Happening
Encyclopedia
A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art
, usually as performance art
. Happenings take place anywhere (from basements to studio lofts and even street alley ways), are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience. Key elements of happenings are planned, but artists sometimes retain room for improvisation
. This new media art
aspect to happenings eliminates the boundary between the artwork and its viewer. Henceforth, the interactions between the audience and the artwork makes the audience, in a sense, part of the art.
In the later sixties, perhaps due to the depiction in films of hippie
culture, the term was used much less specifically to mean any gathering of interest, from a pool hall
meetup or a jamming
of a few young people to a beer blast or fancy formal party.
Allan Kaprow
first coined the term "happening" in the spring of 1957 at an art picnic at George Segal
's farm to describe the art pieces that were going on. The first appearance in print was in Kaprow's famous "Legacy of Jackson Pollock" essay that was published in 1958 but primarily written in 1956. "Happening" also appeared in print in one issue of the Rutgers University
undergraduate literary magazine, Anthologist. The form was imitated and the term was adopted by artists across the U.S.
, Germany
, and Japan
. Jack Kerouac
referred to Kaprow as "The Happenings man", and an ad showing a woman floating in outer space declared, "I dreamt I was in a happening in my Maidenform
brassiere".
Happenings are difficult to describe, in part because each one is unique and completely different from one another. One definition comes from Wardrip-Fruin
and Montfort
in The New Media Reader, "The term "Happening" has been used to describe many performances and events, organized by Allan Kaprow and others during the 1950s and 1960s, including a number of theatrical productions that were traditionally scripted and invited only limited audience interaction." Another definition is, "a purposefully composed form of theatre in which diverse alogical elements, including nonmatrixed performing, are organized in a compartmented structure". A "Happening" of the same performance will have a different outcomes because each performance depends on the action of the audience. In New York especially, "Happenings" become quite popular even though many have not seen nor experienced it.
Happenings can be a form of participatory new media art, emphasizing an interaction between the performer and the audience. Breaking the fourth wall between performer and spectator, it replaces criticism with support. For some happenings, everyone present is included in the making of the art and even the form of the art depends on audience engagement, for they are a key factor in where the performers' spontaneity leads. Later happenings had no set rules, only vague guidelines that the performers follow based on surrounding props. Unlike other forms of art, Happenings that allow chance to enter are ever-changing. When chance determines the path the performance will follow, there is no room for failure. As Kaprow wrote in his essay, "'Happenings' in the New York Scene", "Visitors to a Happening are now and then not sure what has taken place, when it has ended, even when things have gone 'wrong'. For when something goes 'wrong', something far more 'right,' more revelatory, has many times emerged". The art thrives on an artist's whim, with the comfort of giving their mistakes the benefit of the doubt. The art defines itself by the fact that it is a unique, one-time experience that depends on audience response. It cannot be bought or brought home, which entitles every Happening artist to a sense of privacy. As Kaprow explains in the aforementioned essay, since the performances are always different, each one of these artists cannot lose their creative drive to a mainstream force.
Kaprow’s piece 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959) is commonly cited as the first happening, although that distinction is sometimes given to a 1952 performance of Theater Piece No. 1 at Black Mountain College
by John Cage
, one of Kaprow's teachers in the mid-1950s. Cage stood reading from a ladder, Charles Olson
read from another ladder, Robert Rauschenberg
showed some of his paintings and played wax cylinders of Édith Piaf
on an Edison horn recorder, David Tudor
performed on a prepared piano
and Merce Cunningham
danced. All these things took place at the same time, among the audience rather than on a stage. Happenings flourished in New York City
in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Key contributors to the form included Carolee Schneemann
, Red Grooms
, Robert Whitman
, Jim Dine
Car Crash, Claes Oldenburg
, Robert Delford Brown
, Lucas Samaras
, and Robert Rauschenberg
. Some of their work is documented in Michael Kirby's book Happenings (1966). Interestingly, Kaprow claimed that "some of us will become famous, and we will have proven once again that the only success occurred when there was a lack of it". (New Media Reader, p 87)
During the summer of 1959, Red Grooms
along with others (Yvonne Andersen, Bill Barrell, Sylvia Small and Dominic Falcone) staged the non-narrative "play" Walking Man, which began with construction sounds, such as sawing. Grooms recalls, "The curtains were opened by me, playing a fireman wearing a simple costume of white pants and T-shirt with a poncholike cloak and a Smokey Stoverish fireman's helmet. Bill, the 'star' in a tall hat and black overcoat, walked back and forth across the stage with great wooden gestures. Yvonne sat on the floor by a suspended fire engine. She was a blind woman with tin-foil covered glasses and cup. Sylvia played a radio and pulled on hanging junk. For the finale, I hid behand a false door and shouted pop code words. Then the cast did a wild run around and it ended". Dubbing his 148 Delancey Street studio The Delancey Street Museum, Grooms staged three more happenings there, A Garden, The Burning Building and The Magic Trainride (originally titled Fireman's Dream). No wonder Kaprow called Grooms "a Charlie Chaplin forever dreaming about fire". On the opening night of The Burning Building, Bob Thompson solicited an audience member for a light, since none of the cast had one, and this gesture of spontaneous theater recurred in eight subsequent performances.
