Beyond the Happening: Performance art and the politics of communication

By Catherine Spencer

Beyond the Happening uncovers the heterogeneous, uniquely interdisciplinary performance-based works that emerged in the aftermath of the early Happenings. By the mid-1960s Happenings were widely declared outmoded or even ‘dead’, but this book reveals how many practitioners continued to work with the form during the late 1960s and 1970s, developing it into a vehicle for studying interpersonal communication that simultaneously deployed and questioned contemporary sociology and psychology. Focussing on the artists Allan Kaprow, Marta Minujín, Carolee Schneemann and Lea Lublin, it charts how they revised and retooled the premises of the Happening within a wider network of dynamic international activity. The resulting performances directly intervened in the wider discourse of communication studies, as it manifested in the politics of countercultural dropout, soft power and cultural diplomacy, alternative pedagogies, sociological art and feminist consciousness-raising.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526144478

Catherine Spencer

In the past, Catherine Spencer has been an English teacher which was the springboard for her writing career. Heathcliff, Rochester, Romeo and Rhett were all responsible for her love of brooding heroes! Catherine has had the lucky honour of being a Romance Writers of America RITA finalist and has been a guest speaker at both international and local conferences and was the only Canadian chosen to appear on the television special, Harlequin goes Prime Time.

Book preview

Beyond the Happening

rethinking

art’s histories

SERIES EDITORS

Amelia G. Jones, Marsha Meskimmon

Rethinking Art’s Histories aims to open out art history from its most basic structures by foregrounding work that challenges the conventional periodisation and geographical subfields of traditional art history, and addressing a wide range of visual cultural forms from the early modern period to the present.

These books will acknowledge the impact of recent scholarship on our understanding of the complex temporalities and cartographies that have emerged through centuries of world-wide trade, political colonisation, and the diasporic movement of people and ideas across national and continental borders.

Also available in the series

Colouring the Caribbean: Race and the art of Agostino Brunias Mia L. Bagneris

Performance art in Eastern Europe since 1960 Amy Bryzgel

Bound together: Leather, sex, archives and contemporary art Andy Campbell

Art, museums and touch Fiona Candlin

Travelling images: Looking across the borderlands of art, media and visual culture Anna Dahlgren

Staging art and Chineseness: The politics of trans/nationalism and global expositions Jane Chin Davidson

The ‘do-it-yourself’ artwork: Participation from fluxus to relational aesthetics Anna Dezeuze (ed.)

Empires of light: Vision, visibility and power in colonial India Niharika Dinkar

Fleshing out surfaces: Skin in French art and medicine, 1650–1850 Mechthild Fend

Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution Jacopo Galimberti, Noemi de Haro-García and Victoria H. F. Scott (eds)

The political aesthetics of the Armenian avant-garde: The journey of the ‘painterly real’, 1987–2004 Angela Harutyunyan

The matter of miracles: Neapolitan baroque sanctity and architecture Helen Hills

The face of medicine: Visualising medical masculinities in late nineteenth-century Paris Mary Hunter

Glorious catastrophe: Jack Smith, performance and visual culture Dominic Johnson

Otherwise: Imagining queer feminist art histories Amelia Jones and Erin Silver (eds)

Addressing the other woman: Textual correspondences in feminist art and writing Kimberly Lamm

Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai Jenny Lin

Photography and documentary film in the making of modern Brazil Luciana Martins

After the event: New perspectives in art history Charles Merewether and John Potts (eds)

Women, the arts and globalization: Eccentric experience Marsha Meskimmon and Dorothy C. Rowe (eds)

Flesh cinema: The corporeal turn in American avant-garde film Ara Osterweil

Productive failure: Writing queer transnational South Asian art histories Alpesh Kantilal Patel

The ecological eye: Assembling an ecocritical art history Andrew Patrizio

Migration into art: Transcultural identities and art-making in a globalised world Anne Ring Petersen

After-affects|after-images: Trauma and aesthetic transformation in the virtual Feminist museum Griselda Pollock

Vertiginous mirrors: The animation of the visual image and early modern travel Rose Marie San Juan

The synthetic proposition: Conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art Nizan Shaked

The paradox of body, building and motion in seventeenth-century England Kimberley Skelton

The newspaper clipping: A modern paper object Anke Te Heesen, translated by Lori Lantz

Screen/space: The projected image in contemporary art Tamara Trodd (ed.)

