The Situationists, old and new
The Situationist International (SI) was founded in 1957 and were most popular during the historic May 1968 uprisings in France. The Situationists argued for a creative, revolutionary approach to Socialism, work and life. The method behind this radical ideology was the construction of situations and the setting up of environments favourable for the fulfilment of a radical, continuously creative lifestyle. Using methods drawn from the arts, The Situationists developed a series of experimental fields of study for the construction of such situations, like unitary urbanism andpsychogeography.
The Situationists saw as essential to their method, an intelligent awareness and resistance to the various mechanisms of capitalism. The small but highly influential Situationist book The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. (1967) argued that advertising and the Mass Media were central to the manufacturing of false reality and misguided sense of identity, relationships and life. The book was prophetic in forseeing a time when The media would begin reporting on itself and its own works as ‘News’. The Situationists International was dissolved in 1972
The New Situationists
During the Big Freeze, The New Situationists movement organically developed through the global activity of cyber activists, supported by organisations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Global Voice and Technology for Transparency. When Anonymous joined forces with the Situationists, the alliance rapidly became the voice of survival information.
The Situationist movement grew as more member joined and after the Big Freeze, groups began to emerge, specialising in Political art, derived from the Fluxus movement and other surrealists.
In the early days of the Big Freeze, the scientific community was in dispute about how bad the weather was going to get and how long it would last. The Situationists used information from Chinese, Iranian and American scientists to actively promote radical long-term survival strategies based on principles of co-operation and open information sharing.
Meanwhile, Corporations decided to take matters into their own hands to protect their property and assets; contracting Private Military Companies and security firms to police their premises. This included many of the supermarkets and malls, petrol stations and privatised utility plants.
The Situationists, in collaboration with Wikileaks and hackers from Anonymous released information showing that multi-national distributors like Tesc-Mart were falsifying information on how much food-stock they had in order to keep prices unrealistically high and quoting different prices in different nations. Other records showed that Tesc-Mart were cutting deals with oil and gas producing nations as well as Private Military Corporations to ensure protection of their assets, fuel their trucks and keep businesses open. Many executives in Tesc-Mart and their corporate axis partners were profiting from these back-door deals.
The Situationists infiltrated Tesc-Mart with low level drivers and distribution managers. These undercover Situationists installed a hacking app into the Tesc-Mart Server and truck computers. The app monitored loads and deliveries and allowed access to back-office deals. The Situationists used the evidence to prove the distribution of resources was being guided by who could pay the most for it rather than need.
It did not take long for corruption to set into the deals between Governments, corporations and Private Military Corporations like Lycus, leading to the neglect or eviction of people not living in official urban settlements . In response, the Situationists began to support a growing alliance of War veterans who organised to protect vulnerable and isolated communities threatened by Lycus. The Veterans, aged between 25-60 came to be known as the People’s Infantry. The combination of Military expertise and Cyber-activism became a powerful force against corruption and oppression after the Big Freeze
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