Guy-Ernest Debord / Asger Jorn - Mémoires

In accordance with a statement on the title page, Memoires is produced according to the practice of 'détournement' established by the Lettrist International founded by Debord and adopted by the Situationists. The book is a collage of cut-ups of text and images printed mostly in black and adorned with Jorn's 'portable structures' - vivid colour shapes reminiscent of Jackson Pollock paint drippings. In 2009, the French government stepped in to prevent Yale University from acquiring Debord's personal archives, continuing almost everything he produced from the 1950s as well as his library, typewriter and spectacles. Andrew Gallix commented in an article in The Guardian, that Debord would be spinning in his grave - had he not been cremated following his suicide in 1994 - at the idea of being officially recognized as a national treasure: "In 1959, Debord and the artist Asger Jorn published Mémoires, which was bound in sandpaper so that it would attack any book placed next to it. For years, this lethal dust jacket served as a perfect symbol of Debord's abrasiveness: he was the ultimate outsider whose ideas could never be assimilated by the mainstream.

Printed in Copenhagen by Permild & Rosengreen
van de Loo - Catalogue Raisonné - nr. 220