Art and human rights: Contemporary Asian contexts Caroline Turner and Jen Webb

Timed out: Art and the transnational Caribbean Leon Wainwright

Performative monuments: Performance, photography, and the rematerialisation of public art Mechtild Widrich

Beyond the Happening

Performance art and the politics of communication

Catherine Spencer

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Catherine Spencer 2020

The right of Catherine Spencer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 4445 4 hardback

First published 2020

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or any third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Cover: Marta Minujín, Simultaneidad en simultaneidad (Simultaneity in Simultaneity), Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, October 1966. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires, and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).

Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK

Contents

List of figures

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Introduction: Communication studies

1Allan Kaprow’s lesson plans

2Marta Minujín’s sociability experiments

3Carolee Schneemann’s group work

4Lea Lublin’s exercises in denaturalisation

Conclusion: Breaching experiments and social bodies

Bibliography

Index

Figures

0.1 Wolf Vostell, poster for Three Country Happening , 1966, reproduced from an original pencil-on-paper design. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c. 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Wolf Vostell © DACS 2019.

0.2 Marta Minujín, Simultaneidad en simultaneidad ( Simultaneity in Simultaneity ), 13 and 24 October 1966, Happening at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).

1.1 ‘Photo Play’ booklet, n.d., featuring images of graffiti walls and children creating collages, produced as part of Project Other Ways, directed by Allan Kaprow and Herbert R. Kohl, supported by the Carnegie Corporation and the Berkeley Unified School District, Berkeley, California. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.2 Allan Kaprow, Gas , August 1966, Happening performed in the Hamptons, Long Island and New York, with contributions from Charles Frazier, Mordi Gerstein and Gordon Hyatt, sponsored by Dwan Gallery and WCBS-TV. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.3 Pamphlet produced for Project Other Ways, n.d., directed by Allan Kaprow and Herbert R. Kohl, supported by the Carnegie Corporation and the Berkeley Unified School District, Berkeley, California. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.4 Allan Kaprow, poster with scores for Six Ordinary Happenings , 1969, sponsored by Project Other Ways, Berkeley, California. Photographs by Carol Bowen. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow © J. Paul Getty Trust.

1.5 Allan Kaprow, Giveaway , May 1969, part of Six Ordinary Happenings , sponsored by Project Other Ways, Berkeley, California. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.6 Allan Kaprow, Giveaway , May 1969, part of Six Ordinary Happenings , sponsored by Project Other Ways, Berkeley, California. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.7 Allan Kaprow, Travelog , July 1968, Happening presented for the Eighth International Artists’ Seminar, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.8 Allan Kaprow, Travelog , July 1968, Happening presented for the Eighth International Artists’ Seminar, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.9 Ed Ruscha, Twentysix Gasoline Stations , 1963 (detail), artist’s book, 7 1/16 in × 5 1/2 in × 3/16 in (17.9 cm × 14 cm × 0.5 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian © Ed Ruscha.

1.10 Jurgen Ruesch and Weldon Kees, ‘Gestures as Substitutes for Words’ and ‘Nonverbal Accompaniments of Verbal Communication’, in Nonverbal Communication: Notes on the Visual Perception of Human Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), 77, 78.

1.11 Joy Aschenbach and Robert Mayer, ‘As an Art Form, It Happened to Be a Fire Hazard,’ Newsday (12 May 1967). Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.12 Allan Kaprow, Fine! , April 1969, part of Six Ordinary Happenings , sponsored by Project Other Ways, Berkeley, California. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.13 Allan Kaprow, Shape , April 1969, part of Six Ordinary Happenings , sponsored by Project Other Ways, Berkeley, California. Photograph by Gretchen Garlinghouse. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), Gretchen Garlinghouse and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.14 Allan Kaprow, Shape , April 1969, part of Six Ordinary Happenings , sponsored by Project Other Ways, Berkeley, California. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.15 Allan Kaprow, Days Off: A Calendar of Happenings (1970) on display at the Arte de sistemas exhibition, 1971, Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, organised by the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC), Buenos Aires. Courtesy of the Allan Kaprow Papers, c . 1940–97, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063), and the Estate of Allan Kaprow.

