The Cavern of Antimatter: Giuseppe "Pinot" Gallizio and the Technological Imaginary of the Early Situationist International
Name
Pezolet-2010-The Cavern of Antimatter Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio and the Technological Imaginary of the Early Situationist International.pdf
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1.08 MB
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Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Pezolet, Nicola
Date Issued
February 2010
Journal
Grey Room
Publisher
MIT Press Journals
Citation
Nicola Pezolet, "The Cavern of Antimatter: Giuseppe "Pinot" Gallizio and the Technological Imaginary of the Early Situationist International," Grey Room, Winter 2010, No. 38, Pages 62-89. (doi:10.1162/grey.2010.1.38.62) © 2010 by Grey Room, Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Version
Final published version
Abstract
During its formative years (1957–1960), the Situationist International (SI)
charted a paradoxical relationship between an enthusiasm for a technological
future and a surrealist longing for the premodern. In the first
installments of the Internationale situationniste, alongside articles by
Asger Jorn, Giuseppe “Pinot” Gallizio, and others are several unsigned
articles, most of which were written by the editor, Guy-Ernest Debord,
advocating the “destruction of the subject” and the use of contemporary
machines to systematize and consciously organize “what the Surrealists
had still experienced as random, as the marvelous.”1 According to Debord,
the surrealists originally provided useful insights in their indictment of
bourgeois society but soon regressed into an occultist movement that
failed to recognize the potential of modern “conditioning techniques.”2
As a response to such a deterioration of surrealism’s subversive potential
and its cooptation by commercial interests, Gallizio’s “industrial paintings”
were championed by Debord as a new technological form of
creativity that would bring a fatal blow to the outdated avant-garde
and that could be used to create liberating, transitory “situations” signaling
the emergence of a revolutionary movement.3 By using “industrial
painting”—as well as détournement and several other technological and
scientific metaphors—Debord attempted to work through the influential
practices of André Breton’s group, which still occupied a prominent role
in postwar Europe.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1162/grey.2010.1.38.62
