Exploding Appendix Podcast 11: Class Wargames: From Situationist Subversion to Political Strategy. An Interview with Richard Barbrook

In this episode Bradley Tuck will be joined by Richard Barbrook to discuss his 2014 book Class Wargames, which explores how the avant-garde artist and radical theorist Guy Debord developed a wargame. We discuss Guy Debord’s influence on the punk movement, and art and politics more generally. We discuss how Guy Debord was influenced by council communism, how Guy Debord drew strategic and tactical insights from Carl Von Clausewitz’s On War and the battle tactics of Napoleon Bonaparte. We discuss this in relation to Richard’s own fascination with hobbyist wargaming, the Class wargames art project, his interest in cybernetics and his involvement in the labour party. We explore how gaming can yield artistic provocations, tactical insights, and teach us how to avoid becoming little Stalins. In many respects, this podcast is continuous with our previous one where we discussed Richard’s previous 2007 book Imaginary Futures, the development of media theory and the cold war origins of the internet.

In what follows you will hear an interview between Bradley Tuck and Richard Barbrook conducted on 01/03/2018 interspersed with snippets from the short film Class Wargames Presents Guy Debord’s The Game of War, which can be viewed in whole by visiting the Class Wargames website at www.classwargames.net.