Class Wargames: Ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism

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Minor Compositions Open Access Statement Please Read

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In a world become game-ied against its will, Class Wargames

provides the eld manual for the only game that matters that

of history.

McKenzie Wark, author ofTe Beach Beneath the Streetand GamerTeory

Richard Barbrooks approach to the Situationist International is

so left eld, he leaves virtually every other author addressing the

subject looking like a dull academic plodder. Were he still alive,

Barbrooks fellow iconoclast Guy Debord would heartily approve

of such unacceptable theory. Stewart Home, avant-garde pornographer and Paul Hamlyn Foundation prize winner

Richard Barbrooks book is a jubilant manifesto for ludic art and

revolution each in service of the other for a participatory future.

By bringing Situationist disciplines into a contemporary context, he

shows how thinkers, gamers, artists, hackers and educators can resist

assimilation, and their creative endeavours escape perversion, by the

deadly, dominating forces of neoliberalism.

Ruth Catlow, co-founder of Furthereld and creator of Rethinking Wargames

Like H.G. Wells, Guy Debord saw wargames as a valuable means

of ludic subversion of established societal and military hierarchies.

In this impressively eclectic and erudite book, Richard Barbrookexplains with infectious enthusiasm how he and his group have

striven to use ludic ideas to inspire and inform a new generation

of radicals.

Philip Sabin, Professor of Strategic Studies at Kings College London and author of

Simulating War


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classwargamesLUDICSUBVERSIONAGAINST

SPECTACULARCAPITALISM

Richard Barbrook

classwargames.net


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Class Wargames: ludic subversion against spectacular capitalismRichard Barbrook

Tis book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial

3.0 licence. If you have any queries about republishing, please contact MinorCompositions/Autonomedia.

ISBN 978-1-57027-293-6

Designed by David S. and Anne L. BlancoCover image: Toussaint LOuverture at Bedourete Kimathi Donkor (2004)www.kimathidonkor.net

Released by Minor Compositions 2014Wivenhoe / New York / Port Watson

Minor Compositions is a series of interventions & provocations drawing fromautonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of everyday life.

Minor Compositions is an imprint of Autonomediawww.minorcompositions.info | [email protected]

Distributed by AutonomediaPO Box 568 Williamsburgh StationBrooklyn, NY 11211

[email protected]


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Elena Mikhailovna Duffield

While you live, shineDont suffer anything at all;Life exists only a short while

And time demands its toll.

Seikilos

dedicated to

( ne Vorontsova )

C o m r a d e , C l a s s W a r g a m e r & F r i e n d

19752012


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Spectacular dominations rst priority is to eradi-

cate historical knowledge in general; beginning with

just about all rational information and commentaryabout the most recent past. With consummate skill,

the spectacle organises ignorance of what is about to

happen and, immediately afterwards, the forgetting

of what has nonetheless been understood. Historys

domain is the memorable, the totality of events

whose consequences will be lastingly apparent. As

thus, inseparably, history is knowledge that should

endure and aid in understanding, at least in part,what is to come. In this way, history is the measureof genuine novelty.

Guy Debord Comments on the Society of the Spectacle


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Arty Barbrook-Black; Adeline Mannarini; Alan Freeman; AlastairBrotchie; Ale Freire; Alessandro Vincentelli; Alex Auld; Alex Galloway;

Alexander Nikolic; Alexandra Poblinkowa; Alexei Blinov; Alexei

Monroe; Alexei Tsvetcoff; Ali Tajvidi; Andriy Linik; Andy Cameron;

Angelina Davydova; Anna Kolodziejska; Anne Blanco;Andrew Burgin;

Anton Lukinskij; Armin Medosch; Ben Carmedy; Ben Vanovitch; Billy

Cass; Brian Train; Bridget Cotter; Caterina Carta; Clare Solomon;

Claus Voigtmann; Christian Nold; Clive Adams; Corrado Morgana;

Dan Judelson; Daniel Hinchcliffe; Dave Douglass; Dave Green;David Blanco; David Bovill; Dibyesh Anand; Dick Pountain; Djahjah

Bonorandi; Dmitry Golynko; Dominic Wells; Don Nicholson-Smith;

Drica Veloso; Eva Pascoe; Farhang Morady; Frands Pedersen; Frank

Boyd; Fred Turner; Fred Vermorel; Gill Woodward; Harry Pearson;

Helen Barbrook; Henry Hyde; Hicham Khalidi; Hubert Czerepok; Ian

Bone; Inke Arns; Isis Salvaterra; Jacqueline de Jong; James Moulding;

Jane Pavitt; Joel Bauman; John Barker; John McDonnell; John Rees;

John Wyver; Jonathan Duffield; Kateryna Onyiliogwu; Keith Franklin;

Ken Wark; Kimathi Donkor; Lara Blazic; Lewis Sykes; Lisa Devaney;

Lisa Vanovitch; Lyubov Bejkatskaya; Malcolm Hopkins; Malcolm

Imrie; Marc Garrett; Marina Koldobskaya; Marta Kubik; Martin

Housden; Mary Flanagan; Mel Franklin; Michael Kalivoda; Michle

Bernstein; Nik Gorecki; Niki Gomez; Olena Linik; Paolo Gerbaudo;

Paul Gilroy; Pat McMath; Patrick Burke; Phil Sabin; Pil & Galia

Kollectiv; Radhika Desai; Ray Holiday; Ricardo Blaug; Richard Parry;Richard Tomas; Rob Lucas; Rob McMaster; Robin Halpin; Russell

King; Ruth Catlow; Sam Cooper; Simona Lodi; Soa Korzova; Sophia

Drakopoulou; Stevphen Shukaitis; Stewart Home; Suzy Robson; Tara

Woodyer; Tiago Novaes; Tom Campbell; Tom Moore; Tom Vague;

Tuesday Greenidge; Ursula Huws; Vladimir Rudykh; Wessel van

Rensburg; Autonomedia; BOEM; Chto Delat?; Cybersalon; Cyland;End Notes; FleaPit; Firebox; Furthereld Gallery; Housmans Bookshop;

KCC & the Rocking Crew; LRC; Media Ecology Association; MidiaTtica Brasil; NCCA; nettime; Pussy Riot; Raylab; Resonance FM;

Teory & Practice; Toi-Toi; UCU; and Weekly Worker.

respect due


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contents

Illustrations

Xenon-Eye by Alex Veness

Class Wargames Players

Class Wargames on Campaign

Games Played on Campaign

1.0: Te Art of War

2.0: Te Skilful General

3.0: Te Workers Militia

4.0:Bibliography

5.0:Index by John Barker

8

10

14

15

20

28

112

230

342

406


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illustrations

Xenographs by Alex Veness

Inside Cover:Mara Menca with Class Wargames at Cold War Modernin the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England, on 31stOctober

2008.

Frontispiece: Richard Barbrook and Ilze Black playing Te Game ofWarat Alex Veness Bankside at in London, England, on 28thOctober

2008.

Chapter 1: Richard Barbrook and Malcolm McLaren with Class

Wargames at the Wunderbar Festivalin the Baltic Centre for Contem-porary Art, Gateshead, England, on 14thNovember 2009.

Chapter 2: Stefan Lutschinger and Danilo Mandic with Class Wargames

atWhat Is To Be Done?

Te Urgent Need to Struggle

in the ICA, London,

England, on 13thOctober 2010.

Chapter 3: Ilze Black, Lucy Blake and Stefan Lutschinger with Class

Wargames at Cold War Modernin the Victoria & Albert Museum, Lon-don, England, on 31stOctober 2008.

Bibliography: Fabian Tompsett, Mark Copplestone and Richard Bar-

brook with Class Wargames at Cyberfest 2008 in the State HermitageMuseum, St. Petersburg, Russia, on 27thNovember 2008.

Index: Alex Veness with the Xenon-Eye scanner camera at Occupation

Studios, London, England, on 14thMarch 2014.


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Diagrams

1: Pump House opening positions for Guy Debords Te Game of War.Page 110

2: Rio de Janeiro opening positions for Guy DebordsTe Game of War.Page 224

3: 1800 Marengo campaign scenario for Guy Debords Te Game ofWar. Page 226

4:1918 battle of Kazan scenario for Chris Peers Reds versus Reds. Page228

5: 1805 battle of Austerlitz scenario for Guy Debords Te Game of

War. Page 336

6: 1802 battle of Fort Bedourete scenario for Richard Borgs Com-mands & Colors: Napoleonics. Page 338

7: Haldon Forest opening positions for H.G. Wells Little Wars. Page340


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Xenon-Eye by Alex Veness

Xenon-Eye is a hybrid camera constructed by Class Wargames co-founder, Alex Veness, combining a hacked digital scanner (to become a

photographic plate) and a Victorian camera.

Xenon is a gas, rare in nature, but easily synthesised, whose name de-

rives from ancient Greek, meaning strange or peculiar. Xenon gas

creates brilliant, white light in all digital scanners built-in lamps. In

everyday use, these lamps light streams of documents placed on scan-

ners un-illuminated glass beds.

