I think the SI artists were the first who really took on capitalist aesthetics.

Interviewee: Neala Schleuning

Well, I think the SI is important because they are the first who really take on in a very conscious way, with a set of tools, what they saw as capitalist aesthetics. They understood it completely. And the history goes back to the 1950s. They followed on the heels of the Letterist movement and Surrealism as political statements. But they really were the first to look outside of art, if you will. They looked outside of art at a competing art system that was dominating the worldview, the capitalist aesthetic. They identified these techniques to undermine the spectacle or the reality. First they named the spectacle, then they named the great power that Adorno and Horkheimer had called the culture industry but the spectacle was beyond the industry. It wasn’t just corporations. It was how this whole world of visuals impact and controls society. Second they had specific techniques and tools that they used and a lot of them were also geographers. They were interested in space and how you create new spaces and autonomous spaces.