1975 : chronologie performance

1975

 

- 80 LANGTON ST.

« 80 Langton – An Alternative, » Artweek, v.6, May 3, 1975, p.7.

Short article announcing the opening of alternative space, 80 Langton St. by the San Francisco Art Dealer’s Association. Excerpt:

« For artists who use such media as video and performance which, for varied reasons, the galleries are unable to accomodate, the space will offer a means of exposure for their works. Music and dance performances, poetry readings, lectures and panel discussions, as well as art exhibitions, will also be presented. »

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Echanger les rôles, 1975.

« Je trouve une femme qui a une expérience de prostituée de 10 ans.

A cette époque, j’avais une expérience professionnel de dix ans.

Je lui propose d’échanger nos rôles.

Elle accepte.

Elle viendrait à l’ouverture de mon exposition de la galerie De Appel à Amsterdam.

Au même moment je serai assise dans la vitrine du quartier chaud de la ville.

Durée de la performance : quatre heures. »

(Galerie De Appel, Quartier chaud, Amsterdam, 1975)

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, L’Art doit être beau. L’artiste doit être beau, 1975.

ART  MUST BE  BEAUTIFUL, ARTIST  MUST BE  BEAUTIFUL (14’55’’)

« Je me brosse les cheveux avec une brosse en métal dans la main droite et un peigne dans la main gauche, simultanément, en répétant à haute voix :

L’art doit être beau

L’artiste doit être beau

jusqu’à la destruction de mes cheveux et de mon visage»

Dans cette performance (qui eut lieu en 1975 à Charlottenborg, Copenhague), Marina  Abramovic, tenant dans une main un peigne et dans l’autre une brosse, se coiffe  alternativement avec l’un et avec l’autre, en répétant inlassablement la même phrase:  « Art must  be beautiful, Artist must  be beautiful ». Elle se frappe parfois avec le peigne et la brosse, coiffe ses cheveux en tous sens, tantôt brutalement, tantôt doucement, puis se fait violence  en s’arrachant les cheveux. Elle prononce la phrase sur plusieurs tons, parfois en chuchotant, parfois d’une manière agressive et rageuse, puis de nouveau calmement. L’artiste tient bon ainsi pendant 45 minutes. La vidéo  réalisée ultérieurement ne montre que son buste, de manière à ce que le spectateur puisse voir l’expression de son visage.

Cette performance véhicule l’essence de la conception artistique de Marina Abramovic : le rejet d’un art qui n’a aucune dimension sociale et humaine, mais qui est uniquement replié sur lui-même et qui veut plaire. C’est contre cette conception de l’art pour l’art qu’est dirigée son agressivité. L’artiste transpose ironiquement sur sa propre  personne la pensée du « être beau ». Lors de son arrivée de l’ex-Yougoslavie aux Pays-Bas, elle  formulait ainsi sa théorie :  « L’Art sans éthique est de la cosmétique ». (Festival d’art, Copenhague, 1975)

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Les Lèvres de Thomas, 1975.

Performance

Je mange lentement un kilo de miel avec une cuillère en argent

Je bois un litre de vin rouge dans un verre en cristal
Je brise le verre de ma main droite

Avec la lame de rasoir, je découpe une étoile à cinq pointes sur mon ventre

Je me fouette violemment jusqu’à ce que la douleur cesse

Je m’allonge sur une croix faite de bloc de glace

Au plafond pend un chauffage électrique, dirigé vers mon ventre

Le chauffage chauffe l’étoile et me fait saigner, alors que tout le reste de mon corps est gelé

Après être resté étendue treize minutes sur l’étoile de glace, les spectateurs courent vers moi et interrompent la performance

(Galerie Krinzinger, Innsbruck, 1975)

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Libérer la mémoire, 1975.

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Libérer le corps, 1975-76.

- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Libérer la voix, 1975.

- ACCONCI Vito, Pornography in the Classroom, 1975. (action-installation).

- AKERMAN Chantal, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. 1975 (film).

- ALMEIDA Helena, Pintura Habitada, 1975.

- ALPERT Richard, Finger, 80 Langton Street, San Francisco, Ca., 1975.

« This piece was a static installation. The room was in general darkness except for lights aimed at several areas in the space. An unindentifiable sound could be heard from the rear of the room. The first illuminated area approached upon entering the space showed the sentence ‘Chris-I went to the hospital-I think I cut my hand bad’ alongside a knife and some bread. In the second spot was found a photograph placed on the floor. At the rear of the room was a spotlighted door out of which protruded my two fingers as my only visible presence in the room. As this area was approached, the sound in the space could be heard coming from an adjacent room through an open doorway, and could be identified as that of a ball bouncing in a confined space. The lighting was set so that it was difficult to see into the room without entering it. Upon entering, the source of the sound, a tape recording playing, could be seen in the almost totally dark room. »

- ALPERT Richard, Hand Generated Light, Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, Ca., 1975. 

Performed in MOCA’s Second Generation series.

« The performance was situated in a room adjacent to the main exhibition space. Attached to the front of the door, the only entrance to the room, was a small light-bulb. For the duration of the three-hour show, I was in the room with the door locked from the inside generating electricity from a hand-crank generator to the lightbulb. The amount of electricity that I could produce varied over the length of the exhibition, causing the light emitted from the bulb to fluctuate, going from intensely bright to barely visible, but never completely going out. Corresponding to the degree of light intensity were the accompanying vibrations felt in the floor outside the room. »

- ALPERT Richard, Spent Time/Spent Energy, 1975, San Francisco Art Institute’s ‘The Annual’ (temporary 16th Street, S.F. Exhibition Space)

- ALPERT Richard, Stretch, 1975. 

- ANDERSON Laurie, Duet on ice, 1975, Gênes, Samangallery-Ida Gianelli

- ANDERSON Laurie, Songs and Stories for the Insomniac, 1975.

- ANT FARM, Media Burn, 1975-2003.
 San Francisco. Videotape. 16 mins. Color. 

— Jon Carroll. « Watching the Media Burn », The Village Voice, July 14, 1975, excerpt.

« (23:02 version EAI) (alias Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Curtis Schrier, Uncle Buddie)

Media Burn integrates performance, spectacle and media critique, as Ant Farm stages an explosive colllusion of two of America’s most potent cultural symbols : the automobile and television. On July 4, 1975, at San Francisco’s Cow Palace, Ant Farm presented the « ultimate media event ». In this alternative Bicentennial celebration, a « Phantom Dream Car » — was driven through a wall of burning TV sets. 

Footage of the actual event, much of which was shot from a closed-circuit video camera mounted inside a customized ‘Tail-fin’, is framed and juxtaposed with news coverage by the local television stations. Doug Hall, introduced as John F. Kennedy, assumes the ironic role of the Artist-President to deliver a speech about the impact of mass media monopolies on American life : « Who can deny that were are a nation addicted to television and the constant flow of media ? Haven’t you ever wanted to put your foot through your telévision ? »

The spectacle of the Cadillac crashing through the burnning TV sets became a visual manifesto of the early alternative video movement, an emblem of an oppositionnal and irreverent stance against the political and cultural imperatives promoted by television, and the passivity of TV viewing.

Examining the impact of mass media in American culture, Media Burn exemplifies Ant Farm’s fascination with the automobile and television as cultural artifacts, and their approach to social critique through spectacle and humor. » (by Ant Farm. Executive Producer : Tom Weinberg. Editors : Chip Lord, Skip Blumberg, Doug Michels, Tom Weinberg) Source EAI. Electronic Art Intermix. »

Jon Carroll . Extrait : « At 2:30 in the afternoon on July, 4, a man introduced as President John F. Kennedy appeared in a long black car with an american flag on each front fender. Well-groomed men in dark suits trotted alongside. The car stopped behind the bunting-draped speaker’s platform, and the man introduced as Kennedy bounded up the stairs. He looked like Kennedy, and he walked with hands thrust in his coat pockets, thumbs protruding…

Kennedy gave a speech to 500 curiosly seekers assembled behind yellow barricades in the huge concrete parking lot. His speech seemed to be loosely based on a McGovern campaign document. While Kennedy spoke, some 50 cameras — still, video, movie — recorded the event, while a smaller number recorded the cameras recording Kennedy. « Mass media monopolises control people by their control of information, » said Kennedy. « I ask you, my fellow Americans, haven’t you ever wanted to put your foot through your television screen ? » A roar went up from the crowd.

Below Kennedy, in front of the platform, lurked the Cadillac dream car, a customized 1959 Biaritz with a sleek canopy surmounted by two clear Plexiglass bubbles. Rising behind the bubbles, on what would ordinarily be the trunk, was a spire on top of which was mounted a television camera. Kennedy finished, was applaused, sped off. A blue van moved forward and disgorged two men dressed to ressemble astronauts, complete with opaque helmets. After acknowledging the cheers of the crowd, they crawled into the dream car. The daredevils would steer the car, using a monitor on the floor and a camera in the spire.

A hundred yards away, Uncle Buddy poured kerosine on a stack of 15 television sets. He lit a match. The kerosine burned with a bright orange flame and thick black smoke. The wood cabinet on some of the older television consoles caught fire. The Cadillac accelerated toward the wall of burning television sets. Another roar went up. The car hit the wall at 55 miles per hour. Televisions wreathed in flames were hurled forward. The spire of the car was sheered off entirely. The Cadillac came to a halt at the far edge of the parking lot. The drivers emerged, stood on top of the car, and waved their hands over their heads. The crowd cheered.

The televisions sets continued to burn, punctuated by an occasionnal howl as another picture tube imploded. »

Frank Fox . Extrait : « Ant Farm distributed scripts to the score of more « musicians » who waited in the cars for Schreier to signal the beginning of the symphony with a blast from an air horn…

The air horn was pathetically weak. Schreier and Michels had to wave their arms like frenzied Leonard Bernsteins while the people accross Farm Lane blew their horns, flashed headlights, ran around the cars, slammed hoods and thrunks and generally behaved like greasers in a drive-in on Saturday night…

Finally came the triumphant climax as the horns joined together in a strident screech that absolutely delighted the spectators with a blast of energy and joyously mindless noise.

Carla Lisa . Extrait : « …the whole point of Media Burn is producing art in the public domain. When you do that it becomes a political statement, because it’s setting up a reality. Just the way the media reporte dit and put it into some kind of format to explain it to people: like Kennedy they could say was an actor and the event was quasi Evil Kneival. But if you were actually there you know that the experience was between reality and performance.

- ANT FARM, T.V. Radiation Survey, San Francisco, Ca., 1975.

On July 25, 1975, Ant Farm (Curtis Schreier, Chip Lord and Doug Michels) made random visits to 40 homes in San Francisco to check T.V. sets for levels of X-radiation emission.

— Ant Farm, « T.V. Radiation Survey », La Mamelle Magazine: Art Contemporary, no.3, v.1, Winter 1976, pp.16-17. Excerpt:

« Color television sets may be dangerous to your health.

On July 25, 1975, Ant Farm (Curtis Schreier, Chip Lord and Doug Michels) accompanied by Dr. Rolin Finston, Senior Health Physicist of Stanford University’s Health Physics Office, made random visits to forty San Francisco homes to learn if any of the local television sets were leaking X-radiation (X-rays).