During its hack from document-reader to camera-plate, Alex Veness

stripped a xenon lamp from an everyday scanner and re-named it Xe-non-Eye. Fitted to a camera-back,Xenon-Eyecan see lens-based imagesonly because its bright xenon lamp is absent, otherwise it would blind

its own scanner-head, instead of recording images projected by its cam-

eras antique lens. Nevertheless, the scanners lost xenon lamp lives on

under the cameras new name.

Employing customised software to override the scanners alarm at its

severe hacking, and to make it a stable, functioning camera-plate, Alex

Veness has usedXenon-Eyeto document Class Wargames public eventssince 2007, especially the playing of Guy Debords Te Game of Waratnational and international venues.

Xenon-Eyes lack of empathy, its predilection for representing humansas unnatural grotesques, can be understood as a parodic visual aesthetic

for neoliberalism. As awareness grows of unchecked markets indiffer-

ence to human welfare, these images come to dene the individuals

true identity within the presiding systems logic: distorted, extruded

and forced into unbearable forms. Far from showing people as they

really are,Xenon-Eyeshows them as they really exist: unwilling actors

within the current socio-economic logic.

When the disillusioned majority nally throw off the shackles of

spectacular capitalism, there will be no use for Xenon-Eye, and it willbe ritually destroyed. Until that time, it will continue to record the


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colourless, painful distortions suffered by citizen-players, unwillingly

forced to endure the intolerable indeterminacy of free markets and the

distressing brutality of economic liberalism for the benet of a tiny,

super-wealthy elite; an increasingly despised bankocracy.

Hasta la victoria, siempre!


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class wargames players

Richard Barbrook University of WestminsterIlze Black Queen Mary, University of London

Lucy Blake Software Developer

Mark Copplestone Copplestone Castings

Rod Dickinson University of the West of England

Elena Vorontsova Duffield WRN Broadcast

Stefan Lutschinger Middlesex University

Fabian Tompsett London Psychogeographical Association

Alex Veness University of the Arts London

Class Wargames

puts on participatory performances of Guy Debords Te Game of

Warand other subversive politico-military games;

investigates gaming as a metaphor for social relations under

repressive neoliberalism;

celebrates the craft skills of gamers as artistic expression;

creates a social space where lefties can meet & play with each

other;

re-enacts the proletarian struggles of the past in ludic form;

trains the militants of the cybernetic communist revolution to

come.


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Class Wargames on Campaign 20072013

Exhibitions

Te Institute of Psychoplasmics, Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park,London, England, 9thApril26thMay 2008.

Class Wargames Te Game of War, HTTP Gallery, London, England,26th September20th October 2009.

Class Wargames Presents Guy Debords Te Game of War, Institute ofContemporary Interactive Art, University of Bath, Bath, England, 19th

January26thFebruary 2011.

Tomorrow Never Dies European Cultural Congress, Design Gallery,Wroclaw, Poland, 8th11thSeptember 2011.

Games People Play, Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World,

Haldon Forest Park, Exeter, England, 6thApril30thSeptember 2012.

Invisible Forces, Furthereld Gallery, McKenzie Pavilion, Finsbury Park,London, England, 16thJune11thAugust 2012.

Performances

23rdOctober 2007 London Games Festival Fringe, 01zero-one, Lon-don, England.

19thApril 2008 Salute 08, Excel Centre, London, England.

26thApril 2008 Te Institute of Psychoplasmics, Pump House Gallery,London, England.

10thMay 2008 1968 & All Tat, Conway Hall, London, England.

31stOctober 2008 Cold War Modern, Victoria & Albert Museum,London, England.


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27thNovember 2008 Cyberfest 2008, State Hermitage Museum, St.Petersburg, Russia.

20thApril 2009 Guy Debords Te Game of War, UniversidadeFederal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

29thApril 2009 Guy Debords Te Game of War, Caf com Letras,Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

25thJuly 2009 Guy Debords Te Game of War, Plan 9, Bristol, England.

26th27thSeptember 2009 Guy Debords Te Game of War, HTTPGallery, London, England.

10thOctober 2009 Crash/Crush Festival 2009, Bed Elze Gallery, TeHague, Netherlands.

27thOctober 2009 Guy Debords Te Game of War, Department of

Media & Communications, University of Middlesex, London, England.

8thNovember 2009 Market Forces: Share International Festival of Artsand Digital Culture, Turin, Italy.

14th November 2009 Wunderbar Festival, Baltic Centre forContemporary Art, Gateshead, England.

14th November 2009 Guy Debords Te Game of War, EstonianAcademy of Arts, Tallinn, Estonia.

28th November 2009 Guy Debords Te Game of War, YugoslavWorkers Club, Lokativ, Vienna, Austria.

19thDecember 2009 Resonance FMs Media Playground, Te Foundry,London, England.

27th January 2010 Guy Debords Te Game of War, HousmansBookshop, London, England.


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7th February 2010 Transmediale 10, Haus der Kulturen der Welt,Berlin, Germany.

16thFebruary 2010 Class Wargames Presents Guy Debords Te Gameof War, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster,London, England.

7thMarch 2010 Gender & Politics Free School, London Free School,London, England.

21st

March 2010 Skill Share Bazaars of Haringey, Tottenham Chances,London, England.

14th May 2010 Birkbeck Debord Reading Group, Birkbeck College,London, England.

30thJuly 2010 Parque del Sol 10, St. Plten, Austria.

18th

September 2010 H.G. Wells Festival, Folkestone, England.

13thOctober 2010 What Is To Be Done? Te Urgent Need to Struggle,ICA, London, England.

28thNovember 2010 TeFuturological Congress, Center for the Historyof East Central Europe, Lviv, Ukraine.

9th January 2011 Artists Talk and Te Game of War ParticipatoryPerformance, Institute of Contemporary Interactive Art, Bath, England.

26thFebruary 2011 Participatory Re-performance of H.G. Wells LittleWars, Institute of Contemporary Interactive Art, Bath, England.

19thJune 2011 Virtual Futures 2.0, University of Warwick, Coventry,England.

25thJune 2011 Guy Debords Te Game of War meets Vasily Chapayev,Vse Svobodny Bookstore and Literary Club, St. Petersburg, Russia.


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2nd July 2011 Guy Debords Te Game of War meets Takako SaitosLiquor Chess, Tsiolkovsky Bookstore, State Polytechnical Museum,Moscow, Russia.

27th July 2011 Guy Debords Te Game of War meets Chapayev andVoid, Galereya Revolutsija, Irkutsk, Russia.

24thAugust 2011 Guy Debords Te Game of War meets McKenzie WarksBeach Beneath the Street, Housmans Bookshop, London, England.

2nd

December 2011 Guy Debords Te Game of War meets Takako SaitosLiquor Chess, Raylab, London, England.

8th9thJune 2012 Guy Debords Te Game of War, Live-Art-Festival:Postspectaculism, Hamburg, Germany.

23rdJune 2012 Class Wargames Picnic & Subversion: Guy Debords TeGame of War, Furthereld Gallery, London, England.

30th June 2012 Class Wargames Picnic & Subversion: 1791 HaitianRevolution version of Richard Borgs Commands & Colors: Napoleonics,Furthereld Gallery, London, England.

18thAugust 2012 Guy Debords Te Game of War, Centre forContemporary Art and the Natural World, Exeter, England.

19thAugust 2012 H.G. Wells Little Wars, Centre for ContemporaryArt and the Natural World, Exeter, England.

28th October 2012 Guy Debords Te Game of War, HousmansBookshop, London, England.

31stOctober 2012 1791 Haitian Revolution version of Richard BorgsCommands & Colors: Napoleonics, Housmans Bookshop, London,England.

12th December 2012 Guy Debords Te Game of War, HousmansBookshop, London, England.


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24th March 2013 Guy Debords Te Game of War, Cowley Club,Brighton, England.

13th April 2013 Te Life & Legacy of C.L.R. James, WEA LondonRegion, London, England.

23rdApril 2013 Playgrounds of Insubordination, Leipzig Centre forthe History and Culture of East-Central Europe, University of Leipzig,

Leipzig, Germany.

30th

November 2013 Spielsalon 2013, Kunsthalle Fredericianum,Kassel, Germany.

Class Wargames also hosted the Ludic Science Club at the FleaPit,London, England, in 20082009; and at Firebox, London, England,

in 2013.


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Games Played on Campaign 20072013

Guy Debord, The Game of War (1977)

Historical Period

18thand 19thcentury Horse-and-Musket warfare.

Protagonists

Te players are divided into two teams of North or South.

Pieces

Te armies of North and South are both made up of the same number

of pieces: 9 infantry, 4 cavalry, 1 foot artillery, 1 horse artillery, 1

marching general and 1 mounted general. Each unit occupies one

square and no stacking is allowed.

