Abstract

In this essay, Lütticken focuses not only on Debord as a filmmaker, but as an aesthetic activist. Films such as In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978) are discussed as stand-ins for “absent works” whose problematic status is part of the point. Lütticken proposes that we can see or read Debord’s “works,” we can publish or screen or exhibit them, but they exist as something both more and less than tangible facts. They are performance rather than object. In this they mirror more general transformations of capitalism during the 1960s and 1970s, but Debord’s practice pushes performance to the point where it becomes a form of action turned against the performative regime itself. In this sense, In girum was not actually Debord’s final word on the cinema. He continued be involved in the performing of his oeuvres cinématographiques by developing such activities as the ‘curating’ of the Champ Libre book shop, the continuous screenings of his films at Studio Cujas and the development of his board game Le jeu de la guerre.