The findings were startling. Ten of sets leaked radiation and one was leaking at a level which exceeded the government standard. »

- ANT FARM & T. R. UTHCO, The Eternal Frame, 1975 (Vidéo, 23 mins)

Howard Smith and Brian Van der Horst . Extrait :

« …bought at 1963 Lincoln Continental limousine and modified it with a roll bar and other presidential accoutrements. They researched every photograph of the original event they could find for spatial relationships. They obtained a copy of the Zapruder film and studied it for hours.

« Then we consulted makeup artists so each of us could play the necessary parts, such as JFK, Connaly, and Secret Service agent Hill », said Michels, who portrayed Jacqueline in the re-creation. « We practiced and timed the event like a ballet. We made it look exactly like the original ». Finally the two bands of artists arrived in Dallas and in front of their own photographers, video and film cameramen, proceeded with their plans.

« We found that tourists still comes there every day », says Curtis Shreier. « They line up on the streets just like in 1963 – except they wear pink shorts instead of suits. They loved us. People rushed up with they Instamatics. We were doing it every hour – 20 times during that day – and they throught we were a government reconstruction squad or from the Chamber of Commerce. »

— Ant Farm, « The Eternal Frame: An Authentic Remake of the Original JFK Assassination », La Mamelle Magazine: Art Contemporary, no.5, 1976, pp.30-31. Excerpt:

« In August 1975, members of Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco went to Dallas to video tape their re-enactement of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Fearing that their desecration of an American myth could result in an unpleasant confrontation with the citizens and authorities of Dallas, the artists’ motorcade made its first pass through Dealy Plaza at 7 a.m. By two in the afternoon, the artist-president had been assassined 17 times. Dealey Plaza had becom jammed with tourists who eagerly photographed the event for family and friends back home. Even the dallas Police were cooperative, allowing traffic to be stopped for the motorcade. The reaction of the tourists ranged between amusement and being sincerely moved by the spectacle. The only confrontation occurred when the artist-president party entered the Kennedy Museum just off Dealy Plaza. The impromptu speech by the J.F.K. look-alike was cut short by the curator of the museum, who demanded that he leave the premises. The event ended with the artists and tourists gathered on the grassy knoll singing ‘The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You’. »

- ANT FARM, Who killed Kennedy ?, 1975 (The Eternal Frame).

- ANTIN David, « Libra Piece », LAICA Journal, no. 7, August-September 1975, pp. 14-16.

- ANTIN David, « Television: Video’s Frightful Parent – Part I », Artforum, v.14, December 1975, pp.36-45.

- ANTIN David, « Warm up », Art-Rite, no. 10, Fall 1975. 

Text ‘from a performance at St. Marks in The Bouwerle, March 10. 1974.

- ANTIN Eleanor, Eleanor Antin as The King Meditations, San Diego, Ca. 1975  

(— Cindy Nemser. Art Talk : Conversation with 12 Women Artists. NY : Scribners, 1975. Eleanor Antin is among the 12 women interviewed for the book, pp. 267-302. Extensive interview ; includes several photographs.

— Cindy Nemser, « Four Artists od Sensuality », Arts Magazine, v. 49, March 1975, pp. 73-75.

— Carla Liss, « Eleanor Antin as Ballerina », Artweek, v. 6, November 29, 1975, p. 6. Review of Antin’s performance, as the King (November 6) and as the Ballerina (November 7), performed at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, as part of the opening of Lynn Hershman’s Floating Museum.)

Extrait :

« E. Antin : When I started movng out of those more plausible or expectable transformations like dieting, putting on street make-up, or changing my regular artist’s self into a more bourgeois image, all these things we do all the time, I moved into perfectly plausible but less expected and perharps more exotic transformations. I got interested in the tranformational nature of the self and the possibilities of defining my limits, such as age, sex, space, time, talent, what have you, all the things that restricted of himself would be. Well I wanted perfect freedom.

C. Nemser : To transcend space and time.

E. A. : Why not ? If autobiography is fiction – and it is because it is history, the past – you don’t have to be restricted to your own past. You might come up with someone else’s fiction. One of my selves is a king.

C. N. : Does that refer to your piece The King and The Ballerina ?

E. A. : I have been putting those two together.

C. N. : Which did you do first ?

E. A. : Well they all started with Carving and the naturalist transformations and then they went into exploring the limits of my possibilities. »

- ANTIN Eleanor, Meditation #XVIII, 1975.

- ANTIN Eleanor, The Little Match Girl Ballet, Huntington Beach, Ca. : KOCE-TV, Videotape. 27 mins. color. 1975.

- BAILEY Clayton, Wonders of the World Museum : Catalog of Kaolithic Curiosities and Scientific Wonders, Port Costa, Ca. : Wonders of the World Museum, 1975.

- BAKER Mary Winder, RAPOPORT Debra, WICK Susan, An ARThritic Experience, Berkeley, Ca., 1975.

- BAKER Mary Winder, RAPOPORT Debra, WICK Susan, Fiberworks Gallery Live-in, Berkeley, Ca., 1975.

- BAKER Mary Winder, RAPOPORT Debra, WICK Susan, Interplay, University Art Museum, Berkeley, Ca., 1975.

— Ann Flanagan. « Collaboration as Process », Artweek, v. 6, May 17, 1975, p. 6. Article on the collaborative work of Mary Winder Baker, Debra Rapoport, and Susan Wick. Extrait :

« Last month, (Baker, Rapoport, Wick)… occupied the Special Events gallery at Berkeley’s University Art Museum for Interplay, a spontaneous exchange between the artists and the public, ‘giving the public a chance to relate to the artist working instead of just the dead object’ (Wick). The museum collaboration was much more structured and formal in terms of activities and space because of museum restrictions… As in the studio, each woman had her own work area but there were also joint projects… Together they worked on a huge, transparent plastic scrapbook with a page for each day, a fiber/plastic/wire grid tapestry and a monumental twisted paper rope. On the last day surrounded by friends and visitors, they fashioned a great knot out of the rope, a symbol of their shared lives and concerns. »

« INTERCHANGE

Purpose : By exchanging identities and answering questions as each other and as themselves, the interviewees might reveal new perspectives about their work and relationship. Baker, Rapoport and Wick were not permitted to consult each other about their answers.

Question : The public collaborations and performances have been largely spontaneous. Do you ever feel vulnerable, leaving so much to change ?

Mary Winder Baker :

as Mary Winder Baker – creative people energize one another. Just let me feel an energy level connection and trust and I’m off. The spontaneous experience happens and happens fully. No room for uneasiness.

as Debra Rapoport – No. Basically I trust and flow with the feelings that are built out of performance.

as Susan Wick – I dont’t feel there is much risk. I know my own assertiveness. The group wants to experience its self-will and I can sense that.

Debra Rapoport :

as Mary Winder Baker – No, there is enough conversation, planning, understanding and trust among those initially involved that we can rely on each other’s energies. If a lull should occur, we can always pull from past conversations.

as Debra Rapoport –  I don’t feel vulnerable leaving things to chance. There’s a fear of being rejected which lasts a short time. I trust in the process and in the people involved so I don’t preoccupy myself with failure. Before doing any performance, I feel strongly about what I am doing and my relationship with the others. I enjoy the challenge of using the positive energy to influence the other participants/spectators.

as Susan Wick – It’s not the chance that leaves me vulnerable. At first, it’s the exposure of self – will I be rejected ? There are always enough degrees of energy and trust of each other to keep us going.

Susan Wick :

as Mary Winder Baker – Yes. Amount changes depending on how much preplanning we’re done. Vulnerable but definitely worth taking the risk as there is much to gain and all we ever have to work with is ourselves.

as Debra Rapoport – Yes, I feel vulnerable, but it is exciting ; I believe in it and all of it has value on one level or another, at one time or another for each of us – more for some than others, that’s all. The spontaneity and the including others into my process makes it more enjoyable.

as Susan Wick – I feel vulnerable, more or less depending on my sureness, my own self image, who is present, the reason for the event. It is risk taking – what will I learn about myself in this spontaneous fashion, and what will the others learn about me at the same time ? It’s exciting, stimulating. I’d hate to have everything planned. I like the feeling of trusting the situation, myself, the others. »

— Ann Flanagan «  Live-In Art at Fiberworks Gallery », Craft Horizon, v. 35, June 1975, p. 9.

« Much of ‘live-in’ was devoted to woman’s traditional nurturing activities – hostessing, serving, cleaning up after guests during an assortment of brunches, tea parties, and dinners. Homemaking and gardening took various forms : lettuce leaf ‘living tapestries’ which carpeted the floor and embellishee a ‘paper forest’ of hanging paper panels ; buckets of wild growing grass were brought in ; and the room was filled with piles of various fibers and paper on another occasion. »

- BAKER Mary Winder, RAPOPORT Debra, WICK Susan, Transformation, San Francisco : La Mamelle, inc. 1975. Videotape approx. 49 mins., b/w.

- BALDESSARY John, Four Events and Reactions, Florence : Centro di, 1975. Artist book. 

The Events : 1. Putting finger in milk ; 2. Touching a cactus ; 3. Putting out a cigarette ; 4. Pushing a plate off a table. The reactions – as recorded by close-ups of a beautiful young woman.

- BALDESSARY John, Throwing a Ball Once to Get Three Melodies and Fifteen Chords, Irvine : Art Gallery of the University of California, 1975. Artist Book.

- BALDESSARY John, Throwing a Ball Once to Get Three Melodies and Fifteen Chords, 1975

(Jim Welling, Artweek, v. 6, March 1, 1975, pp. 13-14.) book review by Jim Welling. Extrait: « Throwing shows, in fifteen sequented photographs, a man throwing a ball. Overprinted on each photo are red, yellow and blue horizontal lines. The red lines passes over the left throwing hand ; the yellow line over the right hand ; and the blue rests on the left foot. These primaries plot the thrower’s movements. As the ball becomes airborne, the red line follows the ball rather than, as we expected, the hand. The final image almost startles ; the red line leaves the body, travels down slightly and seems to emphasize the movement of the ball back into the pages of the book. Three melodies form as the lines follow hands and foot through the pages. Chords take shape according to the vertical arrangement of lines on each page. »

- BANANA Anna et GAGLIONE Bill, Dada Shave, La Mamelle, San Francisco, Ca., 1975 

(« Untitled », Intermedia no.2, v. 1, June 1975, p. 50. Includes four photos documenting Dadaland with shaved « DADA » torso, by Anna Banana.) Videotape, approx. 13 mins. b/w. The editors of Vile magazine in private performance in homage to Dada. Banana shaves a Dada message across the chest of Gaglione (aka Dadaland).

- BANANA Anna, The Banana Olympics, 1975 

(— « The Banana Olympics ! », San Francisco Guardian, March 8-21, 1975, p. 3. Full page ad announcing the Banana Olympics ; includes photo, programm of events, general rules, and information about events to take place.

— « Embarcadero Center Goes Bananas : Yes We Have No ‘Bananalogy’ », The Centerview (San Francisco), v.3, March 1975, p. 10. Article announcing Banana events organized by Anna Banana at Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, March/April 1975.

— « Art for Free Spirits/Crazy ‘Banana Olympics’ », San Francisco Examiner, March 31, 1975, p. 5. Short article and photos pubished the day after the Banana Olympics took place at the Embarcadero Plaza, San Francisco.

— « Art for Free Spirits… Crazy ‘Banana Olympics’ », Sometimes Yearly Banana Rag, v. 11, May 1975. Special report on the 1975 Banana Olympics in San Francisco, organized by Anna Banana., promoted by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, live broadcast by KPFA, over 100 participants. Videotape, color.)

- BARB Sherry, The Other Side Show, 1975.

