1973 : chronologie performance

Publié le 25 février 2015 par Olivier Lussac IDEAT

1973

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Es liegen einige Objekte auf dem Tisch, die sie an mir gebrauchen können: Ich bin das Objekt, 1973 ou 74.

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Rythme 10, 1973.

« Rythme 10 de Marina Abramovic. Préparation de la performance : «Je pose une feuille de papier par terre. Je pose vingt couteaux différents de toutes formes et de toutes dimensions sur le papier blanc. Je pose deux micros sur le papier blanc.

Performance

Je branche le magnéto.

Je ramasse le couteau. Je l’enfonce entre les doigts de ma main gauche aussi rapidement que possible.

Chaque fois que je me coupe, je change de couteau.

Quand j’ai changé tous les couteaux (tous les rythmes) je rembobine la bande sonore.

Je branche le deuxième magnéto.

J’écoute le son enregistré de la première partie de la performance.

Je me concentre.

Je reproduis la performance en suivant le son enregistré.

Je prends le même couteau dans le même ordre, en suivant le même rythme, en me coupant au même endroit.

Par cette performance, je confonds le temps passé avec le temps présent, avec des erreurs.

Je rembobine la seconde bande et l’écoute.
Le son des rythmes des couteaux redouble.
Je pars.»
(Festival d’Edimbourg, 1973) »

- ACCONCI Vito, Air Time, 1973.

« Two intersecting areas: the ‘field’ of the gallery and the ‘point’ of an enclosure, off to the side. The gallery space is a floating space: it’s nearly empty, no images to focus on: the corners are resting places, listening places: ‘radios,’ white boxes containing tape loops in my voice: the sound comes from one box at a time, skips and winds across the space.

These are programs: prerecorded messages addressed by me to you, the passer-by—or storages, places to keep my voice for myself, places where I can steady myself, build myself up.

Scenarios: ways to define your positions, keep you here – ways to widen the space, break through it, send you out of it. This is my voice from the past: this is in the back of my mind while I’m elsewhere, now, in the ‘recording studio,’ on the spot.

Tape excerpts: …on the air, in the air… a field, the air is clear, you’re walking in a field, you can see for miles along the hill, down the valley… you can slide down the hill, the long soft grass moves under you in your direction, aiding your slide, your slide out of his space… the plot shifts, snag in the plot, as one of them moves his leg forward, I can think of him ready to trip me, I have to sneak around in order to get to her… you can be sitting there, as she might have been, as if creating difficulties for me, making contradictory demands on me, as she might have done…

I’m off to the side, enclosed in a small closer space: a red light blinks on the door: recording studio: I’m ‘on the air’: you, the passer-by, can survey me, keep an eye on me, by means of a television set outside, in the gallery space. This is a place where I can isolate myself, in order to deal with an obsession, in order to cut myself off the fantasies and interactional possibilities on tape — or a place where I can pin down an obsession that can generate the fantasies outside. I’m sitting here, looking into a mirror, not to see myself but to see myself in relation to a specific person I’ve been involved with for an extended time: I look at the mirror as if she’s in here with me, as if I’m looking at her, as if I’m talking to her through the crowd: recreate incidents we’ve been through together: see myself the way she’s seen me, hear myself the way she’s heard me. You, the passer-by, have to be there, outside, so you can certify my positions: once you’ve seen how I’ve been with her, I wont’t be able to deny it, I’ll have to come to terms with it, I’ll have to leave her — I might be able, then, to get myself off the spot, join into the fantasies, the open field, where I’ve already sent you. »- ACCONCI Vito, Air Time, 1973.

These are programs: prerecorded messages addressed by me to you, the passer-by—or storages, places to keep my voice for myself, places where I can steady myself, build myself up.

- ACCONCI Vito, Command Performance, 1973 (action-film)
57:23 1973

Turn over the pressure to perform for his audience, Acconci fantasizes about « a dancing bear » who takes his place, performing in the spotlight, doing what others want, « what I always had to do. » The viewer is placed in the position of an authority or analyst, above Acconci’s head, listening to his hallucination. This fantasy becomes increasingly erotic as Acconci unburdens himself psychologically and reveals his contradictory need to control and to be controlled.

1974, 56:40 min, b&w, sound

In Command Performance, Acconci attempts to replace himself with the viewer. He lies on his back with the camera gazing down on him and begins a hypnotic incantation: « Dream into the space... dream myself out of here, into you. » Cajoling, pleading, insulting, fantasizing, he tries to seduce the viewer to take his place in the spotlight: « You’re there where I used to be. I don’t have to be there anymore. You can do it for me now...Oh, you didn’t expect this, did you baby? You’re used to the way it was. » As the tape progresses, Acconci, humming and singing to himself, is driven further and further into his fantasy. « Now you’re in the spotlight. You’ll do everything I want, my little puppet, my little dancing bear. » Becoming increasingly agitated, he is alternately comedic and cruel, sadistic and seductive, as he confronts the relation of artist and viewer, self and other. In the installation of Command Performance, the audience was confronted with an empty stool in a spotlight; Acconci, exhorting the viewer to take his place, was present only on a video monitor.

- ACCONCI Vito, Face-Off, 1973. 32:57 min. b&w. sound.

Face-Off is an ironic collusion of private and public, of exposure and masking, a tense rutal wherein Acconci divulgues and then censors his self-revelations. Acconci turns on a reel-to-reel audiotape recorder and bends down to the speaker to listen to it, his face barely visible in the frame. The audio is a recording of his own voice addressing himself and the viewer, recounting intimate details about his life. However, wherever the material becomes too personal, he tries to drown out his voice and prevent the viewer from hearing, yelling : « No, no, no, don’t tell this, don’t reveal this… ». Reacting to his recording voice, he becomes increasingly agitated as the tape proceeds. Acconci has started that this work was intended to « dig into the past » as the tries to « face the facts », claiming, « I really want other people to find out these secrets because they can esthablish a kind of image for me. » By preventing the viewer from hearing, of course, his « secrets » remains only implicit. As the double entendre of the title implies, he both invites and avoids a direct confrontation with the viewer.

- ACCONCI Vito, Full Circle, 1973 (action-film)

1973 30 min, b&w, sound

This historical Acconci videotape, produced by Art/Tapes/22 in Florence, Italy in 1973, is being made available for the first time in decades through EAI’s Video Preservation Program. Writes Acconci: « I walk in a circle around the camera: sometimes I’m on screen, sometimes I’m off, sometimes I change direction, leaving the screen on one side and coming back on the same side. Every five minutes or so, the location changes: my circle is continuous while the background shifts: bare walls -- a corner with a window on one wall -- outside, on a roof, with sky as the ground -- outside, on a terrace, with other buildings and windows as the ground -- inside, in a living room, bookcase and couch in the background. I’m silent; there’s a voice-over, it’s my voice: on screen, I’m talking about circling you, wrapping myself around you, as I did around ‘her,’ a person from my past: a kind of trap. When I go off screen, the talk shifts, becomes dreamier -- fantasy talk, quasi-hypnotic -- it’s as if we’re on a beach, we’re covered by sand -- it’s as if we’re in a field, we’re rolling down a hill. »

Produced by Art/Tapes/22

- ACCONCI Vito, Home Movies, 1973 (action-film)

HOME MOVIES, 1973

La notion de « home movie » correspond en français à celle de vidéo familiale, dont les significations diffèrent d’une génération d’artistes à l’autre. Vito Acconci présente sous ce titre la structure des rapports entre sa vie intime, son oeuvre et le public. Dans le cadrage obtenu par la caméra fixe, l’artiste définit quatre espaces par les positions de son corps et ses déplacements, et par un monologue qui permet d’identifier les rapports particuliers à sa compagne, d’une part, et au spectateur, d’autre part. Il se déplace d’une position à l’autre dans un cheminement en boucle, repris dix fois au cours de la bande vidéo. La position de départ situe Vito Acconci assis face à son travail, tournant le dos à la caméra et au spectateur. Il indique son statut d’artiste et son oeuvre par un commentaire succinct de diapositives d’oeuvres de 1969 à 1971. Sans se lever, il se tourne vers la gauche et s’adresse à une personne absente et hors champ : sa compagne. Il évoque sa vie de couple, son entourage (notamment la présence d’une troisième personne dans leur vie intime), les compromis de cette vie, le contrôle qu’il doit exercer sur chaque personne et sur lui-même, et ses difficultés existentielles des années 1970 et 71. Puis l’artiste se lève et se place debout devant l’écran de diapositives. Les flashs lumineux nous le font percevoir de façon discontinue. Il manifeste, par des propos peu explicites, son regard critique sur son travail. Enonçant le souhait d’ajouter un exemple, il se tourne vers la gauche et se penche en avant. Mais il évoque des rapports de « structure » et de « substructure » entre le passé et le présent, temporellement et spatialement, sans les illustrer. Il s’adresse ici au public et à sa compagne de façon indifférenciée. Vito Acconci ne livre aucun élément qui nous permette de comprendre le contenu de son oeuvre par sa biographie, il s’agit de rapports de positions. Vito Acconci propose sous le titre Home Movies une approche conceptuelle de son rapport à l’intime et au public, alors que cette notion réfère aussi à un tout autre genre dans les décennies suivantes : à des vidéos témoins, où le vécu quotidien d’une famille est donné en spectacle (Joël Bartoloméo, Pierrick Sorin). (Thérèse Beyler)

1973, 32:19 min, b&w, sound

In this powerful « meta-document, » Acconci sits in the dark with his back to a screen, on which are projected slides of past works, in chronological order from 1969. He describes each piece briefly. At times he turns to one side and speaks to an absent person in a conspiratorial whisper: «They couldn’t possibly know these pieces the way you do ... you know how I took what was happening with us and transferred it into the work.» At other times he stands in front of the slide projections to face the viewer and addresses his art-making strategies, including the process of making this tape: « There’s too much action here, my interest is language. Language can over-analyze things, break things down, over-complicate things. » The viewer assumes a voyeuristic role, as if eavesdropping on a private conversation that elucidates the personal psychology behind his work. In his direct addresses, however, Acconci calls this intimacy into question: « There’s too much past here, past history. It’s about having a past base on which to structure a present relationship. » within the context of his art-making, Home Movies reveals the psychological circuit that propels much of Acconci’s work, as he explores the self through a dialogue between the artist and an absent other.

Produced by Art/Tapes/22.

- ACCONCI Vito, Line up, Performance with slide & videotape. 1973.

Festival d’Automne. Musée Galliera. Paris. (Barbara Gladstone Gallery. NYC)

- ACCONCI Vito, My Word, 1973-74 (action-film)

My Word est le dernier et le plus important de la trentaine de films Super 8 réalisés par Vito Acconci. Alors que la plupart sont très courts et réalisés avec une caméra fixe et un plan unique, celui-ci a la durée d’un long métrage et une forme complexe. Il n’est plus dans l’usage élémentaire du cinéma exploité jusque-là par l’artiste. Dans une trame de fiction flottante, imbriquant des textes écrits (adresse au spectateur, puis à des femmes invisibles) aux images du film qui construisent une sorte de biographie artistique de Vito Acconci, plusieurs moyens sont exploités et plusieurs registres d’énonciation cinématographique et de langages plastiques :

- l’espace minimaliste, quand la caméra cerne d’abord chaque angle, les murs, le plancher de l’atelier vide.