Regarding happenings, Red Grooms
has remarked, "I had the sense that I knew it was something. I knew it was something because I didn't know what it was. I think that's when you're at your best point. When you're really doing something, you're doing it all out, but you don't know what it is."
The lack of plot as well as the expected audience participation can be likened to Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed, which also claims that "spectator is a bad word". Boal expected audience members to participate in the theater of the oppressed by becoming the actors. His goal was to allow the downtrodden to act out the forces oppressing them in order to mobilize the people into political action. Both Kaprow and Boal are reinventing theater to try to make plays more interactive and to abolish the traditional narrative form to make theater something more free-form and organic.
's and other artists of the 1950s and 1960s that performed these Happenings helped put "new media technology developments into context". It was highly influential in true intermedia work and the interactivity in art. The Happenings allowed other artists to create performances that would attract attention to the issue they wanted to portray. Digital media examples of Happenings could be as simple as artists creating a webpage about their issues or going on to blogs, forums and other networks that they could send mass art and information through. Currently happenings today can be found with Jazz in a whole new way through the artistic collaboration of renowned musicians American saxophonist David Liebman, French jazz pianist Jean-Marie Machado, and multimedia visual artist Barbara Januszkiewicz
. their group Jazz Vision Trio is using new media techniques and real-time improvising with jazz and art. Samples of this mixing music and art can be found on YouTube. Dave Liebman a NEA 2011 Jazz master is a perfect example of a forward-thinking player whose advanced style and association with Miles Davis makes him one of the most influential jazz musicians of his era. He recalls mixing it up with the happenings in and around New York in the 60s. It is like visiting an old idea but making it new again.
first performed Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle
. The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a cheque, in exchange for gold
; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the cheque, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine
. The ritual would be performed in the presence of an art critic or distinguished dealer, an art museum director and at least two witnesses.
In 1960, Jean-Jacques Lebel
oversaw and partook in the first European Happening L'enterrement de la Chose in Venice
. For his performance there - called Happening Funeral Ceremony of the Anti-Process - Lebel invited the audience to attend a ceremony in formal dress. In a decorated room within a grand residence, a draped 'cadaver' rested on a plinth which was then ritually stabbed by an 'executioner' while a 'service' was read consisting of extracts from the French décadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans
and le Marquis de Sade
. Then pall-bearers carried the coffin out into a gondola and the 'body' - which was in fact a mechanical sculpture by Jean Tinguely
- was ceremonially slid into the canal.
Poet and painter Adrian Henri
claimed to have organized the first happenings in England in Liverpool
in 1962, taking place during the Merseyside Arts Festival. The most important event in London was the Albert Hall “International Poetry Incarnation
” on June 11, 1965, where an audience of 7,000 people witnessed and participated in performances by some of the leading avant-garde young British and American poets of the day (see British Poetry Revival
and Poetry of the United States
). One of the participants, Jeff Nuttall
, went on to organize a number of further happenings, often working with his friend Bob Cobbing
, sound poet
and performance poet
.
In Tokyo
in 1964, Yoko Ono
created a happening by performing her "Cut Piece" at the Sogetsu Art Center. She walked onto the stage draped in fabric, presented the audience with a pair of scissors, and instructed the audience to cut the fabric away gradually until she was naked.
In Belgium
, the first happenings were organized around 1965–1968 in Antwerp, Brussels
and Ostend
by artists Hugo Heyrman
and Panamarenko
.
In the Netherlands
, Provo organized happenings around the little statue "Het Lieverdje" on the Spui, a square in the centre of Amsterdam
, from 1966 till 1968. Police
often raided these events.
In Germany
, HA Schult
(b. 1939), together with his muse, Elke Koska, organizes happenings since the late 1960s, thereby primarily working with garbage. In the 1960s Joseph Beuys
, Wolf Vostell
, Nam June Paik
,
Charlotte Moorman
and Dick Higgins
made Happenings in Germany.