1.16 Experiments in Art and Technology, Children and Communication , 1971. Courtesy of the Harry Shunk and Shunk-Kender Photographs, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20). Photograph Shunk-Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust.

2.1 Marta Minujín, La destrucción ( The Destruction ), 1963, Happening at the Impasse Ronsin, Paris. Courtesy of the Harry Shunk and Shunk-Kender Photographs, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20), and the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires. Photograph by Shunk-Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust.

2.2 Minucode survey, Women’s Wear Daily 116, no. 89 (6 May 1968): 16. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

2.3 Marta Minujín, Minucode , May 1968, environment at the Center for Inter-American Relations, New York City. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires.

2.4 ‘Cocktail Parties – Are Hosts People?’ Newsweek 55, no. 18 (2 May 1960): 25. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

2.5 ‘Stars at Washington Square,’ Continuing Education , newsletter of the School of Continuing Education, New York University (February 1968): 1. Courtesy of the Fonds Pierre Restany, INHA-Collection Archives de la critique d’art, Rennes, and the New York University Archives Collection of University Publications and Promotional Materials (MC 334).

2.6 Marta Minujín, Circuit ( Super Heterodyne ), April 1967, environment supported by the Youth Pavilion/George Williams University, Expo ’67, Montreal. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires.

2.7 Marta Minujín, Circuit (Super Heterodyne) , April 1967, environment supported by the Youth Pavilion/George Williams University, Expo ’67, Montreal. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires.

2.8 Shunk-Kender, the US and USSR pavilions at Expo ’67, Montreal, 1967. Courtesy of the Harry Shunk and Shunk-Kender Photographs, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20). Photograph by Shunk-Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust.

2.9 Carolee Schneemann, Night Crawlers (Rampants de la nuit) , 1967, performance at the Youth Pavilion, Expo ’67, Montreal. Courtesy of the Harry Shunk and Shunk-Kender Photographs, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20) and the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery, and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann. Photograph by Shunk-Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust.

2.10 Marta Minujín, Minucode , 1968, screening session at the Center for Inter-American Relations, New York City. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires.

2.11 Tony Martin, poster for Game Room and ‘Invironment’ , 1968, Howard Wise Gallery, New York City. Courtesy of the Howard Wise Gallery Records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, and Tony Martin.

2.12 Marta Minujín, Minucode , 1968, Tony Martin’s light environment, Center for Inter-American Relations, New York City. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires.

2.13 Marta Minujín, Interpenning , August 1972, Happening in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, as part of the Summergarden programme. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires.

2.14 Peter Moore, performance view of Juan Downey’s Energy Fields , 21 February 1972, 112 Greene Street, New York City. Courtesy of the Estate of Juan Downey © 2019 Barbara Moore/licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, Courtesy Paula Cooper, NY.

2.15 Marta Minujín, 200 Mattresses (The Soft Gallery) , 1973, environment at Harold Rivkin Gallery, Washington, DC, in collaboration with Richard Squires. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires.

2.16 Marta Minujín, Nicappening , 12 June 1973, Happening for the Nicaraguan Earthquake Art Relief Managuan Homeless Settlement Committee benefit, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York City. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires.

2.17 Marta Minujín, Kidnappening , August 1973, Happening in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, as part of the Summergarden programme. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires.

2.18 Marta Minujín, Kidnappening , August 1973, Happening in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, as part of the Summergarden programme. Courtesy of the Marta Minujín Archive, Buenos Aires.

3.1 Carolee Schneemann, Illinois Central group work exercises, c. 1966–68. Photograph by Max Waldman. Courtesy of the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann. Photograph © Max Waldman Archives USA, All Rights Reserved.

3.2 Lawrence and Anna Halprin, Blindfold Walk , 2 July 1968, from the Experiments in Environment Workshop , 1–24 July 1968, Kentfield, California. Courtesy of the Lawrence Halprin Collection, the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.

