New book on Situationism and wargaming…
Class Wargames: Ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism
Richard Barbrook
Why should radicals be interested in playing wargames? Surely the Left
can have no interest in such militarist fantasies? Yet, Guy Debord – the
leader of the Situationist International – placed such importance on his
invention of The Game of War described it as his most significant of his
accomplishment.
Intrigued by this claim, a multinational group of artists, activists and
academics formed Class Wargames to investigate the political and
strategic lessons that could be learnt from playing his ludic
experiment. While the ideas of the Situationists continue to be highly
influential in the development of subversive art and politics,
relatively little attention has been paid to their strategic
orientation. Determined to correct this deficiency, Class Wargames is
committed to exploring how Debord used the metaphor of the Napoleonic
battlefield to propagate a Situationist analysis of modern culture and
politics. Inspired by his example its members have also hacked other
military simulations: H.G. Wells’ Little Wars; Chris Peers’ Reds versus
Reds and Richard Borg’s Commands & Colors. Playing wargames is not a
diversion from politics: it is the training ground of tomorrow’s
communist insurgents.
Fusing together historical research on avant-garde artists, political
revolutionaries and military theorists with narratives of five years of
public performances, Class Wargames provides a strategic and tactical
manual for subverting the economic, political and ideological
hierarchies of early-21st century neoliberal capitalism. The knowledge
required to create a truly human civilisation is there to be discovered
on the game board!
—
“In a world become ‘game-ified’ against its will, Class Wargames
provides the field manual for the only game that matters – that of
history.” – McKenzie Wark, author of The Beach Beneath the Street and
Gamer Theory.
“Richard Barbrook’s approach to the Situationist International is so
left field, he leaves virtually every other author addressing the
subject looking like a dull academic plodder. Were he still alive,
Barbrook’s fellow iconoclast Guy Debord would heartily approve of such
unacceptable theory.” – Stewart Home, Stewart Home, avant-garde
pornographer and Paul Hamlyn Foundation prize winner
“Richard Barbrook’s book is a jubilant manifesto for ludic art and
revolution – each in service of the other – for a participatory future.
By bringing Situationist disciplines into a contemporary context, he
shows how thinkers, gamers, artists, hackers and educators can resist
assimilation, and their creative endeavours escape perversion, by the
deadly, dominating forces of neoliberalism.” – Ruth Catlow, co-founder
of Furtherfield and creator of Rethinking Wargames
—
Bio: Richard Barbrook is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University
of Westminster and an active member of Class Wargames. He is the author
of Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village, The
Class of the New, and Media Freedom: The Contradictions of
Communications in the Age of Modernity
PDF available freely online: http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=636
Released by Minor Compositions, Wivenhoe / Brooklyn / Port Watson
Minor Compositions is a series of interventions & provocations drawing
from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of
everyday life.
Minor Compositions is an imprint of Autonomedia
www.minorcompositions.info | [log in to unmask]
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