1974 : chronologie performance

1974

 

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Rythme 5, 1974.

Rythme 5 de Marina Abramovic. Contenu de l’action

« Je pose sur le sol l’étoile aux cinq points (la construction est faite de bois et de sciure arrosée de cent litres d’essence)

Je mets le feu à l’étoile
Je marche autour de l’étoile

Je me coupe les cheveux, que je dépose dans les pointes de l’étoile

Je me coupe les ongles des mains et les place dans les pointes de l’étoile

Je me coupe les ongles des pieds et les place dans les pointes de l’étoile

Je pénètre dans l’étoile
Je suis en union avec l’étoile »

(Centre culturel étudiant, Belgrade, 1974)

« Alors que j’étais allongée dans l’étoile, je n’ai pas eu pensé que le feu consumerait l’oxygène. J’ai perdu conscience. Parce que j’étais allongée, le public n’a pas réagi.

Quand une flamme m’a touché la jambe, je n’ai pas eu  de réaction ; alors deux spectateurs se précipitèrent dans l’étoile et m’en ont sortie. Après je m’en voulais à moi-même, aux limites de mon corps, puisque la performance était interrompue.

A partir de cette expérience, je me demandais comment dépasser l’état de conscience et d’inconscience. »

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Rythme 2, 1974.

Rythme 2 de Marina Abramovic. 1974. « J’utilise mon corps pour une expérience. Je prends des médicaments utilisés en l’hôpital, ce qui met mon corps dans des états imprévisibles.

Performance

Première Partie

Face au public, je prends le premier médicament.

Ce médicament est donné au malade catatonique afin de les faire changer de position.

Tout en étant dans un état normal, alors que je prends ce médicament, mes muscles commencent à se contracter violemment, sans que je puisse les contrôler. Mais en même temps, je suis pleinement consciente.

Pause

Je mets la radio au hasard, et pendant dix minutes le public écoute des chansons folkloriques jusqu’à ce que j’ai préparé la deuxième partie.

Deuxième partie

Je prends la deuxième pillule que l’on donne aux malades schizophréniques au comportement extrêmement agressif, afin de les calmer.

Ce cachet apaise complètement mon corps et je perds conscience pendant six heures.

Malgré cet état, la performance se poursuit jusqu’à ce que disparaîssent les effets de médicaments. »

(Galerie d’art contemporain, Zagreb, 1974)
 

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Rythme 4, 1974.

Rythme 4 de Marina Abramovic. 1974. Il y a deux espaces : dans l’un, le public suit la performance sur un moniteur-vidéo. Je suis dans l’autre, avec une machine qui souffle de violents courants d’air à haute pression.

Performance

Lentement je m’approche de l’ouverture du trou, en essayant de respirer la plus grande quantité d’air possible.

Lorsque je suis très près de l’ouverture, je perds conscience à cause de la quantité d’air à haute pression.

Mais ceci n’interrompt pas la performance car la pression de l’air continue à bouger et à changer mon visage.

Cela donne l’impression d’être sous l’eau.

La caméra-vidéo est dirigée sur mon visage sans dévoiler la soufflerie.

Le public dans l’autre pièce est confronté avec cette image sans connaître les raisons des transformations du visage.

Au moment où je perds conscience, la performance continue durant trois minutes, et le public ne remarque pas la différence. Dans cette performance, j’ai réussi à utiliser mon corps avec et sans conscience, sans interruption.

(Galerie Giagramma, Milan, 1974)

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Rythme 0, 1974.

« Instructions

Sur la table sont posés soixante-douze objets que vous pouvez utiliser sur moi.

Je suis un objet.

Durant cette période, je prends toute responsabilité.

Durée : six heures (20h-2h)

(Galerie Studio Morra, Naples, 1974)

La performanc Rythme 0 est celle par laquelle je termine le cycle Rythmes (Rythme 10, Rythme 5, Rythme 2, Rythme 4, Rythme 0).

Ainsi je conclus mes recherches sur le corps en tant qu’objet, dans des états de conscience et d’inconscience. »

- ACCONCI Vito, Face of the Earth, 1974.
22 :18 min. color. sound

In Face to the Earth, Acconci’s face becomes a metaphorical theater for a narrative drama of the mythic American landscape. Eyes closed, his face filling the screen in extreme close-up, the camera looking up from  his chin, he inhabits a dreamlike, intensely theatrical space. Alternatively humming and whispering, Acconci begins and oddy poetic, hypnotic monologue, a stream-of-consciouness fantasy of a gunfichter in the American West. « As if I were riding in from over the moutains… Where did I come from ? » His fingers ru nover the landscape of his face in the rhythm of a galloping horse, or caress it as the narrative tension builds. With language as a catalyst, he conducts a riveting examination of his own identity through American culture mythologies.

- ACCONCI Vito, Open Book, 1974.

Open Book consiste en un gros plan serré sur la bouche de Vito Acconci, qui s’est engagé paradoxalement à la garder grande ouverte pendant qu’il parle. Les fonctions d’articulation et de communication du langage parlé sont ainsi contredites. Son monologue, qui invite le spectateur à entrer en relation avec l’image et l’artiste, est presque incompréhensible. Cette vidéo met donc en retrait la parole au profit de la bouche comme représentation incongrue de l’ouverture à l’autre et comme lieu ou livre.

Concentré sur cette image prégnante, le spectateur voit d’abord les lèvres et les dents, puis la langue en gros plan comme un muscle en activité dans son antre semblable à une grotte. L’espace de la parole est manifesté par la cavité buccale et par les sons ouverts projetés en avant par le souffle.

La durée du film et la fatigue due à la contrainte conduisent l’artiste à relativiser les règles qu’il avait fixées. La voix s’éraille et la bouche s’assèche, Vito Acconci déglutit pour reprendre ses forces. Il demande pardon pour avoir fermé la bouche, comme si cette fermeture signifiait une rupture dans la relation à autrui. Enfin, il articule davantage, et ses paroles deviennent plus compréhensibles. Il dit notamment : «You can go inside», « It’s not a trap » (1).

La bouche est une ouverture où passent la nourriture, le son et le souffle. Si, dans Two Takes, Vito Acconci l’avait définie comme un lieu d’ingurgitation et de prise de possession, dans Open Book, il la présente à l’échelle de l’écran et la transfigure en un lieu d’accueil fantastique, en attente de l’autre. Elle est un seuil puis un lieu de communication et de relation, exhibé et mis en abîme par la limite infranchissable de l’écran de télévision. L’esthétique de Vito Acconci ne relève ni de l’art formel, ni de l’art conceptuel au sens strict, qui lui sont contemporains. Elle est conçue dans un rapport à la chair et au corps et contraste par là même avec l’immatérialité de la vidéo et la décontextualisation de sa lecture dans le lieu du spectateur. (Thérèse Beyler)

(1) « Tu peux entrer », « Ce n’est pas un piège ».

1974, 10:09 min, color, sound

In Open Book, Acconci’s open mouth fills the screen. Struggling to hold his mouth open, he attempts to talk to the viewer, intoning in an almost unintelligible voice: « I’m not closed, I’m open. Come in...You can do anything with me. Come in. I won’t stop you. I can’t close you off. I won’t close you in, I won’t trap you. It’s not a trap. » As though under the authority of an implicit contract with the viewer, Acconci fights to keep his « promise » of remaining open. When his mouth accidentally closes, he begs for the viewer’s forgiveness: « That was a mistake. I won’t close. I won’t close you off. I won’t close you in. I’m open to everything.... » The controlled action is typical of the works in which Acconci sets up an implicit agreement to perform a specific act for the viewer.

Open Book 09:10 1974

Acconci’s open mouth is framed by the camera in an extreme close-up, bringing the viewer uncomfortably close. A  desperate sense of strained urgency comes across as Acconci gasps, «I’ll accept you, I won’t shut down, I won’t shut you out... I’m open to you, I’m open to everything... This is not a trap, we can go inside, yes, come inside...» Acconci continues to plead in this way for the length of the tape, his mouth held unnaturally wide open. The pathological psychology of such enforced openness betrays a desperate struggle to accept and be accepted by others. The sustained image of Acconci’s open mouth also evidences a sinister, vaguely threatening streak that is more or less evident in much of Acconci’s work.

- ACCONCI Vito, Shoot, 1974.
 10 :18 min, color. Sound.

Shoot is a bold, theatrical work that merges the autobiographical with the cultural. Acconci’s performance is an assault, a barrage of aggressive action, visuals and language. Acconci imitates the sounds of war, gunfire and explosion ; he trusts his face, stomach or penis onto the screen. His childlike battle sounds are interrupted with monologues in which he defines himself as an American, with ironic references to cultural cliches and stereotypes. « Yeah, I’m an American. I can’t help it… I’m not trying to parody America now. I’m not trying to parody myself. I really do like Coca Cola. I’m not acting, this is really the truth. I really do like it… » He asserts his cultural identity only to reject it : «  No, I have an Italian name, my father’s Italian. I’m not really Americana t all, I have a tradition, I have au culture. » Vulgar and outrageous, Acconci  plays out the nightmare of the American Dream. He waves his penis at the camera, «  The savage American is here ! I’m everyone’s clown, I’m everyone’s fool. »

- ACCONCI Vito, Turn On, 1974.
21:52 min. color. Sound. 