3.3 Carolee Schneemann, Newspaper Event , 29 January 1963, performance at the Judson Dance Theater, Judson Memorial Church, New York City, gelatin silver print, 8 in × 10 in (20.32 cm × 25.4 cm). Courtesy of the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

3.4 Carolee Schneemann, poster for Round House , July 1967, Happening at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, Roundhouse, London. Courtesy of the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

3.5 Carolee Schneemann, Round House , July 1967, Happening at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, Roundhouse, London. Photograph by Michael Broome. Courtesy of the Carolee Schneemann Papers, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University (M1892), and the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

3.6 Carolee Schneemann, Round House , 1967, Happening at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, Roundhouse, London. Photograph by Leena Komppa. Courtesy of the Carolee Schneemann Papers, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University (M1892), and the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

3.7 Carolee Schneemann, Viet-Flakes , 1965, DVD of toned black-and-white original 16mm film. Courtesy of the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery, and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

3.8 Carolee Schneemann, Round House , 1967, Happening at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, Roundhouse, London. Photograph by Michael Broome. Courtesy of the Carolee Schneemann Papers, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University (M1892), and the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

3.9 Carolee Schneemann, Round House , 1967, Happening at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, Roundhouse, London. Photograph by John Haynes. Courtesy of the Carolee Schneemann Papers, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University (M1892), and the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann. Photograph © John Haynes/Bridgeman Images.

3.10 Carolee Schneemann, Round House , 1967, Happening at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, Roundhouse, London. Photograph by Michael Broome. Courtesy of the Carolee Schneemann Papers, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University (M1892), and the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

3.11 Carolee Schneemann, Sexual Parameters Survey , in Parts of a Body House Book , 1972, artist’s book, 33 cm × 20.3 cm, 66 pages, published by the Beau Geste Press, Cullompton, Devon, and Felipe Ehrenberg. Courtesy of Tate Archives and Special Collections, the Felipe Ehrenberg Estate, and the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann. Photograph © Tate, London 2019.

3.12 Carolee Schneemann, Sexual Parameters Chart II (Original) (Ye Olde Sex Chart) , 1969, titled, dated, signed on reverse, type and pen on paper, 7 3/4 in × 24 in (19.69 cm × 60.96 cm). Courtesy of the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

3.13 Carolee Schneemann, Sexual Parameters Chart III (Original) (Ye Olde Sex Chart) , 1971, titled, dated, signed on reverse, type and pen on paper, 8 in × 27 in (20.32 cm × 68.58 cm). Courtesy of the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

3.14 Carolee Schneemann, Parts of a Body House – Genitals Playroom I (a) , 1966, watercolour and ink on paper, 23 1/4 in × 26 1/2 in (59.1 cm × 67.3 cm). Courtesy of the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

3.15 Carolee Schneemann, Portrait Partials , 1970/2007, thirty-five gelatin silver prints, 37 1/2 in × 38 1/4 in (95.25 cm × 97.16 cm). Courtesy of the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales Gallery and P•P•O•W, New York © Carolee Schneemann.

4.1 Lea Lublin, Mon fils , May 1968, Salon de Mai, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, vintage gelatin silver print, 7 1/16 in × 9 7/16 in (18 cm × 24 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of the Modern Women’s Fund, the Latin American and Caribbean Fund, Estrellita Brodsky, and Mauro Herlitzka. Courtesy of Nicolas Lublin and espaivisor, Valencia © 2020 Lea Lublin.

4.2 Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Inside , 1973, part of Maintenance Art performance series, 1973–74, performance at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York © Mierle Laderman Ukeles.

4.3 Lea Lublin, Mon fils , May 1968, Salon de Mai, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, vintage gelatin silver print, 7 1/16 in × 9 7/16 in (18 cm × 24 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of the Modern Women’s Fund, the Latin American and Caribbean Fund, Estrellita Brodsky, and Mauro Herlitzka. Courtesy of Nicolas Lublin and espaivisor, Valencia © 2020 Lea Lublin.

4.4 Lea Lublin, Mon fils , May 1968, Salon de Mai, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, vintage gelatin silver print, 7 1/16 in × 9 7/16 in (18 cm × 24 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of the Modern Women’s Fund, the Latin American and Caribbean Fund, Estrellita Brodsky, and Mauro Herlitzka. Courtesy of Nicolas Lublin and espaivisor, Valencia © 2020 Lea Lublin.