- BELSLEY Diane Calder, « Excerpts from Nine Fantasy Projections », LAICA Journal, no.7, August-September 1975, pp. 25-26. 

Excerpts from a proposal in which Belsley would attempt to live for one each, the lives of 9 other women artists.

- BELSLEY Diane Calder, Mother Heard, Northridge : self-published, 1975. 

Artist book that grew out of a Mother’s Day Performance celebrated by Belsley at the Woman’s Building, Los Angeles, in 1975.

- BLANCHARD Nancy, Memoirs, 1975. Audiotape, 15 mins.

- BLANCHARD Nancy, Screen Stories 50, 1975. Audiotape, 15 mins.

- BRISLEY Stuart, Moments of Decision and Indecision, 1975 (action) Galeria Teatra Studio. Varsovie.

- BURDEN Chris 

— Chris Burden & Jan Butterfield, « Chris Burden: Through the Night Softly, » Arts Magazine, v.49, March 1975, pp.68-72. Separately, Burden and Butterfield describe the following works of Burden: Five Day Locker Piece (1971), Prelude to 220 or 110 (1971), Bed Piece (1972), Icarus (1973), Through in the Night Softly (1973), Doorway to Heaven (1973), Transfixed (1974), Sculpture in Three Parts (1974), and Oh Dracula (1974). Excerpts:

[Chris Burden]: To be right the pieces have to have a kind of crisp quality to them. For example, I think a lot of them are physically thing. I think of them, sense them that way too. When I think of them I try to make them sort of clean, so that they are not formless, with a lot of separate parts. They are pretty crisp and you can read them pretty quickly, even the ones that take place over a long period of time. It’s not like a Joan Jonas dance piece where you have a lot of intricate parts that make a whole. With my pieces there is one thing and that’s it.

[Jan Butterfield]: That physical or mental danger is possible in many of Burden’s pieces cannot be denied. It is the presence of this danger, the fear of it, and the resulting apprehension around which his works are structured. The pieces are highly controlled, however, and the actual risks are minimal…

His works do not make a deliberate attempt to terminate life or to maim the body but, rather, set up situations where but for the control, these things could happen.

— Corinna Ferrari, « Chris Burden: Performances Negli USA e a Milano, » Domus, no.549, August 1975, pp.50-51. An interview with Burden in Milano, May 1975. Text in Italian and English. Also includes a list of performance works from 1971-73 with brief explanations of the pieces. Excerpt:

« CB: A lot of the pieces that I do are fantasies acted out and realized. The reason that they involve people, or have meaning for people is that they are common fantasies. My acting them out breaks down the barrier between fantasy and reality and makes people question what kinds of experiences are possible.

CF: What importance do you attach to the space in which you do your performances?

CB: I see myself primarily as a sculptor. My individual pieces are almost always generated by the spaces where they happen. In other words, I never know what I’m going to do until I see the space…

CB: Like most California artists, I am very much concerned with the visual content of my work. The pieces are primarily visual experiences, and I try to make the experiences as rich as possible. Most people to not perceive this aspect, but it is what gives the pieces their impact. »

- BURDEN Chris, Art and Technology, De Appel, Amsterdam, Holland, October 16, 1975. (see B-Car, 1977)

« During the two month period of August 24 to October 16, 1975, I conceived, designed, and constructed a small one passenger automobile. My goal was to design a fully operational four wheel vehicle as extremely lightweight, streamlined, and similar in structure to both a bicycle and an airplane. Details similar to bicycle design include spoke wheels, adjustable wheel bearings, and space frame construction. Cable-operated controls, fabric coverings, skeletal structure, and careful consideration for weight distribution are found in light weight airplane construction. 

The completed ‘B-Car’ was disassembled and air freighted to Holland. I re-assembled the car in four fays as a performance for the De Appel Gallery in Amsterdam. »

— Chris Burden, « B-Car », Choke, no.1, Fall 1976, pp.23-26. Photos and statement by Burden regarding his B-Car. 

— Chris Burden & Alexis Smith, B-Car: The Story of Chris Burden’s Bicycle Car, Los Angeles: Choke Publications, 1977. Excerpt:

« Once the project was conceived, I was compelled to realize it. I set the goal of completing the car for two shows in Europe. I saw building the car as a means toward the end of driving it between galleries in Amsterdam and Paris as a performance. When I arrived in Amsterdam, I knew that the accomplishment of constructing the car had become for me the essential experience. I had already realized the most elaborate fantasy of my life. Driving the car as a performance was not important after the ordeal of bringing it into existence.

B-Car Specifications

Length: 8’10’’

Height: 31’’

Weight: 200 lbs

Wheelbase: 6’ 3/4’’

Track front: 4’

     rear: 4’

Minimum ground clearance: 7 3/4’’

Frame: Pure space frame of 4130 chrome moly tubing, 5/8’’ O.D., .035 wall thickness, silver soldered and welded

Suspension: Independent on all four wheels

Body: Fabric, riptop nylon with silver vinyl coating

Tire: 2’’ x 19’’

Brakes: 4’’ x 1’’ drum, on all four wheels, mechanically operated

Fuel capacity: Twin 1 gallon tanks

Engine and Drive Train: P4 Minarelli 2 Stroke 50 cc. air-cooled motorcycle engine

: 4-speed transmission, clutch, and magneto in integral case with engine

Top Speed: 50 m.p.h.

Fuel Consumption: Approximately 150 m.p.g.

— The following is a description of the work by Chris Burden (1977):

‘‘During the two months period between Argust and October, 1975, I conceived, designed, and constructed a small one passenger automobile. My goal was to design a fully operational four-wheel vehicle which would travel 100 miles per hour and achieve 100 miles per gallon. I imagined this vehicle as extremely lightweight, streamlined, and similar in structure to both a bicycle and an airplane.

Once the pproject was conceived, I was compelled to realize it. I set the goal of completing the car for two shows in Europe. I saw building the car as a means toward the end of driving it between galleries in Amsterdam and Paris as a performance. When I arrived in Amsterdam, I knew taht the accomplishment of constructing the car had become for me the essential experience. I had already realized the most elaborate fantasy of my life. Driving the car as a performance was not important after the ordeal of bringing it into existence.

The car is not completely engineered; most of the parts are hand-made, and many of the decisions in design and construction were based on hunches. As I worked, I kept all the sketches and drawings as a record of the process. Displayed with the car, they became documentation of the construction. The car and drawings represent a vision - my fantasy as an artist of what a car should be.’’ (Feldman Gallery. The exhibition will consist of this fully operational car that the artist has designed and constructed. In addition there will be 120 drawings, photographs, and a video tape explaining the car’s construction.)

- BURDEN Chris, Documentation of Selected Works, 1971-1974. 1975. Videotape, 36 mins., b/w and color.

- BURDEN Chris, « Oracle », Vision, no.1, September 1975, pp. 50-51. 

Explanation of his performance, Oracle.

- CADÉRÉ André, Arte Banco Brescia, 1975, Italie.

- CADÉRÉ André, Café Oasis, 1975-76, Liège, Belgique.

- CAROOMPAS Carole, Dragon Lady, 1975.

- CHA Theresa Hak Kyung, Aveugle voix, 1975. San Francisco. Courtesy University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s family immigrated to the US in 1962, where she studied literature and art. She later moved to Paris, where she studied film and film theory with Christian Metz, Raymond Bellour and Thierry Kuntzel. Cha’s (1951-1982) most important work, published shortly before her violent death en 1982, is the novel Dictee, which inter-weaves the biographies of several women. The various genres employed in her works are united by the topic of cultural, geographical and social uprootedness, which runs as a common thread through her oeuvre of films, performances and texts.

– In Aveugle Voix (literally ‘blind voice’ in franch, but also phonetically ‘the blind sees’, Hak Kyung Cha is dressed in white, squatting in front of a rolled white banner and two white headbands. She ties the first headband, with the word AVEUGLE (‘blind’) stencilled in black, over her mouth before tying the other over her eyes, revealing the word VOIX (‘voice’, ‘opinion’ or ‘vote’) also stencilled in black. She then stands and unfurls the banner, revealing a text in the following order:

WORDS-FAIL-ME-SANS (‘without’)- MOT (‘word’, ‘message’)- SANS-VOIX-AVEUGLE-GESTE (‘gesture’, ‘act’).

She lays the banner on the ground and begins interacting with it in a series of gesture and movements. As many of her work, she evokes references to Korean culture, dance and ritual, but without drawing a coherent picture of cutural memory, language or origin. The relationship between body, language, meaning and memory is fragile, fragmented or distorted. Multiplicity and multilingualism is her mode of regainin language and existence.

- CHA Theresa Hak Kyung, Mouth to Mouth, 1975.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s family immigrated to the US in 1962, where she studied literature and art. She later moved to Paris, where she studied film and film theory with Christian Metz, Raymond Bellour and Thierry Kuntzel. Cha’s (1951-1982) most important work, published shortly before her violent death en 1982, is the novel Dictee, which inter-weaves the biographies of several women. The various genres employed in her works are united by the topic of cultural, geographical and social uprootedness, which runs as a common thread through her oeuvre of films, performances and texts.

-– The subject of Mouth to Mouth, one of Cha’s early films, is language. Eight Korean vowel characters are shown, and the vowels are inaudibly spoken by the artist. The scenes then slowly fade to black. These presentations of printed characters and articulated vowels are interrupted by video static, which has been interpreted as representing the ‘‘the loss of language over the course of time’’.

- CHAPLINE Claudia, As Is 1975, Kieran Gallery, 1975.

- CHAPLINE Claudia, Object-Object, Kieran Gallery, 1975.

— Claudia Chapline, « Two Performances, » Intermedia, no.3, v.1, December 1975, p.6. Notes on two performances: Object-Object, performed at the Kieran Gallery, Riverside, January 12, 1975, and As Is 1975, a work for George Washington’s Birthday, one of a number of holiday (Holy Day) events.

- CHAPLINE Claudia, « Performance Notes, » LAICA Journal, no.7, August/September 1975, pp.34-35. 

Notes and photos from Marline Line, Part 2, performed at Santa Monica Beach, 6-10 a.m., December 1974. Excerpt:

« Paul brought the black plastic down by the sea and everyone became excited and joyfully played with this huge wave of material in the wind. The sun was high now and the sky was clear and blue. Eventually they brought it down to the sand and we crawled under it and sat quietly for some time. It was like being in a soft warm cave. The light was a bluish grey with golden highlights. Looking at the sun through this slate-colored skin was s strange and beautiful experience. We didn’t want to leave this place. »

- CHAPLINE Claudia, The Telephone Book, Los Angeles: Self-published, 1975.

— Claudia Chapline, « Telephone Book, » La Mamelle Magazine: Art contemporary, no.2, v.1, Fall 1975, pp.20-21.

- CHICAGO Judy, Through the Flower : My Struggle as a Woman Artist. Garden City, NY : Doubleday. 1975.

- COLETTE, Real Dream, 12/1975. Real Dream. Clocktower. NYC.

- COLETTE, Ragdoll, 1975, window perf. Rizzoli’s Bookstore. Exh. Fashion as fantasy.

- D’ARMAGNAC Ben, Een gebeuren, De Appel. Amsterdam. 1975.

- DARLING Lowell, « Lowell Darling », LAICA Journal, no. 4, January 1975, p. 23. 

