In Sadie Plant’s ‘The most radical gesture’ she states “The situationist analysis of contemporary capitalist society was simple and effective. Its express purpose was to transform this society, and it remain.” (Plant, 1992, p.1) By reading further into the situationist movement and the group known as The Situationist International, we were inspired to make our piece in a way that could allow it to some what transform and reform society by liberating it from its normal expectations. We plan to have four banners that are double sided with one side proposing a question that will invoke social interaction it people in the city, whilst the other side will be more thought invoking with a quote that people will have to stop and read and really think about. These quotes are yet to be decided but are well in the development process. We have already begun to test the interacting sides on our site with the phrases; “Can we hug?” “Can I compliment you?” and “Can we high-five?”.

Testing out a sign in the high street.

We will continue to test these to see what responses we get. In everyday life people walk the streets not paying attention to each other or interacting with other people that are around them, with our banners we hope to change this if even for a day, thus liberating society from their normal everyday lives. When testing our interaction phrases we already started to see this liberation happening as people began to stop what they were doing to come hug, speak to or high-five us. An important concept of situationist theory was counteracting the spectacle; moments of life deliberately constructed for the purpose of reawakening authentic desires, and the liberation of everyday life. Therefore we take great inspiration from this movement and hope to put this into practise within our final performance.

Plant, S. (1992) The Most Radical Gesture. New York: Routledge.