In Australia
, the Yellow House Artist Collective
in Sydney
housed 24-hour happenings throughout the early 1970s.
Behind the Iron Curtain
, in Poland
, artist and theater director Tadeusz Kantor
staged the first happenings starting in 1965. Also, in the second half of 1980s, a student-based happening movement Orange Alternative
founded by Major Waldemar Fydrych became known for its much attended happenings (over 10 thousand participants at one time) aimed against the military regime led by General Jaruzelski
and the fear blocking the Polish society ever since the Martial Law
had been imposed in December 1981.
The non-profit, artist-run organization, iKatun, has reflected the use of "Happenings" influence while incorporating the medium of internet. They aim is one that "fosters public engagement in the politics of information". Their project entitled The International Database of Corporate Commands presents a scrutinizing look at the super-saturating advertisements slogans, and "commands" of companies. "The Institute for Infinitely Small Things uses these commands to conduct research performances- performances in which we attempt to enact, as literally as possible, what the command tells us to do and where it tells us to do it. For example, a user may look at a long list of slogans on the website database section, and may submit, in text, his or her take on the most literal way to act out the slogan/ command. The iKatun team will then act out the slogan in a research-performance related way. This means of performance art draws on the collaboration of the web world and tangible reality to conduct a new, modern Happening.
and Oregon Country Fair
. Along with the famous Allan Kaprow
Burning Man
frowns on the idea of spectators and stresses the importance of everyone being involved to create something amazing and unique. Both parties embody the "audience" and instead of creating something to show the people, the people become involved in helping create something incredible and spontaneous to the moment. Both of these events are happenings that are recreated and special each year and are always new and organic. These events draw crowds of close to 50,000 people each year and reach more people then just the attendees with their messages and ideals.
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, usually as performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
. Happenings take place anywhere (from basements to studio lofts and even street alley ways), are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience. Key elements of happenings are planned, but artists sometimes retain room for improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
. This new media art
New media art
New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...
aspect to happenings eliminates the boundary between the artwork and its viewer. Henceforth, the interactions between the audience and the artwork makes the audience, in a sense, part of the art.
In the later sixties, perhaps due to the depiction in films of hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
culture, the term was used much less specifically to mean any gathering of interest, from a pool hall
Pool hall
A billiard/billiards, pool or snooker hall is a place where people get together for playing cue sports such as pool, snooker or carom billiards...
meetup or a jamming
Jam session
Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...
of a few young people to a beer blast or fancy formal party.
Origins
Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
first coined the term "happening" in the spring of 1957 at an art picnic at George Segal
George Segal (artist)
George Segal was an American painter and sculptor associated with the Pop Art movement. He was presented with a National Medal of Arts in 1999.-Works:...
's farm to describe the art pieces that were going on. The first appearance in print was in Kaprow's famous "Legacy of Jackson Pollock" essay that was published in 1958 but primarily written in 1956. "Happening" also appeared in print in one issue of the Rutgers University
Fluxus at Rutgers University
The mid-20th-century art movement Fluxus had a strong association with Rutgers University.Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts, both key figures in the movement, originally met while they were students at Columbia University; though only together there for one year, soon after they both began teaching at...
undergraduate literary magazine, Anthologist. The form was imitated and the term was adopted by artists across the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
referred to Kaprow as "The Happenings man", and an ad showing a woman floating in outer space declared, "I dreamt I was in a happening in my Maidenform
Maidenform
Maidenform Brands is a manufacturer of women's underwear, founded in 1922 by three people: seamstress Ida Rosenthal; Enid Bissett, who owned the shop that employed her; and Ida's husband, William Rosenthal...
brassiere".
Happenings are difficult to describe, in part because each one is unique and completely different from one another. One definition comes from Wardrip-Fruin
Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Noah Wardrip-Fruin is Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is an advisor for the Expressive Intelligence Studio. He is an alumnus of the Literary Arts MFA program and Special Graduate Study PhD program at Brown University...
and Montfort
Nick Montfort
Nick Montfort is an associate professor of digital media at MIT in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. He is also a poet, computer scientist, and author of interactive fiction. Montfort has collaborated on the blog Grand Text Auto, the sticker novel Implementation, and the contemporary...
in The New Media Reader, "The term "Happening" has been used to describe many performances and events, organized by Allan Kaprow and others during the 1950s and 1960s, including a number of theatrical productions that were traditionally scripted and invited only limited audience interaction." Another definition is, "a purposefully composed form of theatre in which diverse alogical elements, including nonmatrixed performing, are organized in a compartmented structure". A "Happening" of the same performance will have a different outcomes because each performance depends on the action of the audience. In New York especially, "Happenings" become quite popular even though many have not seen nor experienced it.