- DE COINTET Guy

— James Welling, « Linking Dream Structures and Images, » Artweek, v.6, June 28, 1975, p.16. Review article comparing performances by Guy de Cointet with John White, both performed in May 1975 at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA). See also, John White. Excerpt on De Cointet:

« In Guy de Cointet’s performance a little woman recounts a fantastic adventure which goes something like this: The narrator’s dying father bequeaths a booklike object, his ‘diary,’ to her. He dies and war erupts. The narrator’s fiancee hastens off the battle, leaving her alone with the book. Escaping to the street amid exploding buildings, our heroine is forced into the crush of evacuees fleeing out of the city. After an all-night march, the rabble arrives in the threatening countryside. Miraculously, at daybreak, the war ends. Troops disperse, and the narrator is reunited with her lover. The tumultuous and contracted force of events imprints itself into the pages ot the book, and the entire performance revolves around this farcical telling and showing. A burning timber singes one page; bloodstains mar, but improve, a drawing on another. Enemy bullets complement a design. The construction of plot is much like connecting numbered dots  to arrive at a pattern; here the pattern of is in time –  and continuously providing explanations for the localized appearance on each page. The implausible glosses move the narrator from one page to the next. The book is seemingly acted upon by the same figurative events that propell the frantic narrative. »

- DE COINTET Guy, A Few Drawings, Self-published, 1975. Artist Book.

- EDELSON Mary Beth, Goddess Head, 1975 (photocollage).

- FOX Terry

— Five Artists and Their Video Work, Seattle: AND/OR Gallery, 1975. Catalogue for an exhibition. Excerpt on Terry Fox:

« Fox enters from the back of the space and begins lighting what becomes evident as a structure of 12 white candles, one at a time, each time with a new match, putting each used match in his jacket pocket… The pendulum ball hangs in the center of the room, the center of the labyrinth. The and/or space is of nearly the same diameter as the Chartres labyrinth – 40 feet. After lighting the candles and setting the pendulum ball in motion, Fox places himself at the entrance to the structure and makes sound with a cello and violin bow across a large metal bowl shaped like a caldron and a shallow bowl, the earth digging part of a plow – both found instruments. The rhythm of Fox’s breathing, the rhythm of the labyrinth. »

— Barbara Radice, « Visibilia: Firenze, Terry Fox, » Data, nos.16/17, June/August 1975, p.36. Review in Italian of Terry Fox’s performance at the Galleria Schema in Florence, Italy.

— Michael Welling, « Terry Fox Videotapes, » Artweek, v.6, March 15, 1975, p.16. Review of five videotapes shown at the Long Beach Museum of Art: Turgescent Sex (1974), Clutch (1971), Children’s Tapes (1974), Incision (1972), and Two Turns (1975).

- FOX Terry 

— ‘‘522 Steps Into the Labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral,’’ Vision, no.1, September 1975, pp.22-23.

- FOX Terry & MARIONI Tom, Duologue, 1975, C.A.R.P., Los Angeles, California.

- FOX Terry, Attic Salt, 1975, And/Or, Seattle, Washington.

- FOX Terry, Capillary Action, 1975, Galleria Schema, Florence.

- FOX Terry, Cats’ Brain Bread, 1975, Fort Worth Museum of Art, Fort Worth, Texas.

- FOX Terry, Two Turns, 1975. Videotape, 42 mins., b/w.

- FRIED Howard, The Burghers of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, 1975, work in progress. 

Film, color. Fried’s first golf lesson.

- FRIED Howard, ‘‘Untitled’’, Vision, no.1, September 1975, pp.30-31.

- FRIEDMAN Ken, Paik’s Third Symphony, San Francisco: La Mamelle, Inc., 1975. Videotape, approx. 8 mins., b/w.

Private performance of the Third Symphony written by Nam June Paik subtitled, Young Penis Symphony.

- FRIEDMAN Ken, « Perspective: Brief Notes on an Exhibition, » La Mamelle Magazine: Art Contemporary, no.2, v.1, Fall 1975, pp.6-10. Excerpts of Friedman’s events in Fluxus notational form:

10,000

Mail to friends, people chosen by random

processes, etc. 10,000 objects, papers,

events, etc., over the span of a predetermined time.

1971

(Which recipients are to receive which items and on what dates also be selected at random. First performed in 1971 over the span of one year).

- FRIEDMAN Ken, Ken Friedman at the Slocumb Gallery, Johnson City, Tenn.: Department of Art, East Tennessee State University, [1975].

Catalogue for a one person exhibition at the Slocumb Gallery, October 13-November 1, [1975].

- Front, San Francisco, no.1, 1975. Editor, Carl E. Loeffler. Tabloid format. 

- GAGLIONE Bill, Dadazine, San Francisco, no.1, 1975, Editor and Publisher.

- GRAHAM Dan, Performance/Audience/Mirror, 1975. (video) 22:52 minutes, sound, b/w. 

In the filmed performance Performer/Audience/Mirror, Dan Graham was interested in examining the relationship between the performing artist and the audience. By means of a large-scale mirror in which the audience was reflected, Graham captured both himself and the audience facing him; at first he stands facing to the audience, and later turns to face their reflection in the mirror. In this way, Graham enables the viewers to understand the subjective viewpoint of the performer, which is compared with their own viewpoint in real time.

- GRIEGER Susan, Friends/Artists, Pasadena: Self-published, 1975.

- GRIFFITHS Jennifer, Animation Madness, 1975.

- HERSHMAN Lynn, Lady Luck: A Double Portrait of Las Vegas, 1975.

— Lynn Hershman, « Lady Luck: A Double Portrait of Las Vegas », Self-published, 1976. Documentary artist book for a work that took place at Circus Circus Casino and Spa in Las Vegas, Nevada, March 2, 1975. Excerpt:

« On March 2, 1975, the ritual celebration was performed. Lisa [Charles] and her wax altered ego matched wits ate the roulette table at Circus Circus. Siteen curious spectators flew to Las Vegas from San Francisco to share the experience. Lisa and Lady Luck each began with $1500.00 worth of chips. While Lisa based her bets on intuition, Lady Luck was aided by an amplified tape of prerecorded numbers. By the end of the game, Lisa had $40.00 while Lady Luck had won $1620.00. »

— 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:

« MR: And then, also in 1975, you did the Las Vegas: A Double Portrait of Lady Luck.

LH: Yes. I again dit a portrait of a city – Las Vegas – just as I had done the portrait of New York. And I wanted to do a double portrait. The first casio I went to was called ‘Circus Circus’, and the first person I met there was called ‘Charles Charles’. Charles Charles had a wife who was an employee of the casino, and I made a wax sculpture double of her. The real woman and the sculpture were dressed alike, wore the same make-up and looked identical. The sculpture had a prerecorded cassette tape of her gambling moves. The woman used her intuition, and the two of them played roulette at the casino. The sculpture won in the metaphysical match…

Then there was Roberta, also in 1975. She was the woman who left the hotel room and went on to have her own life…

- HERSHMAN Lynn, Re: Forming Familiar Environments, Self-published, 1975. 

An artist book documenting a work by Lynn Hershman with Eleanor Coppola that took place May 16, 1975 in a three-story home.

- HERSHMAN Lynn, Roberta Breitmore, 1975-

— 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:

- HOOVER Nan, Light Dissolves, 1975.

Nan Hoover (1931-2008, USA, Germany) studied in Washington , DC, before she moved to Amsterdam in 1969 and became a Dutch citizen. She taught video and film at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1987 to 1997. In 2007, she moved to Berlin, where she died in 2008. Along with Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell, Nan Hoover was one of the pioneers of video art in the 1970s. Her first light performance was held in Berlin in 1976, and from 1991 onward, she created spectacular light installations in public spaces. Her video works are contemplative explorations of the body, movements, light and shadow, creating abstract but also very sensual landscapes.

In this early performance piece, Hoover uses her body to experiment with light and shadow. The video begins with Hoover in stark silhouette against a white background. An abstracted from materialises in front of the silhouette, moving with the play of light. It reveals itself as her hand, which cuts through the picture plane and occupies the space in front of her. The sound is dramatic and evocative: a continuous humming, almost a Buddhist chant. A flash of light – and suddenly a transition in light – reveals a different composition altogether, more vertical and geometric, minimal and simple. Light Dissolves is a collection of picture planes for which the artist performs the compositions, each of which is separated by dissolving light.

- JONAS Joan, Twilight, 1975.

-  KLAUKE Jürgen et ULAY, Keine Möglichkeit-Zwei Platzwunden, 11, 12 et 13 septembre 1975. 

Galerie Stichding De Appel.

- KAPROW Allan

— Mirella Bandini, « Allan Kaprow: A Happening and a Conversation with Allan Kaprow, » DATA, nos.16/17, June/August 1975, pp.60-67 and insert. History of the happening – past and present. Includes photos of happening events from early 1960’s. Text in Italian with an English translation by Rodney Stringer. Excerpts:

« Kaprow, for example, in talking about the birth of his first happening, states that he moves on from his first paintings and assemblages, done in 1952, to a sort of agglomeration of action-collage and finally to their structural arrangement in environments with sounds and lights; and he at once realised that « every visitor became a part of it, which, to tell the truth, I hadn’t expected. So I entrusted those who came in with unimportant duties, like moving something, turning on switches, etc. Towards ‘57-’58 this need grew more intense and prompted me to attribute an increasingly marked responsability to the visitor, whom I entrusted with more and more things to do. So the happening was born. My first happenings were staged in quite different kinds of places: attics, shops, classroom, gymnasiums, on a friend’s (George Segal) farm, and so on. The combining of all the elements in my work – compositions, environment, time, space and people – was my biggest technical problem right from the start… Most of all, I wanted the audience not so much to watch, but to ‘take part’ in my work, and I had to find a practical way of accomplishing this aim. So I devised a system of very simple situations and images, with elementary mechanisms and implications… I generally elaborated my works on the basis of four points:

I) the action’s simple or complex ‘being’, that’s to say, without any other meaning beyond the physical and sensitive immediacy of whatever happens. II) The actions are fantasies carried out not exactly in the model of life, though they are derived from it. III) The actions constitute an organised structure of events. IV) Their ‘meaning’ is readable in a symbolic and allusive sense. » (Allan Kaprow)

[Bandini]: Since 1965, or since ‘Calling,’ to be precise, the number of people taking part in your happenings has grown steadily smaller, with the exclusion of spectators. What determined this new position?

[Kaprow]: In the beginning, because I wasn’t a professional actor and nor were my friends, I was looking for an experience similar to that of actors so that I could really try out this unknown dimension to me. This was the reason why the people were involved in an almost theatrical way. But as soon as I experienced this I stopped moving in that direction. I just gave very objective direction-notes as coldly and flatly as possible, leaving you with the fullest scope for action.

[Bandini]: However, in this way participation in your events becomes an aleatory thing.

[Kaprow]: No, it implies no kind of superiority over anybody. Besides, our knowledge and yours was left to chance. This position of freedom is important. You were absolutely free to put on the piece, in that it is a proposal which the participants could perfectly well refuse if they wished. So these efforts of mine to research certain aspects of human institutions are experiments on a minor scale, which could however be done on larger one. After the sixties my happenings stopped being a large scale and became steadily smaller and more intimate. Maybe it’s the effect of the times. Certainly, after ‘68, which we all learnt something from, one is more inclined towards a more inward-looking dimension. This doesn’t upset the research in the slightest, because it is simply the study of models that can later be blown up again on a larger scale as soon as the occasion arises and the situation is riper.

