How did art escape the deadlock of the Situationists’ anti-art refusal? Did the relational artists, with their repetitions of Situationist slogans and techniques, outline a sustainable, micro-political alternative to Guy Debord’s dream of surpassing art and realizing philosophy? Looking back at some of the Situationists’ confrontations with the museum, this book traces a path beyond the tragedy of negativity and the litany of recuperation.

In this book, Nicole Brenez presents the key figures and the basic concepts of Lettrist cinema, the art form within which their formal innovations proved the most far-reaching, prefiguring the breakthroughs of the nouvelle vague and the experiments of expanded cinema.

After the infamous split in the Situationist International in 1962, the Danish artist J. V. Martin was unexpectedly put in charge of the group’s Scandinavian section. This book is the first presentation of Martin’s strange trajectory within the SI, in which he would remain a member until the group’s dissolution in 1972.