Chiunque può essere Luther Blissett, semplicemente adottando il nome Luther Blissett

 

Chiunque può essere Luther Blissett, semplicemente adottando il nome Luther Blissett...

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/9

On the Passage of a few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International 1956-1972

Spectacular Times- Larry Law

With the egocentricity of youth- when I was about 17 - I thought that I'd practically invented anarchism, and with a narcissistic smugness I'd go on about it to anyone who'd listen. To be honest about it I wasn't looking for kindred spirits or sympathetic ears, I wanted the outraged responses of the ordinary Joes.
Then, when I started college I met a lot of old heads from the sixties who had seen it all before. In 1983 1968 seemed to me an impossibly long time ago, but to these guys it was just the other day.
So I came to be aware of The Situationists, and stuff like this.

I don't know much about Larry Law ('writer, publisher and anarchist'). I do know that his series of 'pocket-books' Spectacular Times was started on April 1st 1979, with the aim of assimilating Situationist ideas (so often steeped in obfuscation) into the anarchist movement. The title is a reference to Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle.

Larry Law died on July 22nd 1988.

Copies of Spectacular Times are available to read online here...

The Return of The Durutti Column (1979) La Retour De Colonne Durutti (1966)

Musical virtuosity may not have been the defining feature of the British 'post punk' era, but virtuoso is an apt description of the Mancunian guitarist Vini Reilly. Graduating from punk band Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds ( he was replaced by Billy Duffy- later of The Cult, and Ed Banger by a certain Stephen Morrissey) Reilly was an early signing for Factory Records. In fact Durutti Column were assembled by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus before they embarked on the Factory scheme. After various line up changes Durutti Column effectively became Reilly's solo project, and this, the first Durutti Column LP, was a collaboration between Reilly and producer Martin Hannett. Included here is a two track record by Hannett that came with initial releases of the album.
Being an admirer of the Anarchist Buenaventura Durruti I had often wondered if there was any significance in the misspelling of his name as used by Reilly, or was it merely an error.
This brings us on to Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus, and their seeming fascination for the Situationist International movement of the 1960's. Fac 51- The Hacienda Nightclub, would later be named from Formulary for a New Urbanism , a Situationist work by Ivan Chtcheglov,(the hacienda must be built...)
Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti (The Return of the Durutti Column), was a 4-page Situationist comic by Andre Bertrand given away at Strasbourg University in October 1966- so the misspelling was not down to Wilson, Erasmus or Reilly, but was faithful to Bertrand's text.



*Translation below

The LP itself also made reference to the Situationists. Like Guy Debord's book Mémoires — It came in a sandpaper cover,(the idea in Debord's case being that this would destroy other books on the shelf).



Vini Reilly & Martin Hannett



*Cowboy 1: What's your scene, man
Cowboy 2: Realisation
Cowboy 1: Yeah? I guess that means pretty hard work with big books and piles of paper on a big table.
Cowboy 2: Nope. I drift. Mostly I just drift.