The Situationist Intergalactical: A Brief Introduction

The Situationist Intergalactical (SI) is an intergalactic organization of made up of a strange amalgamation of pre/post avant-garde artists, eldritch intellectuals, and poetically inclined political theorists. It remains prominent in certain portions of the Milky Way, NGC 4414, the Sombrero Galaxy, and Andromeda among others. Membership is open to anyone who claims they are a member, and a variety of spin-off groups exists in certain star cluster and extragalactic nebulae.

The intellectual foundations of the Situationist Intergalactical were developed from star seeds of thought emanating from Canis Major, in particular the Sirius system, during the early years of the 21st century on Terra. Disinclined to give two fucks about either capitalism, communism or any of the-then prevalent economic theories available, early members of the SI allowed themselves to be seduced by the irrational forces of the subconscious mind and what occultists called “the unseen” – a field of consciousness extending from the highest planes of reality down to the densest plane of the material commonly seen as the manifest world. The SI has in particular been fond of employing a kind reverse hauntology known as retromancy, for inspiration. It has looked to the avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century, particularly the original Situationist International, Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Luigi Russolo’s theosophic inspired Art of Noise as cultural mines to search for various ore.

The SI remains multi-sub-cultural, as well as multi-cultural in theory and practice. “Use and adapt from anything that works” is our motto. In this regard we have seen how the endgames of capitalism and communism have not worked, and so look into the proverbial dumpster of economic systems and strategies that have never really been tried in full as we seek to create a variety of nodes of parallel polis in our attempt to resist the sovcorp ascendancy seen as one possible outcome of the nascent entrepreneurial turn.

True to our Intergalactic ethos, key pioneers in the world of “space music” continue to transmit their voices to us, and remain active on the inner planes, sending their signals from deep within the akashic archives. (This locale is also known to some as the dream library, and to others as the inner library.) Sun Ra, Karlheinz Stockhausen, David Bowie, Klaus Nomi and Erik Satie have all given key mutational teachings to the musical arms of the Situtationist Intergalactical.

Essential to situationist theory is the concept of the spectacle, a unified critique of fully automated advanced luxury capitalism / communism. Both were highly bureaucratic in their collective organization and relied on propaganda to keep their sway. This agitprop was activated by the mediation of social relations through imagery. A controlled mass media kept the inmates of the collective mind forged prisons fully manacled. Members of the Situationist Intergalactical believe that this living by proxy through the spectacle of reality television, parasocial media, and advertising, is a leading contributor to the passive second-hand alienation experienced by inmates of both advanced capitalism and communism. As such the Situationist Intergalactical advocates a return to developing Analog Intelligence, through the deliberate cultivation of the various arts of memory, and low-tech means of living as a way of engaging fully with the shared reality of the interconnected web of life.

This interconnected web of life is why some members of the Situationist Intergalactical have taken to calling themselves Arachnists, after certain fictional works of one of their founding members. Arachnists have taken some of the best thinking from spiritual anarchist philosophy, whose roots reach back to Chuang Tzu and Gerard Winstanley, along with certain elements of political anarchism, such as mutual aid, stateless societies, or at the least, the idea of micronations, the sovereignty of the individual and the divine spark that animates them. Alongside this the Arachnists have chosen to take ideas from various ecological movements of the 20th and early 21st century as another part of their complex and braided lineage. Strands of rewilding, permaculture, deep ecology, and the core essential knowledge emanating out of thinkers surrounding the peak oil movement and its aftermath are also claimed.

All of this low-tech stuff may cause one to wonder, just how it is the group remains Intergalactical without high technology? I should remind them then that a third branch of our investigations is the realm of dreams. All of our space travel outside of earth is done on the astral plane. To this end we seek to grow new organs of perception to to continue to refine our intergalactic travel. But don't let that worry you! Our work is as much pataphysical as it is metaphysical.

All of this material is used to reweave human paths of fate and destiny, taking what was once separated out by alienated forms of work and economy, and coagulating them anew as a way to disengage from the spectacle and construct situations of life where authentic, unmediated desires and the destiny of souls can be worked out, leading to individual liberation.      

Where the Situationist Intergalactical differs most from their namesake is that they get bored to tears reading things by or about Marx. So much critical theory, that otherwise might have much to offer those seeking to construct situations, gets bogged down by this ridiculous deference to Marx, as if he were the only economic thinker who ever lived. As if there weren’t other alternatives to capitalism (and communism). The bootlicking quality many thinkers have towards Marx is in no-way conducive to ones own self respect as a sovereign individual. We reserve the right to of course offer accolades to our artistic and intellectual ancestors, but the amount of shit piled on the doorstep to Marx is inordinate to what has actually been achieved or done in his name. Having come to the dead end of both dominant systems, it is time to explore new economic ecologies as we build the parallel polis. We will rescue these from the histories eclectic compost hope in an act of retromancy.
 
Since the Situationist Intergalactical has been formed, the focus remains predominantly artistic, but we recognize that within every artist a magician is sleeping. The images that mediate us in the spectacle and simulacrum, are where the I-Mage can exert a lateral influence, even if, while at the fringes of society. Therefore, the tools of the various avantgarde art movements listed above, among any others of interest as led by the daimon of the individual practitioner, are utilized on a spectrum that ranges from complete chaotic abandon to ordered deliberation. Seeing how the alchemical has infused the minds of the surrealists, and later resurfaced in the manner of the “return of the repressed” as seen in Raoul Vaneigem’s increasing investigations of alchemical and occult iconography in his later literary output, the alchemical aspect is of particular interest. But again, any avenue of advanced amalgamation is worthy of having a spot on the shelf in our collective apothecary.

Detournement, psychogeography and many other tools of the original SI remain important to the Situationist Intergalactical. Explorations of these and many more will be further revealed in further communiques!

​If you think you may wish to be a part of the Situationist Intergalactical, you probably already are. No permission is needed. Think yourself a Situationist and you will be. Furthermore, no permission is required to form your own node in the collective web of arachnist activity. Seeking permission may even be grounds for dismissal, in which case you’ll have to form your own node anyway. Until next time, remember that it is always forbidden to forbid, so you might as well demand the impossible.

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