This article explores the legacy of the Situationist
International’s explosive intervention into
the first world performance scene. The focus is less on their activity during
the 1960s, and more on their impact during the 1970s both on artistic practices
and on the developing discipline of Performance Studies. Case studies come from
the performance arts of George Brecht, Joseph Beuys and John Cage, and the
films of Shigeko Kubota and Michael Snow. Taking on board the paradigm shift
from ‘discipline’ to ‘performance’ and the ‘challenge’ of
global performance (McKenzie 2001), this paper analyses these case studies with
contemporary tools extrapolated from Lyotard’s work
during the same years. To wit: (1) his prolonged engagement with Duchamp (1977
trans. 1990); (2) his deliberate self-distancing from the Marx and Freud that
had driven his earlier activist work (his rethinking of desire and
theatricality); and (3) the parallels between his and Deleuze’s work (Lyotard 1974, Deleuze &
Guattari 1972). These tools afford a means of situating the concept of artistic
‘drift’ within
the world of 1970s performance art. Two implications of moving beyond the
confines of the Situationist I nternational and rethinking ‘intervention’ are discussed: (1) drift loosens up the politics of
performance and its social force (a pressing task in our neoliberal era, and
one of Lyotard’s key contributions to
Performance Studies); and (2) unpacking the ph enomenology of drift qua
aesthetic inattention / indifference affords the basis for a properly pragmatic
discourse.