Board

Te board is a 20 by 25 grid of 500 squares divided down the middlealong its longest side. Te North and South halves of the board

are distinguished by the asymmetrical locations of their common

geographical features: 2 arsenals, 3 fortresses and a mountain range

broken by a pass.

Movement

Taking alternative turns, the players of North and South can move up

to 5 pieces of their armies on each go. Troops on horseback move two

squares while those on foot move one square. Pieces can move both

orthogonally and diagonally. Mountain squares are impassable.

Combat

Each side is allowed to initiate one combat per turn. Infantry and

artillery units are stronger in defence than attack. Cavalry pieces can

charge the enemy which makes them stronger in attack than defence.Fortresses and passes give extra strength to their defenders and prevent

the enemys cavalry charging. Te outcome of combat is resolved by

calculating the total points of the various units on both sides which

can bring their combined strength to bear on the square under dispute.


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If the defence is equal or stronger than the attack, this side wins. If

the attack is one point stronger than the defence, the enemy unit has

to retreat on its next turn or be eliminated. If it is two or more points

stronger, then the defending piece is immediately removed from the

board.

Other Factors

Infantry, cavalry and artillery pieces can only move and ght if they

are in direct or indirect contact with at least one of the two arsenals

on their side of the board. Tese lines of communications radiate

outwards either orthogonally or diagonally from the arsenals.T

e twogenerals can provide relay links for the supply route connecting a piece

to its arsenal. Any unit which is attacked while out of contact with an

arsenal is automatically destroyed.

Victory Conditions

Te progress of the game is focused upon the North and the Souths

attempts to outmanoeuvre each others army with the aim of breaking

its lines of communications to its two arsenals. When a player occupiesan enemy arsenal, they can only destroy it with their one allotted

combat in the next move. Final victory is secured when one side

captures both of its opponents arsenals.

Further Information

Te full set of rules for Te Game of Warcan be found in Alice Becker-Ho and Guy Debords eponymous book and on the Class Wargames

website.

Chris Peers, Reds versus Reds (2008)

Historical Period

19171921 Russian Civil War.

Protagonists

Te players are divided into two teams of Bolsheviks or Social

Democrats.


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Pieces

Both sides armies are made up of 28mm Russian Civil War gurines

from Copplestone Castings Back of Beyondseries. Te Bolshevik armyconsists of 40 Kronstadt sailors, 40 regular soldiers, 1 Lewis machine-

gun team, 1 Maxim gun team, 2 commissars and Leon Trotsky. Te

Social Democratic army consists of 40 Czechoslovak Legionnaires, 40

peasant militiamen, 1 Maxim gun team, 1 eld artillery piece and a

general.

Board

Te terrain is constructed out of 28mm scale buildings, walls and treeswhich represent a village and its outskirts on the approach to Kazan in

Tatarstan, Russia.

Movement

Te Bolsheviks and Social Democrats move one unit alternately until

they both have completed this part of the turn. Te two armies can

activate as many as their units as they want on each go. Infantry gurines

and the Lewis machine-gun team move two 1-to-6 dice throws x 6inches (15 cm) in open terrain and one dice throw x 6 inches (15 cm)

within the village. Te Maxim gun team and the artillery piece move

one dice throw x 6 inches (15 cm) in open terrain with penalties for

moving within the village.

Combat

After all movement is completed, the two armies can engage in combat.

Both ranged ring and hand-to-hand ghting are decided by throwing1-to-6 dice. Infantry with ries and machine guns get bonuses if the

enemy gurines are in close order and penalties if theyre at long range,

stationary for that turn and/or behind cover. Te Social Democrats

artillery piece is aimed by this player guessing the coordinates of the

target on the terrain. Riemen and the artillery piece throw one dice,

the Lewis machine-gun team get three dice and the Maxim gun team

has six dice. One enemy gurine is removed if the nal score is 4, 5 or 6.

Hand-to-hand ghting is resolved in a similar manner with the soldiers

on each side throwing 1-to-6 dice with bonuses for overwhelming odds

and/or penalties for attacking someone in cover. If the nal score is two

or more than the opponents, the enemy gurine is killed and removed

from the game.


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Other Factors

Any unit which suffers signicant casualties must test its morale. If it

throws a 1-to-6 dice score less than its designated morale rating, the

unit is routed and ees offthe board. Te Kronstadt sailors and the

Czechoslovak Legionnaires have a higher morale rating than regular

troops and peasant militiamen.

Bolshevik units can only move and ght if they are no further than 24

inches (60 cm) from Leon Trotsky.

Leon Trotsky and the Bolshevik commissars can prevent a unit on theirside from routing by shooting one of its soldiers.

Te Czechoslovak Legion will withdraw from the board if one or more

Bolshevik units reach the middle of the village.

Victory Conditions

Te Bolsheviks win the game if they drive all of the Social Democrat

units out of the village. Te Social Democrats win if they dont.

Te Bolsheviks immediately lose the game if Leon Trotsky is killed.

Further Information

Te full set of rules for Reds versus Reds is available on the ClassWargames website.

Richard Borg, Commands & Colors: Napoleonics (2010)

Historical Period

17921815 Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

ProtagonistsIn our 1802 battle of Fort Bedourete scenario, the players are divided

into two teams of Haitian Jacobins or French Bonapartists.


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Pieces

Te Haitian Jacobin army consists of 2 veteran infantry units, 5 regular

infantry units, 3 militia units, 1 Parisian sans-culotte riemen unit,

1 heavy cavalry unit, 2 light cavalry units, 1 foot artillery unit, Jean-

Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe and Toussaint LOuverture. Te

French Bonapartist army consists of 2 French light infantry units, 5

French line infantry units, 3 colonial infantry units, 1 colonial cavalry

unit, 2 French foot artillery units, 2 generals and Charles Leclerc. Each

unit occupies one hex and no stacking is allowed except for generals.

BoardTe board is a 13 by 9 grid of 97 hexes which represents Fort Bedourete

and its immediate environs. Te bastion is made up of 3 hexes on a

hill in the centre of the board with a village hex to its west and a river

running north to south to its east. Tere are wood and hill hexes along

both sides of the river bank. Tere are also forest hexes scattered across

the northern and southern edges of the board.

MovementTe two armies take alternate turns. Each side is dealt 6 command

cards from the pack provided with the game which are used to activate

their units on the board and/or implement special actions. When a

card is played, a new one is picked up. Units can only ght and move

when activated by a command card except for Toussaint and the unit

accompanying him. Each of the different types of infantry, cavalry and

artillery units is able to move in any direction up to the number of

hexes designated in the games army charts. Units must nish theirmove as soon as they enter a river, forest, fortication or village hex.

Combat

Both ranged re and hand-to-hand combat are decided by throwing

the special dice provided with the game. Te number of dice thrown

and their effects are determined by the type and quality of the units

involved, ring range, the terrain of the hex and card bonuses.

Depending upon the results of these dice throws, units can either lose

one or more of their constituent blocks and/or be forced to retreat.

Infantry can form squares to defend themselves against cavalry, but

their side will temporarily be deprived of one command card until they


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come out of this formation. Te presence of a general and/or nearby

units will negate the effects of a dice throw forcing a retreat.

Other Factors

If in the same hex at any point during his move, Toussaint can activate

one Haitian unit on every turn without needing a command card. Tis

unit can only move when accompanied by Toussaint.

If Toussaint is in an adjacent hex to a French colonial militia unit, the

Haitian player may throw one dice to persuade it to defect and join the

cause of national liberation.

Victory Conditions

Each army needs 6 ags to win the game. One ag is gained for each

destroyed enemy unit and for the sole occupation of the hexes which

make up Fort Bedourete.

Te Haitians immediately lose the game if Toussaint is either killed or

captured.

Further Information

Te full set of rules is contained in GMT Games Commands & Colors:Napoleonics.Te opening positions and special rules for the 1802 battleof Fort Bedourete scenario are available from the Class Wargames

website.

H.G. Wells, Little Wars (1913)

Historical Period

Early-20thcentury industrialised warfare.

ProtagonistsTe players are divided into two sides representing armies of the major

powers just before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.


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Pieces

Both sides armies are made up of 54mm Britains toy soldiers and

cannon. Other manufacturers products can be used if they look like

they might have been owned by Wells children. Each players army

consists of 50 infantry gurines, 25 cavalry gurines and 3 artillery

pieces.

Board

Te terrain is constructed out of wooden block buildings, twigs

representing trees and square wooden boards of different sizes for the

hills.

Movement

Taking turns, each side can activate all or some of its gurines on its

go. Infantry can move up to 12 inches (30 cm) and cavalry can move

up to 24 inches (60 cm). Artillery pieces can only move if theyre

accompanied by at least four gurines. Depending upon the type of

their crew, they will move at either infantry or cavalry speed. Artillery

pieces cannot move and re on the same turn.