- l’artiste comme sujet, quand la caméra fixe ensuite le corps de Vito Acconci et ses mouvements.

- des plans proches du Pop Art, avec des natures mortes d’objets féminins, supports classiques du fétichisme.

- des séquences psychologisantes, quand la caméra suit Vito Acconci dans ses déambulations dans l’atelier et sur le toit.

- de longs passages de caméra subjective, quand le film s’échappe en zoom avant par une fenêtre de l’atelier ou explore le paysage urbain et le ciel.

- des passages en noir et blanc, où les actions intégrées à la trame du film renvoient à des actions antérieures (scène d’onanisme, citant Open-Close par exemple).

- le noir et blanc dans la partie finale du film, avec la sortie théâtrale de Vito Acconci de l’atelier, par laquelle il signe l’abandon du film Super 8 et la fin de l’introspection.

Le titre lui-même, My Word, donne une double signification au film, qui peut être vu à la fois comme un testament et comme une aspiration à la parole, cette parole directement adressée au spectateur que va lui permettre la vidéo.K.B.

1973-74, 91:30 min, color, silent, Super 8 film

In this feature-length silent film, Acconci uses hand-written title cards to present an «interior monologue» about speaking, language, and silence. The written text alternates with images of Acconci, alone in the interior of an urban loft or on a rooftop, with the skyline of downtown New York as a backdrop. This metaphorical landscape of isolation resonates in the text, in which Acconci directly addresses several different women by name, alluding to their relationships with him. The women’s identities seem mutable; they are consigned to silence, others without a voice. Given the unstable nature of subjectivity in his work, Acconci ultimately appears to be « speaking » to himself.

- ACCONCI Vito, Reception Room, 1973-2004, 8:26 min., color, sound.

This newly edited historical video work documents Acconci’s 1973 performance Reception Room, which was presented at the Modern Art Agency in Naples, Italy. Acconci lies naked on a gurney – like table, rocking back and forth as a tape-loop of his voice describes his anxieties about exposing his body and his artwork. Writes the artist : « My voice functions as a scenario that he keeps me confined to the bed : once I’ve exposed my fears and shames publicly, then I might be able to face them in private. »

- ACCONCI Vito, Recorded Studio from Air Time, 1973 (action-film)
1973, 36:49 min, b&w, sound

Recorded Studio From Air Time is a personal confessional in which video is both a mirror and a mediating device. A documentation of a 1973 performance at Sonnabend Gallery, this is one of Acconci’s most psychologically intense exercises in the inversion of the public and the private. Alone in an «isolation chamber» in the gallery every day for two weeks, Acconci sat with the camera focused at his reflection in a mirror. To the gallery public, his image was seen on a video monitor, while his voice was heard through audio speakers. Isolated in his confessional, Acconci begins a stream-of-consciousness monologue about his five-year relationship with a woman, recounting explicit details of their life together and his most intimate feelings towards her. «I’m talking to you so that I can see myself the way you see me,» he states. «I’m acting something out for them.» Becoming increasingly disdainful and cruel, he ultimately decides to end the relationship. In Air Time, video is a vehicle for both an extremely intimate introspection, and for the transmission of this self-examination into the public sphere.

- ACCONCI Vito, Stages, 1973.
1973, 32:30 min, b&w, sound

This historical videotape, produced in 1973 by Art/Tapes/22 in Florence, Italy, is being made available for the first time in decades through EAI’s Video Preservation Program. Acconci writes: « Black screen -- a spotlight, circle of light on the floor, just part of it off-screen, in front of the screen, in the viewer’s space. I’m off-screen, singing: the tone is vague still, indefinable. Then I come into the spotlight, partly, so that my face is barely visible: ‘I’d be dancing for you -- I’d know you were watching -- I’d be at my peak.’ Off-screen, grand song; then I’m back: ‘I’d know you were watching -- but I’d be nervous, I wouldn’t know whose side you were on.’ Off-screen; song becomes shakier. I’m back then: ‘I’d be dancing for someone else now -- but I wouldn’t want to betray this.’ Off-screen; insinuating song; I’m back: ‘I’d be awkward, you’d be making a fool of me.’... Off-screen; circus-like song; then I return: ‘I’d escape in my mind -- I’d be drifting away, dreaming.’ ... Desperate song off-screen, then: ‘By this time things would have changed -- I’d have the upper hand -- I could kill you -- I’d do it slowly -- taunt you.’ Off-screen, sneering song, then: ‘But now I’d have changed my mind -- I’d want us to be reconciled -- I’d know you’d come back to me.’ Off-screen, full-spectacle song. »

Produced by Art/Tapes/22

- ACCONCI Vito, Theme Song, 1973.

On retrouve dans Theme Song les problématiques communes à plusieurs autres bandes vidéo (Undertone, Remote Control, Turn On), une volonté d’établir un champ de pouvoir, une tension entre un (une) autre et lui, entre le spectateur et lui. Vito Acconci est allongé sur la moquette, la tête sur le bras, les pieds dirigés vers un canapé qui ferme l’espace à l’arrière-plan. Son visage, tourné vers le spectateur, remplit la moitié de l’écran et semble vouloir sortir du cadre afin de se faire plus proche. Par cette mise en scène, l’artiste suggère qu’il est réellement là, derrière la vitre, dans la

profondeur du moniteur, dans un lieu privé mais presque neutre (allusion directe à la télévision comme objet domestique et populaire).

Vito Acconci allume une cigarette et actionne un magnétophone, situé hors-champ, qu’il partage avec le spectateur pour lui faire écouter les thèmes des chansons populaires de rock américain qui vont structurer et rythmer ce face-à-face. Partant littéralement des paroles chantées par Jim Morisson, Bob Dylan, Van Morisson, Kris Kristofferson, il développe un long monologue de séduction. Avec l’insistance du dragueur, il s’installe dans l’espace du spectateur et lui intime de se rapprocher, de venir près de lui. Entre candeur et manipulation, il proteste de son honnêteté et force la relation. Le registre envoûtant de sa voix qui chantonne, les mouvements lents de son corps, tout suggère l’enveloppement possible. Par cet essai de manipulation d’un spectateur invisible, par cette volonté de faire disparaître l’écran, de faire oublier la technique et la distance, Theme Song peut être rapprochée de Remote Control et, par le rôle et la place assignés au spectateur, de Turn On et Undertone. L’effet de réel de la mise en scène, les chansons quasi génériques et le ton intime du discours de l’artiste, tout concourt à faire de cette bande vidéo un travail sur un mode particulièrement affectif et ironique de la problématique du contrôle à distance. (K.B.)

1973, 33:15 min, b&w, sound

In Theme Song, Acconci uses video as close-up to establish a perversely intimate relation with the viewer, creating a personal space in which to talk directly to (and manipulate) the spectator. He is face to face with the viewer, his head close against the video screen, lying cozily on the floor. Acconci writes, « The scene is a living room -- quiet, private night -- the scene for a come-on -- I can bring my legs around, wrapping myself around the viewer -- I’m playing songs on a tape recorder -- I follow the songs up, I’m building a relationship, I’m carrying it through. » Smoking cigarettes, he begins a seductive monologue as he plays «theme songs» by the Doors, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Kris Kristofferson and others on a tape recorder. The songs are a starting point for his come-ons; the tenor of his monologues shifts with the lyrics. « Of course I can’t see your face. I have no idea what your face looks like. You could be anybody out there, but there’s gotta be somebody watching me. Somebody who wants to come in close to me ... Come on, I’m all alone ... I’ll be honest with you, O.K. I mean you’ll have to believe me if I’m really honest.... » Theme Song, with its ironic mixture of openness and manipulation, is one of Acconci’s most effective works.

Produced by Art/Tapes/22.

Theme Song 33:17 1973

In a vile and ingenious way, Acconci pleads with the camera/spectator to join with him, to come to him, promising to be honest and begging, « I need it, you need it, c’mon... look how easy it is.» Acconci addresses the viewer as a sexual partner, acting as if no distance existed between them. The monitor becomes an agent of intimate address, presenting adisingenuous intimacy that is one-sided and pure fantasy, much like the popular love songs in the background that Acconci croons along with. «I’ll be your baby, I’ll be your baby tonight, yeah, yeah. »

- ACCONCI Vito, Visions of a Disappearence, 1973 (vidéo) 25 min, b&w, sound.

1973, 25 min, b&w, sound. Visions of a Disappearance is a newly restored performance tape that was recorded in Naples, Italy, in 1973. Crouched in a corner, hemmed in by the video camera and a closed-circuit monitor showing him the scene as it is recorded, Acconci attempts to disappear. He tries to erase his image in the eyes of those watching, alternating between urgent appeals to imagined viewers (represented by the video camera) and pleas to his own image in the monitor.

- ACCONCI Vito, Walk-Over, 1973 (vidéo) 30 min, b&w, sound.

This historical videotape, produced in 1973 at Art/Tapes/22 in Florence, Italy, is being made available for the first time in decades through EAI’s Video Preservation Program. Writes Acconci : « A long narrow corridor, leading to the camera — at one side, a window— sun streams in, splotches of light and dark, the corridor shimmers. I’m at the far end — walking back and forth, humming, biding my time. Then I talk to the viewer — rather, to a specific viewer : ‘So you’re finally there — I’ve waited for you — you had to be there first.’ I walk around the camera, still humming, talking now and then, but waiting till I’m close, blurred : ‘You want to hear about her — her hair is blonde, uour hair could never be like hers — she has her own life this.’ I back off, leave ‘you’ hanging, go back to the other end — but I come back, I don’t leave ‘you’ alone . »

- ADA/ADA2, Aktionen der Avant-garde, 1973-74.

Actions, happenings and processes commissioned by Jörn Merkert and Ursula Prinz, the curators of the « ADA » festival, were carried out between 9 September and 3 October by Robert Filliou, Taka Iimura, Allan Kaprow, Mario Merz and the Berlin-based artists Wolf Kahlen and Wolf Vostell. Many of the participants consciously deployed video as an independant artistic medium. Concurrently with the festival, the artists created in the Akademie des Künste, Berlin, environments that were closely related with the actions and aimed to solicit spectator participation through visual or verbal communication and provocation. The series of events was brought to a closed by a debate between the artists and public in which the ‘ADA’ model and new communications structures were analyzed. The first « ADA » festival was followed up by « ADA2 » from 27 to 29 September 1974, with project by Amelith, Daniel Buren, Rafael Conogar, Jochen Gerz, Ekkat Kaemmerling, Edward Kienholz, Jannis Kounellis and Wolf Vostell. An « ADA2 » school was organized by Wolf Kahlen.

