|
|
potlatch #2
information bulletin of the french section of the lettrist international
29 June 1954
Translated by Gerardo Denís, Greil Marcus, Donald Nicholson-Smith and Reuben Keehan
Potlatch: Directions for Use
We're not interested in a fond place in your memories. But concrete powers are at stake. A few hundred people haphazardly determine the thought of an era. Whether they know it or not, they are at our disposal. By sending Potlatch to effectively positioned people, we can interrupt the circuit when and where we please. Some readers have been chosen arbitrarily. You have a chance to be one of them.
THE EDITOR
No Common Measure
The most dazzling displays of intelligence mean nothing to us. Political economy, love and urban planning are means that we must master in order to solve a problem that is first and foremost of an ethical kind. Nothing can release life from its obligation to be absolutely passionate. We know how to proceed. The world's hostility and trickery notwithstanding, the participants in an adventure that is altogether daunting are gathering, and making no concessions. We consider generally that there is no other honorable way of living apart from this participation.
for the Lettrist International:
HENRY DE BÉARN, ANDRÉ-FRANK CONORD, MOHAMED DAHOU, GUY-ERNEST DEBORD, JACQUES FILLON, PATRICK STRARAM, GIL J. WOLMAN
They Write to Us from Vancouver
We still haven't been to Canada! . . . Perhaps in the not too distant future? My behaviour is no longer just enigmatic, it terrorizes, and I cannot be reproached a single gesture, an illicit word. On the contrary, my conduct is exemplary, completely disorienting . . .
PATRICK STRARAM
Two Détourned Phrases for Ivich
Ivich is winning! Ivich is winning! Love will as good as smile upon him.
He has found it. What? Eternity. Ivich is one with the sun.
For any urgent communication, contact TUR 42-39.
Second Anniversary
On the evening of 30 June 1952, Howlings in Favor of Sade was first shown at the self-described Avant-garde Film Club. After twenty minutes of confusion, the projection of the film was cut short by an utterly indignant audience.
Exercise in Psychogeography
Piranesi is psychogeographical in the stairway.
Claude Lorrain is psychogeographical in the juxtaposition of a palace neighborhood and the sea.
The postman Cheval is psychogeographical in architecture.
Arthur Cravan is psychogeographical in hurried drifting.
Jacques Vaché is psychogeographical in dress.
Louis II of Bavaria is psychogeographical in royalty.
Jack the Ripper is probably psychogeographical in love.
Saint-Just is a bit psychogeographical in politics. (Terror is disorienting.)
André Breton is naively psycho-geographical in encounters.
Madeleine Reineri is psycho-geographical in suicide. (See Howlings in Favor of Sade.)
Along with Pierre Mabille in gathering together marvels, Évariste Gaullois in mathematics, Edgar Allan Poe in landscape, and Villiers de l'Isle Adam in agony.
GUY-ERNEST DEBORD
Out the Door
Since November 1952, the Lettrist International has pursued the elimination of the Old Guard:
a few exclusions
|
a few reasons
|
ISIDORE GOLDSTEIN aka ISIDORE ISOU
|
Morally retrograde individual, limited ambition
|
MOÏSE BISMUTH aka
MAURICE LEMAÎTRE
|
Prolonged infantilism, early senility, a good apostle
|
POMERANS aka
GABRIEL POMERAND
|
Falsifier, nonentity
|
SERGE BERNA
|
Lack of intellectual rigor
|
MENSION
|
Merely decorative
|
JEAN-LOUIS BRAU
|
Militarist deviations
|
LANGLAIS
|
Foolishness
|
IVAN CHTCHEGLOFF aka GILLES IVAIN
|
Mythomania, interpretative delirium, lack of revolutionary consciousness
|
Harking back to the dead is pointless — a new generation has taken charge.
GIL J WOLMAN
Worth Keeping in Mind
"We are too well aware of the insufficiency of all existing ideas and behaviour. Holding onto any of these only assists the police with their inquiries. The present society can therefore be divided into just two groups: lettrists and informants."
(Declaration of 19 February 1953, signed by Dahou, Debord and Wolman; published in issue 2 of Internationale lettriste.)
Editor in Chief: André-Frank Conord, 15 rue Duguay-Trouin, Paris 6.
|