Combat

Hand-to-hand combat is decided by comparing the number of gurines

on each side in the melee. If they are equal, all of the soldiers on both

sides are killed. Te superior side takes prisoners of the numerical

difference between the two sides if its opponents troops are too far

away from the other soldiers of their army. Te rest of this combat is

resolved by removing equal numbers of gurines from both sides untilthe inferior side is eliminated.

As long as theyre accompanied by four or more gurines, artillery

pieces can re up to four matchsticks on each move. If a matchstick

directly or indirectly hits an enemy soldier, it is immediately removed

from the game.

Other Factors

Te length of each players move is determined by the size of their army.

Tey are allocated one minute for each group of 30 or less gurines and

one minute for each artillery piece. As their army suffers casualties, the

length of their move will diminish in proportion to its reduction in


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size. As soon as their allotted time is over, players must immediately

stop moving their army, engaging in hand-to-hand combat or ring

artillery pieces.

Victory Conditions

Te winner of the game is the player who kills all of the toy soldiers in

the other sides army rst.

Further Information

Te full set of rules for Little Wars is available in Wells eponymous

book and on the Class Wargames website.


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1.0: the art of warTe [Situationist] game is thespontaneous way [that] everydaylife enriches and develops itself;the game is the conscious form ofthe supersession of spectacular artand politics. It is participation,communication and self-realisationresurrected It is the means andthe end of total revolution.

Te English Section of the Situationist International,

Te Revolution of Modern Art and the Art of Modern

Revolution, page 21.


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1.1: Playing with Passion

On Saturday 26thApril 2008, in the Pump House gallery of LondonsBattersea Park, I found myself facing Fabian Tompsett across theboard of Guy Debords Te Game of War. Agreeing that I would playSouth and he would be North, we began by secretly writing down thedeployment of our pieces on this simulated battleeld. As shown inDiagram 1 on page 110, the starting positions of these two rival armiesdiagonally mirrored each other. Te Souths troops were concentratedon the east of the board while the Norths soldiers were grouped in

front of its western arsenal. Winning the dice throw to decide whodgo rst, Fabian made the opening move and I quickly responded withmine. For this match at the Pump House gallery, wed both decidedto adopt Napolon Bonapartes winning strategy in the 1797 Italiancampaign. Our main force would keep the enemys army pinned downin the centre while an outanking cavalry attack like that of theFrench raid led by Charles Dugua against the Austrian supply base atTrieste would seize his undefended arsenal.1As turn followed turn,Fabian and I soon got into the familiar rhythm of Debords game. Weno longer had to consult the rules to know what we should be doing.

We didnt need a timer to hasten our decisions. Tanks to our teenageobsession with wargames, we were both endowed with an instinctiveability to manoeuvre our miniature armies to the maximum advantageover the board.

Within a half-dozen moves, the Souths western arsenal was no moreand I was on the verge of taking the Norths eastern bastion. Tecontest at this point must have seemed equally balanced to most ofthe audience at the Pump House gallery, yet I knew that I was alreadylosing the game. Foolishly, like the Prussian generals ghting Bonapartein 1806, Id let my troops in the centre become separated from eachother. After one of its infantry pieces was taken in a skirmish on theopen terrain between the two mountain ranges, my army was soon in

rapid retreat to a more secure position as I desperately tried to avoid a

1 See Emmanuel de Las Cases,Mmorial de Sainte-Hlne, pages 285286; and DavidChandler, Te Campaigns of Napoleon, pages 122125.


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repetition of the Duke of Brunswicks humiliation at Jena-Auerstdt.2Id lost the initiative on the battleeld and was fumbling for a response.Once again, Fabian had the psychological advantage over me. Only aweek earlier at the Salute 08wargames convention, he had trouncedme twice in quick succession. During the year that wed been playingTe Game of War, no one from our crew had been able to surpass him.Fabian was the master of the cunning attack and the impregnabledefence. Above all, he understood how to intimidate his opponentsinto believing that theyd lost the game. For those in the know, theoutcome of this match was preordained. At the Pump House gallery,

Id met my Waterloo.

Ten, suddenly, the impossible happened: Fabian made the fatal errorof leaving his mounted general unprotected. Seizing the moment, Iinicted the blow which would clinch the game by launching a cavalrycharge to take this vital piece. As with Joachim Murats division atthe battle of Eylau in 1807, my brave warriors paid a high price fortheir audacity, but their sacrice wasnt in vain.3Fabian had become

Bonaparte in the 1812 Russian campaign. Deprived of the supplylines provided by its most mobile general, the strength of his armyslowly dissipated with each move that it made towards the Moscowof my eastern arsenal.4For almost an hour, Fabian tried everything toretrieve the situation. Like Bonaparte facing the combined might ofaristocratic Europe in 1814, he used all of his tactical cunning to delaythe strategically inevitable.5But, at last, the decisive moment came: myinfantry and artillery made an attack that succeeded in cutting Fabians

army into two. With his forces helpless, he ruefully conceded the game.Te emperor had been forced to abdicate his throne. Still not quite ableto believe what had just happened, I raised my arms in triumph and

2 See Carl von Clausewitz, Notes sur la Prusse dans sa Grande Catastrophe 1806, pages81135; and David Chandler,Te Campaigns of Napoleon, pages 467497.

3 See David Chandler,Te Campaigns of Napoleon, pages 535551.4 See Carl von Clausewitz, Te Campaign of 1812 in Russia, pages 94100; and

Michael Josselson & Diana Josselson, Te Commander: a life of Barclay de Tolly,pages 91165.

5 See Carl von Clausewitz, Campagne de 1814; and David Chandler, Te Campaignsof Napoleon, pages 9451004.


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exclaimed: Ive won! Ive won!! Ive won!!! After so many defeats athis hands, victory over Fabian was sweet.6

6 Photos of this game can be seen in the Events 2008 section of the Class Wargameswebsite.


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1.2: The Exhibition Piece

When Fabian and I fought our exciting match of Te Game of Waratthe Pump House gallery in 2008, Class Wargames was still a regimentof raw recruits on this simulated battleeld. Founded in the previousyear, all of our members had in their different ways been heavilyinuenced by the practical innovations and theoretical insights of theSituationist International. What had initially brought us together wasour curiosity about the puzzling absence of any detailed discussionof Debords Te Game of War in the increasing number of laudatory

journalistic and academic accounts of this New Left movementsimpressive achievements. For these admirers, his ludic experimentwas nothing more than a poetic metaphor for Debords pugnaciousattitude to life. Serious grown-ups would never waste their valuabletime actually playing this frivolous diversion. However, in his 1989autobiography, Debord had proudly insisted that Te Game of War washis most important legacy to the future generations: a ludic meditationon the Situationists many years of hard ghting against the classenemy.7 But, when we read the contemporary hagiographies of theInternational, we would nd only the briefest mention of the longhours that hed dedicated to designing and rening this board game.For todays hipster artists, political dissidents and radical intellectuals,discovering that their Situationist hero was a nerdy male wargamer wasan embarrassment which had to be passed over as quickly as possible.8Unconvinced by this dubious rewriting of history, wed formed Class

Wargames to investigate why Debord had been so convinced that hismilitary simulation was the culmination of his lifes work as a culturaland political revolutionary. Our vital task would be to promulgate anew subversive wisdom: playing Te Game of Warwas the prerequisitefor understanding how to apply the insights of Situationism in theearly-21stcentury.

Our 2008 event at the Pump House gallery was only Class Wargames

7 See Guy Debord, Panegyric, pages 6364.8 Even among the inadequate milieu of hobbies, wargaming ranked very low. Te

non-believer regarded it at best as the province of socially inadequate geeks, atworst of gun-toting belligerents. Harry Pearson,Achtung Schweinehund!, page 98.


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third public performance of Debords greatest creation. Crucially,despite having successfully mastered the mechanics of this militarysimulation, we then still didnt fully comprehend the cultural andpolitical teachings embedded within Te Game of War. Rereading hismarvellous memoir, wed discovered that Debord believed that hedlived his own life according to the rules of his ludic masterpiece. Forone of the more perceptive chroniclers of Situationism, this intimaterevelation meant that Te Game of Warwas undoubtedly his mostautobiographical work.9Over the next few years, Class Wargames wouldcome to appreciate the profoundness of this smart analysis. When the

contest at the Pump House gallery had taken place in 2008, we wereat the beginning of a long campaign of ludic mischief which wouldspan three continents across the globe. Little did we then realise, Class

Wargames had embarked on our own idiosyncratic recapitulation ofDebords wonderful career. As exemplied by the Pump House match,the rst phase of this campaign was focused upon promoting Te Gameof Waras a Situationist lefteld artwork. As we gained experience byrepeatedly playing Debords simulation, the members of our collective

would soon nd themselves also following his personal trajectory fromcultural sabotage into communist agitation. In this second stage ofour campaign of ludic subversion, Class Wargames would increasinglycelebrate Te Game of War as Debords masterpiece of Situationistpolitical propaganda. Inspired by his love of toy soldiers, we would alsoreinforce this offensive manoeuvre by playing hobbyist wargames, suchas Chris Peers Reds versus Reds, Richard Borgs Commands & Colors:Napoleonicsand H.G. Wells Little Wars. Every deadly weapon must be

mobilised for the revolutionary cause.

