend and publisher Gérard Lebovici, may suggest another motive. Perhaps as a way of hiding his true intention: the gradual eradication of the image itself. If meaning is essentially hypothetical, even ephemeral, then it might be best not to reveal the actual meaning of the gesture itself, but to cloud it as a political statement, to protect the image and the intent.
Panormaic view over the Quai d'Orléans, as seen from the Left
Bank. Close-up shot of a detail of the same Quai.
(Boismortier: reprise of the Allegro)
The removal of these films seems like an arbitrary decision, unconnected with Lebovici's murder, but perfectly in keeping with Debord's distrust of the
Panoramic shot of trees buffeted by a tornado.
work and a medium which even he regarded with ambivalence. As he states
Aerial photograph of the Allée des Cygnes, Paris.
in ‘Considerations on the Assassination of Gérard Lebovici': "The cinema has
not been my passion, and not even the anti-cinema. ‘What we saw him leave behind, without pain, was not the object of his love,' as Bossuet would say."
(The music dies away)
What has been left behind? Footage of dead people, dead ideas. The image
The UN Security Council. Khruschev in a room with De Gaulle at
his side.
of the spectacle and its instruments of power and authority. Both cinema
Eisenhower greets De Gaulle.
and anti-cinema. From the perspective of the spectacle, Debord himself has
Patriotic ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe; De Gaulle and
disappeared, momentarily. This system is always able to reintegrate the neg-
Khruschev standing to attention.
ative to eventually take in even the so-called ‘Pope' of the situationists. The
Eisenhower and the Pope talking.
Eisenhower in the arms of Franco.
image separated from reality renders reality questionable, as if the events
of history were merely a series of random encounters.
A riot in the Congo; soldiers disperse the crowd with blows from
their rifle butts.
We watch a version of history, distant and condensed, like the half-memories
of an innocent bystander. Of images perceived on television or in fiction, as
if they had never really happened or had only been experienced second-hand.
Photo of Djamila Bouhired in a police station. At the edge appear
The spectacle places truth in inverted commas. Had Debord realized this?
the hands of the parachutist-journalist Lartéguy. Tracking shot
That even the critique of power eventually comes under its spell, that the
towards the female prisoner's face.
film against the spectacle is necessarily also of the spectacle. Or had he really convinced himself of his gesture as a genuine protest against the police and their collusion in Lebovici's murder? Perhaps, at that time, he was sincere. Later, Debord would develop the theory of the integrated spectacle, above politics and media, as the overriding system which is instead expressed
The young girl talks and laughs
(Couperin: reprise of the March of the Champagne Regiment)
through these outlets, and the withdrawal of his films would take on a new significance. As an admission of futility, surrender. Or rather, as a negative gesture, negated again in Debord's willful misinterpretation. It is an anti-statement, a refusal to engage with meaning, or in current military parlance, what could be called an ‘unknown unknown'.
(The music stops)
Even as the spectacle separates meaning from product, this gesture (if such
In a tracking shot the camera passes quickly across the façade of
a gesture did exist) remains hidden from its gaze, hidden by the fact that it
Saint-Lazare railway station, then moves away up the Rue de
Havre
may never have been intended. Everything else is absorbed and commodified.
showing numerous cars coming down the street.
The historical moment of the avant-garde as an aesthetic and social impulse is both lost and made present, détourned in service to the new. From the contemporary position, the formal advances of the old guard are lifted freely, transplanted and subverted. To exist is to exist in the spectacle, a system that
A squadron of the Republican Guard passes by in the distance.
Sub-title: The new beauty will be of the situation.
is pervasive, all-consuming. The only act able to circumvent this is one which
Sub-title: Across the path of all the possible directions which
arrive so quickly at this moment, our only friend, our bitter
enemy.
can never be known or recorded, which passes away without commentary or notice.
March-past of West Point cadets in an equally archaic uniform.
A squad in the course of manouevres.
The real Debord would not escape quite so easily. Already, he has been
Continuation shot of the movement of the ball in the pinball
machine.
Sub-title: Who would wish to have as a friend a man who
resurrected from suicide as an icon of iconoclasm, a demonstration of the
discourses in such a manner? Who would choose him
spectacle's ability to exhume and re-animate the dead. This version
from amongst others to discuss their affairs? Who would
have recourse to him during their tribulations? And
even makes an appearance in Richard Linklater's 2001 film ‘Waking Life',
finally to what useful purpose in life could he be put?
as the highly spectacularized ‘Mr. Debord'. Yet, while this figure supposedly
Mutineers forced back into the courtyard of an American prison.
The ball disappears.
Sub-title: To disturb everywhere the appearance of the
existing false dialogue.
represents the opposition to the society of the spectacle, the dazzling
Tracking shot over a large number of parked cars.
visual imagery of Linklater's film undermines any such argument. Achieved through a blend of computer animation and digital photography, the aesthetic
Sub-title: Already further away than India or China.
allure of the movie overwhelms the critique, and, as a result, creates a strange disjunction between image and commentary, where the medium
A couple kiss in the street. Boys and girls at a café table.
