File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2002/lyotard.0204, message 8


From: "Mary&Eric Murphy&Salstrand" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: Fw: Films by Guy Debord
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 8:35:0 -0600


Hugh,

Thanks for passing on the information about the status of the films.  I
admit my first reaction to this was to think "Gee, Wouldn't it be great if
they put these on DVD?" (and I currently don't even own a DVD player.) 

Next I thought: "What would Guy Debord have said about this?"

Putting these on DVD - wouldn't that amount to commodifcation of the basest
kind? A Situationist scream eaten by the spectacle, that hungry neoliberal
monster on steroids who has forever lost his prozac.

Yet, if it isn't on DVD, how will the kids ever know? - unless they are art
students living in large cities who can attend obscure experimental film
festivals?

And even if they are seen, how do they escape from being seen as a
historical curiosity pieces, relics from days gone by, the cultural
equivalent of a derive-by shooting.

It is a commonplace now to be told free speech doesn't apply to spaces like
malls or corporate offices because these are private spaces. Free speech by
definition can only exist in public spaces. But once all the public spaces
have become privatized, doesn't that mean free speech is dead?

I heard about a group called Yoga Inside that goes around to prisons and
reform schools teaching the inmates how to breathe and perform yoga
postures.  They are currently being sued by Intel Inside for brand name
violation of the latter's intellectual property rights. Words are now
becoming private property too. What's in a name?

At the other end of the rainbow, I have heard about movies that are
currently being totally re-vamped by amateurs using computer technology to
redub, splice and edit the original films into something completely
different from the original, perhaps even making the usual hollywood
schlock interesting again. A current case of detournement at work, perhaps,
one that testifies to contemporary possibilities even more than the ancient
films of ST. GUY DEBORD.

I can already hear the sirens of the intellectual property police wailing
in the ontological darkness.

Perhaps, as Proudhan once observed, property is theft. After the primal
crime, there are no repeat performances allowed. 

We have sold our ancient birthright of DNA to genetic-engineering global
corporations for a mess of reality game shows. The spectacle continues even
if we do not.


eric 

 



   

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