Turn-On  is one of Acconci’s most charged and dramatic exercises, a tense and dynamic confrontation with the viewer. The back of Acconci’s head is seen in tight close-up. He hums to himself, first lyrically, then aggressively, violently. Suddenly he wheels around to face the camera, his face filling the screen in extreme close-up, squinting at the viewer and speaking breathlessly : « Now I have to face you now. Reveal myself… But you can’t take it yet. I have to wait. » He turns and continues to hum, repreating this cycle again and again. Each time he faces the camera, the intensity increases. He addresses aspects of his art through his relation to the viewer, confronting the autobiographical within the context of his art-making : « I can talk about her, but maybe you’re heard me talk too much about women. » Eventually he rejects his own art-making strategies : « I’ve been too abstract, now I can be concrete, no more galleries, no more museums. It’s me. I have no conviction anymore. I can’t find any reason to do art. » Ultimately, he insists, « I’m waiting for you… not to be there. »

- Action by Sculptors for the Home Audience. Television broadcast of actions by sculptors, organized by Tom Marioni, director of MOCA, San Francisco, 1974.

- ALPERT Richard, On Our Way, 1974 . 

— Richard Alpert, Text and photo documentation of works : On Our Way (1974) and Stretch (1975). Published in : Kostelanetz, Richard and Korn, Henry (eds). 7th Assembling, New York.

- ALPERT Richard, Probe, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

— Richard Alpert, South of the Slot, San Francisco: Richard Alpert, 1975. Catalogue of photo documentation for the South of the Slot series that took place at Bluxome St., San Francisco, during October-November 1974.

Among the participants who presented performances: Richard Alpert (Probe), Joel Glassman (Prisoners), Pat Ferrero (Mirror Reflections), Stephen Laub (My Father in 1974 Standing Still, My Mother in 1974 Standing Still), Terry Fox (Halation), Tom Marioni (Drum Brush Lecture), Paul Kos (Battle Mountain), Jim Melchert (Points of View Series), Irv Tepper (videotapes Alpha-bet, Sheldon), Bill Morrison (Solo at the Sink), Jim Pomeroy (Composition in D), Paul DeMarinis (C.K.T.), MOTION (Performance Relay), Linda Montano (Death and Birth: A Crib Event), K.P. Costello (Analogy/Installation), Mills College Center for Contemporary Music, Alan Scarrit (Flow), Vaea (Music is Dangerous), John Gillen (Down Hill Slide), Jack Ogden & Jimmy Suzuki (Blank Space), Jeffrey Weiss (One or the Other or Both that Makes Three Possibilities; a Visual Score for Samuel Beckett, Albert Ayler, and Martha Reeves), Simone Forti (videotapes Grizzlies, Solo No.1). Excerpt, Introduction from catalogue:

« SOUTH OF THE SLOT was a group show that took place in San Francisco during the month of October and November in 1974. It was a show that was organized by a group of artists as a much needed forum for a particular type of work.

Organized around a loose structure, the artist that participated were asked to choose a date and time at which they would present their work. The space at 63 Bluxome Street in San Francisco was made available to them throughout the two month period with no stated restrictions as to how the space was to be used.

The work that was presented differed widely each individual, but in general relied on real-time presentation for transferring information from artist to audience. The directness of this type of transference sets up a field of variable very different from traditional forms of art. Each artist dealt with these variables by finding a mode which best suited the ideas inherent in the design of the presented situation. The twenty-two presentations included such various modes as: video performance and live performance, projections and photo-decumentation, dance and music, tableau and environmental situation. »

— Phil Linhares, « South of the Slot », Artweek, v.6, January 11, 1975, pp.6-7. Text and photo documentation of the South of the Slot performance series at 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco.

- ALPERT Richard, Strategy for a Dance, University of California, Davis, Ca., 1974.

« In the front of the entrance to the room in which the performance took place was a container dripping water onto a hot plate, and a video monitor showing an overview of the interior of the room. I began the performance by writing a statement about the relationship between the different parts of the performance in chalk on the floor. After I finished writing, I picked up the hammer and began to strike a lead ball which has suspended from the ceiling. As I continued to hit it, small fragments of lead were thrown about the space. The performance ended when the ball has desintegrated. »

- ANT FARM. The Cadillac Ranch Show, 1974 (videotape), 30 mins., color. 

« Cadillac Ranch : Home on the Range », San Francisco Magazine. August 1974.

- ANTIN Eleanor, « Autobiography of the artist as an Autobiographer, » LAICA Journal, October 1974.

- ANTIN Eleanor, Black is Beautiful, 1974 (videotape, 10 mins., b/w).

- ANTIN Eleanor, The Ballerina and the Bum, 1974, 53 min., b&w, sound. 

Le personnage de ballerine créé par Eleanor Antin apparaît à la même époque que ceux du roi et de l’infirmière. Selon l’artiste, le personnage de la ballerine est son idéal féminin, car en tant qu’artiste et en tant que femme, elle se trouve en marge de la société. La ballerine, artiste idéalisée totalement consacrée à la maîtrise de son art, doit cependant faire face à de nombreux échecs et déceptions. Par ailleurs, la ballerine est le paradigme du rêve de petite fille qui ne se réalise jamais.

Antin a étudié la danse pendant plusieurs mois afin d’interpréter ce personnage de danseuse qu’elle utilise dans plusieurs de ses vidéos. Ainsi elle va le faire évoluer jusqu’à la transformer en Eleonora Antinova, ballerine noire américaine vieillissante, ancienne vedette des ballets russes de Serge de Diaghilev. Si le personnage est fictif, la compagnie de balllet est bien réelle. Dans The Ballerina and the Bum, Eleanor Antin apparaît comme une danseuse très ambitieuse dont le principal objectif est de traverser les États-Unis pour rejoindre New York, la ville de toutes les réussites.

Au cours de son périple, alors qu’elle attend le départ d’un train de marchandise, elle fait la connaissance d’un vagabond avec lequel elle partage son rêve de succès. ils discutent de la vie et de leurs espoirs tout en attendant le départ du train qui les mènera à New York, à la concrétisation de leurs rêves.

Eleanor Antin révèle dans cette vidéo ses talents pour la parole, à la manière de Charlie Chaplin ; elle est vêtue comme une danseuse, avec un tutu et des chaussons de danse. Cette oeuvre pleine d’humour, à travers cette rencontre atypique, ironise et propose une réflexion sur le mythe américain qui suppose que toute personne vivant aux États-Unis peut atteindre le succès grâce à sa force de travail, sa détermination et son talent.

(Priscilla Marques)

http://www.newmedia-arts.be/cgi-bin/show-oeu.asp?ID=150000000060565&lg=FRA

The artist’s ballerina self–represented here as « would-be ballerina from the sticks » - plans to walk accross the United States to « make it in the Big City ». She meets a bum on a freight train and together they dream of success. Ballerina : Eleanor Antin. Bum : Lennart Bowein. Camera : Philip Steinmetz. Technical Advisor : Chick Cox.

— Eleanor Antin, « Dialogue with a medium, » Art-Rite, no.7, Automn 1974, pp.23-24, Video Issue. Excerpt:

« As an artist attracted to working with my own skin, I also needed a mythological machine; but one capable of calling up and defining my self. I finally settled upon a quadripolar system, sort of magnetic field of 4 polar charged images – the Ballerina, the King, the Black Movie star and the Nurse. The psychoanalytic method of mythological exploration is a conversation one, a dialogue in which 2 people over a period of time share a history which they can hold each other responsible for. A certain narrative constancy lies out there in the world between them into which they can place new material and to which they can always refer. Since my dialogue is with myself, my method is to use video, still photography, painting, drawings, writing, performing as mediums between me and myself se we can talk to each other. It is a shamanist theatre which remains out there as proof of itself after the seance is over. »

— Eleanor Antin, « On Self Transformation, » Flash Art, March/April 1974.

— Charles Kessler, « Los Angeles: Eleanor Antin at womanspace, » Art in America, v.62, July 1974, pp.95-96.

Review of Antin’s performance entitled, Eleanor 1954, presented at Womanspace gallery, Los Angeles.

- BANANA Anna, « Manifesto », Intermedia, no. 1, vol. 1, 1974, pp. 6-7. 

Excerpt : « DADA CONSCIOUSNESS is a state of mind that enables a person to withdraw from the immediate, personnal involvementt in the world around us. …to suspend his belief in the currently touted « system of values » – to observe how very ridiculous and futile most of those values and those activities so generated, really are. »

- BANANA Anna & Mr. Peanut, 1974, Art Race, Vancouver Art Gallery.

- BANANA Anna, Columbus Day Parade Entries in San Francisco, publicized by San Francisco Guardian, 1974-76-77-78.

- BANANA Anna & GAGLIONE Bill, Vile, San Francisco, no.1, 1974.

Editors, Anna Banana and Bill Gaglione; Publishers, Banana Productions.

- BARK Jared, Lights, 1974. Photo. Babette Mangolte.

- BENGLIS Linda, Untitled, nov. 1974 (photo) couverture revue Artforum.

« For the invitations to her exhibitions Benglis used images of herself in various gender roles: posing like a man with a car, or in a pin-up style, submissive feminine role, for example. This infamous advertisement placed in Artforum was initially intended as a centerfold artist’s statement but it was not permitted by the magazine’s editor. She declined the magazine’s offer to run her image with an article on her work, instead paying for advertising space under her gallery’s name, claiming ‘…that placing the gallery’s name on the work strengthened the statement, thereby mocking the commercial aspect of the ad, the art-star system and the way artists use themselves, their persona, to sell the work. It was mocking sexuality, masochism and feminism. The context of the placement of the ad in an art magazine was important’ », in Tracey Warr & Amelia Jones, The Artist’s Body, London, Phaidon Press Ltd, 2000.