Happenings can be a form of participatory new media art, emphasizing an interaction between the performer and the audience. Breaking the fourth wall between performer and spectator, it replaces criticism with support. For some happenings, everyone present is included in the making of the art and even the form of the art depends on audience engagement, for they are a key factor in where the performers' spontaneity leads. Later happenings had no set rules, only vague guidelines that the performers follow based on surrounding props. Unlike other forms of art, Happenings that allow chance to enter are ever-changing. When chance determines the path the performance will follow, there is no room for failure. As Kaprow wrote in his essay, "'Happenings' in the New York Scene", "Visitors to a Happening are now and then not sure what has taken place, when it has ended, even when things have gone 'wrong'. For when something goes 'wrong', something far more 'right,' more revelatory, has many times emerged". The art thrives on an artist's whim, with the comfort of giving their mistakes the benefit of the doubt. The art defines itself by the fact that it is a unique, one-time experience that depends on audience response. It cannot be bought or brought home, which entitles every Happening artist to a sense of privacy. As Kaprow explains in the aforementioned essay, since the performances are always different, each one of these artists cannot lose their creative drive to a mainstream force.
Kaprow’s piece 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959) is commonly cited as the first happening, although that distinction is sometimes given to a 1952 performance of Theater Piece No. 1 at Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role...
by John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, one of Kaprow's teachers in the mid-1950s. Cage stood reading from a ladder, Charles Olson
Charles Olson
Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...
read from another ladder, Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
showed some of his paintings and played wax cylinders of Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
on an Edison horn recorder, David Tudor
David Tudor
David Eugene Tudor was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.- Biography :Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the...
performed on a prepared piano
Prepared piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers....
and Merce Cunningham
Merce Cunningham
Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...
danced. All these things took place at the same time, among the audience rather than on a stage. Happenings flourished in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Key contributors to the form included Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist, known for her discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. from Bard College and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois. Her work is primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the...
, Red Grooms
Red Grooms
Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...
, Robert Whitman
Robert Whitman
Robert Whitman is an American artist best known for his seminal theater pieces of the early 1960s combining visual and sound images, actors, film, slides, and evocative props in environments of his own making...
, Jim Dine
Jim Dine
Jim Dine is an American pop artist. He is sometimes considered to be a part of the Neo-Dada movement. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, attended Walnut Hills High School, the University of Cincinnati, and received a BFA from Ohio University in 1957. He first earned respect in the art world with...
Car Crash, Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
, Robert Delford Brown
Robert Delford Brown
Robert Delford-Brown was an American performance artist. The New York Times called him "a painter, sculptor, performance artist and avant-garde philosopher whose exuberantly provocative works challenged orthodoxies of both the art world and the world at large, usually with a big wink." Deborah...
, Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras , is an artist, born in Kastoria, Greece. He studied at Rutgers University on a scholarship, where he met Allan Kaprow and George Segal. While at Rutgers, he joined Gamma Sigma . He participated in Kaprow's "Happenings," and posed for Segal's plaster sculptures...
, and Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
. Some of their work is documented in Michael Kirby's book Happenings (1966). Interestingly, Kaprow claimed that "some of us will become famous, and we will have proven once again that the only success occurred when there was a lack of it". (New Media Reader, p 87)
During the summer of 1959, Red Grooms
Red Grooms
Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...
along with others (Yvonne Andersen, Bill Barrell, Sylvia Small and Dominic Falcone) staged the non-narrative "play" Walking Man, which began with construction sounds, such as sawing. Grooms recalls, "The curtains were opened by me, playing a fireman wearing a simple costume of white pants and T-shirt with a poncholike cloak and a Smokey Stoverish fireman's helmet. Bill, the 'star' in a tall hat and black overcoat, walked back and forth across the stage with great wooden gestures. Yvonne sat on the floor by a suspended fire engine. She was a blind woman with tin-foil covered glasses and cup. Sylvia played a radio and pulled on hanging junk. For the finale, I hid behand a false door and shouted pop code words. Then the cast did a wild run around and it ended". Dubbing his 148 Delancey Street studio The Delancey Street Museum, Grooms staged three more happenings there, A Garden, The Burning Building and The Magic Trainride (originally titled Fireman's Dream). No wonder Kaprow called Grooms "a Charlie Chaplin forever dreaming about fire". On the opening night of The Burning Building, Bob Thompson solicited an audience member for a light, since none of the cast had one, and this gesture of spontaneous theater recurred in eight subsequent performances.
