Critique of Separation (1961) - full transcript

When one thinks how it's

natural and advantageous...

for mankind to identify his

own language and reality,

one guesses what sophistication

degree we must have reached...

to dissociate both,

and study them as

separate objects.

This is a quote from

Andre Martinet's book...

Elements of General Linguistics.

The documentary you are about to

see is called 'Critique of Separation'.

It was written and directed

by Guy Debord.

The images are

from Andr? Mrugalski,

Editing was made

by Chantal Delattre.

About a subject which cinema

never dared to approach.

This film was screened

in February 1961,

And was produced by "Dansk-Fransk

Experimentalfilm Kompagni".

We don?t know what to say.

Sequences of words are repeated;

gestures are recognized.

Outside us.

Of course some methods

are mastered,

some results are verified.

Often it?s amusing.

But so many things we wanted

have not been attained,

or only partially and

not like we imagined.

What communication have

we desired, or experienced,

or only simulated?

What real project

has been lost?

The cinematic spectacle

has its rules,

its reliable methods for producing

satisfactory products.

But the reality that must be taken as

a point of departure is dissatisfaction.

The function of the cinema,

whether dramatic or documentary,

is to present a false and

isolated coherence

as a substitute for a communication

and activity that are absent.

To demystify documentary cinema,

it is necessary to dissolve

its "subject matter."

A well-established rule is that

any statement in a film...

that is not illustrated by

images must be repeated,

or else the spectators

will miss it.

That may be true.

But this same type of

miscommunication...

constantly occurs in

everyday encounters.

Something must be specified

but there?s not enough time,

and you're not sure

you've been understood.

Before you have said or

done what was necessary,

the other person has

already gone.

Across the street.

Overseas.

Too late for any rectification.

After all the empty time,

all the lost moments,

there remain these endlessly

traversed postcard landscapes;

this distance organized

between each and everyone.

Childhood? Why,

it?s right here ?

we have never

emerged from it.

Our era accumulates powers,

and imagines itself

as rational.

But no one recognizes

these powers as their own.

Nowhere is there any

entry to adulthood.

The only thing that happens

is that this long restlessness...

sometimes eventually evolves

into a routinized sleep.

Because no one ceases to

be kept under guardianship.

The point is not to

recognize that...

some people live more or

less poorly than others,

but that we all live in ways

that are out of our control.

At the same time, it is a world that

has taught us how things change.

Nothing stays the same.

The world changes more

rapidly every day;

and I have no doubt

that those...

who day after day produce

it against themselves...

can appropriate it

for themselves.

The only adventure, we said,

is to contest the totality,

whose center is

this way of living,

where we can test our

strength but never use it.

No adventure is directly

created for us.

The adventures that

are presented to us...

form part of the mass

of legends transmitted...

by the cinema or

in other ways;

part of the whole spectacular

sham of history.

Until the environment is

collectively dominated,

there will be no

real individuals ?

only specters haunting

the objects...

anarchically presented

to them by others.

In chance situations,

we meet separated people

moving randomly.

Their divergent emotions

neutralize each other...

and reinforce their solid

environment of boredom.

As long as we are unable

to make our own history,

to freely create situations,

our striving toward unity will

give rise to other separations.

The quest for a

unified activity...

leads to the formation

of new specializations.

And only a few

encounters were...

like signals emanating

from a more intense life,

a life that has not

really been found.

What cannot be forgotten...

reappears in dreams.

At the end of this type

of dream, half asleep,

the events are still for a

brief moment taken as real.

Then the reactions they

give rise to become clearer,

more distinct,

more reasonable;

like on so many mornings...

the memory of what you

drank the night before.

Then comes the awareness

that it?s all false,

that "it was only a dream,"

that the new realities

were illusory and...

you can?t get back into them.

Nothing you can hold on to.

These dreams are flashes

from the unresolved past,

flashes that illuminate

moments...

previously lived in

confusion and doubt.

They provide a blunt...

revelation of our

unfulfilled needs.

Here we see daylight,

and perspectives that now

no longer have any meaning.

The sectors of a city are to

some extent decipherable.

But the personal meaning...

they have had for us

is incommunicable,

as is the secrecy of

private life in general,

regarding which we possess

nothing but pitiful documents.

