"The Stadtlounge's red surfacing flows over benches, tables, and art objects throughout the Bleicheli. (A playground-style surface is used in pedestrian areas, while car routes are paved in bright red asphalt.)" St Gallen Visitors...
urban play
Labels: play, situationist, urban playground
constructing situations
“The construction of situations begins beyond the ruins of the modern spectacle. It is easy to see how much the very principle of the spectacle — nonintervention — is linked to the alienation of the old world. Conversely, the most pertinent revolutionary experiments in culture have sought to break the spectators’ psychological identification with the hero so as to draw them into activity. ...The situation is thus designed to be lived by its constructors. The role played by a passive or merely bit-part playing ‘public’ must constantly diminish, while that played by those who cannot be called actors, but rather, in a new sense of the term, ‘livers,’ must steadily increase.” —Report on the Construction of Situations
Labels: situationist, spectacle, spectatorship
click opera
"So I watched the Hide and Seek Festival documentary, which is an introduction to this thing we're going to call PUG, or pervasive urban gaming. What is PUG? According to the Sandpit site, "pervasive games transform the city into a playground, make your heart race, change the way you see the world, get you playing nicely with others". imomus, click opera (image:cliostraat)
Labels: pervasive urban gaming, play, situationist
constructed situation
"What is a situationist? It's a big question, but an initial answer would be: someone who constructs situations. And what's a "constructed situation"? Helpfully, the first issue of the Situationist International provided us with a glossary in order to resolve that question: it's a "moment of life, concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organisation of a unitary environment and a game of events". Constructing a situation thus implies collective construction of a moment - collective involvement in and modification of all the aspects of a moment in time, from the decor to how those involved are acting....A situation in this sense is somewhere between - more precisely, somewhere beyond - art and politics. Where art is predicated on a division between art work and spectator, the situation demands total involvement in its construction and cannot allow spectatorship." Phil Edwards
Labels: construct, situationist, spectatorship
the logo
There is a growing relationship between the corporate logo and the religious symbol. Each symbol proposes a direct relationship with the entity that it represents. Mutilation of that representation is strictly prohibited. Whereas simply representing religious iconography can result in death, the use and abuse of a corporate logo can lead to innumerable lawsuits, bouts of unemployment and banishment to the fringe of capitalist culture. (photo courtesy of rhizome.org)
Labels: icon, logo, situationist, symbol