4.5 Lea Lublin, Terranautas , 1969, environment at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, fourteen gelatin silver prints, five maps, five typewritten texts on paper, six offset prints and twenty-five 35 mm colour slides. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of the Latin American and Caribbean Fund and Carlos Rodríguez Pastor. Courtesy of Nicolas Lublin and espaivisor, Valencia © 2020 Lea Lublin.

4.6 Lea Lublin, Fluvio subtunal , 1969, Santa Fe, environment supported by the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires and ALPI (Asociación de Lucha contra la Parálisis Infantil). Private collection. Courtesy of Nicolas Lublin and Archivos del Instituto Torcuato di Tella, Biblioteca Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires © 2020 Lea Lublin.

4.7 Lea Lublin, Arte de sistemas catalogue entry, 1971, exhibition at the Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, organised by the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC), Buenos Aires. Courtesy of Nicolas Lublin and the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh © 2020 Lea Lublin.

4.8 Lea Lublin, Interrogations sur l’art: Discours sur l’art , 1975, presented at the Foire internationale d’art contemporain (FIAC), Paris, featuring video equipment and a banner in synthetic polymer paint on fabric, wood and string, 110¼ in × 70 7/8 in (280 cm × 180 cm). Banner in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of the Modern Women’s Fund, the Latin American and Caribbean Fund, Estrellita Brodsky, and Mauro Herlitzka. Courtesy of Nicolas Lublin and espaivisor, Valencia © 2020 Lea Lublin.

4.9 Lea Lublin, Interrogations sur l’art: Discours sur l’art , 1975, presented as part of Une expérience socio-écologique: Photo–Film–Vidéo , Neuenkirchen, Germany. Courtesy of Nicolas Lublin and espaivisor, Valencia © 2020 Lea Lublin.

4.10 Lea Lublin, Dissolution dans l’eau: Pont Marie, 17 heures (Dissolution in Water: Pont Marie, 5pm) , 1978, Paris, gelatin silver print, 7 1/16 in × 9 7/16 in (18 cm × 24 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of the Modern Women’s Fund, the Latin American and Caribbean Fund, Estrellita Brodsky, and Mauro Herlitzka. Courtesy of Nicolas Lublin and espaivisor, Valencia © 2020 Lea Lublin.

5.1 Pilvi Takala, Real Snow White , 2009, video. Courtesy of Pilvi Takala, Carlos/Ishikawa and Helsinki Contemporary.

5.2 Pilvi Takala, The Trainee , 2008, installation, three videos with a duration of 13:52 minutes, powerpoint presentation, key card and letter. Courtesy of Pilvi Takala, Carlos/Ishikawa and Helsinki Contemporary.

5.3 Adrian Piper, Catalysis III , 1970. Performance documentation: three silver gelatin print photographs on baryta paper (reprints 1998), 16 in × 16 in (40.6 cm × 40.6 cm). Detail: photograph no. 1 of 3. Photographs by Rosemary Mayer. Generali Foundation, Vienna, on permanent loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation, Berlin and Generali Foundation, Vienna.

5.4 Otobong Nkanga, Baggage , 2007, reinvention of Allan Kaprow’s Happening Baggage , 1972, at various locations in the Netherlands and Lagos, Nigeria, commissioned by Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, in conjunction with the exhibition Allan Kaprow – Art as Life . Courtesy of Otobong Nkanga.

Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyright material, and the publisher will be pleased to be informed of any errors and omissions for correction in future editions.