Occasionnaly I can call what I do ‘art,’ but I can also say that it is a form of sociology and has a psychodynamic aspect. »

- KAPROW Allan, 2 Measures, Torino: Martano Editore, 1975. 

Includes activities: Affect, that took place in Torino, October 15, 1974, sponsored by Galleria Martano; and Take-Off, sponsored by Galleria Martini-Ronchetti, Genova, on October 19, 1974.

- KAPROW Allan, Air Condition, Los Angeles: Self-published, 1975.

Artist book. An activity. « Air Condition is a ‘privacy piece’meant for an individual alone, which carried out by seven persons in the ills around the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in October of 1973.

- KAPROW Allan, Comfort Zones, 1975, 16 mm film with sound, approx. 15 mins. b/w.

Comfort Zones, Madrid: Galleria Vandres, 1975. Artist book.

« Comfort Zones plays with what the social sciences call ‘territorial bubbles’ and ‘eye contacts.’… seven couples… carry out Comfort Zones in Madrid, Spain, on June 10th and 11th, 1975… sponsored by Galleria Vandres, S.A., Madrid. »

- KAPROW Allan, « Easy Activity », in Art Studies for an Editor: 25 Essays in Memory of Milton S. Fox, pp.177-182. New York; Harry N. Abrams, 1975.

Description with photos of a Kaprow activity entitled Loss.

- KAPROW Allan, Echo-Logy, New York: D’Arc Press, 1975. Artist book.

An activity concerned with natural processes; the activity, commissioned by the Merriewold West Gallery, took place in Far Hills, NJ, on May 3-4, 1975.

- KAPROW Allan, Likely Stories, Milano: Galleria Luciano Anselmino, [1975].

Artist book. An activity that took place in Milan, Italy, November 1975.

- KAPROW Allan, Match, Wupperthal, Germany: Kunst und Museumsverein, [1975]. Artist book.

An activity that took place August 29-31, 1975, sponsored by Kunst-und Museumsverein, the von der Heydt-Museum, and the Berliner Kunstlerprogramm of the DAAD.

- KAPROW Allan, Rates of Exchange, New York: D’Arc Press, 1975. Artist book.

An activity that took place in New York City, March 1975, sponsored by the Stefanotty Gallery, New York.

- KAPROW Allan, Rates of Exchange, 1975. Videotape, 45 mins., b/w.

- KAPROW Allan, Routine, Self-published, 1975. 

An artist book describing the ‘first of three related Activities with the same title’ carried out on December 1-3, 1973; sponsored by the Portland Center for the Visual Arts.

« Routine was the first of three related Activities with the same title. …The idea was prepared in November, 1973 and was realized the following December 1st, 2nd and 3rd, under the sponsorship of the Portland Center for the Visual Arts in Oregon. »

Description and script (artist book) :

« Routine was the first of three related Activities with the same title Each of them alludes to the deadpan stylizations of vaudeville routines, and to routinized behavior in everyday life. 

« The idea was prepared in November, 1973, and was realized the following December 1st, 2nd and 3rd, under the sponsorship of the Portland Center for the Visuals Arts in Oregon. About twenty couples (mostly of opposite sexes) took part. A briefing to begin and a review afterwards brought the participants together, while between these sessions we carried out the program printed here in places of our own choice.

« Althrough the basic operating unit of the Activity was a pair, it turned out that most of the transactions involved self-reflection. This was nothing new, to be sure. As we later ‘reflected’ people generally devote themselves to mirroring who they are in others. But there was, or seemed to be, the promise of some kind of relationship contained in the images and formality of the program. The use of the telephone underlined that possibility.

« A few couples carried out their routine in crowded public places to learn that hardly anyone else paid attention; others sought isolated car lots and backyards, and had ample opportunity to pay attention solely to their own appearance or feelings. Annoyances and amusements resulted. Partnerships do not always serve the member equally. Yet several couples actually throught they got to know each other better. A few rediscovered an ancient way to flirt. Still others concluded they liked their eyes better than their mouths. The prevailing mood, I recall, was ironicaly surreal.

« The photos here do not document ROUTINE. They fictionalize it. There were made and assembled to illustrate the framework of moves upon which an action or set of actions could be based. They function somewhere between the artifice of a Hollywood movie and an instruction manual. The pictures explain the words as the words explain the pictures. Thus the conversion of an event into an exhibit or magazine article becomes a species of mythology. »

1. standing somewhere

facing a friend holding a large mirror

trying to catch one’s reflection

signalling to tilt the mirror variously

until the reflection is caught

both moving apart a few steps

repeating process

moving apart again and again

repeating process

until it’s no longer possible

to see oneself

2. phoning a friend

saying something

asking that it be repeated

hearing the reply

holding the phone at arm’s length

saying something else

asking that it be repeated

listening for the reply

stepping away from the phone a bit

saying something else a bit louder

asking that it be repeated

listening for the reply

moving off farther and farther

each time saying something more loudly

asking that it be repeated

listening for the reply 

(asking again that it be repeated if on can’t hear)

until it’s impossible to hear

3. planning to meet a friend

both approaching from a distance

turning around, walking backwards

towards each other, lookin into a pocket mirror

until the reflections of both faces are very clear

making an eye movement    making a mouth movement

the other copying it        the other copying it

copying again and again    copying again and again

until tired            until tired

moving apart (still looking into mirrors)

repeating process

moving apart again and again

copying until face movements are no longer clear

4. phoning a friend

saying something

repeating it once or twice

saying « OK, now let’s say it together »

saying it, together, again and again

until no longer possible

being phoned by a friend

hearing something said once or twice

being asked to repeat it together

saying it, together, again and again

until repeating is no longer possible

5. looking a one’s eyes and mouth

in a pocket mirror

describing them to a friend (note : Friends may, but need not be, the same throughout the five sections)

on the phone

friend doing same each staring at his/her reflected eyes without blinking

staring at his/her opened mouth without closing it

saying nothing

hanging up when the eyes must blink

when the mouth must shut. »

- KAPROW Allan, Time Pieces, 1975. Videotape, 30 mins., b/w.

- KAPROW Allan, Useful Fictions, Fiction: Galleria Schema, 1975. Artist book of an activity.

- KAPROW Allan, Warm-Ups, 1975, 16 mm film with sound, approx. 14 mins., color.

Warm-Ups, [Self-published], 1975. Artist book. An activity that took place in Boston, October 1975, sponsored by the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, the Massachussets Institute of Technology.

- KIPPER KIDS, Laica, Los Angeles (photo)

— Peter Clothier, « The Kipper Kids: An Endless Ritual, » LAICA Journal, no.5, April/May 1975, pp.47-49. Excerpt:

« The performance is gross, obscene, irreverent and unbeautiful. It is a deliberate and unremitting distortion of the niceties of our social behavior, our beliefs, our intimacies and our art into the grotesque. It’s hard, for example, to imagine anything more innocent and warmly human than a child’s birthday party: in the hands of the Kipper Kids it becomes an obscene, piggy ritual, without joy or love, which includes the perfunctory exchange of rubber ducks as ‘gift,’ a lunatic scoffing match as the two stuff ‘cake’ into their mouths (actually a dinner roll which must have been several weeks old), and a final regurgitation of the remains into the faces of the audience. Hideous-and hideously funny. Each of the successive food ceremonies which form the tri-partite structure of the action – the birthday party, a tea ceremony and a dinner – is a ritual which becomes the occasion for fetichism, obscenity, and a series of sounds and gestures ranging from the low- to the clearly sub-human: burping, gobbling, squealing and squawking, poking, pulling, pinching, goosing, and so on. In short, a Freudian nightmare-comedy of oral and anal obsession. »

- KITCHEN CENTER FOR VIDEO AND MUSIC. N.Y.

— The Kitchen 1974-75. New York: The Kitchen, 1975. Catalogue documenting events sponsored by the Kitchen Center, New York, during 1974-75. Among the California artists presenting works at the Kitchen: Ant Farm (Cadillac Ranch Show, videotape and slide presentation), Eleanor Antin (The Ballerina and the Bum and The Little Match Girl Ballet, videotapes), John Baldessari (The Italian Tape, videotape), Virginia Quesade (Sound Imagery), Martha Rosler (Semiotics of the Kitchen and A Budding Gourmet, videotapes), Allen Sekula (Talk Given by Mr. Fred Lux at the Lux Clock Mfg. Company Plant in Lebanon, Tennessee, on Wednesday, September 15, 1954, videotape).

- KOS Paul, Lightning, 1975. Videotape, 2 mins., b/w.

- KOS Paul, Riley, Roily River, 1975. Videotape, 2 mins., b/w.

— James Welling, « Landscape Video, » Artweek, v.6, October 25, 1975, p.16. Review of Landscape Video exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Of eight participants, ‘Paul Kos takes a position which activates landscape through performance.’ Kos’s contribution included his videotapes, Riley, Roily River (2 mins.), and Pilot Butte, Pilot Light (14 mins.). Excerpts:

« Every other tape looks at landscape as something to be observed. Pilot Butte, Pilot Light transforms landscape. The tape begins with a shot of a butte in the middle distance. The shot cuts to a dry tree stump, presumably on the butte just pictured. A man’s hands enter the frame and construct a small wooden lattice on the stump. The shot moves off to the side, and the man/performer spins a disc of ice in an overturned lid. The ice is held over the wood for a moment and then is spun again. The ice is held over the lattice a second time. The shot cuts to another angle, and the activity becomes more apparent. The globe of ice has been shaped into a lens to focus the sun’s rays on the wood. After a few moments, smoke begins to rise, and in a minute, incredibly, a flame shoots up. Eventually, the lattice/pyre catches fire completely, and the les of ice is placed on the fire. The structure collapses into ashes, and the tape cuts to the final image – the butte of the first shot, this time at twilight. »

- KOS Paul and KOS Marlene, Tokyo Rose. Video installation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1975-76.

A steel mesh environmental trap easy to enter contained a monitor depicting Marlene Kos as Tokyo Rose seductively repeating ‘Come in, I want to be your friend… do not resist… I want to be your friend.’

— Howard Junker, « Video Installation: Paul Kos and Sculptured Monitor, » Arts Magazine, v.50, November 1975, pp.64-66. General essay on the video work of Paul Kos with lengthy description of Cymbols/Symbols: Pilot Light/Pilot Butte (1974), rEVOLUTION: Notes for the Invasion – mar mar march (1975), and Tokyo Rose (1975-76). Excerpt on Tokyo Rose:

« Tokyo Rose (1976, taped but not installed at this writing) will be a trap, easy to enter, hard to escape. It will be an environment that mirrors for the viewer the content ot the tape: Marlene Kos (who is credited with script ans performance), in Oriental make-up as Tokyo Rose, is shown behind the meshes of a flytrap (similar to the trap the viewer has entered); she seductively repeats: ‘Come in. I want to be your friend. Do not struggle…’ »

- LACY Suzanne, « Gothic Love Story, » La Mamelle Magazine: Art Contemporary, no.2, v.1, Fall 1975, pp.18-19.

- LAUB Stephen, Perfect Strangers, 1975. Fort Worth Art Museum. Texas.

- LEPPE Carlos, Perchero, 1975 (installation).

- LOS ANGELES INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART

— Michael Auping, « Issues and information: An Interview with Bob Smith, Director of the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, », La Mamelle Magazine: Art Contemporary, no.1, v.1, Summer 1975, pp.40-43. excerpt:

« MA: A number of artists [Kaprow and Smithson in particular] have speculated that the museum, as a relevant institution to contemporary art, is dead, simply because the kind of art that fits into a museum is dead [i.e. ‘precious objects’]. What is your reaction to artists of that philosophy ?