By becoming hardened veterans of mock combat, Class Wargameswas eventually able to move into the third phase of this campaignof ludic subversion. At our 2008 event in the Pump House gallery,wed distributed a leaet which condently described Te Game ofWaras a Clausewitz simulator without truly realising what we were

9 Vincent Kaufman, Guy Debord, page 267. Also see Guy Debord, Panegyric, pages6364.


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saying.10 It would take four years of playing and research beforeClass Wargames was ready to embrace the pedagogical possibilitiesof Debords enthusiasm for reghting past conicts. By moving theirmodel armies across a miniature terrain, the participants at our publicperformances of Te Game of War, Reds versus Reds, Commands &Colors: Napoleonics and Little Warswere learning the military theorywhich would be required to secure a decisive proletarian victory on thesocial battleeld. Our campaign had opened with an attack of aestheticdisruption which was next followed by an audacious assault of politicalproselytism. For this third stage of our ludic offensive, we would now

devote our energies as members of Class Wargames to disseminatingthe skills of revolutionary leadership amongst the masses. Every workerhad to know how to defeat the capitalist enemy.

Back in 2008, when the Pump House match was being played, wedbeen far from possessing these key insights into Debords insurgentambitions for Te Game of War. At this point in time, promotingSituationist political propaganda and military pedagogy were the as yet

undened goals of future phases of our campaign of ludic subversion.Instead, on that hot summer afternoon in Battersea Park, the openingstage of this offensive against spectacular domination was dedicated toadvancing boldly on the front of heterodox art. Tellingly, as soon as thecontest between Fabian and I was concluded, the members of Class

Wargames couldnt celebrate the success of our event over a drink inthe Battersea Park caf until wed carried out one last very importanttask. Before the Pump House gallery opened the next morning, our

facsimile of Te Game of War had to bereturned to its allotted placein Pil and Galia Kollectivs Te Institute of Psychoplasmics exhibition.During the six weeks of their fabulous show, its gold-and-silver boardand pieces were on display alongside paintings by Seth Coston, potteryby Francis Upritchard and a video installation by Amanda Beech in anupstairs room.11Discerning visitors to the gallery would have instantlyrecognised our contribution to this show from the striking black and

10 See Class Wargames, Communiqu #1. Te 1965 prototype of Te Game of Warwas entitled Kriegspiel Clausewitz-Debord. See Emmanuel Guy, O lon Fait lePortrait de Guy Debord Travers les Livres et sonJeu de la Guerre, page 178.

11 For more about these other participants in the exhibition, see Pil and Galia Kollectiv,Te Institute of Psychoplasmics.


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white photographs of Guy Debord and Alice Becker-Ho playing TeGame of War in his valedictory 1978 lm: In Girum Imus Nocte etConsumimur Igni.12Now, for the rst time, they could appreciate hisludic experiment in all of its metallic glory. Tanks to a small grantfrom the London Games Festival Fringe 07, Class Wargames had beenable to build a twice-sized replica of Debords 1977 original designfor Te Game of War. In an intense burst of co-operative labour, wedtransformed 15 kilograms of pewter along with some aluminium,wood and screws into an exquisite artwork. Standing at waist height,our gold-and-silver recreation of Te Game of War glistened seductively

in the summer sun inside the whitewashed ambience of the PumpHouse gallery. Laid out in the opening positions in their book of thegame, the pieces on the board commemorated the historical momentin the Auvergne when Debord and his partner began playing thisexemplary contest.13All that was missing were these two Situationistsmoving abstract shapes across a stark grid in search of victory. Withinthe sanctied space ofTe Institute of Psychoplasmicsexhibition, playingat war had become a beautiful artwork.

Opened in 1999 during a refurbishment of Battersea Park, the PumpHouse gallery was the beneciary of an ambitious lottery-fundedinvestment in cultural institutions undertaken by the British state.14For most of the 20th century, public subsidies for contemporaryart had been justied on moral and aesthetic grounds. Culture wasa respite from economics. But, by the time that Tony Blair waselected prime minister in 1997, his New Labour government had

embraced a much more utilitarian concept of art. Under neoliberalglobalisation, manufacturing was irreversibly shifting from the Northto the South. Like other developed countries, Britain would haveto earn its living from the expanding businesses of the informationsociety: banking, consultancy, computing and the media. Accordingto Blairs gurus, the building of new museums, galleries and concertvenues acted as a catalyst for this post-Fordist restructuring of the

12 See Guy Debord, In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni, pages 149150, 177,185186, 194; and the cover band of Alice Becker-Ho and Guy Debord, Le Jeu dela Guerre.

13 See Alice Becker-Ho and Guy Debord,A Game of War, page 39.14 See Pump House Gallery, About Us.


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national economy.15With London as second only to New York as amarketplace for contemporary art, high culture was itself a growingsector of employment.16More importantly, cities across the world werenow in competition to provide an attractive environment for a newgeneration of entrepreneurs and workers: the creative class. Educated,tolerant and mobile, they congregated in those locations whichnurtured their hipster lifestyles and the companies which wanted toemploy them would inevitably follow them there.17For New Labour,public subsidies for art institutions provided the urban infrastructurefor these burgeoning creative industries. Culture was the cutting-edge

of economics.18

Although the initial capital investment for the Pump House gallery camefrom a New Labour initiative, it was the local Conservative-controlledcouncil that had covered the costs of Te Institute of Psychoplasmicsexhibition. In early-21st century England, even parsimonious Torieswere willing to spend taxpayers money on experimental art shows.For what had once been an affront to bourgeois good taste was now

a pragmatic vote-winning policy. Contemporary artists like DamienHirst and Tracey Emin were media celebrities. Te Tate Modern hadbecome the most popular tourist venue in London. Gallery openingswere reported like the launches of new lms, plays or albums.Multinational corporations and banks eagerly sponsored exhibitionsand bought up innovative works for their own collections. Modern arthad become mainstream in Blairs Britain.19

Paradoxically, the popularity of looking at unique or rare objects in agallery space was boosted by the rapid spread of computing, the Net andmobile telephony across the world. With more and more time spent

15 See Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques, New Times; and GeoffMulgan, Connexity.16 See Chris Smith, Creative Britain; and GLA Economics, Creativity.17 For the manifesto of this post-industrial economic strategy, see Richard Florida,Te

Rise of the Creative Class. Te antecedents of this prophecy are traced in RichardBarbrook,Te Class of the New.

18 Labours arts minister calculated that the creative industries in 1998 contributed ...almost 4 per cent of [Britains] GDP. Chris Smith, Creative Britain, page 15.

19 See Julian Stallabrass, Contemporary Art, pages 50100; and and GLA Economics,Creativity.


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staring at screens, visiting exhibitions offered a visceral alternative forthose immersed within the virtual environment. Like fans of live musicand theatre, gallery audiences savoured the pleasures of a transientand physical experience. Crucially, whether from the classroom or themedia, increasing numbers of people were now knowledgeable aboutcontemporary art. When they went to a gallery, they were able torecognise and understand what they saw there.20Back in the 1990s, the

YBAs had achieved celebrity status rst in England and then globallyby mixing and matching from iconic late-20thcentury art movements:

Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Conceptualism and Minimalism.21

Both these artists and their admirers were determined to appropriatethe aesthetic genealogy of modern sensibility. Contemporary art wasthe heir of a long and hallowed tradition of insurrectionary culturalmovements: the avant-garde.

Since the early-19th century, each generation had witnessed a smallgroup of young artists declaring war upon the conventional tastesof their elders. By adopting the avant-garde moniker from the brave

soldiers who scouted the way forward for the main body of an army oncampaign, these radicals proclaimed themselves as the pioneers of thefuture in the present.22Across the decades, these cliques have openedtheir offensive against the old order by embracing the four leitmotifsof cultural subversion: innovative aesthetics, new technologies,bohemian lifestyles and radical politics. Although initially rebuffedwith hostility or indifference, these avant-garde movements hadeventually triumphed over the arbiters of good taste. Fortunately, as

soon as one surge of artistic insurgency had become respectable, thenext cohort of young dissidents would quickly emerge to challenge

20 For the steady growth in art audiences, see Mayor of London, Cultural Strategy,pages 7284.

21 YBAs was the trendy acronym for Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst,Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and the Chapman brothers, see Julian Stallabrass, High

Art Lite; and Brook Adams, Lisa Jardine, Martin Maloney, Norman Rosenthal andRichard Shone, Sensation.22 Te most popular training manual of 19th warfare laid down that: Te ... advanced

guard should be composed of light troops of all arms, containing some of the litetroops of the army as a main body, a few dragoons prepared to ght on foot, somehorse artillery, pontooniers, sappers, etc. ... Antoine-Henri de Jomini, Te Art ofWar, page 264. Emphasis in original.