Difference from plays
Happenings emphasize the organic connection between art and its environment. Kaprow supports that "happenings invite us to cast aside for a moment these proper manners and partake wholly in the real nature of the art and life. It is a rough and sudden act, where one often feels "dirty", and dirt, we might begin to realize, is also organic and fertile, and everything including the visitors can grow a little into such circumstances." Secondly, happenings have no plot or philosophy, but rather is materialized in an improvisatory fashion. There is no direction thus the outcome is unpredictable. "It is generated in action by a headful of ideas...and it frequently has words but they may or may not make literal sense. If they do, their meaning is not representational of what the whole element conveys. Hence they carry a brief, detached quality. If they do not make sense, then they are acknowledgement of the sound of the word rather than the meaning conveyed by it." Last, due to the convention's nature, there is no such term as "failure" which can be applied. "For when something goes "wrong", something far more "right", more revelatory may emerge. This sort of sudden near-miracle presently is made more likely by chance procedures." As a conclusion, a happening is fresh while it lasts and cannot be reproduced (Wardrip-Fruin, 86).Regarding happenings, Red Grooms
Red Grooms
Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...
has remarked, "I had the sense that I knew it was something. I knew it was something because I didn't know what it was. I think that's when you're at your best point. When you're really doing something, you're doing it all out, but you don't know what it is."
The lack of plot as well as the expected audience participation can be likened to Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed, which also claims that "spectator is a bad word". Boal expected audience members to participate in the theater of the oppressed by becoming the actors. His goal was to allow the downtrodden to act out the forces oppressing them in order to mobilize the people into political action. Both Kaprow and Boal are reinventing theater to try to make plays more interactive and to abolish the traditional narrative form to make theater something more free-form and organic.
Contribution toward digital media
Allan KaprowAllan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
's and other artists of the 1950s and 1960s that performed these Happenings helped put "new media technology developments into context". It was highly influential in true intermedia work and the interactivity in art. The Happenings allowed other artists to create performances that would attract attention to the issue they wanted to portray. Digital media examples of Happenings could be as simple as artists creating a webpage about their issues or going on to blogs, forums and other networks that they could send mass art and information through. Currently happenings today can be found with Jazz in a whole new way through the artistic collaboration of renowned musicians American saxophonist David Liebman, French jazz pianist Jean-Marie Machado, and multimedia visual artist Barbara Januszkiewicz
Barbara Januszkiewicz
Barbara Morrison Januszkiewicz is an American painter, multi-media artist and filmmaker. She specializes in watercolor painting in a hybrid style – 'realism handled in a impressionist manner'. Her artwork has appeared predominantly in the Washington, D.C., area, including the Phillips Collection,...
. their group Jazz Vision Trio is using new media techniques and real-time improvising with jazz and art. Samples of this mixing music and art can be found on YouTube. Dave Liebman a NEA 2011 Jazz master is a perfect example of a forward-thinking player whose advanced style and association with Miles Davis makes him one of the most influential jazz musicians of his era. He recalls mixing it up with the happenings in and around New York in the 60s. It is like visiting an old idea but making it new again.
Around the world
In 1959 the French artist Yves KleinYves Klein
Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...
first performed Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle
Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle
Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle is an artist's book and performance by the French artist Yves Klein...
. The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a cheque, in exchange for gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the cheque, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
. The ritual would be performed in the presence of an art critic or distinguished dealer, an art museum director and at least two witnesses.
In 1960, Jean-Jacques Lebel
Jean-Jacques Lebel
Jean-Jacques Lebel is a French artist, poet, poetry publisher, political activist and scholar born in Paris in 1936. He is known primarily for his work with Happenings, and as an art theory writer and art curator. He is the son of Robert Lebel, art critic and friend of Marcel Duchamp.-Life and...
oversaw and partook in the first European Happening L'enterrement de la Chose in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
. For his performance there - called Happening Funeral Ceremony of the Anti-Process - Lebel invited the audience to attend a ceremony in formal dress. In a decorated room within a grand residence, a draped 'cadaver' rested on a plinth which was then ritually stabbed by an 'executioner' while a 'service' was read consisting of extracts from the French décadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans . He is most famous for the novel À rebours...
and le Marquis de Sade
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
. Then pall-bearers carried the coffin out into a gondola and the 'body' - which was in fact a mechanical sculpture by Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics...
- was ceremonially slid into the canal.
Poet and painter Adrian Henri
Adrian Henri
Adrian Henri was a British poet and painter best remembered as the founder of poetry-rock group The Liverpool Scene and as one of three poets in the best-selling anthology The Mersey Sound, along with Brian Patten and Roger McGough. The trio of Liverpool poets came to prominence in that city's...
claimed to have organized the first happenings in England in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
in 1962, taking place during the Merseyside Arts Festival. The most important event in London was the Albert Hall “International Poetry Incarnation
International Poetry Incarnation
The International Poetry Incarnation was an event at the Royal Albert Hall in Londonon June 11, 1965.In May, 1965, Allen Ginsberg arrived at Better Books, London, and offered to read anywhere for free....
” on June 11, 1965, where an audience of 7,000 people witnessed and participated in performances by some of the leading avant-garde young British and American poets of the day (see British Poetry Revival
British Poetry Revival
The British Poetry Revival is the general name given to a loose poetry movement in Britain that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The revival was a modernist-inspired reaction to the Movement's more conservative approach to British poetry.-Beginnings:...
and Poetry of the United States
Poetry of the United States
American poetry, the poetry of the United States, arose first as efforts by colonists to add their voices to English poetry in the 17th century, well before the constitutional unification of the thirteen colonies...
). One of the participants, Jeff Nuttall
Jeff Nuttall
Jeff Nuttall was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist sympathiser and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. He was the brother of literary critic A. D. Nuttall.-Life and work:Jeff Nuttall was born in Clitheroe,...
, went on to organize a number of further happenings, often working with his friend Bob Cobbing
Bob Cobbing
Bob Cobbing was a British sound, visual, concrete and performance poet who was a central figure in the British Poetry Revival.-Early life:...
, sound poet
Sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
and performance poet
Performance poetry
Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe poetry written or composed for performance rather than print distribution.-History:...
.
In Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
in 1964, Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
created a happening by performing her "Cut Piece" at the Sogetsu Art Center. She walked onto the stage draped in fabric, presented the audience with a pair of scissors, and instructed the audience to cut the fabric away gradually until she was naked.
In Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, the first happenings were organized around 1965–1968 in Antwerp, Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
and Ostend
Ostend
Ostend is a Belgian city and municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerke , Stene and Zandvoorde, and the city of Ostend proper – the largest on the Belgian coast....
by artists Hugo Heyrman
Hugo Heyrman
Hugo Heyrman , , is a Belgian painter, filmmaker, internetpioneer, synesthesia- and new media researcher.- Biography:Hugo Heyrman was born in Antwerp, where he lives and works....
and Panamarenko
Panamarenko
Panamarenko is a prominent assemblagist in Belgian sculpture. Famous for his work with airplanes as theme; none of which are able nor constructed to actually leave the ground....
.
In the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Provo organized happenings around the little statue "Het Lieverdje" on the Spui, a square in the centre of Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, from 1966 till 1968. Police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
often raided these events.
In Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, HA Schult
HA Schult
HA Schult, born Hans-Jürgen Schult on June 24, 1939 in Parchim, Mecklenburg is a German installation, happening and conceptual artist known primarily for his object and performance art and more specifically his work with garbage.- Life :...
(b. 1939), together with his muse, Elke Koska, organizes happenings since the late 1960s, thereby primarily working with garbage. In the 1960s Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...
, Wolf Vostell
Wolf Vostell
Wolf Vostell was a German painter, sculptor, noise music maker and Happening artist of the second half of the 20th century. Wolf Vostell is considered one of the pioneers of video art, environment-sculptures, Happenings and the Fluxus Movement...
, Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist....
,
Charlotte Moorman
Charlotte Moorman
Madeline Charlotte Moorman Garside was an American cellist and performance artist.She was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied cello from age ten and won a scholarship to Centenary College where she took her B.A. in music in 1955. She received her M.A...
and Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins was a composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist. Higgins was born in Cambridge, England, but raised in the United States in various parts of New England, including Worcester, Massachusetts, Putney, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire.Like other Fluxus artists, Higgins studied...
made Happenings in Germany.
In Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, the Yellow House Artist Collective
Yellow House Artist Collective
The Yellow House was an artists' collective in Sydney, Australia started by artist Martin Sharp. Between 1970 and 1973, The Yellow House, in Macleay Street near Kings Cross, was a piece of living art and a mecca to pop art. The canvas was the house itself and almost every wall, floor and ceiling...
in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
housed 24-hour happenings throughout the early 1970s.