BS: I see that as being a real possibility. Art is evolving in that direction. fewer and fewer material objects are being created, and more and more people are working with performance, video and that kind of thing. The situation I see as being kind of interesting for galleries and museums is that art librarians will become increasingly more important. Museum people are really trained in storing and talking care of things. Librarians are trained at storing things and making them available, taking care of information. As artists deal more and more with information, the people who are trained to retrieve data will be the ones taking care of it. In other words, museums may become libraries. »

— Peter Plagens, « A Short Unofficial History of the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art as Extracted from Semiofficial Documents, » Artweek, v.6, March 15, 1975, pp.6-7. A ‘brief psychic history’/chronology of events related to LAICA from Plagens’ file which includes minutes, clippings, press releases, informal communiques, etc. Excerpt:

« April 1973 – The dehydration of the Southern California art world is not an evaporation of physical facilities (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pasadena Museum of Art, Newport Harbor Art Museum, University of California at Los Angeles Galleries, and several other college spaces), but rather dissipated or flagging energy; the last thing we need is another shiny shell. (What might seem like a local problem is only too easily extended. The trouble with art patronage outside the Eastern seeboard lies not with the easy stuff – fanfare and new hardware, new executive appointements and fund-raising campaigns – but with the hard things – catalogued shows of difficult art, collection of same, hard-nosed criticism of same, and circulation of art and artists into the greater intellectual community. »

- MAOR Haim, Circles, 1975. Born in Jaffa, 1951. Lives and works in kibbutz Giv’at Haim Meuchat.

In a photograph from Haim Maor’s film Circles (1975), a bound figure resembling a war prisoner surrounding by a circle – a basic from that is used in various rituals. Referring to this work, Maor has said he was interested in the gap between the actual representation of violence and pain and a conscious, intentional processes of aestheticization.

- MARIONI Tom (as Allan Fish), « Conceptual Art: Idea Oriented Situations Not Directed at the production of Static Objects, » La Mamelle Magazine: Art Contemporary, no.1, v.1, Summer 1975.

- MARIONI Tom (as Allan Fish), « Listen, Too, » Vision, no.1, September 1975, pp.20-21.

- MARIONI Tom (as Allan Fish), Tom Marioni: Thinking Out Loud, Warszawa: Galeria Foksal PSP, 1975.

Catalog with photo documentation and text (in Polish and English) for an exhibition at Galeria Foksal, October 1975. excerpt from the introduction, by Wieslaw Borowski:

« Tom Marioni has recently reduced his artistic procedures to simple actions with the use of sound emerging by the striking/rasping with drumstick or wire brushes, not on an instrument, but on a plank, desk or metal plate. The uniform noise and monotonous rhythm is synchronized with the pulse of the heart or the measure of breath so as to situate the actions on the purely biological level. In this sense Marioni’s rhythmical sessions belong to such tendencies in modern art which strive to reach to the primary intensity of the interaction of man with his environment and thus turn towards the elementary impulses, reflexes and bodily gestures and rhythms. When we see Marioni in action, we can’t help to get fascinated with his ascetic procedure, or even, as the artist wants us to, we may be vulnerable to some suggestions analogous to the state of hypnosis. Some role may be played by the oriental implications of the artist’s attitude, present in his circle, although only indirectly. It seems, however, that the suggestive appeal of those sessions and their essential meaning is by no means limited to the magical operation and is something more than an expression of the mystical faith, able to produce the states of hallucination or illumination. »

- MATIHIS Melissa, Work Piece, 1975.

- McCARTHY Paul, Glass, 1975.

— Greg Dymkowski, « Glass, Video by Paul McCarthy, » Artweek, v.6, August 23, 1975, p.6. Review of Glass, McCarthy’s videotape contribution to the Long Beach Museum of Art’s Southland Video Anthology. Excerpt:

« Fade-in, Paul McCarthy (I hope he’s not going to throw up). Between Mr. McCarthy and the camera spans a pane of glass. We are viewing Paul’s face, distorted by the pressures of his lips and open mouth against the glass. Rather unhoped for squirting noises announce a flood of saliva, now slowly drooling down the glass (Paul, please don’t throw up)… »

- McCARTHY Paul, Sailor’s Meat, 1975. Los Angeles. Videotape with sound, 30 mins., color.

« A male figure in black panties and a platinum wig approaches a moth-eaten mattress on a brass bed frame. There is a period of testing the bed, jumping and pushing. Then he rips into the bed, assaulting it sexuality. The scene gets gory and lurid as various convincing props come into play: a dildo, dark, viscous fluid, white foamy estoplasmic goo. At the end we see bare feet standing on glass fragments. is this purification through pain? »

- McCarthy Paul, Tubbing: Prelude to Sweet Sailor’s Meat, Videotape, 1975.

This piece was performed for video and a small audience in a cheap hotel.

- MELCHERT Jim

— Judith L. Dunham, « Jim Melchert: Ways of Seeing, » Artweek, v.6, December 6, 1975, pp.1,16. Review of Melchert’s exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Excerpt:

« The works in the museum installation involve one, two or more participants, usually friends and family, who carry out actions structured but not necessarily tighly scripted by Melchert. Their movements are photographed serially by Melchert or by a friend. Therefore, Melchert assumes various roles – choreographer, director, recorder and participant. Similarly, the situations he sets up, one enacted and filmed or photographed, are a fascinating sandwich of performance, dance, film and sculpture, in their multilevel implications, all contained within a two-dimensional rectangular field – either a series of flashing slides or the slow-moving frames of a film. »

— Alec Lambie & Jim Pomeroy, « Enzyme Action », Work, San Francisco, no.1, 1975. An interview with Jim Melchert. Excerpt:

« …a big change for me was in making the switch from clay objects to the slide projections. It started one summer when I was sitting in a warehouse where I had nothing to do but watch the wall. I decided I’d go over and get to know it. I collided with it, rolled across it, fell through the door, that sort of thing. I really got off on it. Once a pattern began forming I asked a girl to come over and try what I was doing. I got a camera and took slides of her and the wall and later projected them on the same wall exactly to size. It was fantastic what the replay of light was doing with the place. I can’t imagine any medium affecting me more at that time. It introduced me to a lot possibilities. Working with a score, for one. Thinking in terms of a particular person or persons moving in a certain space and how that could help me deal with some issue, it was easy to go into slide sequences or into performances or any of a number of areas. »

- MELCHERT Jim, Points of View/Slide Projection Pieces, San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1975.

Catalogue for Melchert’s exhibition, November 14-December 21, 1975.

- MENDIETA Ana, Alma Silueta en Fuego, 1975.

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.

Between the years 1973 to 1980, Ana Mendieta created a series of work, collectively entitled Silueta, originating on trips between the US state of Iowa and Mexico. They all share in common the formal element of the artist’s silhouette represented and filled with organic materials, such as rocks, branches, flowers. This film, Alma Silueta en Fuego (Soul Silhouette on Fire), originally recorded with a Super 8 camera, shows a ghostly silhouette on the ground that catches fire and burns up.

- MENDIETA Ana, On Giving Life, 1975.

- MENDIETA Ana, Silueta de Cinezas, 1975 (action).

- MIRALLES Fina, Relacions. relacions del cos amb elements naturals: cobriment del cos amb palla, 1975.

Fina Miralles (1950 Spain) studied in Barcelona from 1968 to 1972. Today, she lives and works in Cadaques. Fina Miralles 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.

Relacions. relacions del cos amb elements naturals: cobriment del cos amb palla (Relationships. Relationships of the body with natural elements. Covering the body with straw) belongs to a subsequent series in which the artist’s body is fused with a range of natural elements, establishing a full identification with it, forming a single unit of interchangeable values revolving around the eternal processes of destruction and rebirth of nature.

- MONTANO Linda, Blindfold Movement, 1975.

- MONTANO Linda, Living Art Situations, 1975.

— 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:

Linda Montano continued to utilize art to further investigate her life. In Living Art Situations (1975), she stayed home and documented her activity with neighborhood people. Montano ‘‘…felt (she) hadn’t been available to anyone but (herself)… these works were about making myself more available.’’ Soon Montano began doing works where she would live with people for periods of time, designating everything that occurred as Art. One of the first persons she lived with was Nina Wise. Shortly thereafter she lived in the desert for ten days with Pauline Oliveros, an experience which Montano described as ‘‘wonderful. Everything we did was art – exquisite – and I thought it could go on forever.’’ In 1976, Montano, in collaboration with Wise, played drums in… ‘‘an attempt to change… consciousness.’’ Daily they sat at 80 Langton Street wearing masks and playing drums. ‘‘It was an extremely powerful piece. It was a mutual extension of wanting to do something for a long period of time, wanting to change biological rhythms, wanting to change the chemicals of the body, and wanting to move an another place.’’ After a move to Southern California, Montano’s life took on aspects taht previously she could only explore in her art, and her art ‘‘became more public and outward.’’ [19]

[19] Montano’s current works in southern California consists of making video portraits of ‘‘characters’’ which she associates with the various chakras, e.g. the nun, the French woman, the country-western singer, etc. The ongoing influence of Catholicism is important in the work of Montano, who, earlier in her life was a nun. Montano says that it has ‘‘absolutely’’ affected her work and that her use of ‘‘elements of discipline and endurance and martydom… sacred spaces and energy… is a woman’s version of Catholicism.’’

- MONTANO Linda, « Untitled, » Vision , no.1, September 1975, pp.34-35.

Newspaper clipping and family photo of Montano when she received the Missionary Communities habit at the Maryknoll Sisters, Motherhouse, Ossining.

- MOGUL Susan

— Susan Mogul, « Susan Mogul », LAICA Journal, no.4, February 1975, p.40. Includes brief explanation of work with photograph. Excerpt:

« Document from an East Coast–West Coast Introductory Piece I did with Suzanne Lacy. We breakfasted together at 9:00 AM at the Saugus Cafe (a popular student hang-out at Cal Arts) while in Cambridge we arranged for our 2 best friends, who didn’t know each other, to meet at 12:00 PM at the popular cafe there. each had her own letter of introduction from either Suzanne or myself, and after presenting these credentials, they dined together. »

- MOORE Stephen, Destination Death Valley, Self-published, 1975. Artist book.

- MOORE Stephen, Destination Yucca Valley, Self-published, 1975. Artist Book.

- MOORE Stephen, Portable Lecture on Conceptual Art, San Jose: Self-published, 1975. Artist Book.

- MOTION, « Motion/Reynolds Collaborate, » Front, no.1, 1975, p.1.

- MURAK Teresa, Ladie’s Smock, 1975. Lublin

Together with Natalia LL and Ewa Partum, Teresa Murak (1949, Poland) was one of the leading performance and body artists in Poland in 1970s. At the beginnin of the 1970s, Teresa Murak discovered the natural material that was to become central to her artistic practice: plan seeds. After martial law was declared in Poland in the 1980s, she was forced to take her activities to the artistic underground. During this time Murak turned from seed actions and began working with dirt and mud as a means of expression in her art.

