RARE Never Work Ever Situationist DIY Stencil Kit 2003

L-13 Rejects and Rarities Department

This Situationist Slogan Never Work Ever DIY Stencil Kit was the first ever edition made for L-13 back when we were known as the aquarium.

It was concieved and constructed by L-13 founder and Chief Engineer Steve Lowe for the aquarium's inaugural exhibition The SI and After: What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Situationist International, August 2003. It was a crazy exhibition organised by a drunken committee of radicals, politico's, artists and people called 'comrade'. The exhibition itself was a ramhackle contemporary collage of thoughts and ideas with photocopied imagery and texts pasted across the walls of the "gallery", with a programme of events and talks arranged throughout the exhibition. There were also some very scarce Situationist books on display and related material such as Jamie Reid's Situationist inspired Suburban Press.

Never Work (Ne travaillez jamais) was considered a Situationist slogan that still lived on from Guy Debord's anti-capitalist polemics and featured heavily in the show. It looks like we might have added the 'Ever'. Lowe's stencil book (his first "artist book" since he was at art school) took the slogan and presented it as a series of designs that could be cut out to make stencils, that when sprayed on top of each other made a nonsensical jumble of the letters from the slogan.

The wirebound book was packed together with 4 cans of spray paint and padded out with shredded Situationist texts. No instructions were included.

7 sets were made. None sold during the exhibition - or ever. This is the only set we have and don't know what happened to the rest. They were probably thrown away.

Very scarce indeed. Only available for sale to a very serious collection. Price on Application. Be Realistic - Demand The Impossible!

If anyone has any photographs or ephemera from this exhibition we'd be very interested in seeing it.