Contemporary Walking Practices and the Situationist International: The Politics of Perambulating the Boundaries Between Art and Life

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Notes

 1. These have taken the forms of theatre-based performances, such as The Travels (2002) by Forced Entertainment; audio walks, such as Janet Cardiff's The Missing Voice (London, 1999, ongoing) and Graeme Miller's Linked (London, 2003, ongoing); or guided walks such as Simon Persighetti's and Phil Smith's Tour of Sardine Street (Exeter, 2010).

 2. Claire Doherty, ‘The New Situationists’, in Claire Doherty (ed.), Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2004), pp. 7–41 (p. 7).

 3. The Situationists are taught as part of modules in a number of theatre, drama and performance departments in the UK (such as Queen Mary University of London, Warwick, Lancaster, Exeter, Aberystwyth, and Plymouth). There have also been a handful of texts that have mapped and/or analysed the influence of the Situationists upon contemporary British theatre and performance, such as G.D. White, ‘Digging for Apples: Reappraising the Influence of Situationist Theory on Theatre Practice in the English Counterculture’, Theatre Survey, 42 (Spring 2001), 77–190; and Peter Ansorge, Disrupting the Spectacle: Five Years of Fringe and Experimental Theatre in Britain (London: Pitman, 1975).

 4. Townley and Bradby's Teleconnection, Teledirection was part of a broader project, Feet Follow These Rules within the ‘RSPV Contemporary Artists at the Foundling’ exhibition curated by Gill Hedley. It took place at the Foundling Museum, Brunswick Square, London, from 28 September to 18 November 2007.

 5. There are a variety of instructions; some require solitary walks, others group walks, some call for interaction with people, others with props. See Wrights & Sites, A Mis-Guide to Anywhere (Exeter: Wrights & Sites, 2006).

 6. My interviews were conducted with Anna Townley and Lawrence Bradby from Townley and Bradby, and two of the four members of Wrights & Sites: Cathy Turner and Phil Smith (Simon Persighetti and Stephen Hodge were unavailable for interview at this time).

 7. Guy Debord, ‘Theory of the Dérive’, Internationale Situationniste, 2 (1958) trans. by Ken Knabb, <http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/2.derive.htm> [accessed 4 May 2011].

 8. Teleconnection, Teledirection was free to attend. The Mis-Guide is available to purchase online but it is also available for loan from various libraries.

 9. Their projects include guidebooks such as Sweep and Veer (2005) or urban interventions such as What Now: A Silent Public Discussion about the Changing City (2008). For further examples see Townley and Bradby, ‘Artworks’, Axisweb, <http://www.axisweb.org/seCVWK.aspx?ARTISTID=12215> [accessed 1 December 2011].

10. In addition to the Mis-Guides, Wrights & Sites have created a number of site-specific performances such as Everything You Need to Build a Town Is Here (2010), a series of signs that détourn the urban environment through parodying official public plaques. For further examples see Wrights & Sites, ‘Company Projects’, Mis-Guide, <http://www.mis-guide.com/ws/past.html> [accessed 1 December 2011].

11. These rules can also be found in the free artists' broadsheet published for the event with a number of rules for journeys, see Townley and Bradby, Feet Follow These Rules (London: The Foundling Museum, 2007).

12. Sadie Plant, The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 59.

13. Lawrence Bradby, ‘An Interview with Townley and Bradby’ (unpublished interview, Norwich, 2008).

14. Townley and Bradby, ‘Artist Statement’, Axisweb, <http://www.axisweb.org/seCVFU.aspx?ARTISTID=12215> [accessed 1 December 2011].

15. Anna Townley, ‘An Interview with Townley and Bradby’.

16. Lawrence Bradby, ‘An Interview with Townley and Bradby’.

17. Wrights & Sites, A Mis-Guide to Anywhere, p. 31.

18. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, trans. by Ken Knabb (London: Rebel Press, 2005), p.106, original emphasis.

19. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. by Simon Pleasance, Fronza Woods and Mathieu Copeland (Dijon: Les Presses du Réel, 2002), p. 85.

20. Ibid., p. 31.

21. Jacques Rancière, ‘The Emancipated Spectator’, Artforum (Spring 2007), 271–280, (p. 277).

22. Carl Lavery, ‘Police on My Back’, Censorship and Self-Censorship in Theatre and Performance, ed. by C. Svich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming 2012).

23. Peter Hallward, ‘Staging Equality: On Rancière's Theatrocracy’, New Left Review, 37 (2006), 109–129 (p.113).

24. Ibid., p. 122, original emphasis.

25. The ‘police order’ according to Rancière is about keeping people in their place. It is not the police proper, but the hegemonic control over the distribution of the sensible that ‘determines the distribution of parts and roles in a community as well as its forms of exclusion’, see Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. by Gabriel Rockhill (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 89.

26. Simon Sadler, The Situationist City (London: MIT Press, 1999), p. 119.

27. Kenneth Gergen, ‘The Challenge of Absent Presence’, in James Katz and Mark Aakhus (eds), Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 227–241 (p. 227).

28. Ibid.

29. Lawrence Bradby, ‘An Interview with Townley and Bradby’.

30. Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), p. 9.

31. Ivan Chtcheglov, ‘Formulary for a New Urbanism’, Internationale Situationniste, 1 (1958) trans. by Ken Knabb, <http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/Chtcheglov.htm> [accessed 4 May 2011].

32. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), p.17.

33. Ivan Chtcheglov, ‘Formulary for a New Urbanism’.

34. Mark Jayne, Cities and Consumption (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), p.14.

35. Ibid.

36. Massey, For Space, p. 9.

37. Phil Smith, ‘An Interview with Cathy Turner and Phil Smith of Wrights & Sites’.

38. Cathy Turner, ‘An Interview with Cathy Turner and Phil Smith of Wrights & Sites’ (unpublished e-mail interview, 2008).

39. Lawrence Bradby, ‘An Interview with Townley and Bradby’.

40. Phil Smith, ‘An Interview with Cathy Turner and Phil Smith of Wrights & Sites’.

41. Ibid.