Forty Years of Boredom – Room 4 / Réfutation de tous les jugements...
(Rotterdam: Redefine the Enemy at Tent., 2008)

Film pamphlet by Guy Debord commenting on the reaction to his previous movie La société du spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle, 1973). In Réfutation de tous les jugements..., Debord addressed the impossibility of the viewer’s “objective appraisal” of his 1973 movie. Thus, he fractures the ideal of the viewer’s false commitment: precisely the impossibility to “understand,” the impossibility of “identifying” or being “involved” with the art work, social movements, or politics, creates the link between producer and consumer. In the exhibition, the movie was shown in its original language, French, on a pedestal of three meters high, which made it impossible for the visitor to see the movie as a whole. In this sense, Debord doesn’t occupy the role of exhibiting “artist,” but rather as a marker of critical, activist discourse. Thus, his conception of the (impossibility of) engagement acquired a literal, visual dimension.

Concept and production in cooperation with Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei