If I Loved Life, I Wouldn’t Make Movies. Parts II and III. The Films of the Scandinavian Situationists; René Viénet and Détournement

Albert Mertz (1920–1990) was a Danish painter. He is also recognized for his art criticism, experimental films, and teaching. He had his exhibition debut when he was only thirteen years old in 1933 and started at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1936. Years later he became a professor at the same institution from 1979 until his death. Mertz made some of the first experimental films in Denmark and along with Jens Jorgen Thorsen and Jorgen Nash, he directed the film So Ein Ding Muss Ich Auch Haben (1961). He was co-founder of the Linien II in 1947, exhibited with the artists associations Grønningen and Den Frie, and represented Denmark posthumously at the 21st Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil in 1991. Mertz is represented in all major Danish art museums, in Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, The National Gallery in Oslo, Norway, and in major collections such as the Daimler Art Collection. He received the 1964 Eckersberg Medal and the 1988 Thorvaldsen Medal.

Jens Jørgen Thorsen (1932–2000) was a Danish artist, director, and jazz musician. Thorsen began his artistic career attending the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. A member of the Scandinavian Situationist Movement, he orchestrated controversial and provocative happenings in collaboration with Jorgen Nash. Thorsen also wrote, directed, and starred in a number of films, including Quiet Days in Clichy (1970), based on the Henry Miller novel. Thorsen planned to make a film called The Sex Life of Jesus, that was to depict Jesus indulging in various heterosexual and homosexual sex acts. The planned film encountered strong national and international protests and accusations of blasphemy resulting in the Danish Film Academy withdrawing its financial support. Thorsen was also a jazz musician and co-founder of the group Papa Bue’s Viking Jazz Band.

Jorgen Leth is a director, journalist, author, and cycling commentator. In his youth, he was an active cyclist and table-tennis player. Leth studied literature at Aarhus University and ethnography at Copenhagen University. Leth made his first film in 1963, Stop for Bud, a documentary portrait of jazz pianist Bud Powell, and he became a central figure on the experimental documentary film scene in the 1960s. Leth tends to highlight the mythological and epic aspects of his subjects. This is most apparent in his sports films, including Stars and the Water Carriers (1974) and A Sunday in Hell (1977), about two cycling races: the Giro d’Italia and the Paris-Roubaix spring classic, respectively. In 2003, Leth co-directed The Five Obstructions with Lars von Trier. The film presents five remakes of Leth’s 1968 classic, The Perfect Human.

​​Ole John was born in Copenhagen in 1939. He is a producer, director and cinematographer. He has produced a large number of documentaries and short films for Danish TV and The Danish Film Institute and has created a number of experimental films in cooperation with the Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth and the German artist Joseph Beuys. John graduated from The National Film School of Denmark as a cinematographer. He was associate professor at Arts Academy of Düsseldorf, Germany 1971–75, head of the Danish Film Workshop 1977-84, chairman of the Danish Producers Association, and on the board of the Danish Film Institute 1987–91. From 1994–98 he was director of New Danish Screen and from 1998–2009 was deputy director at the National Film School. John has lectured at The Norwegian Film School, The London Film School, Beijing Film Academy, and the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin.

Guy Debord (1931–1994) was a French theorist, filmmaker, and founding member of the Situationist International, a group that sought to critique and subvert capitalist society. He is well-known for his book and film The Society of the Spectacle in which he offers one of the most sustained critiques of a media and consumer culture that alienates individuals from authentic social relations. His ideas are considered to have played a key role in shaping the events of May 1968 in France. Debord’s work continues to influence critical theory, political thought, cinema, and other art practices.

Keith Sanborn has been working in film, photography, digital media, and video since the late Pleistocene Age. His work has appeared at various festivals including Ostranenie, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Images Festival (Toronto), OVNI Barcelona, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Hong Kong Videotage, the Alexandria Film Festival, EMAF, the New York Video Festival, and the Whitney Biennial. His work has been screened at various museums and media arts centers such as the Walker Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art New York, Anthology Film Archives, Chicago Filmmakers, the Pompidou Center, the Pacific Film Archive, and the San Francisco Cinematheque.

René Viénet is a French filmmaker and sinologist known for his involvement in the Situationist International of which he was a member from 1963 until his resignation in 1971. His critiques of Maoism and Chinese totalitarianism are evident in his Situationist films: La dialectique peut-elle casser des briques? (1973), Les Filles de Kamaré (1974), Chinois, encore un effort pour être révolutionnaires (1977), and Mao par lui même (1977). His book Enragés et situationnistes dans le mouvement des occupations (Paris: Gallimard, 1968) is an indispensible account of the events of May 1968 narrated from a Situationist perspective.

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen is an art historian. He is Professor of Political Aesthetics at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Playmates and Playboys at a Higher Level: J.V. Martin and the Situationist International (Sternberg Press, 2014), Crisis to Insurrection (Minor Compositions, 2015), After the Great Refusal: Essays on Contemporary Art, Its Contradictions and Difficulties (Zero, 2018), Trump’s Counter-Revolution (Zero, 2018), Hegel after Occupy (Sternberg Press, 2018), and Late Capitalist Fascism (Polity, 2022), as well as a number of books in Danish. His work has appeared in e-flux journal, Social Justice, South Atlantic Quarterly, and Third Text, among other places. He has edited a number of books, including Expect Anything Fear Nothing: The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere (with Jakob Jakobsen) (Nebula & Autonomedia, 2011) and Aesthetic Protest Cultures (Minor Compositions, 2024).

Paul Grant teaches film and literature at Kiuna and Champlain Colleges in Quebec. He is the author of Cinéma Militant: Political Filmmaking and May 1968, and co-author of Lilas: An Illustrated History of the Golden Ages of Cebuano Cinema. He has translated the work of, among others, Serge Daney, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jean-Louis Schefer, and Roger Vailland. His writing has appeared in La Furia Umana, Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination, The Brooklyn Rail, Film International, Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, and Film Comment. He is currently writing a monograph on Philippine regional cinemas.

Ethan Spigland is a professor in the Humanities and Media Studies Department at Pratt Institute. He received an MFA from the Graduate Film Program at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and a maitrîse in Philosophy from the University of Paris VIII under the supervision of Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard. Ethan is also an award-winning screenwriter, filmmaker, visual artist, critic, and curator. He completed two short films in collaboration with renowned architect Steven Holl. One of these, Luminosity Porosity, formed part of an installation at the Gallery Ma in Tokyo, Japan. His project, Elevator Moods, was featured in the Sundance Film Festival and South By Southwest, and won a Webby Award in the Broadband Category. His short film, The Strange Case of Balthazar Hyppolite, won the Gold Medal in the Student Academy Awards, and was shortlisted for an Oscar. He writes regularly on film and media for The Brooklyn Rail, Film Comment, and many other publications. He is a contributor to the recently published book Reading with Jean-Luc Godard on Caboose Press.