- BEUYS Joseph, Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974. Block Galery. NYC.
video 37:07 min., sound, b/w, René Block Collection.

In the course of the performance Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), Joseph Beuys spent three days with a coyote – a predatory animal considered holy by Native Americans. At the beginning of the performance Beuys was carried on a stretcher from the JFK airport in New York to the Rene Block Gallery, with his body entirely wrapped in felt (an insulating material related to the artist’s survival as a German pilot during WWII). After three days, during which Beuys and the coyote developed tentative reciprocal relations, Beuys was once again wrapped in felt and led back to the airport in an ambulance. Beuys said that during the performance he functioned as a kind of modern shaman, a German citizen experiencing the accelerated process of Americanization that took place during the 1950s. His interest in the coyote’s mythical ‘‘free spirit’’ acquired a sociopolitical dimension in this context: the healing of the roots of the American trauma related to the violence employed against Native Americans, and an allusion to Americanization as symbolizing Western capitalism more generally.

- BOHMERT Hermann, Soft Machine, 1974. Zürich.

- BRISLEY Stuart, Bathworks, Berlin. 1974.

- BUCHANAN Nancy, Please sing along, 1974.

- BUCHANAN Nancy (with Ransom Rideout), Rock’n’Roll Piece, 10 août 1974, Gerard John Hayes Gallery, Westwood. CA.

— Nancy Buchanan, « Rock’n’ Roll Pieces », La Mamelle Magazine: Art Contemporary, no.4, v.1, Spring 1976, pp.8-9. Documentation with text and photo of performance work presented in August 1974 at the Gerard John Hayes Gallery, Los Angeles. Excerpt:

« In preparation for this performance, I had multiple photographs made of myself wearing a long, blonde wig, which I signed and numbered; there were sold as raffle tickets.

The audience was greeted by Blue Cheer, a rock’n’roll band, who introduced me. Together we performed a song entitled ‘Union Oil Compny’s annual report to shareholders’, which I composed from the written by Fred Hartley, Jr (Union Oil). I was then blindfolded and drew two winners of the raffle. While seated at a small table, a performer drew a syringe full of my blood. I announced that the raffle prize was four shares each of Union Oil stock, which I had inherited from my family some years previously. I read the latest Dow Jones averages for Union Oil from the ‘Wall Street Journal’, and signed away ownership with the blood. »

- BURDEN Chris, Chris Burden 71-73. Los Angeles: Self-published, 1974.

A catalogue documenting Burden’s performance work from 1971 through 1973; photographs and text.

- BURDEN Chris, Dreamy Nights-Art as Living Ritual, 1974.

- BURDEN Chris, Kunst Kick, 1974.

- BURDEN Chris, Oh Dracula, 1974.

- BURDEN Chris, Sculpture in Three Parts, 1974. Hansen Fuller Gallery, San Francisco, Ca. September 10-21, 1974.

« I sat on a small metal stool placed on a sculpture stand directly in front of the gallery entrance, an elevator door. A sign on the stand read: ‘Sculpture in Three Parts. I will sit on this chair from 10:30 am 9/10/74 until I fall off.’ About 10 feet away, a camera was constantly attended by changing photographers waiting to take a photograph as I fell. I sat on the chair for 43 hours. When I fell, a chalk outline was drawn on the floor around my body. I wrote ‘Forever’ inside the outline. I placed another sign on the stand which read: ‘I sat on this chair from 10:30 am 9/10/74 until fell off at 5:25 am 9/12/74.’ The chair, stand, and outline remained on exhibit until September 21. »

— Barbara Radice, « Chris Burden, » DATA, v.4, no.12, Summer 1974, pp.106-109. In « Practice and Theory of Art » issue. Article on Burden with text (in italian) and photo documentation of several performance works (photo captions in Italian and English).

— M. L. Sowers, « Chris Burden Performs, » Artweek, v.5, October 5, 1974, p.3. Review of Burden’s duration piece at the Hansen-Fuller Gallery, San Francisco. Burden sat on a chair that was raised on a stand and situated in front of the gallery’s elevator doors until he fell off, 43 hours later.

- BURDEN Chris, The Visitation, 1974, Hamilton College, Clinton, NYC, Nov 9.

- BURDEN Chris, Trans-Fixed, 1974 (Body Art). Venice. Californie.
April 23, 1974. 

« Inside a small garage on Speedway Avenue, I stood on the rear section of the car, stretching my arms onto the roof. Nails were driven through my palms onto the roof of the car. The garage door was opened and the car was pushed half way out into the speedway. Screaming for me the engine was run at full speed for two minutes. After two minutes, the engine was turned off and the car pushed back into the garage. The door was closed. » 

- BURDEN Chris, Velvet Water, 1974.

- BURDEN Chris, Video Performance, 1974.

— Liza Bear, « Chris Burden… Back to You, » Avalanche Newspaper, May/June 1974. An interview on Burden’s first New York Performance; at 112 Greene st., Video Performance events. Excerpt:

« Liza Bear: On the video monitors during the performance it looked as though Larry Bell had stuck several pushpins into your stomach. But after the show I heard a rumor that the tips were broken off and covered with gum.

CB: Well, that’s a good one! They were standard pushpins, folks that I bought down on Canal Street, 5/8’’ tips! But I did sterilize them in alcohol. And you could smell that in the elevator… I didn’t even know it was Larry  because his face was upside down. I thought he was in New Mexico. Then he said – ‘‘Where do you want me to stick there?’’ and I recognized his voice.

LB: That wasn’t audible to the audience on the monitors.

CB: I know. I didn’t say anything, so he tried to poke one into my arm and his hand was shaking so bad that the pin rolled right off. Then he started sticking them into my stomach, but my head was back so I couldn’t see what was happening and I thought they were going all the way in. And I thought, ‘‘Gee, that’s great,  they don’t even hurt.’’

LB: They seemed to stay in for a while. They didn’t fall out.

CB: No, no. He stuck them in all right but he didn’t push them in to the hilt.

LB: Had you expected him to do that?

CB: Yeah, it never occurred to me that a person would do it half-way. Either you don’t put them in or you do put them in. »

- CADÉRÉ André, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1974, Bruxelles.

‘‘La barre de bois rond est un assemblage de segments peints dont la longueur égale le diamètre et se succédant d’après une méthode comportant des erreurs. Exposé là où il est vu. Ce travail est contraire aux textes et photo ici imprimés. Dépendant des contraintes de ce livre, textes et photos ont un seul rapport avec ce qu’ils décrivent’’ l’incompatibilité. Cadéré, 1978.’’

- CHICAGO Judy, A Butterfly For Pomona, 1974-2012.

- COLETTE, If it takes forever I will wait for you, installation-performance, 1974.

- COLETTE, Persephone’s Bedroom, 1974, Palm Beach, Floride.

- COLETTE, Wake of Madame Recamier, 1974, performance privée.

- COSTELLO K.P., Analogy/Installation, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- DAMON Betsy, 7000 Year Old Woman, 1974.

- DARANSKY Marianne, Performance, 1974.

- DE COINTET Guy, The Paintings of Sophie Rummel. Cirrus Gallery Los Angeles, Ca., 1974. Performed by Viva.

— Sandy Ballatore, « Paintings, Puzzles and Performance, » Artweek, v.5, April 27, 1974. Review of de Cointet’s show/performance with Viva at Cirrus Editions, Los Angeles.

— Guy de Cointet, « Guy de Cointet, » LAICA Journal, no.4, February 1975, pp.29-30. Documentation/script for Sophie Rummel, played by Viva, at Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, April 1974. Excerpt:

« The scene is at the ‘World Boostore’, on Cahuenga between Selma and Hollywood. Joyce N. is a journalist and she is interviewing the artist Sophie Rummel. It is 8 o’clock at night.

– How are you Sophie?

A sensual Santa Ana has been blowing all day. Now on the clear sky with moon, the capricious forms of buildings, palm trees, stand out in black relief. Not waiting for an answer Joyce can’t hold her admiration.

– What a majestic sight! What a serenity! I wonder what makes it all so impressive?

– ‘Here she comes!… Suddenly a slim figure…’

Sophie Rummel is reading aloud from a book she just picked up at random: ‘…a slim figure in a green silk dress appeared… Her long auburn hair glistened under the bright, colored lights. Her smile was captivating, entrancing. Electricity seemed to crackle from her. The crowd burst into thunderous applause, a spontaneous demonstration of their love for her. The ovation ceased abruptly as she led the standing people in her theme song:

He touch me! Oh, he touched me!

And oh, the joy that floods my

soul! Something happened…

- DE COINTET Guy (Dr. Hun). TSNZ CZYV A7ME. Venice, Ca.: Sure, Co. 

Artist book; a play in a pseudo language.

- DECCADANCE, Art’s Stars in Hollywood: The Deccadance, Los Angeles, February 2, 1974.

Videotape, 1 hour. On the ceremonial dinner, awards presentation, and the Daccadance event. Produced by Chip Lord and Megan Williams with the assistance of Willoughby Sharp, Environmental Communications, ACE Space Co., and Willy Walker.

- DECCADANCE, Art’s Stars Interviews, Los Angeles, 1974. Videotape, 1 hour. 

Features Willougby Sharp video with some of the Canadian Deccadance participants: Marcel Idea, Mr. Peanut, A.A. Bronson, Dr. Brute, Lady Brute, Granada Gazelle and others.

