The Situationist International was an international organisation of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution in 1972. Essential to the situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle, a unified critique of advanced capitalism as personal and social alienation. Another important concept of situationist theory was the primary means of counteracting the spectacle through the construction of situations, moments of everyday life deliberately constructed for the purpose of publicly interrupting the status quo, reawakening and pursuing individual and collective authentic desires. SI’s founding member Guy Debord stated that the spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people mediated by those images.
Totem Taboo creates directly counter-scenes or neo-situations, or indirectly with its artefacts symbolically dressing such counter-scenes or neo-situations. Totem Taboo’s first-hand public interventions are available unfolding the dropdown menu.
Featured image: Situation Num.I: Totem Taboo Takes France’s Nation Square – Paris, 2017.