There is no such thing, said Debord, as a situationist work of art. No doubt art is still part of the spectacle, which is to say, a particular way in which relations between people are mediated by images.

Cinema must be abolished ('the cinema, too, must be destroyed'), but Debord makes films. It must be abolished, but film can be abolished in film; the mediation of which it would be part can itself be staged and made explicit.

The filmed world is no longer to appear natural. The immersion of an audience in a narrative will be frustrated. We'll see the film crew, the clapper and all the apparatus of film-making. And to Debord's montage there belongs the power to disrupt a familiar cinematic syntax.

By the filmed Society of the Spectacle, there is only found material – scenes from Battleship Potemkin and The Triumph of the Will, footage of Nixon meeting Mao, Castro, pictures of the earth seen from space, scenes from '68 (French riot police around the Flins factory) commericals and publicity stills from the fashion world ('plagiarism is necessary') …

So too is image broken apart from soundtrack: the soundtrack for Society … consists of excerpts from Debord's book of the same name, but with dialogue from Welles' Mr Arkadin mixed in, excerpts from Shakespeare ('from this day … we band of brothers') and Melville ('… desolation and horror, at the calm centre of mysery') …

'Society broadcasts to itself its own image of its own history, a history reduced to a superficial and static pageant of its rulers – the persons who embody the apparent inevitability of whatever happens'.

'This dominant equilibrium is brought back into question each time unknown people try to live differently, but it was always far away. We learn of it through the papers and newscasts. We remain outside it, relating to it as just another spectacle. We are separated from it by own own nonintervention'.

'The only interesting venture is the liberation of everyday life, not only in a historical perspective, but for us, right now. This project implies the withering away of all alienated forms of communication. The cinema, too, must be destroyed'.

By the film, by way of the film, relations no longer mediated, but disrupted. The film as anti-spectacle. As situation. What might relations be between us now: immediate? Can we turn, finally from the film, from all art (the spectacle) to one another, to Life (capital 'l')? On screen: May 1968 barricades in Paris. Fires and street fighting …

Any work of art after Debord is … after the fact? presumptuous? Later than ever. All too late.