- DECCADANCE, Hollywood Edition Art’s Birthday. February 2, 1974.

A newsprint tabloid, produced on the occasion of the Deccadance event. excerpts:

ELK’S BUILDING, LOS ANGELES, FEB. 2

The Decca Dancers, with approval in principal from Robert Filliou and the Eternal Work, celebrated the one million and eleventh Anniversary of the birth art. There was no worldwide school vacation or paid holiday for all the workers of the world, but for the eight-hundred people who attended there was an evening of all-round festivities and spontaneous funmaking as the Canadian dancers saluted the network and opened the doors of a New Era with the presentation of the Sphinx D’Or Awards.

SPHINX D’OR AWARDS

BEST ANIMAL IMPERSONATION – Irene Dogmatic for Mildred Doggerel, Oakland.

ART’S DEAD BUT GOSSIP’S STILL ALIVE – Noah Dakota Toronto.

BEST CONTRIBUTION IN A RAPID OFFSET ZINE – John Dowd N.Y. and Bum Bank Vancouver for Fanzine Fanzani.

BEST GLOSSY ZINE –Ifel Toronto and Fanzini Goes To The Movies Vancouver.

BOOKIE OF THE YEAR – David Young, Toronto.

BEST ALIAS – Willoughby Sharp, N.Y. for Mighty Mogul and Lowell Darling Hollywood for Duddley Finds.

BEST NEW TALENT – Gilbert and George, England.

MS. CONGENIALITY – Anna Banana, San Francisco.

I NEVER PROMISED YOU A RROSE GARDEN MOSTLY FLOWERS AWARD – the judges were unable to reach a decision so there was no winner.

TOM OF FINLAND BULDGE EVENT FOR BUDDHA UNIVERSITY – Pablo Picasso posthumously.

BEST CONTRIBUTION TO ART DECO IN 1984 – Ms. Rhonda, Vancouver.

BEST ZEROX ART – Les Petites Bonbons Los Angeles for Meet Andy and David.

BEST CAMOUFLAGE – Dr. Brute, Vancouver for Spots in Front of Your Eyes.

BEST BUSINESS WOMAN – Sandy Stagg, Toronto for Amelia Earhart Originals.

THE SPHINX D’OR AWARD – Count Fanzini, Vancouver for Bum Bank. »

— James Minton, « Decca Dance in the City of Angeles, » Artweek, v.5: part 1, february 23, 1974, p.7; part 2, March 2, 1974, p.6; part 3, March 9, 1974, p.2. An extensive three part article on the international Deccadance event, to celebrate Art’s one million and eleventh birthday, held at the Helks Hotel, Hollywood, California.

— « The Hollywood Deccadance Art’s Birthday, February 2, 1974 », Mondo Artie, Episode No.1681/IS, no.17, Fall 1975. Special issue of IS., edited by Vic d’Or for The Eternal Network; documents the Deccadance held in Los Angeles, 1974. Excerpt:

« [Marcel Idea (Michael Morris)]

Friends, we are from Canadada to celebrate the one million and eleventh anniversary of the birth of art. We plan to have a marvelous time tonight. Don’t worry about art, there will be plenty, there will be art coming out of your ears, nose and Private Partz. Art was life and in the next decade we hope it will be the same again.

- DeMARINIS Paul, C.K.T., 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- FERRERO Pat, Mirror Reflections, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- FORTI Simone, Grizzlies, Solo No.1, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974. Videotapes

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

Simone Forti (1935, Italy, USA) came of age in the 1950s and 1960s and developed out of two main influences: dance improvisation which she studied with Anna Alprin, and the legendary Judson Dance Theater that revolutionized modern dance in New York at a historical moment of dialogue between artist, musicians, poets and dancers. From her early minimalist dance-construction, through her animal movement studies, land portraits and new animations, Forti has had a seminal influence on her field. For the past two decades she has been developing ‘Logomotion,’ an improvisation dance/narrative form.

Adopting the movements of various animals Simone Forti begins the performance by walking hypnotically in circles. She falls to the floor and begins a cycle of walking and crawling that becomes an open metaphor for evolution and aging. Through the course of the performance, the camera follows Forti’s circling motion at increasingly close range, creating an interactive dance between camera and performer. While ‘rustic’ in respect to the quality of the video image and sound, Solo No.1 serves as an engaging document of Forti’s didicated study of natural movement.

- FOX Terry, Bowing, 1974, MOCA, San Francisco, California.

- FOX Terry, Children’s Tapes, San Francisco, 1974. Videotape series, b/w.

— Terry Fox, « Children’s Tapes, » Arts Magazine, v.49, December 1974, pp.54-57. Text and photo documentation of Fox’s series of videotapes entitled, Children’s Tapes. Excerpt:

« Each silent tape involves the same elements (spoon, fork, bowl, cloth, candle, fire, and water) in new situations of accord with each other as well as in transformed physical states. The tapes were made on a table using a single light source and I both operated the equipment and performed the actions…

[Scenario for one of the tapes]: Pressure on the skin, combustion, silver rests on the skin, soft radius, forked, the skin pulsates, the spoon is warmed, hot wax falls on the skin, fire tunnels to the fork, solid to liquid to solid to form the bridge, the spoon falls and the skin rises, wall of water rises around the spoon, skin mirror reflects the falling flame, skin surrounds the fallen wax. (11 minutes). »

— Willoughby Sharp & Liza Bear, « Terry Fox: Children’s Videotapes, » Avalanche Newspaper, December 1974, pp.32-33. Terry Fox interview, conducted after his Children’s Tapes were shown for the first time, May 25-June 25, 1974, at the Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York. Excerpts:

« WS: Why did you choose those objects?

TF: Because they’re objects I’m familiar with. I really get off on certain situations and objects that have their own substance and reality. But it’s not so much an interest in those particular objects that the tapes convey, it’s more an attitude…

LB: I like watching what was happening, though.

TF: Well, amazing things are happening. That’s why I shot them really close up, to focus in on all the minute events. But besides that, there’s a kind of attitude that’s communicated by the tapes.

LB: What attitude ?

TF: An attitude of contemplation… of wonderment, of relating to something real… without having to take sides…

WS: So the tapes are demonstrations of phenomena.

TF: Phenomena and their worlds. Like all the different shapes the candle can assume, all the kinds of things you can do to it, things that happen to it. like with the flame, you can skin the flame, take away all its color and make it invisible with a fork. There were constant variations on those objects together – the fork and the candle, or the candle and the water, or the water and the bowl… »

- FOX Terry, Halation, 1974, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- FREED Hermine, Art Herstory, 1974. 

In Art Herstory Freed has inserted herself into paintings using blue-screen special effects. She animates the characters in paintings form the Renaissance to Impressionism with an explanatory voiceover running throughout. 

- FRIED Howard, (James Minton) « Kos and Fried, », Artweek, v.5, April 20, 1974, p.4.

Review of an exhibition featuring Howard Fried and Paul Kos, at the University Art Gallery, San Jose State University.

- FRIEDMAN Ken, Source, Music of the Avant-Garde, no.2, 1974.

A participation issue guest edited by Ken Friedman with “intermedia“ orientation. Some California participants included in issue: Tom Marioni, Allan Kaprow, Jock Reynolds, and Ken Friedman.

— Ken Friedman, Source, Music of the Avant-Garde, reviewed by Judith Hoffberg, Artweek, v.9, September 7, 1974, p.15. Review of the second issue of Source, guest edited by Ken Friedman.

- FRIEDMAN Ken — Cecile McCann, « Ken Friedman’s Subtle Art, » Artweek, v.5, September 21, 1974, p.4.

Review of Friedman’s exhibition at the Phoenix Gallery, San Francisco. « His work often takes the form of actions, performances or events, as well as communicative objects that can more easily be presented in a gallery situation. »

- FRIEDMAN Ken — Thomas Radford, Ken Friedman: Sightings. Cheney, Wa.: Eastern Washington State College, 1974.

Description of a project by Ken Friedman.

- GECHTMAN Gideon, Exposure, 1974, video 3:43 minutes, sound, b/w.

Born in Alexandria, lives and works in Rishon LeZion.

Gideon Gechtman’s work Exposure  (1974) was created as a video performance. Gechtman documented himself thoroughly shaving his naked body a short time after undergoing a heart operation. The act of shaving, which was extended from the chest to the entire body, transformed his illness into an expanded metaphor, a ritual amplification of the loss of identity, of sickness and of the prospect of the death. The possibility of addressing the condition of the inhured, vulnerable body was made possible at least in part by the generally morbid that pervaded Israel after the Yom Kippur War. The personal illness echoes a shocked and battered collective spirit, to which the pilling-up of the shaved hair adds Holocaust related associations.

- GECHTMAN Gideon, Naked, 1974 (action-photo).

- GEIGER Anna Bella, Passagens n.1, 1974.

Anna Bella Geiger (1933, Brazil) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Her influential oeuvre is characterized by the use of language and different media, ranging from painting, drawing, photography, photoengraving and montage to (performative) video. Since the 1960s she has explored the relationship between body, space and (national) territory often extending ‘‘the language of maps and cosmological charts… the ‘geography’ of the human body. The artist has called that confluence ‘anthropomorphic cartography’.’’ (Marek Bartelik) Anna Bella Geiger is part of a generation, who experienced Brazilian dictatorship and economical hardship, which influenced her artistic language, being poetic and decisively political at the same time.

