Call It Sleep is the first visual work produced in the United States which makes use of the situationist technique of detournement - the devaluation and reuse of present and past cultural production to form a superior theoretical and practical unity.

Call It Sleep is based on material drawn from the most prevalent means of social conditioning - television - for two reasons. Familiar images easily acquire a strong negative charge when linked with a subversive content. And using images and techniques available to everyone has demonstrated, once and for all, that detournement is within the reach of anyone with a few basic appliances and the ability to communicate radical ideas.

Some people who see Call It Sleep are only interested to know if copyright permissions have been obtained from the producers of the various images in the tape. These "courageous souls" think that a disrespect for cultural and social conventions should begin after property rights have been observed. No doubt many of these people have already produced or dream of producing an artifact which they want protected by the state.

Others want to discover what special techniques or tricks of the trade are used behind Call It Sleep and they may be disappointed because no sophisticated technical expertise was involved. The singularity of Call It Sleep comes, not from the novel use of equipment, but from the practical application of a radical perspective on daily life.

Call It Sleep was completed in May of 1982. It was financed solely by its makers.

Missing Narrative

The New revolt excludes almost no one. Of course some are hopeless cases. For instance, it is not possible to show the rulers the extent of their delirium. But it is necessary to take into account the bitterness of certain servants of power who are imprisoned in roles that are stultifying and humiliating. However, indulgence has its limits. If, despite everything, these people persist in putting a guilty conscience and their bitterness in the service of power by creating the conditioning mechanisms that colonize their own lives, and if they choose power because power has already chosen them, then too bad.

Missing footage

• New footage: young African dacners perform in tribal dress.
• Documentary footage: the pope waves as he rides in a motorcade.
• Closeup of a television with the image and sound from the helicopter attack scene from the first part of Call It Sleep. A slow zoom out reveals that the television is being watched by the man and woman who were watching television in the cadre section.
• A front view of the same couple. The camera slowly zooms out.
• Title: (superimposed over the couple): All these ideas are in everyeone's heads.
• L. Van Beethoven, "Ninth Simphony"