Behind the Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
, in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, artist and theater director Tadeusz Kantor
Tadeusz Kantor
Tadeusz Kantor was a Polish painter, assemblage artist, set designer and theatre director. Kantor is renowned for his revolutionary theatrical performances in Poland and abroad.- Life and career :...
staged the first happenings starting in 1965. Also, in the second half of 1980s, a student-based happening movement Orange Alternative
Orange Alternative
Orange Alternative is a name for an underground protest movement which was started in Wrocław, a town in south-west Poland and led by Waldemar Fydrych , commonly known as Major in the 1980s...
founded by Major Waldemar Fydrych became known for its much attended happenings (over 10 thousand participants at one time) aimed against the military regime led by General Jaruzelski
Wojciech Jaruzelski
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski is a retired Polish military officer and Communist politician. He was the last Communist leader of Poland from 1981 to 1989, Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985 and the country's head of state from 1985 to 1990. He was also the last commander-in-chief of the Polish People's...
and the fear blocking the Polish society ever since the Martial Law
Martial law
Martial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis— only temporary—when the civilian government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively , when there are extensive riots and protests, or when the disobedience of the law...
had been imposed in December 1981.
The non-profit, artist-run organization, iKatun, has reflected the use of "Happenings" influence while incorporating the medium of internet. They aim is one that "fosters public engagement in the politics of information". Their project entitled The International Database of Corporate Commands presents a scrutinizing look at the super-saturating advertisements slogans, and "commands" of companies. "The Institute for Infinitely Small Things uses these commands to conduct research performances- performances in which we attempt to enact, as literally as possible, what the command tells us to do and where it tells us to do it. For example, a user may look at a long list of slogans on the website database section, and may submit, in text, his or her take on the most literal way to act out the slogan/ command. The iKatun team will then act out the slogan in a research-performance related way. This means of performance art draws on the collaboration of the web world and tangible reality to conduct a new, modern Happening.
Modern happenings
- FlashmobFlashMobFlashMob is a band formed in Nashville, Tennessee featuring Meghan Kabir. The band signed a record deal with Warner Brothers in spring 2010....
- Improv EverywhereImprov EverywhereImprov Everywhere is a comedic performance art group based in New York City, formed in 2001 by Charlie Todd. Its slogan is "We Cause Scenes."The group carries out pranks, which they call "missions", in public places...
- Performance ArtPerformance artIn art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
- Zombie WalkZombie WalkA zombie walk is an organized public gathering of people who dress up in zombie costumes...
- Subway partySubway partyA subway party is a celebration that occurs on a mass transit system. Generally, people meet at a predetermined station in their city's mass transit system, wait until their numbers have achieved critical mass, and board the train...
- International Pillow Fight Day
- Silent DiscoSilent discoSilent disco has become a common name for a disco where people dance to music listened to on wireless headphones. Rather than using a speaker system, music is broadcast via an FM-transmitter with the signal being picked up by wireless headphone receivers worn by the participants. Those without the...
Philosophy
Kaprow explains that happenings are not a new style, but a moral act, a human stand of great urgency, whose professional status as art is less critical than their certainty as an ultimate existential commitment. He argues that once artists have been recognized and paid, they also surrender to the confinement, rather the tastes of the patrons (even if that may not be the intention on both ends). "The whole situation is corrosive, neither patrons nor artists comprehend their role...and out of this hidden discomfort comes a stillborn art, tight or merely repetitive and at worst, chic." Though the we may easily blame those offering the temptation, Kaprow reminds us that it is not the publicist's moral obligation to protect the artist's freedom, and artists themselves hold the ultimate power to reject fame if they do not want its responsibilities. (Wardrip-Fruin, 87)Festivals as happenings
Art and music festivals play a large role in positive and successful happenings. Some of these festivals include Burning ManBurning Man
Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening...
and Oregon Country Fair
Oregon Country Fair
The Oregon Country Fair is an annual three-day fair held in Veneta, Oregon, United States. Located in the Willamette Valley, the site is about west of Eugene along the Long Tom River. Annual attendance is approximately 45,000, and the fair has around 350 booths each year...
. Along with the famous Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
Burning Man
Burning Man
Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening...
frowns on the idea of spectators and stresses the importance of everyone being involved to create something amazing and unique. Both parties embody the "audience" and instead of creating something to show the people, the people become involved in helping create something incredible and spontaneous to the moment. Both of these events are happenings that are recreated and special each year and are always new and organic. These events draw crowds of close to 50,000 people each year and reach more people then just the attendees with their messages and ideals.
Further reading
- Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, ed (2003). The New Media Reader. pp. 83–88. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-23227-8.