The video Passagens n.1 shows a woman (the artist) climbing stairs in repetitive acts, gradually proceeding from the internal, private staircase of a residential house to the monumental flight of stairs of a public building. While alluding to the tedious repetitive labour of (women’s) everyday chores and movements, the video also hints at a possible transgression – slowly but decisively approaching the centre of public power.

- GERZ Jochen, Leben, 1974. Action-installation.

Jochen Gerz writes by hand the word ‘Leben’ all over the floor of an exhibition space, meaning the visitors have to trample on the artist’s words. The performance as physical process and art-work involving the usage of real life-time can be grasped only through the medium of the words on the floor.

- GETTER Tamar, Golem, 1974-1975.

In Getter’s work Golem (1974-1975), Michal Na’aman is seen drawing a circle with her left hand, which she uses as a dial. Na’aman, whose head is wrapped in white fabric, connects a rope to an X marking the center of the circle and coils it around her neck. She looks like a golem of sorts that has been condemned to death, and her appearance underscores the condition of her trapped body. Na’aman’s use of her left hand prevents her from skillfully controlling her movements, and constitutes an intentionally self-limiting action.

- GETTER Tamar, Kozo Ocamoto Pumpkin-Head, 1974-1975.

In her work Kozo Ocamoto Pumpkin-Head (1974-1975), Getter performs a series of futile actions while impersonating a ridiculous version of a Japanese Samurai of sorts. This figure, which resembles a scarecrow, is shown in a series of humiliating situations; it is related to the figure of Kozo Ocamoto, the Japanese terrorist who was involved in the Ben-Gurion airport massacre in 1972. Getter notes that when the character she impersonates writes the sentence ‘‘Kozo Ocamoto Pumpkin-Head’’ on the blackboard, it seems to be attempting to divest itself of blame.

- GETTER Tamar, Roof, 1974-75.

In Tamar Getter’s work Roof (1974-1975), a figure (Efrat Natan) was filmed moving along the edge of a roof while wearing a long pointed hat, which lends her the appearance of a clownish midget charting its territory. The figure’s movement is amplified by the movement of her elongated hat by the angle of the camera, which creates a markedly foreshortened image.

- GILBERT & GEORGE, The Red Sculpture, 1974, Sonnabend Gallery, NYC.

- GILLEN John, Down Hill Slide, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- GLASSMAN Joel, Prisoners, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- HARRISON Newton, Lagoon, 1974.

- HARRISON Newton, Portable Fish Farm, 1974.

— Newton Harrison, « Sea Grant Second Narrative and Two Precedent Works by Newtion Harrison, » Studio International, v.187, May 1974, pp.234-237. An article about Harrison’s works, Lagoon and Portable Fish Farm, includes photographs and photocopies of drawings.

- HERSHMAN Lynn, Chelsea Hotel, New York, 1974.

— Lynn Hershman, Forming a Sculptured/Drama in Manhattan, self-published, 1974.

Documentary artist book; text and photo documentation of Chelsea Hotel piece, New York, October 21-December 15, 1974. Excerpt:

« TENTATIVE PROPOSAL FOR PROJET IN CONJUNCTION WITH STEFANOTTY GALLERY

DATES: NOVEMBER 23, 1974 TILL JANUARY 5, 1975, 24 hours a day

PROPOSED PLAN: A rented bus will depart from the gallery at various intervals during the day, transporting viewers to the installations. At this point, rooms or walk in tableaux will be incorporated within the structures of St. Regis Hotel, The Central Y.M.C.A., the Chelsea Hotel and Roosevelt Hospital.

Individual Curators for each room will be hired through N.Y.U. and Cooper Union. These individuals will let viewers into the rooms and care for the installation.

The catalogue/brochure will be a fold out postcard with photographs and a map of each site. This will be made available and distributed by the Gallery as well as be on the bus and at each location.

It is hoped that the installation will take into account the potential and actual energies of each building and render an awareness of the social ecology, balanced by each individual’s experiences.

Gallery’s responsabilities: to act as an interpreter for the project and in my absence discuss and explain the project to various media.

Each room will incorporate sound, light, wax sculpture, and a fixed tableaux made of materials found inside each building. The dates were selected in order to take advantage of the nostalgia of the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. »

- HERSHMAN Lynn, Commercials for ‘‘Forming a Sculpture Drama in Manhattan’’, 1974.

In five TV commercials, men and women of different racial backgrounds explain that they are Lynn Hershman. The commercials were advertisements for Hershman’s site-specific work Forming a Sculpture Drama in Manhattan. For this piece, the identities of three fictional women were reconstructed through personal traces, objects, smells and sounds in three hotels rooms: one in the Chelsea Hotel, one in the Plaza et one in the Central YWCA in New York. During the installation (October-November 1974), these rooms were accessible to viewers 24 hours a day. This project was an extension of Hershman’s concept of living environments that goes back to her work Dante Hotel. The American television station ABC broadcast the commercials in New York in October 1974.

- HERSHMAN Lynn, Plaza Hotel/November 2-3, 1974, self-published, 1974.

A documentary artist book on a work that took place at the Plaza Hotel, New York. Includes one-page text with nine pages of photos.

- HILLER Susan, Dream Mapping, 1974. Hampshire. Angleterre.

- HORN Rebecca, Berlin Exercises in Nine Pieces, Videoperformance. 1974-75.

- HUEBLER Douglas, « Heubl, Heubler, Heublest, » Art-Rite, no.5, Spring 1974, pp.4-6.

- JOB Enrico, Bodymap, 1974.

« The Bodymap is composed of about one thousand photographs; the skin of the artist’s own body has been subdivided in black pencilled squares of 4.50 cm for the body and 2.50 cm for the head. 

The squares have subsequently been photographed and enlarged twice their actual size and then pasted on wooden panels to recompose the original body in a gigantic puzzle. It appears as a skinned man: a flat animal carpet.

The intention of Bodymap, like that of any other map, is the reduction to a single dimension of a living thing, and therefore it works against the double time-space dimension. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 119)

- JONAS Joan, Funnel, 1974. University of Massachussetts.

— « …le travail de Joan Jonas, l’une des premières artistes à avoir créé cette relation directe entre les installations et la performance, est particulièrement explicite. À la question : « Comment pensez-vous le temporel, la variation, les aspects éphémères de vos performances dans le cadre d’une rétropective muséale ? », l’artiste répond : 

« Lors de ma rétrospective à Berkeley en 1980, j’ai fait des performances dans toutes mes pièces, dans celle-ci [à Stuttgart], je n’en ai fait aucune. Ce ne sont que des nouvelles installations. J’ai utilisé tous les anciens éléments des performances mais pour faire de nouveaux arrangements avec. J’ai stratifié l’information, chargé chaque espace avec de l’information de façon à ce que cela évoque mes performances où il y avait simultanément plusieurs actions réalisées par des personnes différentes. Je voulais que la perception sensorielle soit intacte même si le visiteur ne restait que cinq ou dix minutes dans l’espace. » (J. Simon, « Scenes and Variations », entretien avec Joan Jonas, in Performance, Video, Installation, 1968-2000, (cat. expo.), Ostfildern-Ruit, Hatje Cantz, 2001, p. 26)

Il y a très clairement pour l’artiste, les reproductions ‘‘d’époque’’, qui renvoient le spectateur à une historicité qui est celle du travail au moment de sa création en direct et des mises en espace éclairant la performance sous une autre lumière. Les oeuvres de Joan Jonas portent toujours deux dates, celle de leur naissance et celle de leur exposition. Le temps s’étend entre les deux pour contrer de façon métaphorique la disparition possible. C’est en soulignant ce contraste que Joan Jonas propose une réflexion sur son travail, en insistant sur la possibilité de créer des rencontres permanentes entre film, performance, dessin, danse et installation. Elle-même issue de la sculpture, elle considère son corps comme matériau sculptural dans la pratique de la performance, elle déjoue les catégories artistiques.

« J’ai apporté à la performance ma façon de regarder l’espace illusionniste de la peinture, de tourner autour d’une sculpture ou de marcher dans des espaces architecturaux. Je n’étais presque pas présente dans mes premières performances, j’étais juste là comme un morceau de matériau ou un objet qui se déplaçait avec raideur, comme une marionnette ou une silhouette dans une peinture médiévale, je n’existais pas en tant que Joan Jonas, en tant que ‘‘je’’ individuel mais seulement comme une présence qui faisait partie de l’image. » (idem, p. 27)

(Nathalie Boulouch & Elvan Zabunyan, « Introduction » in Janig Bégoc, Nathalie Boulouch & Elvan Zabunyan, La Performance. Entre archives et pratiques contemporaines, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes & Archives de la critique d’art, 2010, p. 18-19.)

- JOURNIAC Michel, 24 heures de la vie d’une femme ordinaire, 1974. (Galerie Stadler, Paris).

- JÜRGENSSEN Birgit, Hausfrauen Küchenschürze, 1974.

Née à Vienne en 1949 Birgit Jürgenssen décide dès le plus jeune âge que, plus tard, elle sera artiste. Ainsi, dès ses huit ans, le sobriquet « BICASSO Jürgenssen » figure sur le bas de ses dessins -– une fusion de son nom avec celui de Picasso qui laisse présager un avenir prometteur. À dix-sept ans, elle découvre le surréalisme avec le théâtre d’Artaud : elle est aussitôt subjuguée par ce courant littéraire et artistique, qui aura un impact decisif sur son oeuvre. Entre 1968 et 1971, elle fait ses études à l’École des Arts Appliqués de Vienne, où elle commencera à enseigner en 1980. En parallèle, elle crée, dessine, photographie, innove, invente des formes et des langages, embrassant tous les médiums artistiques : dessins, aquarelles, photographies, sculptures, rayogrammes ou performances s’entremêlent ainsi dans un délicieux jeu de contrastes. Cette multiplicité foisonnante donne naissance à une oeuvre féministe critique, engagée et radicale.

