The Beach Beneath the Street by McKenzie Wark

Author:McKenzie Wark [Wark, McKenzie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9Divided We Stand

“Newell Street, London, E14 7HR. £1,250,000: A beautiful Grade 2 listed house formerly headquarters of The British Sailors Society. Built circa 1802 for one of Horatio Nelson’s captains, the property retains many naval features including one of London’s only Victorian swimming pools, originally built to teach sailors to swim. The property is laid out over three floors and consists: large entrance hallway, drawing room, conservatory, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, studio room, sauna, private garden and two parking spaces. The property has also been used for filming, including Beginner’s Luck and Dead Cool and has been graced by stars such as Rosanna Arquette, Liz Smith, and Julie Delpy.”1

It’s easier to sell a property with a story, but beneath these stories lie others. The ad neglects to mention that the same address formerly housed the homeless, or that it was once disgraced by the anti-celebrities of the Situationist International. In preparation for the 1960 London conference, Debord and Jorn embarked on a dérive of the city looking for a suitable venue. They settled on this hall in the Lime-house district, mythologized by Charles Dickens as a seedy warren of opium dens.2 With them was Jacqueline de Jong (b. 1939), one of the handful of women who, like Michèle Bernstein, was able not only to put up with men like these, but make vital contributions of her own. “I mean, no washing the dishes and things like that.”3

De Jong’s was a sophisticated family from provincial Holland. Her father’s company made seamless stockings for Dior. When the Nazis invaded Holland, two-year-old Jacqueline crossed over the Jura Mountains with her mother, while her father hid out in Amsterdam. After the war de Jong moved to Paris, where her father found a position for her at Dior. She met Jorn in the company of her father, when he bought one of Jorn’s pictures. The family collection included works by several Cobra artists, a Franz Kline, and many other fine contemporary works. In 1957 de Jong was in Holland, working as an assistant to Willem Sandberg at the Stedelijk Museum. The Situationists were involved in a somewhat fraught collaboration with the Stedelijk, which brought de Jong into contact with them.4

The Spur Group (1957–66) was one of the stronger signs of life in postwar German culture. It formed in 1957 in Munich. De Jong joined Spur in 1959. “Jorn thought very highly of them,” she says. He found them a dealer and brought them into the orbit of the Situationists. They would not return the favor. “If you pick a strange baby, don’t be surprised if it craps on you!” Or so the artist Roberto Matta advised his friend when Jorn became their champion.5

To Spur, art was the last free domain from which to oppose the rationalization of social life. Spur defended art against attempts to rationalize it as well, a last redoubt against administered life. They had read their Theodor Adorno (1903–69), and while the cardinal of critical theory would hardly recognize them, they were his mutant offspring.

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