Official news is elsewhere.

Society broadcasts to itself its

own image of its own history,

a history reduced to a superficial

and static pageant of its rulers ?

persons who embody the apparent

inevitability of whatever happens.

The world of the rulers is

the world of the spectacle.

The cinema suits them well.

Regardless of its subject matter,

the cinema presents heroes...

and exemplary conduct...

modeled on the

same old pattern...

as the rulers.

This dominant equilibrium is

brought back into question...

each time unknown people

try to live differently.

But it was always far away.

We learn of it through the

papers and newscasts.

We remain outside it,

relating to it as just

another spectacle.

We are separated from it

by our own nonintervention.

And end up being rather

disappointed in ourselves.

At what moment was

choice postponed?

When did we

miss our chance?

e haven?t found the

arms we needed.

We?ve let things slip away.

I have let time slip away.

I have lost what

I should have defended.

This general critique

of separation...

obviously contains,

and conceals,

some particular memories.

A less recognized pain,

a less explicable

feeling of shame.

Just what separation was it?

How quickly we have lived!

It is to this point in our haphazard

story that we now return.

Everything involving

the sphere of loss ?

that is, what I have lost of myself,

the time that has gone;

and disappearance, flight;

and the general

evanescence of things,

and even what in the

prevalent and therefore...

most vulgar social

sense of time...

is called wasted time ?

all this finds in that strangely

apt old military term,

lost children,

its intersection with the

sphere of discovery,

of the exploration of

unknown terrains,

and with all the forms of quest,

adventure, avant-garde.

This is the crossroads where

we have found ourselves,

and lost our way.

It must be admitted that

none of this is very clear.

It is a completely typical

drunken monologue,

with its incomprehensible

allusions...

and tiresome delivery.

With its vain phrases...

that do not

await response...

and its overbearing

explanations.

And its silences.

The poverty of means

is intended to reveal...

the scandalous poverty

of the subject matter.

Generally,

the events that occur in our individual

existence as it is now organized,

the events that really concern us

and require our participation,

generally merit nothing more

than our indifference...

as distant and

bored spectators.

In contrast,

the situations presented in

artistic works are often...

attractive, situations

that would merit...

our active participation.

This is a paradox to reverse,

to put back on its feet.

This is what must be

realized in practice.

As for this idiotic spectacle of the

filtered and fragmented past,

full of sound and fury,

it is not a question now

of transforming...

or "adapting" it into...

another neatly

ordered spectacle...

that would play the game of

neatly ordered comprehension...

and participation. No.

A coherent artistic

expression expresses...

nothing but the coherence of

the past, the passivity.

It is necessary to destroy

memory in art.

To undermine the conventions

of its communication.

To demoralize its fans.

What a task!

As in a blurry drunken vision,

the memory and language of

the film fade out simultaneously.

At the extreme,

miserable subjectivity

is reversed...

into a certain sort

of objectivity:

a documentation of the conditions

of noncommunication.

For example, I don?t

talk about her.

False face.

False relation.

A real person is separated from

the interpreter of that person,

if only by the time passed,

between the event

and its evocation,

by a distance that continually increases,

that's increasing at this very moment.

Just as a conserved expression...

remains separate from

those who hear it...

abstractly and without

any power over it.

The spectacle as a whole is

nothing other than this era,

an era in which a certain

youth has recognized itself.

It is the gap between that

image and its consequences;

the gap between

the visions, tastes,

refusals and projects that

characterized this youth...

and the way it has advanced

into ordinary life.

We have invented nothing.

We adapt ourselves,

with a few variations,

into the network of

possible itineraries.

We get used to it,

it seems.

No one returns from an

enterprise with the ardor...

they had upon setting out.

Fair companions,

adventure is dead.

Who will resist?

It is necessary to go

beyond this partial defeat.

Of course.

And how to do it?

This is a film that interrupts itself

and does not come to an end.

All conclusions

remain to be drawn;

everything has to

be recalculated.

The problem continues

to be posed ?

in continually more

complicated terms.

We have to resort

to other measures.

Just as there was no

profound reason to begin...

this formless message,

so there is none

for concluding it.

I have scarcely begun to

make you understand...

that I don?t intend

to play the game.

Subtitles by hellboytr based

on the translation by Ken Knabb