À ses débuts, dans les années 70, son oeuvre se déploie comme une véritable attaque en règle contre l’ordre bourgeois patriarcal, avec ses rôles de sexes figés. Une partie importante de son oeuvre est ainsi dédiée à la dénonciation de la condition de la femme au foyer, dépersonnalisée, au mode de vie entièrement quadrillé par les tâches ménagères. L’oeuvre Hausfrauen-Küchenschürze (Tablier de cuisine de la femme au foyer), créé en 1975, est emblématique. L’artiste se photographie, de face et de profil, avec un hybride tridimensionnel suspendu à son cou, qui recouvre son corps dans son intégralité. À la fois tablier et mobilier de cuisine, un four entrouvert sur un plat en cours de cuisson trône en son coeur et se substitue à son ventre. Cette métaphore de la grossesse illustre de façon percutante l’aliénation de la femme, dont l’identité succombe tant à ses fonctions domestiques qu’à son devoir de reproduction.

Birgit Jürgenssen ne se contente pas d’exprimer un état de fait : il s’agit au contraire d’inventer des alternatives, de suggérer des lignes de fuite. Véritable artiste de la métamorphose, elle multiplie les mises en scènes, se déguise, se travestit, démantelant les images conventionnelles de la femme pour inviter à une réflexion globale sur les questions de l’identité, du corps et du genre. Plutôt que de se cantonner l’affirmation d’une essence féminine, Jürgenssen interroge les déterminations de son sexe, épousant toutes les altérités possibles. Entre réalité et apparence, présence et absence, elle se pare de masques d’animaux, se déguise en gladiatrice (cf. 1980) ou en écolière, clamant que la personnalité est avant tout « un produit de combinatoires » [Birgit Jürgenssen, Pulsschlag einer Sinnlichkeit, catalogue de l’exposition Schmuck, Zeichen am Körper (Bijoux, signes sur le corps), Ed. Falter, Vienne, 1987, p. 234] Ces jeux de transformation sont rythmés par l’emploi d’une arme majeure : l’ironie. Car, comme le dit l’artiste dans un entretien, l’autodérision est pour elle « une forme de stratégie autobiographique permettant de transmettre plus facilement un potentiel subversif et déconstructif » [Birgit Jürgenssen, « Quelle expérience de soi fait-on en l’autre, de l’autre en soi ? », entretien avec Rainer Metzger, (« Wie erfährt man sich im Anderen, das andere in sich? », revue Kunstforum International, 164, mars-mai 2003, p. 234-237]. Décédée en 2003, Birgit Jürgenssen a laissé derrière elle une oeuvre marquée par sa pluralité, son caractère mouvant, polyvalent. En trente ans de création, les séries d’une diversité extrême se succèdent, tissant un réseau de significations entre elles par la continuité d’une démarche féministe. L’artiste sculpte et remodèle des chaussures (série Schuhwerk), en tant que stéréotypes de la fétichisation de l’identité féminine, explore le leitmotiv de la représentation de la mort sous le visage de la femme (série Totentanz mit Mädchen) ou encore utilise son corps comme surface de projection d’images et d’objets étrangers (série Körperprojektionen). La force de l’oeuvre de Birgit Jürgenssen réside ainsi dans son ambivalence, irréductible à un langage unitaire. D’un apport majeur pour la réflexion féministe moderne et posmoderne, elle mérite aujourd’hui d’être redécouverte dans toute sa richesse. (http://elles.centrepompidou.fr/blog/?p=819)

- KAPROW Allan, « Hello: Plan and Execution, » Art-Rite, no.7, Autumn 1974, pp. 17-18. 

Excerpt:

« A global network of simultaneously transmitting and receiving “TV Arcades.“ Open to the public twenty-four hours a day, like any washerette. An arcade in every big city of the world. Each equipped with a hundred of more monitors of different sizes from a few inches to wall-scale, in planar and irregular surfaces. A dozen automatically moving cameras (like those secreted in banks and airports, but now prominently displayed) will pan and fix anymore or anything that happens to come along or be in view. Including cameras and monitors if no one is present. A person will be free to do whatever he wants, and will see himself on the monitors in different ways. A crowd of people may multiply their images into a throng.

But the cameras will send the same images to all other arcades, at the same time or after a programmed delay. Thus what happens in one arcade may be happening in a thousand, generated a thousand times. But the built-in-program for distributing the signals, visible and audible, random and fixed, could also be manually altered at any arcade. A woman might want to make electronic love to a particular man she saw on a monitor. Controls would permit her to localize (freeze) the communication within a few TV tubes. Other visitors to the same arcade may feel free to enjoy and even enhance the mad and surprising scramble by turning their dials accordingly. The world could make up its own social relations as it went along! Everybody in and out of touch all at once! »

- KAPROW Allan, « The Education of the Un-Artist, Part III, » Art in America, v.62, January/February 1974.

- KAPROW Allan, Routine, Portland, Ore: Portland Center for the Visual Arts, 1974. 

16 mm film with sound, approx. 20 mins., b/w.

- KAPROW Allan, 2nd Routine, NYC: Stefanotty Gallery, 1974. Artist Book + videotape, 15 mins., b/w.

- KAPROW Allan, Then, Firenze, Italy: Art/Tapes, 1974. Videotape, 30 mins., b/w.

- KIPPER KIDS, 1974, Los Angeles (photo)

- KLAUKE Jürgen, Gebaute Figuren, 1974. (photo)

- KLAUKE Jürgen, Masculin-Féminin, 1974.

- KLAUKE Jürgen, Rot, 1974. (photo)

- KOS Paul,  (James Minton) « Kos and Fried, », Artweek, v.5, April 20, 1974, p.4.

— Review of an exhibition featuring Howard Fried and Paul Kos, at the University Art Gallery, San Jose State University.

- KOS Paul, Battle Mountain, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- KOS Paul, Pilot Light, Pilot Butte, 1974. Videotape. 

Kos shaping ice to make a lens in order to build a fire at Pilot Butte.

— Tom Kent, « Paul Kos – Videotapes and Sculptural Residue, » Artweek, v.5, November 2, 1974, p.5. Review of Kos’ exhibition at the DeYoung Museum, San Francisco, featuring his Pilot Butte, Wyoming piece, includes videotape of performance and documentation/objects related to the work. Excerpt:

« ‘It seemed Pilot Butte needed a pilot light to extend its visibility,’ says Paul Kos. ‘So I lit a fire on top using a block of ice after first fashioning a magnifying lens out of it.’ The laying of the fire, the making of the lens, the ignition, burning and eventual extinghishing of the fire by the melting ice comprise a spare, ironic ritual performed by Kos in August of this year, recorded by his wife Marlene on a videotape… »

- LACY Suzanne, Three Works from the Teeth Series. 1974. Videotape with sound, 7 mins., b/w.

- LAUB Stephen, My Father in 1974 Standing Still, My Mother in 1974 Standing Still, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- LOS ANGELES INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART

— Sandy Ballatore, « LAICA, – a Promising Alternative, » Artweek, v.5, August 24, 1974, pp.1-16. Article on the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, preceding its opening, Fall 1974. Among the first alternative spaces in Southern California. LAICA Director, Bob Smith. Excerpt: « LAICA will function as an institute composed of three parts: 1. exhibition space at 2020 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles; 2.  a bi-monthly journal which is not meant to be a mouthpiece for the institute, but a publication reflecting Southern California’s art activities, voices, etc.; 3. a slide registry open to all artists and acting as an information center for Southern California art.

- LÜTHI Urs, Self-Portrait with Ecky, 1974 (photo).

- MARIONI Tom

— A. Moore, « Tom Marioni; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY » Artforum, vol.12, June 1974, pp.77-78. Review of a conference, « Video and the Art Museum, » and video installations mounted in conjunction with the conference by Peter Campus, Andy Mann, Ira Schneider and Tom Marioni. Excerpt on Marioni:

Tom Marioni’s tape – a tour of the Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco shortly after the 1973 ‘All Night Sculpture Show’ there – partakes of the form, but it is not a simple sampling of work, rather it is subsumed within a narrative context as history.

A handheld camera records a walk down a street and up a flight of stairs to the deserted MOCA premises. Museum director Marioni narrates and directs the camera (‘Get a shot of the refrigerator’). Voice and camera together explore the many rooms – floors, walls, and fixtures – of MOCA, which Marioni explains in terms of the former use of the space as a printing shop.

- MARIONI Tom (as Allan Fish), A Sculpture in 2/3 Time, Student Culture Center, Belgrade, Yusgoslavia, 1974.

« After polishing a smooth and reflective spot on an old rusted piece of steel I moved a wooden drumstick back and forth across the spot. On the underside of the spot was a contact microphone to amplify the sounds of all activity on the surface of the metal. The pendulum-like movement of the stick suggested a visual 1-2 rhythm, but the sound was 1-2-3 as in a waltz, because the stick moved from the rusted part of the metal across the polished spot and to the rusted metal on the other side. The sound superimposed on the action was 2 on 3. »

- MARIONI Tom (as Allan Fish), Drum Brush lecture, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca., 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- MCCARTHY Paul, Heinz Ketchup, 1974, videotape, 30 mins., color.