- ANT FARM, Inflatocookbook, San Francisco: Ant Farm, 1973 (2nd printing; first publishing January 71).

The idea of an inflatcookbook stems from Ant Farm’s involvement over an eighteen month period beginning 1969 in which the group « designed, built, and erected inflatables for a variety of clients and situations. Charley Tilford showed Ant Farm how to make fast, cheap inflatables out of polyethylene and tape and support them with used fans from Goodwill. »

- ANT FARM, 2020 Vision, San Francisco, Ant Farm, 1973.

A calendarLOG for 1974, produced as the catalogue to Ant Farm’s exhibition 20/20 Vision, sponsored by the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas. Excerpt:

« In 1970 ANT FARM was commissioned to do a study of nomadic architecture. The result, TRUCKSTOP, was a city for 10,000 people that was configured as a network of villages physically dispersed around the country but interconnected by a computer controlled communication system that allowed a resident to travel between the truckstops as he might between neighborhoods. To research TRUCKSTOPS we went on the road for 5 months in the Ant Farm media van and self contained life support unit. »

- ANTIN Eleanor, Carving: A Traditionnal Sculpture, 1973 (action-photo).

- ANTIN Eleanor, Caught in the Act, 1973, 36 min, b&w, sound

A photographic session in which the artist as « ballerina » is photographed by the « photographer » in a set of stills intended to represent her in the appropriately glamorous and correct positions, after only three months of ballet training. The tape juxtaposes the truth of the « still » image, adequate for 1/125 of a second, against the video camera’s more extensive duration. The cropped reality photographed is compared to the «truth» of the video camera.

Producer/Director: Eleanor Antin. Technical Director: Charles Cox. Ballerina: Eleanor Antin. Photographer: Philip Steinmetz. Camera: Fred Lonidier, Lennart Bowein, Allan Sekula.

- ANTIN Eleanor, I Dream I Was a Ballerina, Orlando Gallery. Encino, CA. October 5-27, 1973.

- ARNATT Keith, Banaustic Effort, 1973 (action-film).

It is a record of (physical) work done in order to arrive at the artwork which is the nine photographs – it is not a record of the artwork but a record of the effort employed in making the artwork.

- Art-Rite, New York, no.1, 1973, Editors, Edit deAk and Walter Robinson.

- Artists Books. Philadelphia: Moore College of Art, 1973.

Catalogue of an artists’ book exhibition at Moor College of Art, March-April 1973, and the University Art Museum of the University of California, Berkeley, January-February 1974.

- BALDESSARI John, Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts), Milano : Edizioni Giampolo Prearo/Galleria Tosselli, 1973. Artist book.

— J. Collins, « Pointing, Hybrids, and Romanticism : John Baldessari », Artforum v. 12, October 1973, pp. 53-58.

- BANANA Anna, Mona Banana Smile Test, Vancouver Art Gallery, April Fool’s Day event.

- BAR-ON Adina, Birds, The Bezabel auditorium, Jerusalem, 1973. b/w photo.

- BAR-ON Adina, First Performance, 1973, The Bezabel courtyard, Jerusalem, b/w photo.

- BENGLIS Linda & LENKOWSY Marilyn, Female Sensibility, 1973. (vidéo).

- BEN (VAUTIER), Declaration, 1973,

« I, Ben, consider that Body Art is interesting only insofar as it brings about a fundamental innovation and does not represent a series of tricks reflecting Marcel Duchamp’s idea that ‘evething is art.’ This fundamental innovation appears when Body Art is involved in the transformation of the artist and his subjectivity. IN ORDER TO CHANGE ART ONE MUST CHANGE MAN. »

- BENITO Jordi, Nuevo Lente n° 13, 1973.

- BERARDINONE Valentina, Urbana: The Hand as Phenomeon-Image, 1973. (film).

« In the general context of my work th use of film, and in this, the use of the body (i.e. the hands), have a particular place. The basic theme of my artistic research is the happening – or what he happened. By this I mean the recording of a modification to the given order, the attempt to make evident the dynamic ambiguity of the passage from a state of order to a state of disorder, which in its turn presents itself as an apparent order: the process can go on ad infinitum.

The use of film is inevitably involved in this theme of the ‘happening.’ I have chosen the hand as a recurrent basic element in my films, that is, a phenomenon-image which, in its historicity, could be a link between myself and the external world. That is why the hand is seen mainly as gestures; it is not, as far as I am concerned, a morphologic element rediscovered as a place of shelter or as an intimistic situation, but as a projection of creativity outside myself.

The hand neurotically cleans the windowpane, it springs from under a step and reaches toward the light, it writes on a sheet of paper, it erases some writing, it is clenched, it throws a stone. These actions involve motions which are happenings and knowledge at the same time; the hand – the terminal part of the body, the one intended for contact with the things that surround us – make gestures which synthesize the event (the hand itself being an event), turning itself into the protagonist and the catalyzer, becoming therefore a permanent reference point for every act of verification. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 44-45)

- BEUYS Joseph, Iphigenia, 1973.

- BREDER Hans, Body Sculpture, La Ventosa. 1973.

- BRISLEY Stuart, 10 Days. An English Lie. Hunger Makes Free, 1973.

- BRISLEY Stuart, Arbeitmachtfrei, 1973.

- BROWN Trisha. Group Primary Accumulation, 1973.

« …In the past five years I have been associated with the construction of mammoth props and technical systems that enable human beings to walk on walls, walk down a seven-story building or appear to be free falling or suspended in neutral space – works in which the main preoccupations are anti-gravity and ordinary movement appearing in extraordinary circumstances.

My current work – accumulation – is a solo performance concerned solely with movements – no props, no music. The structure of the piece is rigid, the movement predetermined. Repetition has the effect of blurring the image, much as a word repeated over and over again loses its original meaning – ocean becoming notion, etc. The performance is a live process of keeping vigil over the integrity of each gesture. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 57)

- BROWN Trisha, Roof Piece, 1973.

- BROWN Trisha, Sticks, 1973.

- BURDEN Chris (Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp), « Chris Burden: The Church of Human Energy, » Avalanche, no.8, Summer/Fall 1973, pp.54-61.

An extensive interview with Chris Burden. Excerpts:

(Avalanche): What do you see as your central concerns?

CB: Well, in some of the pieces I’m setting up situations to test my own illusions or fantasies about what happens. The Locker piece, for instance… I didn’t know what it was going to feel like to be in that locker, that’s why I did it. I thought it was going to be about isolation; it turned out to be just the opposite. I was seeing people every single minute for thirteen, fourteen hours a day, talking to them all the time. In Secret Hippie, I thought I was gonna get hurt when I got that stud hammered in my chest, but it didn’t hurt at all, there was absolutely no feeling. In Shoot I was supposed to have a grazed wound. We didn’t even have any band-aids – the power of positive thinking. It’s not that I consciously decided not to think about what might happen… I had no plans of going to the hospital…

WS: So it doesn’t matter much to you whether it’s a nick or it goes though your arm.

CB: No. It’s the idea of being shot at to be hit.

WS: Mmmmm. Why is that interesting?

CB: Well, it’s something to experience. How can you know what it feels like to be shot if you don’t get shot? It seems interesting enough to be worth doing it…

WS: What about TV Hi-Jack?

CB: I wasn’t really putting her life at stake. In my head it was just an example of what I could have done in the TV studio. I had already decided that I wasn’t going to slit her throat; I wasn’t going to make her do obscene things on live TV but we were on live, and I was holding a knife at her throat, so they had a flash that I was really doing it…

WS: Why is your work art?

CB: What else is it ?

WS: Theatre?

CB: No, it’s no theatre. Theatre is more mushy, you know what I mean? Uhhh… it seems that bad art is theatre. Getting shot is for real… lying in bed for 22 days… there’s no element of pretense or make-believe in it. If I had just stayed there for a few hours or went home every day to a giant dinner it would be theatre. Another reason it that the pieces are visual too. »

- BURDEN Chris (Melinda Terbell Wortz), « An Evening with Chris Burden, » Artweek, v.4, Dec. 22, 1973, p.5.

Descriptive article about Burden’ work; includes a review of his December 5, 1973 work at Newspace Gallery, Newport Beach, in which the gallery was transformed into a livingroom atmosphere and two lithographs were unveiled, If You Fly and If You Drive.

- BURDEN Chris, (Daniel Douke), « Burden at Newspace, » Artweek, v.4, July 7, 1973, p.5.

Review of a Chris Burden performance work sponsored by Newspace Gallery, Newport Beach. A note tacked to the wall of the gallery stated that Burden would walk from San Felipe, Baja California, southward for the two week duration of the « exhibit ».

- BURDEN Chris, Chris Burden, 1973. Videotape, 30 mins., b/w. Videoviewed by Willoughby Sharp.

- BURDEN Chris, Doorway to Heaven, November 15, 1973.

« At 6 p.m. I stood in the doorway of my studio facing the Venice boardwalk. A few spectators watched as I pushed two live electric wires into my chest. The wires crossed and explosed, burning me but saving me from electrocution. »

- BURDEN Chris, Icarus, 1973. Venise. Californie.

- BURDEN Chris, « Performances, » Oberlin College Bulletin, v.30, Spring 1973, pp.128-130.

Photographs and text about works. Brief description of performances: Five Day Locker Piece, I Became a Secret Hippy, You’ll Never See My Face in Kansas City, and Deadman.

— A. T. Spear, « Some Thoughts on Contemporary Art, » Oberlin College Bulletin, v.30, Spring 1973, pp.92-93.

- BURDEN Chris, Through the Night Softly, Main Street, Los Angeles, 12 septembre 1973. 16 mm film.

Documentation of a performance work in which, holding hands behind his back, Burden crawled through fifty feet of broken glass – Main street, Los Angeles, September 12, 1973. ‘‘Holding my hands behind my back, I crawled through 50 feet of broken glass. There were very few spectators, most of them passersby.’’

- CLARK Lygia, Baba antropofagica, 1973.

In collective works like ‘Tunel’ or ‘objetos relaciones’, Lygia Clark initiates psychic processes of exchange which transform the dichotomy of subject and object. In doing so, she follows the transgressive logic of ‘devouring’ and ‘vomiting’. The reception of « Baba antropofagica » (Cannibalistic Saliva) also relies on the documentary film O mundo de Lygia Clark, filmed by Eduardo Clark (1973). But escaping this phantasmal staging of the body seems almost impossible : kneeling over a guinea-pig-like subject lying on the floor, a figure pulls from its mouth – like spiders do from their bodies – a spittle-drenched thread and spins a cocoon around the reclining figure. The precarious division of subject and object is eliminated by this thread – like weaving with the gestural webbing of the passive subject. In the retrospective, these interactive aspects might have been what was most convincing. In contrast to Performance and Body Art, Lygia Clark understood herself to be an initiator of processes, and was most successful in this respect when her haptic attempts on ordering were targeted at inter-subjective body politics (Petra Löffler « Lygia Clark, The Inside is the Outside »).

- CLARK Lygia, Tunnel, 1973.

