Gothenburg Fragments

Beskrivelse

Gothenburg Fragments captures a unique gathering of artists, thinkers, workers, and strikers in September 2021 at the historic Volrat Tham hotel in Gothenburg. This venue is famously known as the site of the fifth Situationist conference back in 1961, where a pivotal split in the movement took place.

A reflective exploration of Situationism’s legacy through a modern-day conference held at the original site six decades later.

Between September 3rd and 5th, 2021, twelve individuals met in the same room where the legendary fifth Situationist conference occurred in 1961. This event marked a significant rupture within the movement, making the location a symbolic choice for this anniversary gathering.

The motivation behind revisiting this conference lies in the idea that, as psychogeography suggests, the unconscious is structured not only as a language but also across time and space. Holding a conference about a conference in the very same room, sixty years on, taps into this concept. It raises the question of which conference-historically speaking-was the tragedy and which the farce.

Engaging with Situationism is considered risky, as Asger Jorn warned, calling it the most dangerous of all -isms once you begin to believe in it. This paradoxical nature of the movement, which seems to undermine itself, is part of the complex legacy left by the fifth conference. It also complicates how we historicize these events, as it feels like looking back at a group that was focused on the future, almost as if they are silently challenging us.

There might be a sense of guilt tied to a prophecy that appears to have failed. Yet, what if it hasn’t failed? What if it’s still unfolding? From an anachronistic perspective, absence can turn into a latent presence, echoing Jorn’s vandalist approach to history.

After the 1961 conference broke up, some Situationist International members drifted to Hamburg, where discussions continued and led to the formulation of the Hamburg Theses. These theses marked the end of the movement’s first phase and established a stronger opposition to art within its modern context.

The works featured in this book act as fragments reflecting the aftermath of that conference, focusing on the core tensions within the movement’s ideology.

Did the 2021 gathering finally close the chapter on this history, or did it revive it? Probably neither. In the haunted halls of Volrat Tham, there was no corpse or ghost-only something neither alive nor dead: the undead.

The contributions here respond to ongoing divergences in art, value, labor, and capital, which have manifested into situations. While recuperation continues, new symptoms are emerging-symptoms that the book’s participants are keenly observing.

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