- MCCARTHY Paul, Hot Dog, 1974. (body art). Pasadena. Californie.

- MCCARTHY Paul, Whipping a Wall and a Window with Paint, 1974. (action)

- MELCHERT Jim, Shadow Piece. Points of View Series, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- MENDIETA Ana, Body Tracks, 1974 (action) University of Iowa. Iowa City.

- MENDIETA Ana, Untitled (Ocean Bird Washup), 1974.

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.

‘‘Filmed by Breder in Mexico, but clearly depicting a scenario of Mendieta’s devising, the four-minute, thirty-second Super 8 film again finds a youg woman in shallow water (Mendieta, covered in the white feathers she sometimes utilized for her performances of the era). But rather than functioning as a lolling, sexualized icon of classical feminity as the female subject did in the work’s Iowa analog of three years earlier, Mendieta is here vitally committed to her own activity, allowing herself to be tossed on the waves and onto the shore, where she’s washed into the branches of a downed tree.’’ (Jeffrey Kastner)

- MILLARES Fina, Recobriment del cos Amb Terra, 1974.

- MILLS COLLEGE CENTER For CONTEMPORARY MUSIC, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- MLCOCH Jan, Hanging-The Big Sleep, 1974. Prague.

- MOGUL Susan, Take Off, 1974. Videotape.

- MONTANO Linda, Death and Birth: A Crib Event, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- MORRIS Robert, Untitled, 1974 (photo).

- MORRISON Bill, Solo at the Sink, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- MOTION (Suzanne Hellmuth, Joya Cory, Muniera Christensen, Brigitte Hotchkiss), Performance Relay, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- MURAK Teresa, Equilibrium of Balance, 1974.

- MURAK Teresa, Procession, 1974.

In the very spring of 1974, the artist put on herself a cresse coat grown earlier (the working method being a reference to the tradition of handiwork and ‘female labor’), and set out on a Procession through the streets of Warsaw, thus introducing the figure of Mother Nature into a realm of specifically belonging to culture. This gesture, primarily referring to the relationship between the feminine and the natural being – also a main focus essential to feminism, albeit differently – present in corporal feminism, was at the same time a political one, an intervention in urban space which manifested a sensitivity extremely different to that officially valid in the People’s Republic of Poland.

The cress seed, a small fast-growing plant with a distinctive smell, became Teresa Murak’s trademark. Co-existing with the artist, in most cases the plant becomes the subject of her examination and the object of care while her art practice connected with the seeds is based on the idea of co-existence.

- NATAN Efrat, Flag, 1974, Photographed Action.

- NATAN Efrat, Milk (Performance for Staircases), 1974, b/w photo, 

from Musag, monthly magazine for Art and culture, vol. 3, June 1975, p. 81. In her work Milk  (1974), Efrat Natan performs a series of simple and precise actions, in the context of which the symbolic value of the material – milk – is examined in an everyday environment. Natan slowly pours a thin stream of milk down a set of stairs while the vocal piece Stimmung  (1968), by Stockhausen, plays in the background. natan’s choice of performance site alluded to a terrorist attack that had taken place a short time earlier in an apartment building in Kiryat Shemona. (Born in Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin, 1947, lives and works in Tel Aviv).

- NAUMAN Bruce (James Minton), « Bruce Nauman – Gunslinger, » Artweek, v.5, June 29, 1974, p.1,16. 

Lengthy article on Nauman, includes a review of Nauman’s retrospective, 1965-72, at the San Francisco Museum of Art.

- NAUMAN Bruce, Flayed Earth/Flayed Self (Skin/Sink), Los Angeles: Nicholas Wilder Gallery, 1974.

Written work by Nauman in conjunction with an exhibition, December 17-January 11.

- NAUMAN Bruce, Tony Sinking Into The Floor, 1974.

- NITSCH Hermann, 48th Action, 1974. Munich Modernes Theater (actionnisme).

- ONTANI Luigi, Don Quixote, 1974.

- OGDEN Jack & SUZUKI Jimmy, Blank Space, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- ORLAN, Strip-Tease occasionnel à l’aide des draps du trousseau, 1974 (photo).

« J’ai intitulé une oeuvre : Strip-Tease occasionnel avec les draps du trousseau. Il n’y a pas de strip-tease possible puisque quand on se déshabille, il y a toujours des images qui se surimposent, qui vous précèdent, qui sont recouvrantes. Et puis, on n’a pas de corps, on a des ‘‘corps’’. Des corps très différents : que ce soit un corps jouissant, malade, confronté au handicap, à l’extase. Ce sont des corps aux chimies différentes qui se mêlent à des corps qui sont jeunes, vieux, ils se superposent. »

http://elles.centrepompidou.fr/blog/?p=957 publié le lundi 11 octobre 2010.

- PANE Gina, Action Laure, Galerie Isy Brachot, Bruxelles. 1974.

- PANE Gina, Action mélancolique, Naples. 1974.

- PANE Gina, Action sentimentale, 1974.

« The body and its support image for a non-linguistic communication

The body, which is at the same time project, material, and performer on an artistic practice, finds its logical support within the image, through the photographic medium.

Photography is a “sociological“ object which allows us to grasp reality; therefore, it can grasp the heart of that dialectic through which behavior becomes significant by making itself communicable for a community.

Many types of black and white and color image exist:

a: a single fixed image: photography/transparency.

b: a series of contiguous images: photographs.

c: a sequence of temporal images: cinematographic film/videotape/transparencies.

d: an image along with other elements: verbal (the word)/ non-verbal (music, noise, intonation).

e: a scripto-visual image (along with a caption).

A single image contains the “zero“ degree of significance.

The caption is used in order to bring the excess of significance back to a single meaning.

The creation of series of contiguous or sequence images representing the same theme replaces the caption and enables us to neutralize the multiplicity of contradictory information.

The reading of an image, or a series, or a sequence establishes itself on two levels: on the one hand, on what is shown and on the other, on what it means.

The first is the statement of a reality to which the image refer, as they do not contain any arbitrary or unmotived sign, the second consists in identifying and deciphering the semantic message.

One is tied to the semeiology of the optical image, and inversely, and the other is tied to the significance, that is, to the denotative structures. The visual communication remains of the universal type because it reintroduces the fundamental social relationsships.

N.B. - The objects presented in this artistic practice are not still-lifes, but the accessories of an action or the attributes for one or more persons. Therefore, they can keep their original context or that which refers to their reality through the support of images. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 196-197)

Sentimental Action, 1974

« Projection of an “intra“ space in which the relationship between two women is intercalated by the magic mother/child rapport, which death symbolizes.

This “intra“ space is stated by an exchange/mirror closed circuit: the Woman/Women relationship,  identifying itself in the primary emotive phenomenon – mother/child, a symbiotic relationship which can discover different emotional solutions to one’s own conflicts of introjection.

My body is a conducting substance in a motion of “going to the return,“ coming back to its starting point through a deconstruction of the primary image (mental puzzle): the red rose, mystic flower, erotic flower, transformed into a vagina by a reconstitution in its most present state, the paindul one.

It is through a rigorous use of form: mental/biological space, cadences, images, metaphors, that is, of the modality of my attitude, that I can reach my essence. The content is tied to the particular use of a language corresponding to the psychological process and to the sense of the action(s). » (see Lea Vergine, p.197)

- PANE Gina, Death Control, 1974. Paris (Body Art)

- PANE Gina, Psyché, 1974.

- POMEROY Jim, Composition in D, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca., 1974. 

Performance for the series, South of the Slot. Participants included: Howard Fried, Jim Pomeroy, Paul Kos.

- ROSENBACH Ulrike, Sorry Mister, 1974 (vidéo)

- ROSLER Martha, Budding Gourmet : Semiotics of the Kitchen (videotape b/w), 1974-75. 

This and A Budding Gourmet are part of an ongoing body of work about consuming habits that includes not only videotapes but also performance works, dialogues and serial postcard novels. Food is treated as a necessity reinvented as commodity, and cooking is presented in its persona land political aspects as itself and as a metaphor, as an internalized value and as a colonized strategy.

— Since the early 1970s, Martha Rosler’s (1970) works have constructed social and political analyses of the myths and socio-political realities of contemporary culture. Her video works investigate with deadpan with how socio-economic realities and political ideologies dominate ordinary life. Presenting complex critical analyses in accessible forms, Rosler merges performances, narrative, documentary and mass media images.

Semiotics of The Kitchen  adopts the form of a parodist cooking demonstration. On a counter before the artist are a variety of ustensils, each of which she picks up, names and proceed to demonstrate, but with gestures that are increasingly marked by frustration and anger and depart from the normal uses of the respective tools and into a kind of mad music of sound and gesture.

- RUTH Sheila, Haircut, FSW Group Show, June 1974. Videotape.

- SAPIEN Darryl, Split-Man Bisects the Pacific, 1974, ruins of Sutro Baths, San Francisco, Ca., with Michael Hinton. 

Two performers are roped together through the axle of an eight foot diameter wheel. Their task is to roll the wheel along the top of a 100 yard causeway to an island and back again. A bright beacon of light from above tracks their progress. Each man, useen to the other, calls back and forth to guide the wheel. The energy generated by the pull of opposition is harnessed and propels the men and the wheel along its night sea journey.

