bigideas

In preparation for the recording of a panel discussion on psychogeography next week (of which more later) we went looking for some situationist resources online and esperienced an embarrass de richesse. Here are some of the choicest pickings.

Over at Barbelith we found a handy article serving up situationism in a nutshell, and at Surrey University we found a brief 1958 glossary of situationist jargon. The Geography department at Leeds has this screed by Sadie Plant which captures much of the spirit of the movement.

At nothingness.org we found a large electronic library of situationist texts including Guy Debord‘s book The Society of the Spectactle. We also found many more free etexts at the Bureau for Public Secrets.

YouTube has some footage which looks like it’s from the right period, but in French, which is no good to us (sorry — if you speak French, let us know what you thought). One of them appears to be the sort of thing they used to like showing late on BBC2 — really just a lot of gratuitous shots of topless sunbathers, but, you know, it’s culture, innt? There’s an okay TV documentary from I guess the late 1970s (part one, part two and part three), but you have to put up with a lot of talking-head jabbering from Malcolm MacLaren and similar artschool poseurs.

Looking further afield, we like Mute Magazine‘s articles on culture and geography, whose most recent issue is themed around the debt crisis, which is occupying our thoughts on and off at the moment too. We also enjoyed First Monday, which often takes a psychogeographical look at the internet — well, it’s a place where we spend a lot of time these days, so why not?