- COLETTE, Street Work-The Eye, 1973, NYC, Soho.

- COLETTE, Street Work-The Lips, 1973, NYC. In front of Stefonatty Gallery.

— ‘‘Colette’s street pieces began around 1970 when she decided to make her mark of code on the sidewalks of Soho, enigmatic messages to be read from above. She performed these ritualistic actions in a harlequin costume and had them photographed and documented on film. These mysterious traces were soon followed by anatomical drawings: Colette painted large schematic diagrams in broken outlines of lips, ears, eyes, noses, or hearts on the surface of the street.’’ Peter Selz, ‘‘The Coloratura of Colette’’, Arts Magazine, 1978.

- CONCIERTO ZAJ.

– Departamento de Musica de la Universidad de Vincennes, Paris. Performers : Ferrer/Hildalgo/Marchetti.

– Univerdad de la Sorbona, Paris. Performers : Ferrer/Hildalgo/Marchetti.

– Voyages Zaj Etats-Unis et Canada. Performers : Ferrer/Hildalgo/Marchetti.

New York University, Albany

Darmouth University, New Hampshire

« The Kitchen », New York (cf. photos)

Merce Cunningham Studio, NYC

Massachussetts University, Amherst

Buffalo University, Buffalo

The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

The Colorado College, Colorado Springs

The Quinci House Arts Festival of Harvard University, Cambridge

Mills College, Oakland, Ca.

K.P.F.A., Berkeley, Ca.

Université de Montréal

- DARLING Lowell, « Advertisement/‘An Interview Between Lowell Darling and Dudley Finds in Hollywood, 1973,’ » Avalanche, no.8, Summer/Fall 1973 (p.74).

— Willoughby Sharp, « Shuck & Jive’: Lowell Darling, » Avalanche, no.7, Winter/Spring 1973, pp.24-29. An interview. Excerpt:

« LD: I started my school two years ago. My art school. Fat City School of Finds Art… That’s what I do. I run the world’s largest degree granting art school. Didn’t you know that? That’s why I’m so rich. Everything else I do is just to support the school. It’s hard to run a big school, you know, budget, physical plant. We give master’s degrees to whoever wants them…

WS: How long have you been doing the school?

LD: Well, the school about two years ago, but I started giving out degrees with my friend Dana Atchley, of Ace Space Co. in Oakland, California. The College of Arts and Crafts and we held our first commencement a year ago last November. Since then, Dana’s been travelling all over the country and Europe and Canada, and I’ve been travelling around, and we’ve graduated ten thousand people between the two of us and we hired them immediately too. You know, the employment problem. »

- De COINTET Guy, Espahor Ledet Ko Uluner. 1973. Artist book.

- De FREITAS Jole, Introvert/Penetrate. Extrovert/Penetrate. Fear/Do Not Penetrate, 1973.

« Using photography as a means of expression interests me inasmuch as it allows me to record the climate of my mental state. My body was photographed by myself; if another person had operated the camera the resulting image would not be that on which I alone must intervene at a given moment. Anybody else’s perception would completely change the psychological meaning of the situation. I still need an intense release of feelings and I mean to record more than to document, through a planned image, certain moments which are part of an intimistic research, to reach a better understanding of myself. Such an aim was always present in all my priot activities: first with dance through corporeal expression, then with group analysis through verbal expression and presently by means of recording my image in particular psychic states.

The work I am presenting here, however, does not only involve the recording of what I call a psychic release, because the resulting images are supported by a rational organization which refers to the dialectics of language, as it appears from the contrasts between images and words. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 85)

- EDELSON Mary Beth, Strong Medecine, 1973.

- EDELSON Mary Beth, Woman Rising, 1973-74.

- EXPORT Valie, Adjucated Dislocations I + II, 1973.

- EXPORT Valie, Asemie or the Inability of Expressing Oneself Through Facial Expressions 1973,

7:10 min, b&w, sound

This work documents a ritualistic performance concerned with «Ansemia,» or the inability to either express or understand gesture. Using symbolic materials — hot wax, a knife, a dead bird — as well as text, Export investigates human expression, and how communication can fail.

«I had used my mouth to take the knife from the podium -holding it in my mouth, (the knife is language, the naming of things, its separates the subject from the object) using it to cut.» — VALIE EXPORT

- EXPORT Valie, Hyperbulie, 1973.

— Valie Export (1940, Austria) is one of Austria’s most prominent artists since the late 1960s and was one of the most important pioneers of feminist art in the 1960s and 70s. She explores radical questions about the conditioning of reality and the artistic representation of mental states. In her performances, coneptual photographs, videos and experimental films, she explores how women are constructed by the dominant gaze. She also develops strategies of subverting, refusing and overcoming the loss of self. She has been influenced by feminism, Viennese Actionism and Expanded Cinema. In 2007, she took part in the Venice Biennale and documenta 12. The Centre Georges Pompidou devoted an entire room to her in 2008. In 2009, she and Silvia Eiblmayr were the commissioners of the Australian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale.

In Hyperbulie VALIE EXPORT demonstrates how thoroughly our bodies and minds are standardised and restrained by the social system. ‘‘She moves naked through a corridor of wires charged with electric current. She touches the wires over and over, collapsing in pain. She musters all her energy to reach liberation at the end of the corridor, crawling on all fours’’ (VALIE EXPORT)

- EXPORT Valie, Kausalgie, 1973.

- EXPORT Valie, Remote Remote, 1973 (action-cinéma).

Human Behaviour – in contrast to that of machines (animals) – is influenced by past events, no matter how long ago they occurred. This has led to the existence of a spiritual para-time that runs parallel to objective time and is constantly subject to the influence of the prayers of fear and guilt, of the incapacity to overcome, of deformation that tear open the skin, of visual manifestations. I point to something representing past and present. (Valie Export)

With sometimes painful directness, Valie Export conducts a psychological investigation of the body in this film performance, externalizes an internal state. In front of a police police showing two children who were sexually abused by their parent, she tortuously cuts into the cuticles until blood drips into a bowl of milk on her lap. On top of the symbolic place of blood and milk, the physical effect of the viewer of her destructive act of self-mutilation is extreme.

- FOX Terry (Tom Marioni) « Terry Fox: Himself, » Art and Artists, v.7, January 1973, pp.39-41. Excerpt:

« Fox has said: ‘All my life I’ve regarded objects with fear… but everything – a cigarette, a rock has always been beautiful to me if I just look at it.’…

In the daily life of Terry Fox every act of life is an act of art. The objects of routine life are potential works of art. A work table is covered completely with flour and water and allowed to dry. The light cords in his studio are heavy wrinkled wire that run from hanging bulbs onto and across part of the floor. The floor of his Third Street studio last year was covered with white paper. At the end of several months the surface of the paper had taken on a painterly quality that was an actual record of all of his movements and actions. There were sweeping of rusty piles of bits of wire and purple splotches of spilled wine The wall, too reflected this attitude to objects for it was covered with nails and indentations from the blows of a hammer. »

- FOX Terry, Cell, Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, Ca., 1973.

Fox created a room permanently installed at MOCA on the form of a memento mori for the series, All Night Sculptures.

- FOX Terry, Yield, University Art Museum, Berkeley, September 4–October 21, 1973.

« I am sending 8 photographs from my latest work, at the University Art Museum, Berkeley. This was a two-month exhibition (September 4-October 21) that involved two rooms, I enclose a drawing of the floor plan of this space, with my actions indicated. This exhibition and the actions were based on my investigations into the labyrinth at Chartres. I made a model of the large space in my studio and photographed small objects in it through a magnifying glass, including an eyetooth and an apple, a plaster model of the labyrinth at Chartres, a tube of bread and a vial of blood. These photographs were blown up to 2 by 3 feet and 22 of them were placed close together ompletely around the smaller room (B). A blackboard with a drawing of the curtain in the larger room was placed on its back in the small room and the objects used in the photographs were on the blackboard (A) corresponding to the actions to follow in the large room. This is the first room the visitor saw and served to slow him down and place his emotional state and critical facilities at the service of the larger room, in that the actions to occur there were very slow and trancelike and analogous to the labyrinth. The visitor left this room and walked through four 50 foot tubes of blood, urine, milk and water (C) to the large room. Here I had constructed a 12 foot high curtain out of translucent muslin (D); this curtain was 40 feet long and completely covered this room, which had a solid wall of windows (G). The curtain was in the shape of a body and had a cul-de-sac at one end and a passage, through glass doors (E), to the balcony outside (F) where the viewer could watch the action in the sealed space (H) which he could not enter. It was in this hermetically sealed space that I made my actions together with my twin brother, Larry Fox, who photographed everything.

The action took 3 days: 4 hours the first, 2 hours the second and 3 hours the final day. They were continuous and each action began where the previous one left off. The first was done in the daytime and the next two were done at sunset into darkness with the aid of a spotlight.

On the first day I created a ribcage of lines of flour laid on the floor and then a trough made with my fingers, then I filled this trough with water transferred from a metal bowl through my mouth, drop by drop. This method was used to make all paste lines. Then the excess flour was blown away.

The second day I made a line (vertebrae) from the ribcage to the pelvis. Here I had a 8 foot square mirror on the floor. I made the pelvis by laying flour on the mirror, which reflected this image on the curtain. I added a mirrored bowl for the socket of the pelvis and blew smoke in it.

The third day I made a line out from the sternum to the metal bowl (1) which contained dried flour, and blew smoke. I continued this line to the mirrored bowl, which had formed a penicillin mold, and blew smoke. I continued this line to the enamel bowl at the window. Here I made a loaf of bread and laid a spoon against the bowl. I caused the bread to rise by holding a heating bowl above it. The bread rose and caused the spoon to rise. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 96-97)

— see Cecile McCann, « Terry Fox: The Shape of Thought, » Artweek, v.4, September 22, 1973, pp.1-16.

A descriptive article on the work of Terry Fox, includes information regarding the first one-man exhibition at the University Art Museum, Berkeley, September-October 1973.

— Brenda Richardson, Terry Fox, Berkeley: University Art Museum, University of California, 1973. Catalogue for Fox’s exhibition at the University Art Museum, September-October 1973. Excerpts:

« Fox has explored in his work an astonishing number and variety of means of evading or rising above the limitations of body or corporeality: energy transformations and transference; sleep and dreaming; levitation; reincarnation; music; fasting; religious chants or matras; melting, dissolving, dissolution (wax, liquids, smoke, dust); hypnosis; automatic writing and “accident»; allucination. Even in his earliest performance pieces, he pushed at walls (in a energy exchange, as if his body could go through material, or to “test“ the substantially of material), skipped, shuffed, and dragged across a floor (as if to test the limits of the pull of gravity on his body), or physically removed himself from the “action“ site (as if to lend his presence only as the designing mind and spirit)

(Untitled), September 1973.