Sub-title: A poor rebellion, without language but not without a
cause. The programme will make itself.
Two of the lost children of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
cancels out the message, as if Debord was speaking of the necessity of
A prison guard in a watchtower.
Sub-title: Partisans of the power of forgetting.
eliminating speech, or trying to film the end of cinema.
THE SCREEN REMAINS DARK.
Sub-title: Besides, it's less a question of form than of the
traces of form, impressions, memories.
The double of Debord cancels out the original. It is insubstantial, a doppelganger mouthing the words of an other, while subtly contradicting (and affirming) his argument, through his very existence. This ghost is
Sub-title: We are faced with a world which has fallen apart
relentlessly.
thus an exaggeration and a natural extension of the spectacle.
THE SCREEN REMAINS DARK, WITHOUT SUBTITLES OR
COMMENTARY.
As the inevitable return and incorporation of Debord demonstrates the
The young girl who's been featured a lot.
adaptabilty of the spectacle it also exposes the inherent weakness of the situationist methodology. This film itself, the ‘Critique of Separation', uses
Panoramic shot over cut-up sentences: "The production also shows
Sub-title: The truth of an artificial society.
borrowed imagery, stock footage, repeated scenes, a "panoramic shot over
the mark of youth." "It's terrible, magnificent, hopeless disorder."
cut-up sentences", even intermissions of a black screen, seemingly borrowed from Debord's own, earlier film ‘Howls in Favour of Sade'. These elements
"All the elements of an American detective novel are there -
are taken over and turned against the spectacle, as a practice to activate
violence, sex, cruelty; but the direction..."
the passive experience of the viewer, to initiate a subjective, critical reading
of the scopophiliac impulse. Like the techniques of the psycho-geographical drift through the urban environment, or the insertion of subversive slogans in comic books, the re-contextualization of prior material is intended to disrupt complacency, and allow a moment of lucidity into the suffocating atmosphere
Swimmers filmed from under water.
of the spectacular society.
Photos of a few situationists.
(Couperin: reprise of the March of the Champagne Regiment)
The subjectivisation of the spectator is the instant of contamination by the spectacle. And the situationists' failure. ‘Mr. Debord' quotes Robert Louis
A group at the counter of a café.
Stevenson: "Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest."
Comic strip: A man holding a glass thinks: "The dice are cast. Now
she has to say yes to me, soon, very soon."
Sub-title: How many bottles since then? In how many glasses,
in how many bottles has he hidden himself, alone since then?
In opening the work to a plural, relative interpretation, Debord's thesis is made hypothetical, and thus a part of the theoretically diverse structure of the spectacle. It becomes one of many, unfixed and circulating freely in the
Shot of the cover of a detective novel called Swindle. A woman in
profile; further away a man, glass in hand.
multitude without ever finding any answers.
A blonde-haired girl.
Trees in a tornado.
A napalm explosion.
The path cut by the tornado.
The same blonde girl.
Panoramic shot over the cut-up sentence: "The wine of life is drunk,
and only the dregs are left in this pretentious cellar."
(End of the March)
In the end, there is only situation-ism, an image of Debord and the Inter-
Continuation of the riot in the Congo.
national. The spectacle owns its representation, undoing all their hard work, re-showing the films and relics of that moment. Yet, they had already
Two photos already seen of situationists alternate in and out of
Sub-title: It's quite normal that a film on private life should
shot as the sub-title explains the conversation they are having.
be solely composed of private jokes.
disappeared from this representation, leaving only the shell of the movement, and the simulacrum of Debord. The failure of the situationists is proof
The blonde girl.
Sub-title: I didn't understand it all.
of the spectacle, that it could only adapt and absorb any opposition, that
Asger Jorn.
Sub-title: In the same way one could make a series of
documentaries over three hours. A kind of ‘serial'.
it would even expand to accept the blank screen, the détourned fragment, the anti-spectacle. After that, the situation need no longer exist. The instigators could withdraw, while "drink and the devil took care of the rest."
Debord.
Sub-title: The ‘Mysteries of New York' of alienation.
The refusal to engage was the impetus for self-destruction. What else had to be done, but expel the situationists?
Asger Jorn.
Sub-title: Yes, that would be better, more boring; more
significant.
"What we saw him leave behind, without pain, was not the object of his love". And another quote from Debord, at the close of this ‘Critique of Separation': "I have scarcely begun to make you understand that I don't intend to play
the game."
Debord: the camera draws away from him.
Sub-title: More convincing.
Sub-title: (To be continued).
Chris Clarke is a critic and curator of education and collections at Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork. He has written extensively on contemporary art and film for publications including Art Monthly, Circa, Irish Arts Review and Photography and Culture.