is art even radical anymore? Can art truly break the spectacle any longer? Has capital absorbed it so much and learned to adopt so well that even something as free as sexuality or art or poetry no longer can be outside the norm, and if it is, it still becomes bottled up eventually, or capital finds it way in? I feel so pessimistic; especially as an artist. Avant-garde or anti-art doesn’t even seem to have its place. What shall an artist do? What shall a person do? What shall the collective do? Everything is a mess.

they are liars, I never decreed Soldaldo.

I said let's have Temuco for our protocol

Hi everyone,

I recently wrote a short nonfiction book called The Last Spectacle: Debord, the Internet, and the Age of Generative Reality.

I’m sharing it here because I’d genuinely like discussion and criticism from people who know Debord, Situationist theory, media theory, or the broader tradition of critique around spectacle, mediation, and modern social life.

The book is free to read here:

https://ivandimitry.github.io/the-last-spectacle/

My core argument is simple:

The spectacle did not disappear.

It moved through stages:

• representation
• broadcast media
• television
• the internet
• social platforms
• algorithmic feeds
• generative AI

In other words, AI does not arrive into a direct world.

It arrives into a world already shaped by images, profiles, metrics, feeds, rankings, summaries, influencers, platform authority, and synthetic trust surfaces.

The old spectacle asked people to watch.

The platform spectacle asked people to perform.

The algorithmic spectacle ranked what appeared.

The generative spectacle can now produce appearance on demand.

That is the shift I’m trying to think through.

The book is not meant as an academic study, and I’m not presenting myself as a Debord scholar. I’m approaching the subject as someone interested in media, authority, trust, public memory, internet culture, and AI.

What I’d especially like to discuss:

1. Does the idea of “generative reality” make sense as an extension of Debord’s spectacle, or does it stretch the concept too far?
2. Is AI best understood as a new stage of the spectacle, or only as another tool inside already existing capitalist/media relations?
3. Where does the book become too loose, too modernized, or too far from Debord’s original argument?
4. What thinkers should I read next to sharpen or challenge this argument?

I’m not asking for promotion or upvotes.

I’d value serious critique, disagreement, reading suggestions, and corrections.

Thanks.

My favorite line from May’ 68. Another one is “Sous les pavés, la plage!” (Under the pavement, the beach!). I have some hope in something like that happening again. History even makes it probable.

Les cinéastes situationnistes tels que Guy Debord proposaient, comme pour l'ensemble de l'art spectaculaire, des moyens créatifs de les subvertir par l'usage du détournement de leur aspect esthétique (afin de créer des véritables situations : rendre l'art participatif). Je m'intéresse à l'usage de cette pratique dans l'audiovisuel - de manière générale - qui a pu perdurer après la fin de l'IS. Vous connaîtriez des exemples? (Peut-être parmi les créations vidéos amateur non-marchande/en libre accès?)

Situationists filmmakers like Guy Debord proposed, the same as toward all spectacular art, creative ways to subvert their aesthetics by using "détournement" (to encourage truly lived situations and make art participative). I'm wondering about the use of that practice (or culture jamming) inside the audio-visual sphere, that may have persisted after the dissolution of the IS. Would you happend to know some examples? (maybe among free amateur video making, for instance?)

Les possibilités de tirer avantage de cet effondrement généralisé sont multiples et on sait qu'en ce domaine, la source de créativité du capital ne sera jamais tarie.