From March through August of 1973 Fox worked on the various elements of the Berkeley exhibition. he built a model of the Berkeley space, and kept it in his studio, photographing through a plastic dime store magnifying glass the various objects and actions that he might perform in the actual space at the time of the exhibition. The model was complete, including a gray-painted floor, concrete walls, and a hanging curtain to indicate the fabric and ultimate placement of the finished drapery. Among the elements he photographed in the model were a labyrinth (which he constructed out of plaster to duplicate the labyrinth of Chartres), a dried half apple imbedded with his own eye tooth, a silver spoon with its finish oxidized, a spool of black thread, and a tin bowl filled with vinegar and flour (the same bowl he used to mix the concrete).

Edge of the bowl of vinegar.

Active flour ont the surface of the vinegar.

Edge of the bowl of vinegar with remnants of concrete.

North entrance to the curtain (cul-de-sac).

South entrance to the curtain (alley).

Building blocks on the labyrinth.

The center of the labyrinth.

Spool of thread in the labyrinth.

Still from the videotape, “Incision,“ which Fox made of the labyrinth. »

- GERZ Jochen, Exposition de Gerz près de sa photographie, 1973.

In « Exhibition of Jochen Gerz Next to His Photography Reproduction, » a performance in the early « Six Pieces on language » series, Jochen Gerz stands in front of a shop-window in which his picture is displayed. Passers-by and cars cross through the shot.

- GERZ Jochen, Writing by Hand, 1973. action-texte.

With no writing ustensil but his hand, Jochen Gerz writes on the wall of a building : « Diese Worte sind mein Fleisch und mein Blut » (‘These Words are my flesh and my blood’) Towards the end of the sentence, traces of his bleeding fingers can be seen.

- HERSHMAN Lynn & COPPOLA Eleanor, Dante Hotel, San Francisco, 1973.

— Lynn Hershman’s work comprises photography, video, film and installation. She also is a pioneer of computer art. She studied art with a major in art criticism at San Francisco State University. Her works explore the construction of identity in private and public spaces and the interaction between reality and fiction. From 1970 to 1979, she crated Roberta Breitmore, a fictional character, which she portrayed along with four other actresses. Roberta had her own life: she got a driver’s license and opened a bank account. In 1995, Hershman received the Siemens Media Art Prize from the ZKM Karlsruhe. She also received the Golden Nica at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz in 1999. She has recently made several feature films, including Teknolust (2002) and Strange Culture (2007), as well as a documentary film on feminist art called !Women Art Revolution (2010).

Dante Hotel was a site-specific performative installation created by Lynn hershman and the artist Eleanor Coppola in two hotel rooms that they rented for nine months and two weeks, respectively. Throughout Hershman’s room, objects were distributed to look like traces of people living there. The objects allowed visitors to reconstruct the stories behind these fictional characters. As in Hershman’s other works from the 1970s, in Dante Hotel she investigates not only the relationship between life, art and identity, but also between the beholder and the artwork.

— Thomas Albright, « A Ghostly Hotel Room Tableau, » San Francisco Chronicle, December 22, 1973, p.32. Review of Lynn Hershman and Eleanor Coppola’s environments at the Dante Hotel, San Francisco.

— James Minton, « Trepassing at the Dante, » Artweek, v.4, December 22, 1973, p.3. Descriptive article about the environmental works produced by Lynn Hershman and Eleanor Coppola at the Dante Hotel, San Francisco. Excerpts:

« Lynn Hershman and Eleanor Coppola have entered the Dante with intent to commit art… They have each entered a room, number 47 and 50 respectively, and have installed or made in each room a sculptural piece or environment…

[An] air of illegal entry is heaviest in Hershman’s room. In the bed, tangled, nearly buried in the sheets and blankets, are two of her “ladies,“ locked together in penultimate exhaustion. A single eerie green lightbulb burns in the fixture hanging from the center of the cracked, stained ceiling; a similar light leaks out from around the closed closet door accompanied by a woman’s voice, recorded, the voice of Siobhan McKenna reciting Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from “Ulysses.“ But, the playback volume is so low her words are nearly indistinguishable from one another. It could be the voice of a tenant next door, mumbled into her pillow, the body of another person, or the still flat air. »

— Lynn Hershman & Peter d’Agostino, Dante Hotel Documentary, San Francisco, 1974. Videotape.

— Peter Selz, « San Francisco; Lynn Hershman at the Dante Hotel, » Art in America, v.62, March/April 1974, p.119.

— Moira Roth, « An interview with Lynn Hershman », LAICA Journal, no.17, January/February 1978, pp.18-24. (Errata-three additional photos appear in Journal no.19). Excerpt:

« LH: [on the Dante Hotel piece, 1973] …I think that was the first interesting thing I did. I just set up a hotel room where you could go 24 hours a day, any day of the week. You could sign in at the desk, get a key, go up to the room, and trepass into this kind of alien identity that was there – to see this persona that was assumed to have living there. There were two wax figures that were lying in the bed as you entered the room, two women. Articles of their lives were part of the environment so you got a sense of the people who inhabited the space. I used what was there, changing it as I could. A special record was made for the sound, and I used different kinds of lighting.

MR: We should mention that the Dante Hotel is a rather sleazy hotel, shabby and slightly ominous. After the Dante Hotel, you did a three-room environment in New York. Three rooms in places of highly different character: the Chelsea Hotel, The Plaza, and the YWCA.

LH: A bus went to all three places. You could get off and note the differences of what it would be like to land in New York for one day and, for whatever reason, be put into one of these situations, situations that were profoundly different in all ways: visual, social and economic. Each room had the idea of being indigenous to each neighborhood, using materials from within a one-block radius of each place as the core medium for creating that particular portrait… »

- HORN Rebecca, Cockfeather Mask for Dieter, 1973.

« The cockfeathers are attached to a replica of my profile, half an inch wide, which is strapped on my head. With the feathers I caress the face of a person standing close to me. The intimate space between us is filled with tactile tension. My sight is obstructed by the feathers – I can only see the face of the other, when I turn my head, looking with one eye like a bird. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 115)

- JONAS Joan, Organic Honey’s Vertical Roll, 1973. NYC.

First performed in 1973 at the Toselli Gallery, Milan, Italy.

« I became interested in masks when I went to Japan in 1970. I went to the Kabuki and the No theatre every day for a month, and the level of abstraction of sound and image, the use of time in the No made a deep impression on me. I found the mask in a place where pornographic objects are sold to be used as erotic turn ons. The erotic overtones affected the content of my work and I became fascinated with the ways the mask transformed my movements and the appearance of my body. That this character was my opposite and a stranger was what interested me. She was Organic Honey and by dressing in different costumes she played different roles; the sorceress, the seducer, the narcissistic child… there are some aspects of the cutie doll/painted woman that are repellent and intriguing at the same time. I also used the mask to cover my face and whatever expression might be on it at a given moment.

I wanted to depersonalize myself.

I wrote that script after I performed the piece. The material didn’t have a hard exterior structure, as most of my films and tapes do. It developped day by day and I throught of it in terms of a musical score in which sound and image follow one another in a certain rhythm. Nevertheless, certain themes did predominate, such as the idea of the opposite light and dark, black and white, sun and moon, and finally left side and right side in relation with the monitor – the monitor does not reverse the image as the mirror does… » (see Lea Vergine, p. 123)

- JONAS Joan, The Glass Puzzle, 1973.

- KAHLEN Wolf, Rope, 1973. Action. Public Space.

- KAPROW Allan, Time Pieces, Berlin, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein Videothek, 1973. Videotape, approx. 30 mns.

- KIPPER KIDS, Performance, 1973, Forum Theater, Berlin. (photo)

- KLAUKE Jürgen, Eine ewigkeit ein Laecheln, 1973. (photo)

- KLAUKE Jürgen, Selbst, 1973 (photo)

- KLAUKE Jürgen, Transformer, 1973 (photo).

- KLAUKE Jürgen, Umarmung, 1973-74.

- KNOWLES Alison & MACIUNAS George, Identical Lunch, 1973 (action fluxus)

- KOS Marlene, One Bite, Self-published, 1973. Artist book.

- KOS Paul, Battle Mountain, 1973. Videotape, approx. 20 mins., b/w.

- KOUNELLIS Jannis, Table, 1973. (action)

- LACY Suzanne, Under my skin. a true-life story Perf. 1 from Anatomy lessons, 1973-76.

- LÜTHI Urs, A Self Portrait by Urs Lüthi, 1973

This is About you

A Few Mindfakes

« Perhaps the most significant and creative aspect of my work is ambivalence as such… Objectivity is not very important for me: all is objective just as all could be subjective… Therefore, one must take reality into account and actually my awareness of the real, depending on my moods, has thousands of facets… I believe that these facets are in fact, the sum of every man’s own conscience…

Personally, I find it interesting to look for these secret facets and, once I have discovered them, to try to visualize them. I am strongly attracted by all those vibrations that live inside every existence as well as by all that cannot be expressed with words. It is not, though, great events I want to make visible but rather, the reason that moves them…

The result of my investigation is the portrait. A portrait which has an existence of its own and which lives outside me as soon as the floodlights go off. Whoever observes it compares it with his own existence until he modifies himself, divides himself…

This is my contribution to self-awareness, of one’s limits, one’s excesses, one’s possibilities… and also of the different realities which live within the same reality… » (see Lea Vergine, p. 135)

- LÜTHI Urs, The Numbergirls, 1973.

- MACIUNAS George, Multicycle. Flux Game Fest, 1973.

- MARIONI Tom, All Night Sculptures, Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, 20 avril 1973.

— A. Belard, « All Night Sculptures, » Artweek, v.4, May 26, 1973, p.3.

Review of a performance event sponsored by the Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, which took place April 20, 1973 from sunset to sunrise. Nine artists participated in the event: Joel Glassman, Stephen Laub, Paul Kos, Mel Henderson, Bonnie Sherk, Frank Youmans, Barbara Smith, John Woodal, and Terry Fox. Curated by MOCA director, Tom Marioni. Excerpt:

« Nine artists worked throughout the night. Joel Glassman drew a virtual volume of light in the shape of a wedge by constructing a tent for the central third of two neon gas tubes. Steve Laub constantly vanished and reappeared, changing dimension, sex, character and identity. Paul Kos materialized a geometric reduction of the freedom of movement, demonstrating the similarities in the milatary and bureaucratic oppressions of the individual, by forcing the visitor to march towards a red light to the beat of a typewriter. Mel Henderson separated the light of searchlights, transfused hem through the dust of window glass, from candle light in a romm without surfaces. Bonnie Sherk invaded a neighboring rooftop sanctuary for pigeons with media and displaced animals in a aggressive series of acts, including the scrambling of eggs before the nesting birds. Frank Youmans worked throughout the night to realize an example of the simple beauty of the master craftsman, without ideals or ambitions exterior to itself. Barbara Smith exposed herself in a series of one to one relationship with all who would impose their egocentric needs upon her naked open body. John Woodall appeared as the machinated man, constricted by his geometry, tracing his own one-dimensional shadow as he rotated on his axis. Terry Fox created a room permanently installed in the Museum in the form of a Memento Mori.

- MASI Denis, Distortion, 1973.