In 1975, Teresa Murak created a work that was to become her artistic signature: Lady’s Smock, a dress made out of fast growing cress seeds. In this performance, Murak’s nude body is both subject and an art material interacting with natural elements. In this fusion of earth art and body art, she removed the seeds from their immediate natural environment, giving them an ideal new breeding ground for natural development and growth: her warm body. The intimate contact between the seeds and Murak’s body created a place for vegetation she formally intensified at the end of the 1980s. In this meditative action, she lay in a bathtub with water and seeds while the seeds began to sprout.

- MURAK Teresa, Woman’s Calendar, 1975.

- NA’AMAN Michal, Glue and Honey, 1975, 8 mm film, silent, color, Haifa Museum of Art Collection.

In Michal Na’aman’s work Glue and Honey (1975), two substances, which form two round puddles on the table, are examined in terms of their relation to the body. In contrast to the hand that sticks to the glue as it dries, the honey-covered hand is licked by Na’aman. In her typically restrained manner, Na’aman creates an ambivalent experience of sweetness and entrapment in sticky substances, which constitute an extension of the body.

- NATALIA LL, Sztuka Konsumpcyjna (postconsumer Art), 1975 (photo: Zofia Wallgora).

Natalia LL (1937, Poland) was heavily influenced by Polish Conceptual art and was part of the avant-garde scene in Poland in the 1970s. In 1970, she co-founded the group of artists and gallery Permafo. She primarily works in the media of photography, video, installation and performance. Her work analyses the iconography of popular culture, mass media and pornography. Her performances and photographic documents of a trivial reality adhere to a strict, repetitive structure. She stages her own body and that of others in ambiguous, often suggestively erotic and ironic poses. In her later works, she also thematises suffering and death.

This video is part of a series of photographs and videos spanning several years with the title Sztuka Konsumpcyjna, in which Natalia LL analyses the meaning of consumption and gives it an ironic twist, for example by assuming seemingly pornographic poses while eating a banana. 

- NAUMAN Bruce

— Jan Butterfield, « Bruce Nauman: The Center of Yourself », Arts Magazine, v.49, February 1975, pp.53-55. Major interview. Excerpt:

JB: I am interested in examining some of your attitudes about ‘art.’ There has to be some common ground, some societal overlap for pieces to be ‘visible’ to others besides yourself. How little of that can we have and still have an ‘art form,’ rather than individual exercise on your part? I am interested in determining whether or not you are conscious of where the boundaries are?

BN: Not consciously. I don’t necessarily think consciously aware. I am sure that I think about that, and would really like to be working at the edge of that. What I am really concerned about is what art is supposed to be – and can become. It seems to me that painting is not going to get us anywhere, and most sculpture is not going to, either, and art has to go somewhere… Everybody is going about looking for what is going to be ‘next’ in terms of art, and it will probably turn out that it is something that has been going on all the time. »

- NICOLA L., Penetrable Performance with The Plan K, Bruxelles, Galerie de la Reine, 1975.

- PANE Gina, Discours mou et mat, 1975.

Gina Pane (1939-1990, France) is one of the most important and influential body and performance artists. In her works, she investigates a new, explicitly personal, emotional and symbolic language, which she uses as a basis for establishing physical relations between her own body and different objects by performing lyrical, personal rituals. Milk and blood, white and red, fire and burns, mirrors, glass and cuts are just a few of the recurring elements in her work. The use of razorblades to make superficial cuts on skin is something closely tied to Gina Pane’s artistic practice. Through these cuts, which are always scripted into her performances, the artist transforms her body into a surface of inscriptions through which she opens herself to the out-side. Pane thus builds up an intense relationship with the ‘anaesthetised’ audience who are forced to question their own passive stance.

In this video, Gina Pane enters a gallery, dressed typically in white and wearing sunglasses. The audience, after sidestepping a motorcycle blocking the gallery entrance, is waiting. Different objects are arranged on the floor: a helmet, a pair of boxing gloves, a gold-coloured golf ball and razorblade, red and white roses, two glass mirrors on which the word ‘alienation’ is written (among other things) and a naked woman with blue stars on her back stretched out in the periphery. In the following six scenes, the artist slips into different roles: the protective figure of the mother, the trauma of separation at birth, the alienation of the newborn baby from its mother, as well as closeness, intimacy and desire. All the while, Pane handles the objects with a kind of poetry, lending them symbolic value through the repetition of her movements, the inclusion of music, the reading of texts and the projection of slides.

- PICARD Lil, Tasting and Spitting, 1975.

Performance at 3 Mercer Street, Performance of Tasting and Spitting, November 29, 1975, with Kathy Aker. Photo: Robert Parent.

- PIPER Adrian, The Mythic Being: Cruising White Women, 1975. Cambridge Massachussetts.

- ROSENBACH Ulrike, Don’t Believe I’m an Amazon, 1975.

- ROSENTHAL Rachel

— Edie Danieli, « Rachel Rosenthal: A Life History », Artweek, v.6, December 13, 1975. review of Rosenthal’s performances at the Orlando Gallery, Encino, November 14, 1975, and at Wilshire West Plaza, Westwood, Los Angeles, November 25, 1975. Excerpt:

« Rosenthal announces that this will not be a performance as was scheduled, and what we have been invited here under false pretenses. That moment is incredibly exciting; that is the phrase that breathes life into the event. She sits in a chair and slowly and very stiffly, like a marionette, begins to move her arms, and then, as if connected by string, her knees follow. She slowly rises and rotates her body to the sound of a dialogue between herself and her doctor as he examines her knees. We see slides of the X-rays, and she shows us her knees and draws in dotted lines the possible corrective surgery. She pours red liquid from a container to show us the amount of blood extracted from her knees in one examination. Now we see slides of all the activities she had to give up: yoga, ballet, swimming, tai chi, bicycling, jogging. And to each one (outrageously staged) she says, ‘Of course, this is a simulation,’ and they are hilarious, and the situation is very sad. »

— Rachel Rosenthal, « Rachel Rosenthal », LAICA Journal, no.4, February 1975, pp.11-15. Rosenthal’s essay is in the form of a letter to Eleanor Antin, guest editor for the issue of LAICA Journal. Excerpt:

« You asked me to give my ‘best recollection’ of emigre days in Southern California. As a professional emigre (WWII refuge from France via Portugal, Brazil and N.Y.C.), daughter of emigres (Father, then age 14, from the Caucasus to Paris in 1888 and Mother from the Bolcheviks to Paris in 1920), and with an atavistic hunch that there were roaming Scythians and perhaps Amazons in the remote past of my genes, I am ready to recount my very personal colonization of early L.A.… »

- ROSLER Martha

— Martha Rosler, « Martha Rosler », LAICA Journal, no.4, February 1975, p.34. Autobiographical statement describing the period when Rosler first moved in California.

— Martha Rosler, « McTowersmaid: Food Novel 2 », LAICA Journal, no.7, August/September 1975, pp.36-37. Reprint of 14 postcards containing text of novel, McTowersmaid: Food Novel 2.

- SAPIEN Darryl

— Robert H. McDonald, « Darryl Sapien’s Search for Totality », Artweek, v.6, May 3, 1975, pp.15-16. An overview of Sapien’s performance works from 1971-75. Includes photos.

- SAPIEN Darryl, Splitting the Axis, 1975. University Art Museum, Berkeley, Ca., with Michael Hinton. 

A thirty-four foot tall wooden utility pole was installed floor to ceiling int the visual center of the museum. Two performers ascended the pole equipped with wooden mallets and wedges. Upon reaching the top both men began hammering the wedges into the pole as they descended. While the performers were splitting the pole lengthwise they were themselves being fragmented by strategically placed video cameras and contact microphones. Visual and auditory fragments of the performance were transmitted around the periphery of the museum, there to be encountered by unsuspecting viewers in the different galleries.

— Darryl Sapien, « Splitting the Axis », La Mamelle Magazine: Art Contemporary, no.3, v.1, Winter 1976, pp.18-19. The text:

« PERFORMANCE PROPOSAL: SPLITTING THE AXIS

This performance will consist of a single action on a vertical axis at point A on the diagram. Two men will climb a wood pole using metal lineman’s spurs and beginning at the top, thirty-five feet above the floor, they will begin driving wedges into the pole simultaneously from opposite sides. The performers will continue to drive the wedges while descending the pole at intervals of about one and one-half feet until they reach the floor. The performers should rotate around the axis as they descend, always remaining on opposite sides of the axis’ diameter.

The men and the pole will be monitored for sound by six small microphones attached to different -sound-producing elements such as voices, metal spurs, the pole itself, etc. The recorded sound will be transmitted to six locations around the museum. There will be three video cameras and four monitors. The cameras will be furnished with zoom lenses and focused on various visual elements of the actions. The recorded images will be transmitted to monitors directly opposite the cameras on the other side of the museum, providing the viewer a glimpse of the other side of the performance. The fourth monitor will display a live mix of the three images through the S.E.G. (Special Effects Generator).There will be six locations in all for the cameras, speakers, and monitors; all six of these stations will be on a different level of the museum. The stations will located at an equal radius from the axis and will be placed to interfere with the normal flow of traffic through the museum. The spectators will encounter them as they wander through the upper and lower levels of the structure. The audience will have the opportunity to see the performance live as a unit or electronically transformed as a visual fragment or disembodied sound. The audio and the video systems will be used to shatter the shell separating performers from audience and fling its pieces throughout the multiple elevations of the museum, to surround the spectators and enveloppe them within the resonance of the performer’s dance. Even as the performers are busily splitting the grain of the pole, the electronic hardware will function to simultaneously disassemble the performers. Lastly, the diagram determining the layout of the axis and stations is derived from both the radially symmetrical architecture of the museum itself and a geometric symbol delineating the basic vectors of action within the performanc… two wedges penetrate a circle. »

- SAPIEN Darryl, Tricycle, Contemporary Recreation, 1975, Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, Ca., with Michael Hinton and Cyd Gibson. 

Two performers wearing video camera headmounts and equipped with intercoms create two drawings on two gridded walls within a wedge shaped enclosure. Their markings are guided by a female director on the floor above them. She speaks in a code based on the clock and compass to guide each performer’s marker in the execution of their drawings. The director can see through the video eyes of each performer on two monitors facing her. On the lower floor the two performers act as her robotic hands , square by square creating what evolves into a child’s drawing of a man and woman.

Catalogue of Van Schley and Billy Adler’s projects, World Run, with color photographs, text and introduction.

— Moira Roth, « Moira Roth Interviews Darryl Sapien », High Performance, no.2, v.1, June 1978, pp.4-7. A major interview that includes discussion of Sapien’s works: Tricycle: Contemporary Recreation, performed at the Museum of Conceptual Art as part of the Second Generation show, 1975; Splitting the Axis, performed at the University Art Museum, Berkeley, August 1975; Within the Nucleus, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March 1976; and The Principles of the Arch, at PS1, New York, March 1977. Excerpt:

« …at MOCA… I did Tricycle: Contempary Recreation, a piece where I invented a video camera headmount with a built-in intercom which supported a camera at the eye level of the performer so that the performer could look through the camera but not have to hold it. It was like a big eye, it made it possible for the audience to see simultaneously with the two of us, Mike and I. The performance involved three people: Michael Hinton, and I in a sort of wedge-shaped enclosure on the first floor of MOCA, and a woman, Cyd Gibson, on the floor above. We were all able to communicate through the intercom verbally and she would guide us using a code based on the clock and compass while looking through our eyes, the cameras…

The audience could hear the instructions as they were being broadcast through a public address system and they could see the markings on the grid as the performers were seeing them through the two monitors which were showing what our video cameras helmets were recording. Also they could see us in our enclosure with the unaided eye. It had this whole buit-in sense of irony because the process was so complicated but the result was so childish. The results weren’t even as good as a child’s drawing because the lines wouldn’t meet from one grid square to the next. I was trying to emphasize this irony of a future disembodied humanity trying to recreate those basic processes like life and sexuality with this overly complicated process and being unsuccessful at it… »

- SCHNEEMANN Carolee, Americana I Ching Apple Pie, 1975.

