London
Détournement, the act of decomposing and redistributing cultural value, resists literal translation but finds its closest approximation in “culture jamming.” Détournement is a turn, but it is also a confrontation. It is not just veering from the road, but ripping cobblestones from the road and lobbing them. As Guy Debord and Gil Wolman saw it, “The cheapness of its products is the heavy artillery that breaks through the Chinese walls of understanding.” In “Interstice,” Alexis Dahan’s first move was to “détourn” Robert Smith – son’s psycho-geographic essay, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey” (1967). Smithson chronicled a bridge, a sandbox, and six drainage pipes, all ersatz monuments of his suburban hometown…see the entire review in the print version of November’s Sculpture magazine.
