Thursday, November 14
6:00 pm
Kellen Auditorium
66 5th Avenue

We know Guy Debord (1931-1994) as a poet, filmmaker, artist, revolutionary theorist, editor and founder of the Situationist International avant-garde movement. But above all else, he was a strategist: poetry, cinema, theory and the avant-garde were, for Debord, means to be deployed in a struggle against the society of his age. To sharpen his strategic instincts and those of his potential comrades, Debord designed a game, the Jeu de la guerre (Game of War), which consisted of a gridded board and a set of pieces representing the various units of an army. Through an exploration of the genealogies, contexts, gameplay and contemporary uses of this object, Emmanuel Guy proposes to consider the implications of this unique ludic and social object for our understanding of Debord, and what lessons might be gleaned from a Situationist art of war.

Emmanuel Guy is a researcher, curator and Assistant Professor of Art and Design History at Parsons Paris The New School.

Presented by the Art and Design History and Theory Program at Parsons School of Design