Acknowledgements

The writing of this book received significant support from a Philip Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, and I am extremely grateful for the sustained focus this enabled. The Arts and Humanities Research Council, Carnegie Trust, J. Paul Getty Trust and Terra Foundation for American Art funded travel for primary research in the USA, Argentina and France. Any book, particularly one about interpersonal relations, amasses significant debts to multiple people, my greatest being to Jo Applin, who has provided support, inspiration and encouragement in equal measure. I would particularly like to thank Natalie Adamson and Julia Prest for their insight. Interactions and conversations from the informal to the more structured settings of conferences and seminars with a number of interlocutors have been invaluable: especial thanks to Natasha Adamou, Fiona Anderson, Sam Bibby, James Boaden, Lucy Bradnock, Ruth Bretherick, Amy Bryzgel, David Peters Corbett, Lara Demori, Jason Edwards, Ruth Erickson, Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, Jessica Freeman-Attwood, Luke Gartlan, Chris Griffin, Sophie Halart, David Hodge, David Hopkins, Victoria Horne, Jeremy Howard, Amelia Jones, Kate Keohane, Kirsten Lloyd, Neil Macdonald, Martyna Majewska, Camila Maroja, Courtney J. Martin, Isabelle Mooney, Stephanie O’Rourke, Elisabetta Rattalino, Alistair Rider, Sam Rose, Camilla Mørk Røstvik, Natalia Sassu Suarez Ferri, Moran Sheleg, Sylvie Simonds, Vid Simoniti, Ana Sol González Rueda, Amy Tobin, Harry Weeks, Michael White and Marta Zboralska. I also owe a longstanding debt to Lisa Tickner.

The Terra Foundation for American Art Summer Residency 2013 formed a deeply productive setting at an earlier stage in the research: thanks especially to Jean-Philippe Antoine, Megan Cotts, Florian Fouché, Ken Gonzales-Day, Mazie Harris, Kellie Jones, Miri Kim, Julia Klein, Sophie Lamm, Alex J. Taylor, Veerle Thielemans and Tatsiana Zhurauliova. The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress provided another nurturing environment: thanks particularly to Ned Allen, Wendy Asquith, Sophie Jones, Mary Lou Reker and Isabella Streffen. Marta Minujín and her studio, as well as the staff of the Fundación Espigas, made me feel welcome in Buenos Aires. Marc Giai-Miniet very kindly provided access to the Salon de Mai archives. The staff of the Archives de la critique d’art; Archives of American Art; Bibliothèque Kandinsky; Bibliothèque nationale de France; Getty Research Institute; Instituto de Teoría e Historia del Arte ‘Julio E. Payró’, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Buenos Aires; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Library; Museum of Modern Art, New York, Library and Archives; Stanford Special Collections and University Archives; Tate Archive; and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Library and Archive all provided much appreciated assistance. I am hugely grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers who gave such helpful feedback, as well as to Emma Brennan and the Manchester University Press team for their expert guidance. Part of Chapter 4 was published in an earlier form in Oxford Art Journal, and I thank Oxford University Press for permission to reprint. It has been a great and sustaining pleasure to teach and learn from my students at St Andrews, particularly those who have engaged with performance art so enthusiastically. Lastly, thanks to my family, Eryl, Richard and Gareth, for their longstanding support, and, most of all, to James.

Abbreviations

Introduction: Communication studies

During 1966, the artist Wolf Vostell designed a poster that could be folded into a mail-out, advertising a forthcoming Three Country Happening (Figure 0.1). The initiative, planned for autumn 1966, was the brainchild of a triumvirate of artists working in different continents: Marta Minujín in South America, Allan Kaprow in North America, and Wolf Vostell in Europe.¹ Vostell’s creation proclaims the proposed Happening’s transnational ambitions, overlaying the sketchy outlines of each landmass, as well as that of Africa in the lower right-hand corner, with the stencilled surnames of each artist next to their respective cities of Buenos Aires, New York and Berlin/Cologne. These metropolitan centres are linked by a triangle of dotted lines, rendered in thicker marks with a darker shade of graphite than the contours of the continents. This contrast conveys the impression that the challenges of brute geography are receding in the face of the dematerialised connections facilitated by media technologies, an inference further underscored by the poster’s trilingual Spanish, English and German text.