« A framework/concept of distortion (i.e. deform, distort, contort, warp, gnarl): to mar the appearance or nature of something as if by twisting. Deform, carries a slighter implication of twisting, but the suggestion of pulling out of shape is usually present. Distort ans contort, clearly imply a twisting or wresting from that which is natural, normal, or true, but contort suggests a more involved twisting, and, usually, a more grotesque or painful effect than distort. Warp, which literally suggests a drying and shrinking out of shape, figuratively applies to that which has been given a bias, a wrong slant, an obnormal direction. Gnarl, used both literally and figuratively, suggests contortions induced by old age, weather, heavy work, misfortune, etc.

The central interest is DISTORTION; personal distortion manifested through the body and motivated by physical contact. It is important that this distortion should be operative both in form and content; it could also be extended to areas directly related to the personal, outside of cultural traditions (such as art), but not to the exclusion of an evident ethos.

The use of the body seems to be a very simple and logical decision; usually first consciousness is inherently associated with one’s own body both in phenomenal and intellectual or intuitional experience.

My interest is, as well, in the aesthetic possibilities of a particular type of restricted and structured body psychology; maybe a celebration of the body; possibly an intrincally symbolic usage of the body to reflect intentional inconsistencies.

It is important to consider that the content is consistent – distortion of the body (use of my own body or parts of it and/or the use of one or two other persons in similar or tableau situations). The distortion innate in the form is also consistent in that the end piece or object is always distorted through manipulation of technique. Lip Smear, for instance, was originally a videotape, but the two final objects of presentation are a 16 mm film (of the videotape) and a series of 40 selected b/w photographs & corresponding colour slides, thus in both cases allowing or even anticipating a definite degree of distortion through the breakdown in detail, etc. and the incorporation of chance happening via transference from one technique to another or even a third, the resulting work seeming to be similar to the original but in fact very different. »
(see Lea Vergine, p. 148-149)

- MATTA-CLARK Gordon, Clockshower, 1973.

(from Program Five 1972-1976), 60:50 minutes, sound, b/w and colour. In Gordon Matta-Clark’s work Clockshower (1973), the viewer discovers that a series of everyday activities – shaving, brushing teeth, showering – are taking place at the top of a gigantic watchtower. The daring location in which these quotidian acts take place endows them with an absurd quality. This experience is amplified by the surprising shift that takes place as the camera zooms out.

- MATTIACCI Eliseo, Remake Myself, 1973.

« The artist covers his face with mud, seated at a table with a chair molded of cast aluminium. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 153)

- MATTIACCI Eliseo, To Think the Thought, 1973.

« A plaster bandage binds the eyes, the mouth and the ears of the artist seated at a table with a chair loded of cast aluminium, in front of a copper plate on which one can write with a pencil point. » (see Lea Vergine p. 153)

- McCARTHY Paul, Meat Cake, 1973. Videotape, 30 mins., b/w.

- McCARTHY Paul, Press, Videotape, 1973.

- MELCHERT James, Attack and Counterattack, 1973. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

— « Rumbles : Attack and Counterattack, Jim Melchert », Avalanche, no. 8, Summer/Fall 1973, p. 66. Brief description of Melchert’s untitled 3-minute film which consisted of 5 attacks and counterattacks; shown at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

- MELCHERT James, Autobiography, Oakland : Self-published, 1973. Artist book.

- MENDIETA Ana, Arbor de la vida, 1973.

- MENDIETA Ana, Mutilated, 1973.

- MENDIETA Ana, Rape Scene, 1973. Iowa City. Iowa.

- MENDIETA Ana, Sweating Blood, 1973.

When she was 13, Ana Mendieta (1948-1985, Cuba, USA) parents sent her and her sister from Cuba to live in the US. This experience of living in exile was formative for Mendieta’s artistic work. She began working less frequently with art objects already while studying painting and started doing performances instead. Her artcorks touch on themes of violence against women, exile, the impermanence of the body, and forces of nature. Mendieta was involved in numerous feminist art projects, such as Artists in Residence Gallery, New York, but she remained critical toward mainstream ‘white’ feminism, which marginalised black women and immigrants. She died young due to a tragic accident.

Ana Mendieta’s works revolve around the four elements, the human body and traditionnal rituals: They represents the often painful conditions of human existence, which she investigates in self-experiments. Sweating Blood shows Mendieta’s head in a close-up. Blood collects on her forehead and begins to trickle down slowly. She meditatively lives through a seemingly painful condition, resting with a kind of voodoo calm.

- MIRALLES Fina, Dona-Arbre. Sèrie Translacions, 1973.

Fina Miralles (1950 Spain) studied in Barcelona from 1968 to 1972. Today, she lives and works in Cadaques. She explores the relationships between humans, nature and objects, and analyzes the transformation and alienation of natural objects when taken out of context. She works with different media, including painting, performance and video. She rediscovered painting again in the late 1970s.

Dona-Arbre. Sèrie Translacions (Three Woman. Passages Series), belongs to one of her earliest series on natural/artificial duality. Trhough the conceptual and physical passage of natural and physical elements, emerges a play of decontextualisation and re-contextualisation which reveals the distance which joins and separates us from the natural realm. The identification of women with the creative force of nature is carried out from the literal insertion of the artist’s body in the landscape, penetrating the land and creating a new and powerful reinterprettion of the stereotypical image of women as mother-earth, mother-woman, in relation to telluric forces in the face of an intensely patriarchal society.

- MOGUL Susan, Dressing Up, Videotape. 1973.

- MOGUL Susan, Mogul is Mobil, Los Angeles, Ca., 1973.

« It gives me great pleasure to announce that after three feminist tries I was issued my first driver’s license on June 4, 1973 and am now the proud owner of a 1967 Volvo. »

- MOGUL Susan, Road Test Score Sheet, Self-published, (1973).

Artist book ; laminated, 4 pages. Extrait : « I have distanced myself from an event in my life in order to examine it ».

- MONTANO Linda, Handcuffed to Tom Marioni for Three Days, San Francisco. 1973. Videotape, b/w. performed at Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, Ca.

Montano as « living art » was handcuffed to Tom Marioni for 3 days; everything that occurs during that time was framed as art.

— Carl E. Loeffler, ‘‘From the Body into Space: Post-Notes on Performance Art in Northern California,’’ in Performance Anthology. Source Book of California Performance Art. Updated Edition, Edited by Carl E. Loeffler and Darlene Tong, Last Gasp Press and Contemporary Arts Press, San Francisco, 1989 (First Edition : 1980), p.369-389. Excerpt on Linda Montano:

‘‘…The investigation of personal relationships is a primary concern of Linda Montano who, in pursuit of life change, was Handcuffed to Tom Marioni for Three Days (1973).

‘‘I guess the piece was really a comment on my relationsship with my husband at the time. That relationship needed some change, so I changed it the only way I was able to do at the time which was through my work. I would do anything within the context of work or art or whatever it was called; that was where all my permission was. The piece with Tom was wonderful. We moved together immediately. As soon as the handcuffs were on we started moving together. That continued for three days: going places, getting up, eating, changing, going to the bathroom. Whatever we did was absolutely synchronized at all times.’’ [18]

The work was performed at MOCA. The public was invited, announcements were mailed out and for Montano… ‘‘it seemed the idea really was the piece.’’ Montano investigated her life situation utilizing the context of art which was where her ‘‘permission’’ was located. In art she could be handcuffed to Marioni and explore that relationship, something she at that point was unable to do in life. Importantly, the work focused upon the two of them and their exchange as the materials of the piece, two male and female forms relating as sculpture.’’

[18] Moira Roth, ‘‘Matters of Life and Death, Linda Montano Interviewed by Moira Roth,’’ High Performance, December, 1978, p.3 & 5.

- MOTION

— see Carolyn Evans « Women’s Movement Collective », KQED Newsroom, August 30, 1973. Script of broadcast on Motion : the women’s movement collective.

— see Carol Loud, « Motion », The Daily California Arts Magazine, February 16, 1973.

- NAUMAN Bruce — J. Harten, « T for Technics, B for Body, » Art & Artists, v.8, November 1973, pp.28-33.

Excerpt:

« Nauman has made it clear that he has no use for participation pieces in which the visitor can play around as he likes. He programmes the spectator, he induces him to react as he, Nauman, reacts. Here one can see the result of a consistent development. It begins with the first organic-anthropometric sculptures, takes in then the impressions, “body traps“ and wax casts which lead to the questioning of objective reality. And it leads finally to manipulations of his own body, to dance-like performances which he first carries out himself and then hands over to others. The more the living body becomes the subject of his plastic researches, the less important the “appearance of things“ becomes, the most intense becomes the secret, the mysterious element and the more abstract the sensual impression. But Nauman is never concerned with emotional expression. When he paces in a special rhythm round his studio, when he puts on make-up or plays with his testicles, he views himself from the outside just as he does when he models himself from hand to mouth in wax. What goes on within us can be shown outside only in action; Nauman invents an action in order to see what inner processes it will release. He hopes that the attentive spectator will add, by “Metacommunication“ whatever is lacking in the outward form. The grimaces, the dislocated body movements which he produces in the video and hologram works are anything but ecstatic. They are a fresh attempt, through physiognomical manipulation, to undermine the meaning of the body as a sign. »

- NAUMAN Bruce :

— Jane Livingston and Marcia Tucker, Bruce Nauman. New York : Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Praeger Publishers, 1973. Catalogue for Nauman’s one person retrospective exhibition at the L. A. County Museum of Art, December 19, 1972-February 18, 1973, entitled Bruce Nauman/Work from 1965 to 1972. Extrait :

« Most of Nauman’s work focuses directly on activities, first those of the artist, then those of the spectator himself. “An awareness of yourself, ” Nauman says, “comes from a certain amount of activity, and you can’t get it from just thinking about yourself. ” Interior events, which are non-physical, must be expressed by relations or operations. In 1966 Nauman made the following list, which was titled CODIFICATION :

1. Personal appearance and skin

2. Gestures

3. Ordinary actions such as those concerned with eating and drinking

4. Traces of activity such as footprints and material objects

5. Simple sounds – spoken and written words

metacommunication messages

Feedback

Analogic and digital codification

Codification, a term used by computer engineers, is “transformation in the mathematical sense of the world,” the substitution of one type of event for another, which is made to stand for it. Analogic codification uses a recognizable model, in a machine, to stand for those external events which are to be thought about. Since the human central nervous system ahs no moving parts, only the whole moving body may be used as an analogic component. Nauman’s codification listing includes certain tangible aspects of the total body that can be used as external “models” in terms of art. »

— Cecile N. McCann, « Bruce Nauman », Artweek, v. 4, January 6, 1973, p. 1. Review article of Nauman’s exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

— Peter Plagens, « Roughly Ordered Thoughts on the Occasion of the Bruce Nauman Retrospective in Los Angeles », Artforum, v. 11, March 1973, pp. 57-59.

- NATAN Efrat, Head Sculpture, 1973, Tel Aviv.

- NAUMAN Bruce, Elke Allowing The Floor To Rise, 1973 (action-vidéo).

