“MY EXPERIENCE in Bridport reminded me that sincere and meaningful human connections are precisely what we must fight for, not against, and also that resistance to the spectacle can come from the most unlikely places.”
So concludes a recent reflective blog entry by Samuel Cooper, a research student at the University of Sussex, who lectured in February on ‘The Situationist International and its British Fallout’ at Marsh Barn just outside Bridport.
Situationism at Marsh Barn, Bridport: "Is there a fault with reality?"
Mr Cooper was, in short, giving one of the Lectures About Everything organised by Horatio and Ioana Morpurgo.
You can see why a D Phil student obsessed with ‘a forgotten period of avant-garde activity’ (British Situationism since 1967) would regard Marsh Barn as a surprising place to encounter people who were not only enthused by his overview of such subjects as the Angry Brigade and Punk but had themselves been engaged in ‘proximate activity’ (a 68er, a workplace activist, a wobbly, a trade unionist, a road protestor and others). But that’s the appeal of this part of the world…
A ‘wobbly’, incidentally, is Mr Cooper’s term: I have got no idea what it means. If I’d been there, I would have asked him, but I wasn’t and I’m sorry I missed it.
In return for Mr Cooper explaining to me what on earth a ‘wobbly’ is, I could have told him that the ex-Special Branch man who cracked the Angry Brigade now lives in Bridport. As I was saying, it is that kind of place…
Anyway, if you too missed the lecture, and you want to read Mr Cooper’s notes, you can click on this link here; or if you want read his reflections on his Marsh Barn experience, you can click on this link here.
*Situationism began in 1958 as a radical French philosophy heavily influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism. It sought a “REVOLUTION of everyday life”, most famously through the events of May 1968 in Paris, immortalised in graffiti such as: “Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault with reality” and “Be realistic. Demand the impossible”.
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Hello, Sam here.
‘Wobbly’ is the nickname for a member of the union Industrial Workers of the World: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World. Very interesting stuff, but stuff I associate with Chicago in the early Twentieth Century rather than Bridport in 2010. I was surprising to find out that a chap I was chatting to after the talk was a member of the IWW, partly because there are relatively few members in Britain and partly because it turned out he knew the only other Wobbly who I knew!
I didn’t know that about the so-called Situationist Cop, though. Do you know whether he is allowed or would want to speak about his experiences?
Anyway, again, I’d like to emphasise how welcoming and engaged the people who came to the talk were; I have only good things to say about my experiences in Bridport.
Sam
Hello Sam, I was hoping you might reply and enlighten me, and you have. Thank you! I like to learn new things.
The ex-detective is a friend of mine, though I haven’t seen for him a little while.
I’ll ask him for you.
He took a professional interest in 1970s counter-cultural developments and he has some very interesting stories to tell – because he was also genuinely curious about some things…