Prelimanary Committee for the Foundation of
a New Lettrist International proposes

The First Congress
of the New Lettrist International

Part 1


I travelled illegally to Russia. The business was difficult and dangerous; but it succeeded.
On 16th June I stepped onto Russian soil: on the 19th I was in Moscow.
Report from Moscow, Otto Rühle

Whereas in previous epochs the conduct of International organisations necessitated long and arduous journeys, contemporary society has not only rendered such behaviour unnecessary, but positively demands its supercession. In an era when telematics has industrialised the imagination, our resources and intellegence must move beyond the mental and whizzical constraints imposed by the toy technology of info-tech capitalism.
Our congress will be a virtual congress, but not however mediated by electrickery. We assert that all congresses have always been virtual, a technique for window-dressing predetermined decisions and selling them on to the delegates who then carry the message out to the party faithful, and thence to the broad layers of humanity. Instead of mechanising this process, we wish to implode it. Our First Congress will also be an Imaginist Congress.


The methods which I saw practised on me in Moscow aroused my strongest aversion. Whereto I saw: political scene shifting - calculated as bluff - using flashy revolutionary resolutions to conceal the opportunistic background. It would have been best just to have headed off. However I decided to stay until the second delegate Comrade Merges-Braunschweig would arrive.

Congress is about creating the myth of unity, but our First Congress will, contrariwise, unify the myth creation process. The Congress will only exist at the level of myth, thereby excising political chicanery. Particpants will not so much be inscribing their ideas on the palimpsest of an historic event, but will have to subject themselves to the much harsher discipline of projecting their conceptions onto the tabla rasa of the non-existent.
In this process, we make no restrictions on the use of info-tech. It is sufficient to assert, however, that the most important work will take place away from such machinery. At a time when computers are poised as a means of industrialising the imagination, and present themselves as the open-sesame to a world of virtual reality, we assert that all virtaul reality is the consequence of the social interaction of human consciousness.


I used the time to study the situation. First I looked around Moscow, mostly without official guidance (...) Then I made a long car tour to Kashira and a trip to Nischny-Novgorod, Kasan Simbirsk, Samara . . .

Go to First Congress Proposal Part 2

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