- ONTANI Luigi, Bacchino Poses, 1973.

« POSE = proposition of presence as possibility to outline the ideal self, probable freshness/intensity, by direct formulation or quotation, polyvalent rigorous accumulation = POSE = is a synthetic-moment as photographic expression and a sample of behavior = Bacchino (small Bacchus) is the quotation-case = is icon as revealing result = is conception/summary of the itinerary of knowledge = is the immediate sign of the meditated = is visualization of the postulated idea = is witness of the organic whole = is example/message of human thickness = is intrinsic deviation for the irregular = is pervasiveness in the vanity.

“the pretty statuettes“ = is the sweetened hero of awareness = is radicalization of language = is the humor/lucidity as indigenous preeminence of life/culture = is condition of an effective connection for a further real = is concept/rainbow = refusal of separateness = is energy/present infinity = (and beyond) = » (see Lea Vergine, p. 181)

- PACUS Stanislao, The Conquered Conscience, 1973.

« Actors: Lolly Santini, Stanislao Pacus. Material: book, quail, armchair, posters with the inscriptions “Selvatico“ (Wild), “La coscienza conquistada“ (The Conquered Conscience), string.

With this videotape I wanted to make evident the reconquest of his conscience by the artist, bewildered by his love for a woman, symbol of wildness. Woman nullifies creativeness, she is the dualistic model of love-hate in which the artist loses himself and from which, with intellectual effort, he escapes. To reconquer his professional conscience the artist derides the loved-hated woman’s nakedness. The string that goes from the man’s hand to the book (symbol of artistic construction), to the quail (symbol of the conquered conscience), makes evident the rediscovered condition, this slow resumption of the artist’s conscience. The idea for this videotape was suggested to me by these lines by Leopardi, “Lovely as you were, you were/in the season which is conductive to sweet dreams,“ which, since childhood, impressed on me how great a man’s love for a woman can be. I am very envious of the poet’s imagination, liberated through his love for a woman. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 193)

- PANE Gina, Autoportrait(s), 1973. Galerie Stadler. Paris.

- PANE Gina, Sentimental Action, 1973. Galerie Diagramma. Milan.
(see 1974)

- PENONE Giuseppe, The Hair, like the Nail, and the Skin Occupies Space, 1973.

« Plaster mold of my right foot – inside part and projection of a slide.

The mold of my foot preserves an element of my reality: the hair. During the forming of the mold some hairs are torn away from their roots and reappear on the plaster mold in the very sme pore of the skin from which they were torn.

Therefore, technically, this work is a sum of the elements which reproduce a reality (plaster mold and slide) and of real elements (the hair). The photo, taken at a time following the molding of the plaster and projected on it, completes the preceding reality of the image of my actual foot. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 205)

- PIPER Adrian, The Mythic Being, 1973.

Adrian Piper (1948, USA, Germany) is a first-generation Conceptual artist who started exhibiting her work internationally at the age of twenty. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1969. She also studied philosophy at Harvard and Heidelberg after beginning her lifelong exploration of Yoga and the Indian Vedanta philosophy. She introduced issues of race and gender into the vocabulary of Conceptual Art and explicit political content into Minimalism. Through her insistent exploration of subjectivity, her early conceptual performances anticipated the feminist maxim ‘‘the personal is political’’.

The Mythic Being was a project which went on for several years. In it, Adrian Piper adopted the identity of an African-American man roaming the streets and parks of New York. Piper’s aim was to liberate herself from certain aspects of her own subjectivity and explore moments of confrontation, alienation and difference. using a mathematical formula, she arranged 12 passages from her journal in chronological order and attributed these one by the M.B. (Mythic Being). Adrian Piper invested a great amount of time and effort preparing for her public performances, meditating and repeating each journal passage like a mantra for a month prior to each performance. This video is an except from the film Other than Art’s Sake by Australian artist Peter Kennedy.

- PISANI Gianni, Each Morning Before Going Out, 1973 (action-photo).

« Every morning, after a shower, I rewind the umbilical cord on my abdomen (it is not made of plastic, it is taken from the intestine of a cow, it is that kind of tubular velum used by butchers to make sausages; I tied it at one end and then I inflated it with a bicycle pump). I arrange the skein under my shirt; as I am buttoning it, I completely conceal the “inconvenience.“ I hide it from the others with my bourgeois clothes which make me similar to them; I compress it under my everyday appearance and go among people. The idea of the umbilical cord is tied to my preceding work, from the representation of my suicide to guns, from my old paintings or more recent drawings to the rocking chair or to the destruction of my coffin. So, I do not know whether it is possible to speak of an idea.

The idea is a thought and these things cannot be thought, they are felt. Perhaps the story of the umbilical cord is a return toward life, it is like a need to attach oneself to something, it is the searching for a father-mother-son tie… the others stay away from us, but these are the fundamental ties… » (see Lea Vergine, p. 209)

- PISANI Vettor, Nature Does Not Love Nature, action lasting 5 Days. 1973.

« Durand, on the trails of Jung, Frazer, and Mircea Eliade, organizes the imagination on its figurative space in a vast division between two regimes of symbolism: one diurnal and the other nocturnal; one founded on the time before the fall, on the rituals of elevation and purification, the other on the time after the fall and its astrobiological dramas.

Following the archetypal routes of imagination, Vettor Pisani recreates experience after experience, the motions, antitheses, dualisms, and the circularity of imagination itself. Thus, the references and quotations lying at the base of the critical aim of the comment, of the ideological negations, turn out to be necessary.

That part of his work which converges on the figure of the Hero can be ascribed to the diurnal regime of imagniation.

This is the Hero who limits his monarchic space, the Hero who manages nature, thought, and ideology, the Hero who crosses the border of reality in order to fuse himself with the Absolute. In contrast with the figure of the Hero there is that of the victim (the woman). The woman (nocturnal regime) plays the terrifying role of darkness, of castration, and of death.

In the work Nature Does Not Love Nature, the woman is sitting on an iron table in a room swarming with rats.

Here, Vettor Pisani contrasts nature with nature and matter with matter, gathering the conflicting solutions.

Rats are the swarming and obscene sign of chaos, their accelerated animation seems to be an assimilating projections of anguish. Bachelard in his Alchemical Bestiary suggested a “dental“ sadism in animals with sharp teeth ready to bite and to swallow. The woman is a nystomorphous symbol, like the animal, darkness, noise, deep and black water.

The woman on the table tries to differentiate herself from the natural world. She carries an instrument – two brass cymbals, a weapon with which she annexes power, virility, and purifying force.

The instrument is as circular and golden as the sun: it sheds light and its sound resembles the rumble of thunder.

Bachelard analyzed this “complex of Atlas“ as a scheme of the verticalizing and imperialistic effort which “Gulliverizes“ the world. The woman betrays her own nature and becomes a heroic figure who fights against darkness and belligerently seeks transcendence. (Mimma for Vettor) (see Lea Vergine, p. 212-213)

- RAY Charles, Plank Piece 1 & 11, 1973. (action-photo).

- RUPPERSBERG Allen, A Lecture on Houdini (for Terry Allen), 1973.
Los Angeles. Videotape.

— « Good morning. Today’s talk concerns a man who name has been a household word for almost three quarters of a century. However, it will not dwell on the details of an incredible life, most of which are readily available to any diligent student, but instead will direct itself to exploration of the heroic belief which carried and sustained him for almost forty years. We will see the strength of this belief not only throughout his own mortal life but probably also (to use his words) from the world of the beyond. The man: Harry Houdini. The idea: To establish physical contact with the world of the spirit. is life continuous? Can one reach back from the reaches of the beyond? The determination, energy and emotion behind the ideas of this man are indeed of legendary proportions and have continued to expand since his death in Detroit, Michigan, on Halloween, 1926. His thoughts and research into the activities of a professional magician, and escape artist are still among the finest of today but the promises he saw from the beyond have yet to be fulfilled or surpassed.

Houdini was working as always as the complete madman. The fateful chain of events started October 10th. He was in Albany preparing to be lowered into the water torture cell to close the act. Something snapped in his ankle. “I’ve a show to finish“ was his reply. Later it was confirmed as a fractured ankle. He continued whith the show, traveling for two weeks. He arrived in Montreal, Monday October 17th, with the ankle knitting but Houdini exhausted. One challenge which he continued in every town was a long standing dare to punch him in the midsection with no visible reaction due to his physical prowess.

A college boxer and friends approached him backstage at the Princess Theatre. “Could I try right now?“ asked the boy. “Sure“ was the reply. As Houdini rose from the couch the boy smashed him in the stomach. houdini gasped. He hadn’t been ready. He was white but he set himself and the boy hit again to feel what seemed like an oak plank. Houdini’s side bothered him. During the matinee he suffered pains in his right side but faithfully chose to ignore them. By evening it was worse and Bess wanted to call a doctor. “No“ was the answer. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 224-225)

— Peter Plagens, « Wilde About Harry », Artforum, v.13, April 1975, pp.68-69. Excerpt:

« Houdini begins with Ruppersberg, attired in a straight-jacket and seated belong a long table which exits screen left, announcing: ‘Good morning. Today’s talk concerns a man whose name has been a household word for almost three-quarters of a century…’ He then proceeds to read – the sheets of text laid out side by side, and Ruppersberg scooching his chair over periodically to gain the next page – his enthralling account of the great ‘mysterious entertainer’s’ career, with particular emphasis on Houdini’s love-hate struggle with spiritualism…

Meanwhile, Ruppersberg plays Lacoon with the straight-jacket. Will he burst the bonds before he finishes the lecture? No. Puffing, straggle-haired, he looks up at the camera after recalling Houdini’s final, aborted performance in Montreal, and concludes softly, ‘Thank you,’ still bound. »

— Helene Winer, « Scenarios/Documents/Images », Art in America, v. 61, May 1973, pp. 69-71.

- RUPPERSBERG Allen, Between the Scenes, Stedelijk Museum, October 5-November 25, 1973.

- RUPPERSBERG Allen, The Fairy Godmother. Stedelijk Museum, October 5-November 25, 1973.

— Allen Ruppersberg, Allen Ruppersberg. Amsterdam, Netherlands : Stedelijk Museum, 1973. Text and photo documentation of two works, Between the Scenes (1973) and The Fairy Godmother (1973).

- SAMARAS Lucas, Autopolaroid. 1973.

- SAPIEN Darryl, War Games, 1973. Corner of Third and Howard Streets, San Francisco, Ca., with Michael Hinton and others.

Two performers in war paint engage in a hierarchy of conflict rituals in the basement of a demolished building open to the street above. Seated upon towers elevated to street level at opposite ends of th espace two chess game calling out their moves through loudspeakers. On a wall behind the combatants a youth tracks the game on a display board. In contrasting games and rituals of conflict the performance revealed how games separate participants by creating winners and losers whereas ritual brings the participants together in balanced equilibrum.

- SCHNEEMANN Carolee, Cooking With Apes, 1973.