- Soke Dinkla, "From Participation to Interaction" (283, 289-290) Referenced in Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, ed (2003). The New Media Reader. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-23227-8.
- Joseph NechvatalJoseph NechvatalJoseph Nechvatal is a post-conceptual art digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses.-Life and work:Joseph Nechvatal was born in Chicago...
, Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009 - Kaprow, Allan. Allan Kaprow: 18 Happenings in 6 Parts. 2007. Print.
- Hendricks, Geoffrey. Critical Mass: Happenings, Fluxus, Performance, Intermedia, and Rutgers University, 1958-1972. New Brunswick, N.J.: Mason Gross Art Galleries, Rutgers University, 2003. Print.
- Kaprow, Allan, and Jean Jacques. Lebel. Assemblage, Environments & Happenings. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1966. Print.
See also
- Speculations: An Essay on the TheaterSpeculations: An Essay on the TheaterSpeculations: An Essay on the Theater is a treatise by one of today's major experimental playwrights: Mac Wellman. It was published with the collection of plays entitled The Difficulty of Crossing a Field...
- Mac WellmanMac WellmanMac Wellman is an American playwright, author, and poet. Wellman is best known for his experimental work in the theater which rebels against theatrical conventions, often abandoning such traditional elements as plot and character altogether...
- The Flea TheaterThe Flea TheaterThe Flea Theater, founded in 1996, is a theatre in the TriBeCa section of New York City. It presents primarily new American theatre, and provides a venue for film stars to act on a very small stage. It is the home of "The Bat Theater Company", an Obie Award winning resident acting troupe of...
- Performance artPerformance artIn art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
- Elizabeth LeCompteElizabeth LeCompteElizabeth LeCompte is a founding member and the theater director of experimental theater collective The Wooster Group .-Biography:...
- The Wooster GroupThe Wooster GroupThe Wooster Group is a New York City-based experimental theater company known for creating numerous original dramatic works. It gradually emerged during 1975-1980 from Richard Schechner's The Performance Group and took its name in 1980...
- Ontological-Hysteric TheaterOntological-Hysteric TheaterThe Ontological-Hysteric Theater was founded in 1968 by Richard Foreman. According to his website, his aim was-Total Theater:According to his website,-Production history:...
- Richard ForemanRichard ForemanRichard Foreman is an American playwright and avant-garde theater pioneer. He is the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.-Life :...
- Richard SchechnerRichard SchechnerRichard Schechner is Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University , editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists. His BA is from Cornell University , MA from the University of Iowa , and PhD from Tulane University...
- Allan KaprowAllan KaprowAllan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
- FluxusFluxusFluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
- IntermediaIntermediaIntermedia was a concept employed in the mid-sixties by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres that became prevalent in the 1960s. Thus, the areas such as those between drawing and poetry, or between painting...
- Dick HigginsDick HigginsDick Higgins was a composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist. Higgins was born in Cambridge, England, but raised in the United States in various parts of New England, including Worcester, Massachusetts, Putney, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire.Like other Fluxus artists, Higgins studied...
- Marina AbramovićMarina AbramovicMarina Abramović is a Belgrade-born New York-based Serbian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and...
- Experimental theatreExperimental theatreExperimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...
- Avant-gardeAvant-gardeAvant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
- Situationism
- Flash mobFlash mobA flash mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, artistic expression...
- Robert Delford BrownRobert Delford BrownRobert Delford-Brown was an American performance artist. The New York Times called him "a painter, sculptor, performance artist and avant-garde philosopher whose exuberantly provocative works challenged orthodoxies of both the art world and the world at large, usually with a big wink." Deborah...
- Fluxus at Rutgers UniversityFluxus at Rutgers UniversityThe mid-20th-century art movement Fluxus had a strong association with Rutgers University.Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts, both key figures in the movement, originally met while they were students at Columbia University; though only together there for one year, soon after they both began teaching at...
- Bread and Puppet TheaterBread and Puppet TheaterThe Bread and Puppet Theater is a politically radical puppet theater, active since the 1960s, currently based in Glover, Vermont...
- Gutai groupGutai groupThe Gutai group was an artistic movement and association of artists founded by Jiro Yoshihara in Japan in 1954...
- BuskingBuskingStreet performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles...
External links
- Happenings in Belgium
- Happenings by Orange Alternative in Poland
- http://www.ubu.com/historical/kaprow/index.htmlAllan Kaprow on UbuwebUbuWebUbuWeb is a large web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives.-Philosophy:...
] - Interview with Kaprow
- Report on a Happening, 1963