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Thoughts on The Spectacle and Recuperation?

🕑 Added 2019-05-17 14:56:15 +0000 UTC

Comments

Tom Nicholas

Hey Ben, thanks for joining us! I was about to drop you a quick message of thanks actually (as I do with everyone who's generous enough to sign up on here. Do you want to drop me a message with a bit more about your research and I can have a think about what might be most helpful?

Ben Cyvas

Hey Tom, I am in the process of doing individual graduate research on Guy Debord with an architectural filter on the information. I want to include a few transcriptions of interviews with a few different people who are informed on this topic and might have an opinion that could open up a new branch of discussion. If this is possible I would love to get in touch and set something up. Thanks!

Tom Nicholas

Really glad you liked it! Yeah, I think it was a necessary pessimism but it's not the tone I usually like my videos to end on, haha! In the follow-up I'm planning on being a bit more forthcoming with opportunities for resistance etc to give it a bit of an uplift at the end at least!

Lucas T

Hey Tom! I told you this already, but I loved the video. I understand what you mean by saying it’d be pessimistic, and if I’m not mistaken you said at the end of video that it might have been a bit negative. But, I believe it’s a necessary negativity, if that makes sense. A lot of Debord’s ideas are new to me, and they are things I hadn’t thought of before. While at first it was a bit upsetting to realize how much our world has been “Spectacularized”, now I feel more empowered to try and subvert it, even if just personally. I have more thoughts and a question about this, but will post them in the Q&A post. Thanks!

Tom Nicholas

Personally, I really wish I'd managed to squeeze in some stuff on détournement (which Debord and the Situationists saw as a kind of opposite to recuperation where one subverts a piece of advertising or similar, think adbusters/culture jamming) as, when watching the video back during editing, I realised it was just a little bit pessimistic...