Mémoires
Guy-Ernest Debord, Asger Jorn
1958 [stamped 1959]
Mémoires
Mémoires
Fullscreen
PAUSE
00:00
Guy Debord and Asger Jorn created Mémoires just one year after the psychogeographical book Fin de Copenhague (1957). Inspired by the Dadaist concept of the flâneur, Debord coined the term psychogeography to explore how different ...
Read more
Mémoires
Guy-Ernest Debord, Asger Jorn
1958 [stamped 1959]
Copenhagen: Internationale Situationniste
Unpaginated [64 pages]
27.5 × 21 cm

Guy Debord and Asger Jorn created Mémoires just one year after the psychogeographical book Fin de Copenhague (1957). Inspired by the Dadaist concept of the flâneur, Debord coined the term psychogeography to explore how different places shape our emotions and behaviour. As he wrote: “Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals” (Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, 1955).


 


Made in just twenty-four hours, Mémoires continues this Situationist line of inquiry through a radical rethinking of the illustrated book, combining elements of collage, biography, journalism, and history. The book unfolds in a diaristic mode, where psychogeography meets scraps of city maps, newspaper clippings, cartoons, poetry, photographs, and quotations from Marx, Johan Huizinga, and Prince de Soubise, a sort of dandy avant la lettre. The fragments of text and image are détourned to form a fragmentary journal, with Jorn applying gestural ink splatters and other brightly coloured marks over each collaged spread.


 


According to the myth, Mémoires, like the earlier Fin de Copenhague, was created by the two artists in a state of complete inebriation. Indeed, the book is punctuated by references to alcohol, such as rhum and Guinness, as well as the phrase “il s’agit d’un sujet profondément imprégné d’alcool” (“It is a subject deeply steeped in alcohol”), which floats across the first page.


 


Mémoires is bound in sandpaper covers, revealing the authors’ iconoclastic intention to damage all the books shelved alongside it.

Copenhagen: Internationale Situationniste
Unpaginated [64 pages]
27.5 × 21 cm

Guy Debord and Asger Jorn created Mémoires just one year after the psychogeographical book Fin de Copenhague (1957). Inspired by the Dadaist concept of the flâneur, Debord coined the term psychogeography to explore how different places shape our emotions and behaviour. As he wrote: “Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals” (Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, 1955).

 

Made in just twenty-four hours, Mémoires continues this Situationist line of inquiry through a radical rethinking of the illustrated book, combining elements of collage, biography, journalism, and history. The book unfolds in a diaristic mode, where psychogeography meets scraps of city maps, newspaper clippings, cartoons, poetry, photographs, and quotations from Marx, Johan Huizinga, and Prince de Soubise, a sort of dandy avant la lettre. The fragments of text and image are détourned to form a fragmentary journal, with Jorn applying gestural ink splatters and other brightly coloured marks over each collaged spread.

 

According to the myth, Mémoires, like the earlier Fin de Copenhague, was created by the two artists in a state of complete inebriation. Indeed, the book is punctuated by references to alcohol, such as rhum and Guinness, as well as the phrase “il s’agit d’un sujet profondément imprégné d’alcool” (“It is a subject deeply steeped in alcohol”), which floats across the first page.

 

Mémoires is bound in sandpaper covers, revealing the authors’ iconoclastic intention to damage all the books shelved alongside it.

DESCRIPTION

Guy Debord and Asger Jorn created Mémoires just one year after the psychogeographical book Fin de Copenhague (1957). Inspired by the Dadaist concept of the flâneur, Debord coined the term psychogeography to explore how different places shape our emotions and behaviour. As he wrote: “Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals” (Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, 1955).

 

Made in just twenty-four hours, Mémoires continues this Situationist line of inquiry through a radical rethinking of the illustrated book, combining elements of collage, biography, journalism, and history. The book unfolds in a diaristic mode, where psychogeography meets scraps of city maps, newspaper clippings, cartoons, poetry, photographs, and quotations from Marx, Johan Huizinga, and Prince de Soubise, a sort of dandy avant la lettre. The fragments of text and image are détourned to form a fragmentary journal, with Jorn applying gestural ink splatters and other brightly coloured marks over each collaged spread.

 

According to the myth, Mémoires, like the earlier Fin de Copenhague, was created by the two artists in a state of complete inebriation. Indeed, the book is punctuated by references to alcohol, such as rhum and Guinness, as well as the phrase “il s’agit d’un sujet profondément imprégné d’alcool” (“It is a subject deeply steeped in alcohol”), which floats across the first page.

 

Mémoires is bound in sandpaper covers, revealing the authors’ iconoclastic intention to damage all the books shelved alongside it.

Copenhagen: Internationale Situationniste
Unpaginated [64 pages]
27.5 × 21 cm

Guy Debord and Asger Jorn created Mémoires just one year after the psychogeographical book Fin de Copenhague (1957). Inspired by the Dadaist concept of the flâneur, Debord coined the term psychogeography to explore how different places shape our emotions and behaviour. As he wrote: “Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals” (Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, 1955).

 

Made in just twenty-four hours, Mémoires continues this Situationist line of inquiry through a radical rethinking of the illustrated book, combining elements of collage, biography, journalism, and history. The book unfolds in a diaristic mode, where psychogeography meets scraps of city maps, newspaper clippings, cartoons, poetry, photographs, and quotations from Marx, Johan Huizinga, and Prince de Soubise, a sort of dandy avant la lettre. The fragments of text and image are détourned to form a fragmentary journal, with Jorn applying gestural ink splatters and other brightly coloured marks over each collaged spread.

 

According to the myth, Mémoires, like the earlier Fin de Copenhague, was created by the two artists in a state of complete inebriation. Indeed, the book is punctuated by references to alcohol, such as rhum and Guinness, as well as the phrase “il s’agit d’un sujet profondément imprégné d’alcool” (“It is a subject deeply steeped in alcohol”), which floats across the first page.

 

Mémoires is bound in sandpaper covers, revealing the authors’ iconoclastic intention to damage all the books shelved alongside it.

MORE BOOKS

Guy Debord and Asger Jorn created Mémoires just one year after the psychogeographical book Fin de Copenhague (1957). Inspired by the Dadaist concept of the flâneur, Debord coined the term psychogeography to explore how different places shape our emotions and behaviour. As he wrote: “Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals” (Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, 1955).

 

Made in just twenty-four hours, Mémoires continues this Situationist line of inquiry through a radical rethinking of the illustrated book, combining elements of collage, biography, journalism, and history. The book unfolds in a diaristic mode, where psychogeography meets scraps of city maps, newspaper clippings, cartoons, poetry, photographs, and quotations from Marx, Johan Huizinga, and Prince de Soubise, a sort of dandy avant la lettre. The fragments of text and image are détourned to form a fragmentary journal, with Jorn applying gestural ink splatters and other brightly coloured marks over each collaged spread.

 

According to the myth, Mémoires, like the earlier Fin de Copenhague, was created by the two artists in a state of complete inebriation. Indeed, the book is punctuated by references to alcohol, such as rhum and Guinness, as well as the phrase “il s’agit d’un sujet profondément imprégné d’alcool” (“It is a subject deeply steeped in alcohol”), which floats across the first page.

 

Mémoires is bound in sandpaper covers, revealing the authors’ iconoclastic intention to damage all the books shelved alongside it.

MORE BOOKS