The Situationist International Class:Adopt-An-Executive

The fact that a university, even one with such a strong regard for Critical Theory and progressive social thought like The New School, would even offer a course based on the works of Guy Debord and the Situationist International is in itself a fairly extraordinary pushing of the limits of curricula into the truly radical. I had seen Debord referenced everywhere-from the Deleuzian Film Studies people to network and new media theorists to the lyrics of bands like The International Noise Conspiracy.When it was promoted in my Understanding Media class by Professor Shannon Mattern, I was nearly certain that I would enroll and ultimately did. Professor Ethan Spigland had studied with the likes of Derrida and Lyotard in Paris and also had a background in filmmaking. The class was certainly time well spent and Ethan has become my primary senior thesis adviser on the ongoing production of my film "Juggernaut". In the next couple of installments, I want to give a brief tour of some of the individual and group projects that were executed in the class. The first of note was a large ongoing group project that several of us embarked upon, a "situation" if you will, called the Adopt-An-Executive Campaign. In lieu of the recent financial crises and subsequent "bailouts", we thought that it would be funny to run a fundraising initiative for the recently "financially inconvenienced" retinue of CEO and other chief execs. It began with several "fundraising events" in Union Square Park and culminated in a website loaded with content
http://adoptanexecutive.com/Site/Home.html

This was a truly prodigious project and hilarious. The group consisted of Juliana Pereira, Lauren Coakley, Noelia Santos, Alexandra Desousa and myself. Great job ladies! (The "adorable little kid" in the video is Alexandra's son-who did a great job. And yes, the redheaded guy is Carrottop.)