0.1 Wolf Vostell, poster for Three Country Happening , 1966, reproduced from an original pencil-on-paper design.

Vostell’s annotations identify the triangular dotted line as a telephone link. Another three vectors, each labelled ‘TV’, surge outward from the cities to converge in the poster’s centre at a point representing the Early Bird satellite, suspended above the Atlantic Ocean.² As these arrows indicate, the Three Country Happening was envisioned as a simultaneous performance in Buenos Aires, New York and Berlin, with the action relayed live on television via satellite. Circles of transmission waves pool around each city like ripples from stones thrown into a pond, spreading over borders and reconfiguring cartographic divisions into a diagram of transnational connectivity. Even though the project did not involve artists working in Africa, the continent’s inclusion signals Minujín, Kaprow and Vostell’s aspirations (as well as limitations), which, the poster anticipated, would culminate in 1967 with a ‘Global Happening Festival’. Their publicity presents the Happening as an art form capable of facilitating international communication, bound up with globalising impulses and, by extension, their examination and analysis.³

Unfortunately, the Global Happening Festival failed to materialise, while Three Country Happening was only partially performed. Minujín proved to be the sole artist possessed of the necessary zeal to carry through her part of the plan, indicating the disjunctions and imbalances that fissured the ideal of seamless connection projected by the poster. The resulting performance, Simultaneidad en simultaneidad (Simulaneity in Simultaneity), is highly instructive regarding the politics of communication as they played out in performance art from the mid-1960s onward. Minujín presented her two-part Happening at the audio-visual theatre belonging to the art centres established by the Torcuato Di Tella Institute (Instituto Torcuato Di Tella) in the ‘microcentre’ of Buenos Aires. On 13 October 1966, Minujín welcomed approximately sixty people – mainly journalists and celebrities, but also academics, a novelist and the psychoanalyst Enrique Pichon-Rivière – into a futuristic environment.⁴ Television sets crowded the space, each positioned in front of a seat awaiting a viewer (Figure 0.2). The bristling antennae, combined with those belonging to an equal number of radios placed beside the monitors, looked to one attendee like a space-age forest of metallic bamboo.⁵ Minujín orchestrated proceedings wearing an eye-catching gold boiler suit, which transformed her into an astronaut-like figure.⁶ After entering, guests were ‘photographed and filmed prolifically, from the front and from the side’, and subjected to audio interviews regarding their thoughts on proceedings.⁷ Nearly two weeks later, on 24 October, the subjects of this intensive documentation were invited back to the same room, whereupon they were bombarded with the images and recordings. Participants could review themselves ‘moving, standing up, sitting’ on the television monitors and slides projected around the room, and listen to recordings of their voices.⁸ In contrast to the improvisation that characterised Happenings presented by artists such as Kaprow in New York during the early 1960s, Minujín created a laboratory-like setting in which people could scrutinise their comportment through mass media technologies.

0.2 Marta Minujín, Simultaneidad en simultaneidad (Simultaneity in Simultaneity) , 13 and 24 October 1966, Happening at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires.

During the second evening of Simultaneidad en simultaneidad, the Invasión instantánea (Instantaneous Invasion) occurred. After the audience had viewed their mediatised simulacra, they were instructed to tune into the Canal 13 television programme Universidad del aire (University of the Air). Ensconced in their compartmentalised television booths, participants watched a ten-minute broadcast, the soundtrack for which consisted of a text read by Minujín that also played over Radio Libertad and Radio Municipal, which attendees were instructed to tune into.⁹ It contained images of Happenings by Vostell and Kaprow, supposedly occurring live and transmitted by satellite link. Footage followed of people undergoing the Invasión instantánea, which showed them at home watching television, before receiving a telephone call and a telegram delivered to their door. While these vignettes were prerecorded, they provided an analogue for a process occurring in real time. In his account of the piece, Michael Kirby reported that Minujín worked with researchers at the University of Buenos Aires to identify 500 people who owned a television and a telephone.¹⁰ As they watched the broadcast, these viewers received a call instructing them to look at their environment, and 100 of them were also sent a telegram telling them that they were a creator.¹¹ Through this elaborate procedure, Minujín attempted to extend the sensitisation to media communications trialled at the Di Tella Institute over a much wider area.

Simultaneidad en simultaneidad reads most immediately as a direct manifestation of Marshall McLuhan’s paean to the global interconnectivity facilitated by communication technologies in Understanding Media (1964). The notes for Minujín’s broadcast declared: ‘all these images and messages bring the world close to you, these mass media widen your environment’s frontiers … You are those [sic] news; without you they could not exist. Therefore your body’s physiology has extended – somehow – throughout the world.’¹² Minujín reflected that the observation of the media was