- SCHNEEMANN Carolee, Interior Scroll, 1975. Re-enactment 1995. East Hampton. Long Island.

Performed in East Hampton, NYC and at the Telluride Film Festival, Colorado. Schneemann ritualistically stood naked on a table, painted her body with mud until she slowly extracted a paper scroll from her vagina while Reading from it : « I throught of the vagina in many ways – physically, conceptually : as a sculptural form, an architectural referent, the sources of sacred knowledge, ecstasy, birth passage, transformation. I saw the vagina as a translucent chamber of which the serpent was an outward model : enlivened by it’s passage from the visible to the invisible, a spiraled coil ringed with the shape of desire and générative mysteries, attributes of both female and male sexual power. This source of interior knowledge would be symbolized as the primary index unifying spirit and flesh in Goddess worship. » (C. S.)

Interior Scroll -The Cave,1975-1995, 1995, 7:30 min, color, sound. In a vast underground cave, Schneemann and seven nude women perform the ritualized actions of Interior Scroll — reading the text as each woman slowly extracts a scroll from her vagina. The scroll embodies the primacy of an extended visual line shaped as both concept and action. The extracted text merges critical theory with the body as a source of knowledge. Beatty’s camera moves from the naked group actions into close-ups of the unraveling text. Edited and Produced by Maria Beatty.

- SEGALOVE Ilene, Close, But No Cigar, 1975.

- SHERK Bonnie, « ATKIN LOGIC, volume two, the farm, life, work », Vision, no.1, September 1975, pp.32-33.

- SHERK Bonnie, Performance in Social Context, 27/03/75.

- SMITH Alexis, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1975.

- SMITH Barbara

— Barbara Smith, « Buddha Mind Performance: Pinched Cheek Mudra », Vision, no.1, September 1975, pp.54-55.

— Barbara Smith, « Of What Use Are They: Women in Industry? », LAICA Journal, no.7, August/September 1975, pp.17-19. Excerpt:

« What are women here for? I could package super side products, like the ear plugs with your finely tuned installations; or what probably would work would be to take over the place and run it; that is, the business. That means a clever war so they never realize what happened until one day Bill is sweeping out behing #2, and what’s his name is scouring your porcelain basin and toilet commode, and Terry is on the streets looking for work! However, it’s the diabolics of that that bothers me, clever but so snide and sneaky. And if we tried an all out confrontation, what would come out? Probably great love. For what are we going to do? Who is the boss? What are we here for? We ought to try it! But it scares me to think because I fear the really unknown consequence and the work, cuz I don’t want to win! »

- SMITH Barbara, A Week in the Life Of…, 1975.

— Melinda Wortz, « Art Is Magic », Artweek, v.6, August 1975, p.7. Review of Barbara’s Smith’s work, A Week in the life of…, an auction event; the artist’s contribution to a week of benefit performances for the Pasadena Artist’s Concern Gallery.

- SMITH Barbara, Perf. Conference, 25-28 mars 1975.

- SMITH Barbara, Untitled. Intimations of Immortality, 1974.

- SMITH Bradley, Steamer, CARP, Los Angeles.

— Phyllis Lutjeans, « Description of Smith’s performance, Steamer, at CARP, Los Angeles. Excerpt:

« All of Bradley Smith’s pieces suggest a strong, formalistic, animal ritual, whereby the body is used to characterize God, man and animal, or all three at once. In addition, Smith’s implementation of branches, flowers, water, fir, scent, smoke, feathers and leaves conjures up images of vaguely remembered biblical learning, probably rejected long ago by most of the viewers. »

- STEMBERA Petr, Grafting, 1975. Prague.

- STURGEON John, Shapes From The Bone Change, 1975. Videotape with sound, 4 mins., b/w.

- STURGEON John, The Two of Triangles, 1975. Videotape

- TRANS-PARENT TEACHER’S INK. PAUL COTTON MEDIUM

— Paul Cotton, « Trans-Parent Teacher’s Ink », Vision, no.1, September 1975, pp.28-29. Excerpt:

« The Astral-Naughty Earth Work is a Meta-Physical Sculpture-Poem. The Astral-Naught ‘space suits’ or ‘envelopes’ are designed to symbolize ans re-establish the innocence of body and mind as seen through the eyes of a child. Each suit incorporates electronic radio, headphones, speaker and third-eye light thus integrating within, and illuminating the existent communication network. This network is the architectural substructure of ‘The Temple of the Human Mind’ in which the Astral-Naught Rabb-Eyes exist as present-ions+ of the Mystical Body of Christ. »

- ULLMAN Micha, Place 1975. vidéo. 20 minutes, sound, b/w.

Micha Ullman’s Place (1975) depicts a process of sculpting in sand – a material that symbolizes the local earth. Ullman transformed the pile of sand by forming it into various landscapes and textual expanses that express ephemerality and constant change. The volume of sand used for this work equaled the volume of Ullman’s body, which was precisely measured by calculating the number of buckets of water that had to be taken out of a full bathtub so that he could immerse himself in it. In this context, the sculptural process acquires a hidden morbid dimension, since the artist sweeping away the sand is also symbolically sweeping away his own body.

- UNTEL, Le Bonheur pour vous qu’est-ce que c’est, 1975, Bordeaux.

- UNTEL, Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe, 1975, Grand Palais, Paris.

- UTHCO T.R. (Doug Hall, Jody Procter), Great Moments, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, Ca. 1975.

A ‘slapstick’ parody ‘review’ of all the great masters of performance art in general.

— Tom Kent, « T.R. Uthco: The Theatrics of performance art », Artweek, v.6, January 4, 1975, p.16. An article describing a forthcoming work by Doug Hall, Jody Procter and John Hillding entitled Great Moments by T.R. Uthco, presented at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, January 4-5, 1975. Excerpt:

« Great Moments by T.R. Uthco… is their ironic, parodic, at times almost slapstick ‘revue’ of performance art in general, the trademarked moves and strategies of its better-known practitioners in particular.

Nearly every major performance artist from Acconci to Wegman receives a tasty conceptual pie in his or her face before last Great Moment has passed: not even the Perfect Master Himself, Marcel Duchamp, escapes an  occasional, punning dart. Obviously, the work is designed primarily for an audience of art magazine readers. Much of the humors is generated by speculation about Who’s Going To Get It Next, followed by a little shock of admittedly malicious pleasure when the target is identified and properly skewered. »

- UTHCO T.R., The Avant Guard in Action, San Francisco, Ca., 1975.

The Avant Guard (second from right-Jody Procter/see photo) stands at attention with members of the San Francisco Police Department. Shortly after this photo was taken a shot fired at President Ford as he left the St. Francis Hotel.

- UTHCO T.R. (Doug Hall & Jody Procter), Walking Mission Street, San Francisco, Ca., 1975.

- WEIBEL Peter, Theorem of Identity, 1975 (action-vidéo)

- WEISSER Stefan, « Chance Chants », La Mamelle Magazine: Art Contemporary, no.1, v.1, summer 1975, pp.35-39.

Artist’s note for private performance, May 24, 1975, Los Angeles, with 4 pages of language permutations.

- WHITE John

— Robert Newton, « John White – Technicians’ Theatre », The New Art Ewaminer, v.2, January 1975. Review of a performance presented at the John Doyle Gallery, Chicago.

— Pat Trimble, « John White – Performance – LAICA May 25, 1975 », LAICA Journal, no.7, August/September 1975, pp.45-47. Excerpt:

« The performance begins with the audience observing a solitary audio recordr hanging on the wall. White enters and stands looking at the recorder first on one side, then the other, then in front of the recorder with his back to the audience. He starts the machine and the interaction begins. The recorder proceeds to give White intructions for personal location ans situation. It’s a reversal of artist and material role. »

— John White, « Direct Experience Into Art Experience », LAICA Journal, no.8, November/December 1975, pp.30-31. Explanation and diagram for a performance situation. Excerpt:

« The following day I stopped by the same golf course for some early coffee and to read the morning paper. Stapled to the wall of the clubhouse was a tournament diagram that showed competition brackets between golfers. This diagram is used as a method to record eliminations. The two golfers who remain then play for a championship. I then decided to make a bracket diagram with the same design but using words in place of golfers’ names. In this way I was able to narrow down the multiple images to the two that I then used as a basis for a performance work. »

— James Welling, « Linking Dream Structures and Images », Artweek, v.6, June 28, 1975, p.16. Review article comparing performance by John White and Guy de Cointet; both performed in May, 1975 at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, See also Guy de Cointet. Excerpt on White:

« John White’s performance goes something like this: A tape recorder instructs White to stand before the audience during a description of a demonstration and its subsequent destruction by police, which took place near the LAICA site. This is followed by a description of the physical sensations of boredom, during which White appears to nod off and fall asleep. The tape recorder then shuts off, and White begins a series of actions and subsequent diagrams which relate to eyeglasses; melon heads; headlessness, a bird with no head; a sheeted, ghoslike costume. Following this disjointed series of skits, White seems to lose his place. yet he retrieves a set of instructions elaborately taped to his chest, and this paper guides him throughout the remainder of the piece. Moving to a blackboard, White reminisces on childhood experiences, and early experiences with the sale of his works and their unconscious alteration by owners, and lastly he offers a rumination on his feelings about winos. »

— John White, « Influencing Events #4/Putting Surface », LAICA Journal, no.7, August/September 1975, pp.20-21.

- WHITE John, (20 years (Part One) ‘Acme John and the Mastery of the Fence, 1975.

- WHITE John, Performance Notes, Self-published, 1975. 

Artist book documenting a performance at Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, May 25, 1975. Includes photographs, dialogue script, drawings, notes, etc., related to the performance.

- WHITE John, Tape Recording, A performance at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, May 25, 1975.

- WILHITE Bob

— Connie Lewallen, « Two Occurences: Jones & Wilhite », Artweek, v.6, September 13, 1975, p.3. Reviews a telephone performance work by Bob Wilhite. A musical concert was performed on a stringed instrument over the telephone to anyone who responded to an advertisement in the L.A. Times announcing the event and giving the phone number.

- WILKE Hannah, Hello Boys, 1975, 12 min, b&w, sound 

Hannah Wilke (1940-1993, USA) began ther artistic career as a successful sculptor of vaginal objects made of ceramics and latex. She later turned to other media, such as performance, photography and video, while continuing to explore female sexual organs and naked bodies. She not only exhibited her own body, for which she was criticized by some feminists, she also studied themes of the body’s decay, such as her mother’s mastectomy and her own battle with cancer, which she lost in 1993.

Hello Boys documents a performance at the Gallery Gerald Piltzer in Paris. Seen through the glass of a large fish tank, Wilke, nude, performs a repertoire of studied erotic gestures to the accompaniment of rock music. Entrapped in her fish bowl, on display behind glass, she is both subject and object. Suggesting the iconic female figure of a mermaid, with its ambiguous implications of sexual power and powerlessness, Wilke explores the representation of female sexuality and the male gaze. Camera: Gerald Piltzer. Location: Paris, France.