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this new stylistic orthodoxy.23When the Tate Modern opened in 2000,its curators had prominently displayed a timeline of the leading 20 thcentury avant-garde groups and their most famous members across onewall of the third oor concourse of the gallery. For the mandarins ofCool Britannia, the grand narrative of modern art was a history of itsrebellious artists.24

Tere could be no doubt that Te Institute of Psychoplasmicsexhibitionat the Pump House gallery was showcasing the recreation of a lostclassic of the 20thcenturys cultural upheavels. By adopting a minimal

aesthetic, Debord had identi

ed Te Game of Warwith an illustriousavant-garde heritage. In their simplicity, its gold-and-silver board andpieces evoked Aleksandr Rodchenkos red-and-black Chessset for theUSSR Workers Club at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des ArtsDcoratifs in Paris. Even more strikingly, the forts on the South sideof the board closely resembled the castles in Marcel Duchamps BuenosAires Chess Set 191819.25 For the hip audience of the Pump Housegallery, Debord had chosen his historical references well. In exhibitions,

books and lecture halls across the world, Rodchenko and Duchampwere lauded as heroic gures whod helped to dene the new aestheticof the machine age: Modernism. Emerging from the turbulent timesof the First World War and the 1917 Russian Revolution, it was theirgeneration of radical artists that marked the nal break with thecultural shibboleths of the 19thcentury art establishment. Symbolismand abstraction now superseded realism and ornamentation. Duringthe 1920s, Rodchenko and Duchamp were at the forefront of the

transformation of this new style into a fully-edged multi-mediaphenomenon of paintings, sculptures, readymades, poetry, novels,plays, prints, posters, music, fashion, photography, lms and last but

23 See Raymond Williams, Te Politics of Modernism, pages 3180; and Peter Brger,Teory of the Avant-Garde.

24

See Sara Fanelli, Tate Artist Timeline. In the late-1990s, Cool Britannia was a brie

yfashionable phrase which identied the YBAs and Britpop bands with the reformingearly years of the New Labour government, see Dick Pountain and David Robins,CoolRules, pages 1745: and John Harris, Te Last Party, pages 2423, 325328,355360.

25 See Margarita Tupitsyn, Rodchenko & Popova, page 119; and Larry List, Chess asArt, page 136.


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not least games.26For both artists, creating their Chesssets contributedto the democratisation of the Modernist aesthetic. Symbolism andabstraction mustnt be conned to the gallery within industrial society.

When Chess sets became mass produced Modernist artworks, everypawn could dream of being a queen.

By sampling the iconography of Rodchenko and Duchamp for TeGame of War, Debord was doing much more than showing respect toa couple of early-20thcentury style gurus. At the peak of their careers,both artists had been leading gures in the two celebrated avant-garde

movements that today still epitomise the emancipatory potential ofthe creative imagination: Constructivism and Surrealism. Many oftheir illustrious peers had conned their ambitions to overturningthe establishments aesthetic orthodoxy. Modernism meant makinginnovative work with a contemporary sensibility. However, forRodchenko and Duchamp, this cultural rebellion was only a meansto an end. Enthusiastically identifying themselves with the utopianpromises of the Bolshevik leadership of the 1917 Russian Revolution,

they were members of avant-garde movements dedicated to inventingnew forms of expression which could spark off an all-encompassingsocial transformation. On the one hand, the Constructivists liketheir Bauhaus comrades in Germany applied their aesthetic skillsto designing the everyday objects that would make a better world forworking people. On the other hand, the Surrealists created disturbingimagery which by tapping into the unconscious would liberatethe minds of the masses. Tese two avant-garde movements had

adopted different artistic strategies, but they both shared the samepolitical aspiration. By overthrowing the stiing conventions ofbourgeois taste, its members hoped to endow the proletariat with theintellectual condence to join the revolutionary Left and begin the taskof building a new world. In the Constructivists and Surrealists avant-

26 See Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism; and Jacqueline Chnieux-Gendron,Surrealism, pages 29110.


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garde interpretation, Modernism meant making cutting-edge art witha Bolshevik sensibility.27

Fullling this imperative in their Chesssets, Rodchenko and Duchamphad done much more than transform a humble object into a thing ofbeauty. For them, these artworks contributed to furthering the collectiveliberation of humanity. Constructivist and Surrealist Chess sets provedthat it was the exploited not the exploiters who now owned theimaginary future: the promise of better times to come in the present.Like political militants of the Bolshevik party, radical artists from these

avant-garde movements were opening the way forward for the mainforces of the proletarian offensive against monopoly capitalism. Teirvital role involved not only leading the assault against the culturaldominance of the bourgeoisie, but also inspiring the working masseswith visionary imagery. Avant-garde artists were Red Guards on theaesthetic front of the class war.28

It is not surprising that the strong inuence of Duchamps Buenos Aires

Chess Set can be detected in Debords design for Te Game of War.For dissidents growing up in 1950s France, the Surrealists epitomisedthe revolutionary daring of the previous generation. Radicalised bythe disaster of the First World War, Duchamp and his comrades hadseen their aesthetic mission as breaking the hegemony of bourgeoisideology over the general public.29For these avant-garde provocateurs,the subversive power of their artworks was conrmed by rejection andhostility from the defenders of tradition. Each exhibition, lm show,

performance or publication was a guerrilla raid into enemy territory.30Imitating the erce rhetoric and ideological intensity of a Bolsheviksect, this avant-garde movement had unashamedly identied its

27 See Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism; va Forgcs, Te Bauhaus Idea andBauhaus Politics, pages 3845, 182193; and Helena Lewis, Dada Turns Red, pages2696.

28 See Raymond Williams, Te Politics of Modernism, pages 3748; and Peter Brger,Teory of the Avant-Garde, pages 4759.

29 See Andr Breton, Legitimate Defence; and Helena Lewis, Dada Turns Red, pages2636.

30 See Surrealist Group, Manifesto of the Surrealists Concerning LAge dOr; andHelena Lewis, Dada Turns Red, pages 9296.


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impressive aesthetic and technical innovations with the Communistcause. Te name of their magazine proudly affirmed their collectiveidentity: Surrealism In Te Service Of Te Revolution. Leon Trotskywas the comrade general of these avant-garde artists and they wereaesthetic partisans of the Trotskyist Fourth International.31

In their movements formative period, the Surrealists had enjoyed howthe psychological serendipities of chance were revealed in the Victoriangame of constructing random verbal or visual sequences: ExquisiteCorpse. When played with insight, such childish pastimes were able to

free the creative imagination from the con

nes of capitalist rationality.32

Building upon this Surrealist insight, Duchamp had declared that Chesstoo was an artwork. Troughout his long career, its black-and-whitechequered board and the Staunton pieces didnt just provide evocativepolitical and sexual metaphors for his paintings, readymades, sculpturesand lms.33Duchamp argued that a revolutionary aesthetic experiencecould also be found within the patterns and rhythms of Chess itself.Temechanical dance of Black and White moving their pieces across the

board was a non-utilitarian activity which satisfyingly realised the anti-bourgeois ambitions of avant-garde art. By the 1930s, this enthusiasticamateur was not only a leading light of his local club, but also playingin international tournaments and writing match reports for the press.

A decade earlier, Andr Breton the pope of Surrealism had teasinglypredicted that his friend Duchamp was in danger of giving up art forChess.However, the pioneer of readymades had an irrefutable responseto this prognosis. Duchamp was an avant-garde artist and hed

decided that playing Chesswas making Modernist art.34

In the 1930s, Alberto Giacometti added his own quirky contribution tothis Surrealist fascination with games by producing an unsettling seriesof ludic sculptures. While Duchamp had looked for artistic heterodoxy

31 See Andr Breton, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky, Towards a Free Revolutionary

Art; and Helena Lewis, Dada Turns Red, pages 7792, 140160.32 See Alastair Brotchie and Mel Gooding, Surrealist Games, pages 1012.33 Howard Staunton was the mid-19th century English Chess champion who

appropriately lent his name to the ubiquitous set design of the industrial epoch, seeRichard Eales, Chess, pages 137138.

34 See Francis Naumann and Bradley Bailey,Marcel Duchamp: the art of Chess.


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in the movement of the Chess pieces, his comrade instead mockedthe alienation of everyday life by ensuring that his creations wereunplayable.35Ironically, by confounding their true purpose, Giacomettihad also inadvertently revealed how games could be domesticatedwithin the gallery system. By emphasising their purposelessnessand uniqueness, his avant-garde artworks set themselves apart fromthe mass produced amusements of consumer capitalism. In contrastwith Duchamps Chess sets, Giacomettis sculptures excluded anyparticipation by the audience in the creative process. His Surrealistgames were games without players. Te board and pieces had become

objects of contemplation for visitors in a gallery.

