Active in France throughout the 1960s, the Situationists critique of capitalist spectacle remains an important inspiration for visual and new media artists working today. The Situationists: A User’s Guide will take the form of a “networked book.” Posted on a custom-designed Web interface that facilitates the collaborative production of knowledge, the text will be available from an early stage for interventions by the public. It will be published under the Creative Commons license, an update on the anti-copyright theory and practice of the Situationists themselves. Each chapter will develop one major Situationist concept and will link to a database of original texts in translation. Overall, the work will develop Situationist thought in its contemporary relevance, connecting the historic avant-gardes of the Twentieth century to new media interventions in the early Twenty-first century.
McKenzie Wark is an Associate Professor in Media & Cultural Studies at the Eugene Lang College and the New School for Social Research. He is the author of Gamer Theory (Harvard University Press 2007), A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard, 2004) and other books. His writings have appeared in Grey Room, Cabinet, Bookforum and elsewhere.