— Robert McDonald, « Split-Man Bisects the Pacific, » Artweek, v.5, October 19, 1974, pp.13-14. Review of performance by Darryl Sapien with Michael Hinton that took place September 24, 1974 near the Sutro Baths ruins at the ocean, San Francisco. The ritualistic event began at 8:45 p.m. when Sapien and Hinton, on either side of a giant wheel/spool placed on top of a rough 150 ft. long concrete wall, rolled the wheel out to a small island and back to shore. Excerpt:

« What was the meaning, if any, of the event? It had the appearance of ritual so ancient that both participants and audience no longer remembered its significance; they simply knew that it had to be done. Perhaps it served to remind us of our origin in the sea and of our role as mediators between earth and sea. It carried the sense of a religious act to propitiate the sea and its creature. The ritualistic aspect of the piece as enhanced by the special garb, the painted faces, the general incongruity of the situation and the vocabulary of called signals which, although banal, were transcended by the events so that they acquired a poetic, magical, incantory character. Whatever meaning the performance had had to be read into it by each spectator. This was the intent of Sapien, who subcribes to Duchamp’s dictum that viewers themselves completes works of art. »

— Robert McDonald, « Split-Man reassembled, » Artweek, v.5, November 9, 1974, p.6. Review of exhibition at the Hansen-Fuller gallery consisting of video, photo, slide, and poster documentation of the performance event, Split-Man Bisects the Pacific.

— Darryl Sapien with Michael Hinton, Split-Man Bisects the Pacific, 1974. Videotape, 22 1/2 mins., b/w.

- SCARRIT Alan, Flow, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- SHERK Bonnie, The Farm, 1974.

— 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 Bonnie Sherk:

‘‘Sherk’s major work, The Farm, began in 1974 and can be regarded as a ‘‘series of simultaneous life vignettes’’ that, when seen as a whole, or as Sherk would say, ‘‘when viewed through a wide angle lens,’’ formulates an incredibly rich ‘‘life art/theatre.’’

Basically The Farm is just that, but unbelievably this farm is located inside the city of San Francisco and is replete with buildings, animals, gardens, flowers and enormous amounts of activity. Sherk considers the Farm ‘‘a metaphor of civilization’’ that frames the ‘‘myriad of different relationships, struggles, differences, and similarities’’ which abound in life. The Farm functions as a sociological model enabling you to ‘‘see individuals singly and in groups: human, plant, and animal.’’ It operates on a multitude of levels and is to be understood as total experimental life art/theatre. [20]’’

[20] Bonnie Sherk thinks of The Farm as a ‘‘social art work’’ and the perception of it as art is ‘‘perplexing’’ to the establishment because of its diffuse form. The Farm claerly speaks to the future forms of art which perhaps function as a ‘‘life frame.’’

- Van SCHLEY, World Run: A Globular Piece. 1974

— « Van Schley, » Flash Art, nos. 48-49, October/November 1974, pp.48-49. A description with photos and captions of a work by Van Schley and Billy Adler entitled World Run: A Globular Piece. « In a two month period spanning 14,000 miles, Schley ran the Olympic distance of 1500 meters in various location in eleven world cities. »

- SEKULA Allen, Talk Given by Mr. Fred Lux, 1974. Videotape.

— Allan Sekula, Talk Given by Mr. Fred Lux at the Lux Clock Manufacturing Company Plant in Lebanon, Tennessee, on Wednesday, September 15, 1954. San Diego, 1974. Videotape, b/w. Lux… is part of a larger work, or series of works, dealing with the manner in which Americans articulate their economic lives and the manner in which these representations collide with each other. The work occupies a terrain between ‘documentary’ and ‘fiction,’  shifting self-conciously between the artifice of one modality and the artifice of the other. (from The Kitchen Catalogue, 1974-75)

- SEKULA Allen, This Ain’t China: A Photo-novel, 1974.

- SMITH Barbara, Cheering Section. performance avril 74.

- SMITH Barbara, Dimensions, 1974, John Gerad Hayes Gallery, Los Angeles.

— Melinda T. Wortz, « Barbara Smith’s Dimensions, » Artweek, v.5, September 14, 1974, p.3. Lengthly review of Smith’s performance/happening, Dimension, at the John Gerard Hayes Gallery, Los Angeles.

- SMITH Barbara, Moving Monument (excerpt from Heizenburg’s University Principles), 1974. 

Videotape with sound, 30 mins, color and b/w.

- SCHNEEMANN Carolee, Up To And Including Her Limits, 1974, The Kitchen, NYC, photo. Alan Tannenbaum.

- SOBEL Nina, Breakdowns, 1974. Videotape, 23 1/2 mins., b/w.

- STURGEON John, Hands Up, 1974. Videotape.

- STURGEON John, NOR/MAL CON/VERSE, 1974. Videotape.

- STURGEON John, Shirt, 1977. Videotape.

- STURGEON John, Waterpiece, 1974. Videotape

- SWANNACK Cheryl, Performances, 1974-75.

- TEPPER Irv, Alpha-Bet, Sheldon, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974. videotapes

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- TRANS-PARENT TEACHER’S INK. PAUL COTTON. MEDIUM, 33 Footnotes by Osmosis, 1974. 

Paul Cotton substantiating the self-reflexive form as book.

— 33 Foot-Notes, By Oz Moses, University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1974. « In a Spatial Projection at the Books by Artists exhibition The Astral-Naught Rabb-Eye purrformed. A tape of 33 footnotes wispered from Zippily Boo-Duh’s Tale substantiating the self-reflexive form of the blindfolded medium (Love is Blind), Paul Cotton, re-shaped Hymn-Self in one of 33 stations of the Cross(roads). »

- VAEA, Music is Dangerous, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- WEIBEL Peter, Simultaneous Split Medium, 1974 (action-vidéo).

- WEISS Jeffrey, One or the Other or Both that Makes Three Possibilities; a Visual Score for Samuel Beckett, Albert Ayler, and Martha Reeves, 63 Bluxome St., San Francisco, Ca. 1974.

Performance presented for the series, South of the Slot.

- WHITE John — Peter Plagens, « John White, » Artforum, v.12, March 1974, pp.65-66. An interview. Excerpt:

[White]: I like to reveal the whole insane background that brought you to the work, what’s behind the piece that gave you that ideé, etc. I get weird ideas from strange little things, like hearing somebody tinkling in the toilet, and I go around that for a while. In a performance, threre’ll be something folksy, then something serious, something about the artist, then something about the audience, etc. Working in the hospital has given me most of my material lately, humour as well as the serious stuff. Some of the idiosyncratic things people will do to hide their feelings in a group, which are dead serious in therapy, become quite funny when removed from the context…

I’m very interested in bringing my experiences at the hospital and my art situation very close, very tight. I feel like I integrate the golf part of it, too. I use an 8 mm film of me playing golf in some of the performances, as if to say, “O.K., this is important part of my lifestyle, too.“ »

— Leonard Simon, « John White Performance II, » Artweek, v.5, January 12, 1974, p.3. Review of the second performance by White at Westminster Neighborhood Association, in relation to the Watts Community Housing Corporation.

— Leonard Simon, « John White’s Third Watts Performance, » Artweek, v.5, December 7, 1974, p.4. Review of the third performance of the Watts Community Housing Corporation which took place at the Ruth Schaffner Gallery, Los Angeles. White’s work included a film and drawing, with narrative by White about his involvement with the Watts project.

- WILKE Hannah, Gestures, 1974 (action-vidéo)
1974, 35:30 min, b&w, sound 

Gestures is a series of performance-based works in which Wilke faces the camera in extreme close-up and performs repetitive or durational physical actions. At times she kneads and pulls her skin as if it were sculptural material. Often her gestures — rubbing her hands over her face, smiling so hard that she appears to be grimacing, sticking out her tongue — take on a loaded significance when seen in the context of gender performance.

Hannah Wilke 

From the 1970s until her death in 1993, Hannah Wilke produced work that examined sex and sexuality, feminism and femininity, the body and its representation. Working in sculpture, painting, performance, video, and photography, Wilke often used her own body as a means of asserting a specifically female iconography. Wilke’s project culminated in the early 1990s with a stark, moving series of photographs of her face and body during her struggle with cancer. In the 1970s and early 1980s Wilke made a series of performance videotapes, in which she often explored issues of gender and power through posturing, posing, and gesture. Other tapes document her performances, such as Through the Large Glass, in which she performs a striptease behind Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Wilke uses her own image to confront the erotic representation of the female body in art history and popular culture.

- WILKE Hannah, S.O.S. - Starification Object Series, 1974-82.

- WILKE Hannah, Super-t-art, 1974.

- YALTER Nil, La Femme Sans Tête, 1974.

Nil Yalter is a video artist, born in 1938 in Cairo and raised in Istanbul. She lives in Paris since 1965. In the 1970s, she became concerned with the situation of women and immigration in different countries, depicting this in her works, which span different genres and often combine photographs and drawings. In 1973, she created the installation A Nomad’s Tent thait is a Study of Private, Public, and Feminine Spaces. Since the 1980s, she has expanded her artistic repertoire to include video, and in the 1990s she began working with multi-media installations. She continues to be politically active and aware today, and her approach to the technological possibilities of art remains vibrant.

La Femme sans tête is one of Nil Yalter’s early videos. It shows the artist painting her belly with passages by René Nelly, an author who writes about eroticism and civilization. The artwork portrays an experimental and energetic appropriation of the female body.