When New York took over from Paris as the capital of Modernism in thelate-1940s, its artistic stars and critics had initially shown little interestin Duchamps and Giacomettis ludic experiments. Clement Greenbergand his acolytes were much more concerned with how Surrealism hadanticipated the anti-realist aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism.36It was not until the early-1960s that the Fluxus group rediscovered

the subversive possibilities of art games. Coordinated by GeorgeMaciunas, this avant-garde movements performances, exhibitions andpublications were dedicated to breaking down the barriers between itsartists and their audiences.37In 1964, inspired by Duchamps example,Fluxus began issuing a series of special Chesssets designed by TakakoSaito. Instead of being identied by shape, their pieces were recognisedthrough smell, sound or tactile sensation. Designed to befuddle itsplayers, she famously created a set made out of glasses lled with

coloured alcoholic drinks: Liquor Chess.38Contributing to this project,Yoko Ono in 1966 expressed her outrage at the American invasionof Vietnam by constructing the Play It By Trust (All White Chess Set)which wittily sabotaged the games competitive mechanism by makingall of the squares on the board and both sides pieces in the colourthat symbolised peace within Western culture. Inspired by Giacometti,

35 See Mary Flanagan, Critical Play, pages 9093.36 See Clement Greenberg, Avant-garde and Kitsch; and T.J. Clark, Clement

GreenbergsTeory of Art.37 Macunias had been an inveterate wargamer since childhood, see Emmett Williams

and Ann Noel,Mr Fluxus, pages 1516.38 See Carolus Chess, Takako Saito.


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this New York avant-garde movement also began including rules forparticipatory games in its series of Fluxboxesalong with the texts, scoresand sculptures which so delighted the recipients of these miniatureartworks. Like a DIY version of the groups live performances, theseludic experiments promised that everyone now had the opportunityto make Modernist art.39Unfortunately, as those who did try to followtheir instructions soon discovered, the inuence of Giacometti on thesegames wasnt entirely benign. Confounding their radical aspirations,the playability of the Fluxboxeswas always secondary to their aestheticimpact.40

Living in the epicentre of Cold War Modernism, the best of NewYorks artists had by the 1960s learnt from Duchamps readymadeshow to transform the imagery of consumer capitalism into Pop Art.

Andy Warhols Factory was the 1920s European vision of multi-mediacreativity in its improved and efficient American version: a culturalproduction line of paintings, prints, photography, lms, publicationsand music.41 But, for those with a more radical imagination in the

1960s, a revival of the revolutionary ambitions of the 1920s avant-garde movements promised much more. Another iteration ofModernism could only deliver stylistic and technical innovations.

What was needed instead was a radical cultural shift that wouldcatalyse a profound social transformation. Excited by this avant-garde prophecy, artists on both sides of the Atlantic began staginginteractive performances and exhibitions in their search for new waysto express collective forms of creativity. By inviting the audience to

participate in making their artworks, they werent just ensuring thatthese happenings were spontaneous and ephemeral experiences whichescaped the stultifying control of curators, collectors and critics.42Bestof all, these new forms of Surrealist gaming did have multiple players.In his manifesto on the organisation of happenings, Michael Kirbyproclaimed the ambitious goal of this new avant-garde: to break

39 See Celia Pearce, Te Aesthetics of Play, pages 6972; andTomas Kellein, Fluxus.40 See Mary Flanagan, Critical Play, pages 112113; and Tomas Kellein, Fluxus.41 See Marco Livingstone, Pop Art, pages 6291, 114139, 194219; and Andy

Warhol, Popism.42 See Michael Kirby, Happenings; and Mariellen Sandford, Happenings and Other Acts.


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down the barrier between presentation and spectator and to makethe passive viewer [into] a more active participator.43

On 27thMay 1963, the Smolin gallery in New York hosted the one andonly performance ofTe First and Second Wilderness: a Civil War Game.

With Kirby as the master of ceremonies, a group of artists staged theirrecreation of this bloody confrontation in the 18615 American struggleto crush the slave owners rebellion.44 Four Union and Confederategenerals in full uniform ordered infantry, cavalry and artillery piecesto be moved 1 or 2 squares across a gridded map laid out on the oor.

As the game progressed, American football cheerleaders explained itsrules, resolved combats with a spinner, updated the score board andkept up a running commentary on the action to the accompanimentof the taped noises of ring weapons and galloping cavalry. Watchingon, the audience cheered or booed as the two sides won or lost piecesand territory in this theatrical contest. As its grand nale, the eveningculminated in the burning of the Wilderness scenery along with aslideshow of death and destruction photographs from the original

1864 battleeld.45

Te New York avant-garde had won an interestingaesthetic victory on that evening. Building upon the achievements ofthe Constructivists and the Surrealists, theyd successfully transformedplaying wargames into making art.

43 Michael Kirby, Te New Teatre, page 43. For the Surrealist antecedents of thisimperative, see Peter Brger, Teory of the Avant-Garde, page 53.

44 Te First and Second Wilderness battles took place between 5th12thMay 1864, seeJames McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pages 718734.

45 See Michael Kirby, Te First and Second Wilderness.


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1.3: History Repeating Itself

By displaying our replica ofTe Game of War in the Pump House gallery,Class Wargames was making its contribution to the rediscovery of thisforgotten icon of 20thcentury avant-garde art. In this rst phase of ourcampaign of ludic subversion, our activities were devoted to upholdingthe Situationist banner of cultural rebellion. For the knowledgeablevisitors to the show in Battersea Park, Debords gold-and-silver boardand pieces were clearly in the lineage of the earlier Modernist artworksof Rodchenko, Duchamp, Giacometti, Saito, Ono, Maciunas and

Kirby. Yet, paradoxically, the inclusion of Te Game of War withinTe Institute of Psychoplasmicsexhibition had required the temporaryprevention of its primary purpose: enabling two sides to engage insimulated combat against each other. Inside the gallery space, thepieces were laid out on the board in the starting positions for the matchin Becker-Ho and Debords eponymous book.46However, there wereno chairs for North and South to sit at the table and begin playing thegame. Should any curious visitor try to pick up the pieces, they wouldquickly discover that they were rmly stuck to the board with museumwax. If spotted, they risked the embarrassment of the curatorial staffscolding them for touching the exhibits. When placed inside the PumpHouse gallery, Te Game of Warbecame a museum object. As with oneof Giacomettis ludic sculptures, there was no next move.

Tere was poignancy in this immobility. Back in 1977, Debord had set

up a company with his publisher Grard Lebovici to manufacture anddistribute Te Game of War: Les Jeux Stratgiques et Historiques. LikeDuchamp marketing his Chesssets and Maciunas selling Fluxboxesbymail order, these two conspirators embarked on a publicity campaignto promote their rst product. Te four hand crafted metal sets whichfeatured in the iconic photographs from In Girum Imus Noctewerecommissioned. Debord and Becker-Ho wrote their book of the game.Te rules were published in both French and English. Plans were made

to manufacture cheap cardboard copies of Te Game of War. Debordwas convinced that his company had a potential best-seller on its hands

46 See Alice Becker-Ho and Guy Debord,A Game of War, page 39.


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which would soon join Chess, Draughtsand Bridgeas a game playedin the cafs, clubs and homes of the more proletarian and bohemianneighbourhoods. Everyone could be a player of Te Game of War.47Ten, on 5thMarch 1984, Lebovici was murdered in a Maa-style hitby an unknown assassin in a Paris underground car park. Deprivedof its generous patron, the promotional campaign for Te Game ofWar went into terminal crisis. Debord even stopped showing his lmsin France and withdrew his books from publication in protest at thebrutal murder of his friend.48On that fateful evening in 1984, TeGame of War had lost its key player and was almost forgotten for the

next few decades. When Class Wargames facsimile was put on showin the Pump House gallery, the frozen pieces of the 1977 gold-and-silver set became a disturbing memorial to those harsher times in whichDebords game had been invented.

In spring 2008, the gold-and-silver pieces of our replica weretemporarily immobilised in Te Institute of Psychoplasmics exhibitionfor a dialectical purpose: seducing the Pump Houses audience into

making the next move for themselves. Intrigued visitors could purchasethe recently published English translation of Debord and Becker-Hosbook with its cardboard game in the gallery shop or download RSGsunauthorised computer version.49 Participation not contemplationshould take precedence when appreciating this avant-garde artwork. Ayear earlier in spring 2007, Class Wargames rst attempts to play TeGame of Warhad used a homebrew board and pieces made from myearly-1970s teenage collection of 16thcentury Hapsburg and Ottoman

toy soldiers. Inspired by the discovery of its rules in the back of LenBrackens biography, wed come together to nd out whether thisludic experiment was worth investigating.50By carefully studying themoves of Debords match with Becker-Ho in their book, we eventuallyworked out the formal structure of this ritualised combat. Much to our

47 See Alice Becker-Ho and Guy Debord,A Game of War, page 7; and Alex Galloway,Debords Nostalgic Algorithm.

48 See Guy Debord, Considerations on the Assassination of Grard Lebovici.49 See Guy Debord and Alice Becker-Ho,A Game of War; and Radical Software Group,

Kriegspiel.50 See Len Bracken, Guy Debord Revolutionary, pages 240251.