- SCHNEEMANN Carolee, Up to and Including Her Limits. 1973-76.

Performance. Live vidéo relay. Crayon on paper, rope and harness suspended from ceiling. The Kitchen. NYC. Up To And Including Her Limits was the direct result of Pollock’s physicalized painting procès… « I am suspended in a tree surgeon’s harness on a three-quarter-inch manilla rope, a rope which I can raise or lower manually to sustain an entranced period of drawing – my extended arm holds crayons which stroke the surrounding walls, accumulating a web of colored marks. My entire body becomes the agency of visual traces, vestige of the body’s energy in motion. »

- SCHNEEMANN Carolee, Up to and Including Her Limits. 1973.

December 9, 1973. 10th Annual Avant Garde Festival, Grand Central Station, NYC. Photo : Tal Streeter

- SEKULA Allan, Under Working Conditions, 1973. Vidéo, Université de Californie, San Diego.

- SHERK Bonnie, Cleaning The Griddle, Andy’ Donuts, San Francisco, Ca., 1973.

- SHERK Bonnie, Living in the Forest

– Demonstration of Atkin Logic, Balance, Compromise, Devotion, etc., De Saisset Art Gallery, Santa Clara, Ca., 1973. Environmental work by Sherk replete with trees and living animals presented in the group exhibition, The Four.

— Bonnie Sherk, ATKIN LOGIC, San Francisco : Self-published, 1973. Artist book.

— Bonnie Sherk, Living in the Forest. 1973. Videotape, b/w.

— Judith L. Dunham, « The Four », Artweek, v. 4, January 27, 1973, p. 1. Review of an exhibition featuring four women artists (Judy Chicago, Linda Benglis, Miriam Shapiro, Bonnie Sherk) at the De Saisset Gallery, University of Santa Clara, Ca. The article includes a description of Sherk’s environmental performance works, Living in the Forest – Demonstration of Atkin Logic, Balance, Compromise, Devotion.

- SHERK Bonnie, Pretending To Be a Gargoyle, Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, Ca., 1973.

For the series All Night Sculptures, Sherk occupied a rooftop and assumed the attitude of a gargoyle while looking down.

- SHERK Bonnie, The Short Order Cook Act V Andy’s Donuts,1973-74

- SIEVERDING Katharina, Selection of 148 Phases on the Same Situation « untitled », 1973.

« My films and series of photographs are neither projections nor fictions they happen directly realisation is the maximum of free communication i.e. an action of love possibility to totally living what they would like to be and what they are I can imagine making a film with anybody at all whenever this free communication is developping since people want to know who they are and even more to show who they are even children are stopped from this kind of experiment no voyeurism no demonstration rather a discovery no criticism no norm no solitude finally the interchange of identification becoming equivalent ot the other calm self-awareness that enables you to go on this does not mean “to jump off a fast train“ rather search out your own beauty exploitation of men material moral or ideologic deprives men of their legitimate claim to produce and reproduce themselves. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 241)

- SIEVERDING Katharina, Transformer 1 A/B, 1973 (photo).

- SMITH Barbara, « Three Womanspace Performances, » Artweek, v.4, March 10, 1973, p.5.

Review of first performance works held at Womanspace, Los Angeles, February 2-3, 1973. Reviews the performance works of Aviva Rahmani, Vicki Hall, and Barbara Smith.

- SMITH Barbara, Feed Me, 1973. San Francisco.
Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, Ca.

Performed in the MOCA series, All Night Sculptures. Smith created a boudoir environment and invited individuals one at a time to enter and interact with the artist. This could include conversation and affection.

— Barbara Smith. La Jolla: San Diego Art Gallery, University of California, (1974). Catalogue for an exhibition, November 7-December 4, 1974. Excerpt from ‘Interview with Barbara Smith by Moira Roth:’

« MR: Can we begin by talking about Feed Me piece which you did earlier this year for the San Francisco Museum of Conceptual Art? How was it set up? It lasted all night until dawn and you spend the time sitting nude in a room?

BS: Yes. There was a mattress and a rug and pillows and many things around me, and incense was burning, and it was warm. There was a heater.

MR: As the piece was called Feed Me, what sort of feeding did you get out of it?

BS: On a lot of levels. There were body oils and perfume in the room so that one person gave me a back rub. There was food and wine they could give me. There was music, flowers, shawls and beads and things like that. There was tea, books and grass. That is about all. And so a person came into the room, he could choose anything he wanted to use as a medium of interaction, and it was all a source of food – food meaning sustenance. This could include conversation and affection.

MR: Did you have any limits on what you would allow to happen?

BS: I didn’t want anymore who wasn’t positive, whose emotions weren’t positive towards me. I would have felt very defensive about that, and I would prevent any action which I did not consider food.

MR: Did you check with people afterwards about how they felt?

BS: A few. But since it lasted all night, virtually everybody but the other artists were gone in the morning. The other artists were very supportive of my piece. I heard afterwards about at least one or two people who didn’t like it. They were women and they didn’t like it because they felt it was compromising to women’s lib.

MR: How do you feel about the piece in terms of image of women? The courtesan and odalisque are obvious images that come to mind.

BS: Well, for one thing, that’s an image that either has been real to some people, or in one way or the other has been part of their fantasy life. And then there are so many levels of real life that border on that kind of activity. So the question is, not only if it exists in anybody’s mind, but the fact that it exists on so many levels. So that’s how I feel about it in terms of women’s lib. It’s a reality which one must confront. For me my art accomplishes my own liberation. It makes me stronger. For others it acts as any art does, a confrontation that they must face on their own terms. I am pointing to things that are real, which people may or may not like to face…

MR: Shortly after the MOCA piece, you did a very different type of piece – Pure Food.

BS: Yes. Out in a vacant lot in Costa Mesa – a large field really. I sat in one spot. I just sat there for eight hours. For as long as I was able to, I meditated, which turned out to be maybe two, two and half hours. And from then on it was a matter of passing the time and noticing the different directions my attention would take. One span of time, I slept. »

- SMITH Barbara, The Longest Day of Night. An all-night banquet, 1973.

- TAGLIAFERRO Aldo, Identification, 1973.

« This analysis is a component of my MEMORY AND IDENTIFICATION AS SUPERIMPOSITION ON REALITY. Memories of external thing and memories of the ego – therefore, of identification.

In this work there are several aspects of memory and of identification. I wanted to give this specific analysis a negative sense, to create a model of depersonalization. For this reason I had twins pose for me, because in them (as external images) there is already a beginning of depersonalization. For the solution of my work I tried to create referential or substitutional poses, so that the subject could, in the end, assume the rhythm of an object.

This work has two stages of interpretation: one is the verification of the likeness between the single images represented; the other is the global reading, in which, because of the structure assumed by the image, a depersonalization of the representation ensues and such an image becomes an object or writing. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 245)

- TEPPER Irvin — « Irvin Tepper – Documents and videotapes, » Artweek, v.4, November 24, 1973, p.13.

Review of Tepper’s exhibition at the University of Santa Clara’s De Saisset Gallery; includes a description of Tepper’s videotapes, Starting a Diet and Alphabet. Excerpt:

« In Starting a Diet Tepper strings together a sequence of three palatable contrivances including a session with a doctor discussing his ‘condition,’ repeated visits to the icebox that allow us to withness the ultimate crime of the dieter, and the final sequence which begins, “When you start a diet, foods you should stay away from…“ In this last segment we are offered the gamut of dieter’s no no’s, from the Kentucky Colonel’s Chicken to Banana Dreams. By throwing the food onto a plate with seemingly equal obhorrence and delight, an action in which the now you see it, now you don’t occurs, the oral suggestion is restated through the “devouring“ technique of the editing. It is all “staged,“ exaggerated, one-dimensional theater in which Tepper walks aloof and distracted through his self-portrait as a compulsive food addict. »

- UKELES Mierle Laderman, Hartford Wash: Washing, Tracks, Maintenance: Outside, 1973. Hartford. Connecticut.

- UKELES Mierle Laderman, The maintenance of the art object, 1973.

- URBAN Janos, Parallel Times, 1973.

— « The left side of the screen, connected with the first TV camera, moves constanly, in depth and also laterally, according to the camera’s zoom which goes forward and back, slowly, while focusing always on the same scene: some trees and bushes, at the beginning of that day’s afternoon. The second camera, which determines the image on the right side of the screen, is focusing on another monitor where fragments, previously collected from current feature programs, mainly people in “transitory“ spaces (i.e. stairways, corridors) are played. The process of mixing up goes on, the division of the screen is never the same, until the reserve of the collected material, a non-narrative miscellany, is exhausted.

The sound is replaced at the same time: collected acoustic fragments of other spaces and times, mainly situations acoustically analogous to the TV fragments, are played back and recorded on the Sony tape. The dialogues unite foreign languages, noises, and excerpts of music. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 253)

- VAN SCHLEY

— Willoughby Sharp, « Different Strokes for Different Folks: An Interview with Van Schley, » Avalanche, no.7, Winter/Spring 1973, pp.22-23 with insert.

« VS: My sensibility isn’t serious; there are few things that I can take very seriously.

WS: Why not?

VS: I can’t take external things seriously because they aren’t very real to me.

WS: What is?

VS: Personal experience.

WS: Perhaps that’s why you are so insteresting in videotapes.

VS: Sure.

WS: Which was your first one?

VS: Well, it was a five-minutes tape of me imitating Wilson Pickett singing “In the Midnight Hour.“ I used a golf club as a microphone, lipsyncing into it.

WS: And why did you do such a ridiculous thing?

VS: Why did I do it then or looking back now why did I do it?

WS: Well, I guess you can’t answer why you did it then, but why do you think you did it then? When did you do it?

VS: I did it in 1967 because I liked the music and the media. I used to watch American Bandstand and no one ever really sang on the show; they used to lipsync. So my idea of watching somebody perform was somebody lipsyncing. Chuck Berry was my idol in the 50’s and I used to imitate him in front of a mirror, so I did Wilson Pickett number in the video mirror. »

- VAUTIER Ben, Déclaration: in Order To Change Art One Must Change Man, 1973. (fluxus)

- VOSTELL Wolf, Berlin Fever, 1976, Berlin.

- WHITE John, Watts Performance.

A series of three performances in Los Angeles during 1973-74, for the Watts Community Housing Corporation.

— Leonard Simon, « John White–Watts Performance, », Artweek, v.4, October 6, 1973, p.5.

- ZACK David

— « An Authentic and Historical Discourse on the Phenomenon of Mail Art, » Art in America, v.61, January-February 1973, pp.46-53.

- ZAZA Michele, Euphoric Wreckage, 1973.

— « Made in June 1973, this work’s principal theme is the mechanized condition of existence. A pane of glass covered with dust hides an action as it is taking place, made visible by the progressive cleaning of the glass. The action, which is from time to time visualized, determines, however, the equivocation on the real or presumed existence of the reproduced image.

The last sequence (the protagonist rewinding the clock) establishes an effective awareness of the (absurd) condition of time itself and of the (heroic) uselessness of life. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 265)