created 2025-04-24, & modified, =this.modified
tags:y2025situationist
rel: Situationist International Anthology Psychogeography by Merlin Coverley
Why I’m reading
I’ve read this already, but was intrigued by this note which I am not sure I knew:
Mémoires, was bound with a sandpaper cover so that it would damage other books placed next to it.
The book is a work of psychogeography, detailing a period in Debord’s life when he was in the process of leaving the Lettrists, setting up Lettrism International.
The work contains two separate layers. The first is printed with black ink, reproducing found text and graphics taken from newspapers and magazines. The second layer is printed using coloured inks, splashed across the pages. These sometimes connect images and text, sometimes cover them, and sometimes are seemingly unconnected. The black layer contains fragments of text, maps of Paris and London, illustrations of siege warfare, cheap reproductions of old masters and questions such as ‘How do you feel about the world at the moment, Sir?’ The coloured layer contains freefloating ink splashes, lines created by a matchstick loaded in ink, and a Rorschach inkblob.
Of course, the dreamer doesn’t know that he dreams. He is completely taken over by the sights, the situations, the intentions and the emotions which constitute his dream.
Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the material is new.
NOTE
There’s mention of the Aztec Cōātlīcue - the word is composed snake + her skirt, or she who has the skirt of snakes.
represented as a woman wearing a skirt of writhing snakes and a necklace made of human hearts, hands, and skulls. Her feet and hands are adorned with claws and her breasts are depicted as hanging flaccid from pregnancy. Her face is formed by two facing serpents, which represent blood spurting from her neck after she was decapitated.
this quest will not be useless, on condition that we are don’t allow ourselves to be fooled by the illusory understanding memory gives to us.
the systematic exploration of old maps.
changing his surroundings has become his habitual task: his constant obsession.
We may have many memories of other civilizations… of strange things