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surprise and delight, the members of Class Wargames enjoyed playingTe Game of War.51

In a serendipitous coincidence with the imperialist demonologyof the 2000s, the recycled Hapsburg and Ottoman gurines of ourhome-made set mimicked the conict between the Christian Westand the Muslim East in the US governments War on Terror. Takinginspiration from this DIY version, we wondered whether the imminent40thanniversary of the May 68 French Revolution could be celebratedby re-imagining Debords game as a conict between protesters and

police on the streets of Paris. For the Lefts pieces, infantry wouldbe represented as workers, cavalry as students and artillery as rioterswith Molotov cocktails. Te mounted general had to be Guy Debordand, for the marching general, Daniel Cohn-Bendit the instigatorof the student protests at Nanterre University that had sparked offthis uprising would be a good choice. For the forces of reaction, theremix was also obvious: infantry as street cops, cavalry as riot police,artillery as tear gas grenadiers, the mounted general as French President

Charles de Gaulle and the marching general as his prime ministerGeorges Pompidou. With the pieces sorted, the boards terrain featurescould easily be given a Paris 1968 makeover. Te fortresses would beturned into street barricades, the mountains into apartment blocks,the passes into alleyways and the arsenals into television centres ornewspaper headquarters. Enthused, we contacted Mark Copplestone one of Englands top gurine designers to nd out whether hedbe interested in making the pieces for this new set as a member of the

Class Wargames collective.52Te May 68 version of Te Game of Warwould be the must-have souvenir of the 40thanniversary of the almostrevolution of the baby boomer generation.

Fortunately, Rod Dickinson had a much better idea. Around the coverof the 2006 Gallimard edition of Le Jeu de la Guerre was a purpleband with a vivid colour photograph of Debords 1977 set design. Heinsisted in our group meetings that Class Wargames had to build its

51 In contrast, as a warning to all leftist games designers, the admirable politics ofBertell Ollmans Class Struggledidnt compensate for its dull play.

52 For examples of Marks work, check out the Copplestone Castings website.


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own replica of this iconic version ofTe Game of War. Rod had acquiredinternational artistic recognition for his re-enactments of unsettlingmoments in recent history: the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide; the1993 Waco massacre; and the 1961 Milgram experiment.53Respectingthis experience, the rest of the collective was quickly convinced by hisargument that making a May 68 remix of Te Game of Warwouldbe a mistake. Class Wargames should instead focus its attentionupon Debord and Becker-Ho playing their illustrative contest in the

Auvergne. Te artistic investigation of this special historical momentrequired the construction of a faithful facsimile of the 1977 set design.

Te Game of Warwas meant to be played with its original board andpieces.

By staging re-enactments, contemporary artists showed howmuch theyd learnt from the 1960s avant-gardes happenings andperformances. Like Fluxus and Kirby, they also invited the audience toparticipate in the making of the artwork. Taking inspiration from thelively subculture of hobbyists who devoted their spare time to historical

and fantasy role-playing, the goal of these avant-garde artists was toaestheticise and subvert this fascination with reliving the past.54By witnessing for themselves the actors in Te Milgram Experimentinicting apparently dangerous electric shocks on another humanbeing, the audience at Rod Dickinsons 2002 recreation understoodhow they too might have succumbed to obeying immoral orders whenbullied by authority gures. Empathy intensied not only the personalexperience of the artwork, but also the political resonance of this 1960s

American psychologists research.55

A year earlier, on 17thJune 2001, Jeremy Deller mobilised both veteransof the 19845 British miners strike and members of re-enactmentsocieties for a participatory performance of Te Battle of Orgreave. Byreliving together this decisive confrontation in the Tory governments

53 For more details on these projects, see Rod Dickinsons website.54 See Inke Arns and Gabriele Horn, History Will Repeat Itself;and Sven Ltticken,

Life, Once More.55 See Rod Dickinson, Te Milgram Re-enactment; and Steve Rushton,Te Milgram

Re-enactment.


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war against the organised working class, both its creators and onlookersaffirmed that their own collective memory of these dramatic times wasmuch more accurate than the media-promoted official accounts of thishistorical turning-point. In Dellers happening, those whod been thereat the original battle of Orgreave on the 18thJune 1984 were joined ina common experience by those whod taken part in its re-enactment 17years later.56Te avant-garde artwork now meant most wonderfully a public celebration of the Yorkshire coaleld communities lostalternative to neoliberal globalisation: the live action role-playing gameas the possibilities of the past challenging the limits of the present.57

With Rod Dickinson as a member, Class Wargames soon learnt howto make its own contribution to re-enactment art. Te 2008 match atTe Institute of Psychoplasmicsexhibition was followed by further publicperformances of Te Game of War in other gallery spaces, includingthe Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the State HermitageMuseum in St. Petersburg. Learning from these experiences, Class

Wargames became determined to involve the audience more in our

events. Equipped with travelling versions of its board and pieces, webegan organising participatory contests of Debords ludic inventionduring 2009 at art venues and educational institutions across Europeand in Brazil.58Te Game of War had to be experienced as a DIYartwork. Built by Lucy Blake, our website also encouraged people totry playing Debords game for themselves by providing its rules, boarddesigns and other background information. Over the summer of 2009,with funding from the Arts Council of England, Class Wargames next

completed a short lm directed by Ilze Black explaining the originsand principles of Te Game of War.59After its launch in September atFurtherelds HTTP gallery in London, the collectives campaign to

56 See Jeremy Deller and Mike Figgis, Te Battle for Orgreave; and Jeremy Deller, TeEnglish Civil War Part II. For eyewitness accounts of the vicious police repressionagainst the striking miners, see Dave Douglass, Ghost Dancers; and Jim Coulter,Susan Miller and Martin Walker,State of Siege.

57 Revealingly, one of Dellers goals in staging Te Battle of Orgreave performancewas to politicise the usually apolitical hobby of historical re-enacting, see MatthewHiggs and Jeremy Deller, In Conversation, page 190.

58 For photographs of these performances, see the Events 2008 and Events 2009sections of the Class Wargames website.

59 See Ilze Black, Class Wargames Presents Guy Debords Te Game of War.


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promote Debords game was reinvigorated. By combining screenings ofthe lm with participatory contests, Class Wargames received a warmwelcome on its 200911 European tour: Crash-Crush in Rotterdam,Wunderbar at the Baltic in Gateshead, Transmediale 10in Berlin, TeFuturological Congress in Lviv and many other interesting venues.60During this rst stage of our campaign of ludic mischief, our roleat these events was to enable the members of the audience to turnSituationist theory into ludic practice. For a brief moment of time, theplayers of Te Game of Warwere the makers of avant-garde art.

In these early years of the project, Class Wargames used performances,exhibitions, lm, leaets, xenographs, club nights, radio shows andsocial media to evangelise for the playing of Te Game of War in its1977 analogue design. Te RSG digital version was a useful trainingtool, but this computerised contest lacked the tactile pleasures of theoriginal version. Unlike in the 1990s, now that people were spendingso much time looking at screens at work and in the home, there wasno longer anything artistically adventurous about turning his physical

invention into a virtual object. Best of all, by moving the gold-and-silver pieces across its board, the 21stcentury players of our twice-sizefacsimile were directly connected with the famous photos of Debordand Becker-Ho competing with each other over thirty years earlier. LikeTe Milgram Experimentand Te Battle of Orgreave, Class Wargamesrecreation of Te Game of War was a public invitation for peopleto relive an evocative moment from the recent past for themselves.Debord and Becker-Ho had used this version of the board and pieces

in their Auvergne hideaway. By playing with the 1977 analogue set,contemporary admirers of the Situationist International werent justparticipating in the continuation of this transitory communal artwork.More importantly, as we would investigate more deeply in the next twophases of our campaign of ludic subversion, they were also taking theirrst lesson in the political and military teachings of Te Game of War.

By touring with its replicas of the 1977 set, the members of ClassWargames had committed themselves to realising the most subversiveambition of re-enactment art: enabling the collective exploration of

60 For the photographs of these events, see the relevant years in the Events section ofthe Class Wargames website.


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the relevance of what happened in the past for the here and now.61In the early-21stcentury, Te Game of Warwas a memory of the mid-20thcentury rebirth of the cultural avant-garde. More than fty yearson, Situationism still provided the tactical manual for todays lefteldartists: media outrages, appropriated material, urban interventions anduser-generated content. In this rst stage of Class Wargames campaignof ludic subversion, the players of Debords game were able to returnto the times of the groups founders who combined these subversivecultural techniques together for the rst time. By moving i

Documents

Class Wargames: Ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism