1971 : chronologie performance
1971
- ABRAMOVIC Marina, Environnement sonore : aéroport, 1971.
- ACCONCI Vito, Association Area, 1971.
Association Area est l’enregistrement d’un « exercice quasi-ESP ». Vito Acconci utilise ce terme pour des performances conçues comme des expérimentations en laboratoire de la perception, de l’intuition et de la concentration, grâce à l’isolement d’un ou plusieurs sens (l’ouïe, la vue ou le toucher) et la parole. Au début de la vidéo, Vito Acconci et Mel Waterman se bandent les yeux et se bouchent les oreilles, puis tournent sur eux-mêmes pour brouiller les repères spatiaux qu’ils ont mémorisés. Ils énoncent ainsi partiellement la contrainte qu’ils se sont fixée. Le processus, le but et d’autres conditions de l’expérience menée dans Association Area sont déduits au cours de la lecture de la bande, et notamment dans le décalage entre l’image et la voix off. Pendant soixante minutes, ils se déplacent dans le champ de la caméra, en cherchant à appréhender l’espace et la présence de l’autre de façon intuitive. Ce procédé apparaît dans les déplacements lents et concentrés au cours desquels les deux acteurs ont ponctuellement la même position ou la même posture. La voix off est un monologue, réalisé après la performance, où Vito Acconci exprime des ordres et des intentions : « Vito, Mel is crouching », « Stand still, Mel ! » 1. L’usage de l’indicatif souligne les informations qui manquent aux protagonistes pour s’imiter, l’impératif marque l’idée d’un contrôle sur soi, sur l’autre ou sur la situation qui n’a pas pu avoir lieu. La bande son apporte une traduction verbale des informations visuelles dont ne disposaient pas les performeurs, ce qui limitait la réalisation du but qu’ils s’étaient fixé : se déplacer dans un espace en s’imitant. La lecture de cette vidéo est complexe. D’un côté, lespectateur a le sentiment d’être pris comme témoin d’un travail dont les acteurs seraient les seuls bénéficiaires, l’expérience de l’intuition ne pouvant se vivre qu’en première personne. De l’autre, il se sent impliqué par le fait qu’on exige de lui une compréhension par déduction. (Thérèse Beyler)
1 « Vito, Mel est accroupi », « Mel, tiens-toi immobile ! ».
1971, 62 min, b&w, sound
This early performance tape is an example of what Acconci has termed his « quasi-ESP exercises, » in which he explores mental concentration and intuition as a means of non-visual and non-verbal perception, interaction and communication. Blindfolded and wearing earplugs, Acconci and another man attempt to intuit and imitate each other’s movements and bearing, though they can neither hear nor see. The goal, as Acconci has stated, « was to concentrate on each other so totally that we’d begin to blend together. » Audible only to the audience, an off-camera voice whispers directions and locations to the performers as they move slowly and haltingly around the performance space: « Mel, Vito is facing you. Turn around and get into his position. Vito, turn completely around. Mel, Vito is facing your right side.... » With: Vito Acconci, Mel Waterman.
Association Area 1:02:13 1971
“As a document of an early performance, this tape details the process of orientating the body and self in space, providing a physical metaphor for the process of adjusting oneself in society. « Blindfolded, ears plugged, our goal is to sense each other’s movement and bearing, to attempt to assume the same movement and bearing. An off-screen voice, heard only by the audience, gives directions that would help us attain our goal. » Vito Acconci
- ACCONCI Vito, Breath In (To)/Of, 1971, 3 min., color, silent, super 8 mm film on video.
The screen is empty : the artist stands off-screen — he breathes in and out, his stomach moving into and out of the frame.
- ACCONCI Vito, Centers, 1971
Centers est une action conçue pour la vidéo. Ses moyens sont limités à un seul acteur et à un seul geste face au dispositif. Vito Acconci tend le bras et l’index vers la caméra ou l’écran vidéo. Il tient cette position par un effort de concentration, manifeste dans son regard, dans la tension de son bras et par sa respiration. L’enregistrement a lieu en temps réel, sans interruption, ce qui conduit l’artiste à réajuster sa position lorsque la fatigue et la douleur surviennent. Vito Acconci indique ainsi l’écran comme une limite dans l’espace du dispositif vidéo, qui suppose d’une part l’espace et le sujet filmés, et d’autre part l’espace de réception et le spectateur. Ce dernier se sent lui-même pointé du doigt. La tension de l’index indique, par renversement et par symétrie, celui qui désigne comme le désigné. La durée de la vidéo est assez longue par rapport à l’action et au sens qui peut s’en dégager. Elle installe un espace de réflexion pour le spectateur et une performance physique pour le performeur.
Vito Acconci, dans ses oeuvres vidéo et ses films Super 8, privilégie le sujet de l’action et la dimension narcissique à la réflexion sur le médium. Toutefois, Centers caractérise le médium vidéo par son dispositif, l’action de montrer et le code de langage : l’index. Selon la thèse de Rosalind Krauss1, l’utilisation et la représentation de ce code rapprochent Vito Acconci de ses contemporains. En effet, le recours à ce code traverse et caractérise toutes les pratiques plastiques de l’art américain des années 1970. (Thérèse Beyler)
1. Rosalind Krauss, « Notes on the Index : Seventies Art in America », October, Cambridge, The MIT Press, numéro 3, printemps 1977, p. 68-81 - « Notes sur l’index. L’art des années 1970 aux Etats-Unis », Macula, Paris, numéro 5-6, 1979.
1971, 22:28 min, b&w, sound
In Centers, Acconci faces the camera, his head and arm in close-up as he points straight ahead at his own image on the video monitor, attempting to keep his finger focused on the exact center of the screen. In pointing at the image of himself, Acconci is also pointing directly at the viewer -- an action that is paradigmatic of the psychological dynamic of Acconci’s work in video. As the tape proceeds in real time, the only changes in the performance action are slight adjustments in the position of his finger as his endurance falters. Acconci has written, « The result (the TV image) turns the activity around: a pointing away from myself, at an outside viewer -- I end up widening my focus onto passing viewers (I’m looking straight out by looking straight in). »
Centers 22:43 1971
« Pointing at my own image on the video monitor, my attempt is to keep my finger constantly in the center of the screen—I keep narrowing my focus into my finger. The result [the TV image] turns the activity around: a pointing away from myself, at an outside viewer. » Vito Acconci
« By its very mise-en-scene, Centers typifies the structural characteristics of the video medium. For Centers was made by Acconci’s using the video monitor as a mirror. As we look at the artist sighting along his outstretched arm and forefinger toward the center of the screen we are watching, what we see is a sustained tautology: a line of sight that begins at Acconci’s plane of vision and ends at the eyes of his projected double. » Rosalind Krauss, The Aesthetics of Narcissism
- ACCONCI Vito, Claim Excerpts, 1971. NYC. 1:00:20 1971, 62:11 min, b&w, sound
A documentation of one of Acconci’s most notorious performances, Claim Excerpts is a highly confrontational work, an exercise in self-induced, heightened behavioral states, and an aggressive psychological exploration of the artist/viewer relationship. During the three-hour performance, Acconci sat in the basement of 93 Grand Street in New York, blindfolded, armed with metal pipes and a crowbar. His image was seen on a video monitor in the upstairs gallery space. Staking claim to his territory, he tries to hypnotize himself through language into an obsessive state of possessiveness: « The talk should drive me into a state where everything is possible. » He becomes increasingly tense and violent, threatening to kill anyone who tries to enter his space. Acconci has written, « If during the first hour, I had hit someone, I would have stopped, shocked, horrified; if, during the third hour, I had hit someone, I would have used that as a marker, a proof of success... a signal to keep hitting. »
In this record of a live performance, Acconci gives physical manifestation to the subterranean regions of the artist’s mind and will, revealing the effort he must make as an artist to simultaneously convince himself and his audience. « Perhaps no other piece from the early 1970s more thoroughly spells out the psychologized drama engendered by performance-based video... Blindfolded, seated in a basement at the end of a long flight of stairs, armed with metal pipes and a crowbar, threatening to swing at anyone who tried to come near, Acconci simultaneously invited and prohibited every visitor to the 93 Grand Street loft to descend into the world of the unconscious. » —Kathy O’Dell, Performance, Video, and Trouble in the Home.
- ACCONCI Vito, Contacts, 1971.
29:47 min, b&w, sound
Contacts is one of a series of tapes in which Acconci creates a controlled performance situation to explore the limits of a private space. Applying intense mental concentration and intuition, he uses the body as a vehicle to explore perception and interactive communication. Acconci stands blindfolded, the static camera focused on his torso. A woman kneels before him, holding her hand over parts of his body, concentrating on her hand’s location to convey its placement to him. Acconci tries to intuit her hand’s location through body heat; she answers « yes » or « no » and moves it to another location. Acconci has written that « her hand is used as a kind of dousing rod -- the ground responds. »
- ACCONCI Vito, Conversions, 1971, 65:30 min, three parts, b&w, silent, Super 8 film
In these three exercises, Acconci plays with trans-gender illusions, manipulating and altering his own body parts to suggest sexual transformations. For example, he burns the hair from his chest with a candle, then attempts to create the illusion of having female breasts.
- ACCONCI Vito, Eye-Control, 1971, 3 min. color, silent, super 8 mm on video.
The camera frames the artist’s head. Two hands, palms pressed together, aim at the artist’s face and hit the wall right behind him. His eyes close instinctively. Trying to keep his eyes open, he slowly gains, and then loses again, control of his eye movements.
- ACCONCI Vito, Filler, 1971.
29:16 min, b&w, sound
In Filler, Acconci lies on the floor, facing the camera, his head and upper body hidden inside a large cardboard box. At regular intervals throughout the duration of the tape, he coughs repeatedly. The focus of this minimalist work becomes the rasping sounds of the cough, and the near-silences that precede them. Acconci is both absent and present, obscured and visible, communicating through a bodily function.
- ACCONCI Vito, Focal Point, 1971.
1971, 32:47 min, b&w, sound
In this exercise in the act of viewing and being viewed, Acconci explores intuitive perception through intense concentration. Blindfolded, he stands against a wall, his nude back to the camera. The camera focuses on his neck; the cameraman says, «I’m staring at the back of your neck from straight on.» The camera angle changes and the cameraman continues, «I’m staring at the back of your neck from the left side,» etc.
Throughout the tape, the camera moves to focus alternately on his body and on objects in the performance space, while Acconci attempts to guess the object and direction of the camera’s gaze. « I feel you staring at the back of my neck now. » « Yes. » « You’re staring from the right side. »
- ACCONCI Vito, Pick Up, 1971.
1971, 16:50 min, color, silent, Super 8 film
This is one of several exercises that explore the notion of extreme concentration. Blindfolded, Acconci attempts to intuite the position of another person’s hands over his body.
- ACCONCI Vito & DILLON Kathy, Pryings, 1971.
Pryings est l’enregistrement vidéo d’une performance de Vito Acconci, réalisée en public avec Kathy Dillon dans une université new-yorkaise. L’artiste met en scène une situation où il cherche à ouvrir de force les yeux de la femme, qui s’obstine à les tenir fermés. La caméra suit l’action du couple en cadrant le buste des deux protagonistes. Il tire sur les paupières, elle tient les yeux crispés et clos. Elle penche la tête en avant ou en arrière, il la prend entre ses mains et la redresse. La longue chevelure cache le visage, Vito Acconci la balaye d’une main et, de l’autre, il maintient la femme contre lui. Il tire de nouveau sur la peau, un oeil s’ouvre, mais la femme cache son iris en renversant les yeux dans les orbites. L’oeil blanc ne voit pas. Elle se débat, se déplace, tirant avec elle le corps de l’artiste qui la retient par les épaules. Une affectivité se dégage de la tension du couple. Le son en prise directe donne une idée de leurs mouvements, et notamment de la respiration de Vito Acconci qui augmente avec l’effort physique. Cette lutte figure des tensions - et non des oppositions - dans des couples de forces : féminin / masculin, ouvert / fermé. Vito Acconci expérimente l’action d’un individu conscient de l’autre (ouvert sur l’extérieur) sur un individu fermé sur lui-même. L’absence d’aboutissement de cette situation met en évidence les moyens de la performance. Dans la conception de Vito Acconci et dans la logique initiée par ses actions introspectives - filmées en Super 8 -, la performance a des moyens physiques, le corps comme lieu ou support, et un espace délimité. Pryings est une représentation de la performance comme processus et médium artistique, et une métaphore de l’idée « ouvrir les yeux à quelqu’un ». (Thérèse Beyler)
1971, 17:10 min, b&w, sound
A documentation of a live performance at New York University, Pryings is a graphic exploration of the physical and psychological dynamics of male/female interaction, a study in control, violation and resistance. The camera focuses tightly on Kathy Dillon’s face, as Acconci tries to pry open her closed eyes. Dillon resists, at times protecting her face or fighting to get away. Locked in a silent embrace, the couple’s struggle is violent, passionate; Acconci’s sadistic coercion is tinged with a sinister tenderness.
The body is a vehicle for a literal enactment of the desire for and resistance against intimate contact. He writes, « The performer will not come to terms, she shuts herself off, inside the box (monitor), my attempt is to force her to face out, fit into the performer’s role, come out in the open. »
With: Vito Acconci, Kathy Dillon.
Pryings 16:16 1971
This extraordinary performance carries a wealth of associative meanings in the sexual dynamics of privacy and power—man and woman pitted against each other in a struggle for mental and physical control.
« In Pryings, one of his earliest and least verbal tapes, the artist is seen trying to force open and gain entry into any and all of the orifices of a woman’s face. His persistence outlasts the running time of the tape, as does the persistence of the woman under attack, who manages to persevere in her attempt to guard her metaphysical privacy.» —David Ross, Studio International
- ACCONCI Vito, Pull, 1971.
1971, 32:37 min, b&w, sound
In this documentation of a performance at New York University, an overhead camera circles above Acconci and Kathy Dillon. In a dark auditorium, Acconci walks in a circle around Dillon, while she moves in the center. Staring at each other, they try to maintain eye contact while following the other’s changes in direction and speed. Energy and control shifts back and forth between them as they try to exert a «pull» on each other. The dynamic becomes increasingly charged and aggressive as Acconci circles menacingly. Acconci has stated, « I might be trying to crowd her, drive her to a standstill -- she might be trying to draw me into her, stop me from circling...I might be trying to remain an observer, detached, on the outside. » With: Vito Acconci, Kathy Dillon.
- ACCONCI Vito, Remote Control, 1971.
1:02:15 1971
Two performers, Acconci and a young woman, occupy two wooden boxes in separate rooms, connected via monitor, camera, and microphone. The situation is symbolic of a vicarious and distended power relation, a relationship built through and reliant upon technological mediation. Watching her on amonitor, Acconci coaches the woman through tying herself up, urging her to pretend it is he who is winding the rope around her legs and neck. Acconci states, « The tying up is an occasion for me to get into wrapping you up in a more generalized way. » The rope represents Acconci’s will in the woman’s space, binding her physically and mentally, as she stops resisting and acquiesces to his demands. As a study of consent and control, an underlying theme of the work is the manipulative potential of media technology, which reaches isolated viewers and subjects them to its organizing control.
Note: Remote Control was originally a two-channel installation. To recreate Acconci’s intended environment, show each of the 62-minute tapes simultaneously on separate monitors.
1971, 62:30 min, b&w, sound, Two Channels
The two-channel piece Remote Control is an exercise in manipulation and control between artist and subject, male and female. On separate channels, the viewer sees Acconci and Kathy Dillon sitting alone in wooden boxes in different rooms, each facing a static camera.
Although they can only see and hear each other on separate monitors, they attempt to interact and respond to one another directly, as if their communication were unmediated. Through language and gesture, Acconci tries to manipulate Dillon’s actions from his box, as though by remote control. He instructs her to tie herself up with rope, gesturing as though he were actually in her presence, cajoling her to perform his commands, convincing himself that he is in control: «I’m bringing the rope over your knees...I’m lifting your legs gently.» The isolation and displacement of the couple, and the viewer’s voyeuristic position, serve to heighten the undercurrent of dominance and submission. Dillon, who at first silently complies with Acconci’s commands, eventually reacts to his manipulation with an assertion of her own will. With: Vito Acconci, Kathy Dillon.
- ACCONCI Vito, Second Hand, 1971, 15 min, color, sound, super 8 mm film on video.
Documentation of an evening of three simultaneous performances (Terry Fox, Dennis Oppenheim, Vito Acconci), in January 1971. In each alcove a light bulb hangs from the ceiling above a canvas that covers the ground. In Acconci’s alcove, a clock is hung on the back wall ; staring at the second hand, the artist repeats its movement around the light bulb.
- ACCONCI Vito, Sounding Board, 1971, 22 min, b&w, sound.
Sounding Board documents Acconci’s performance/installation of the same name, which was presented at A Space in Toronto in July 1971. The artist lies naked, face down on two ipward-turned speakers, through which plays a Frank Zappa song as interpreted by Jean-Luc Ponty. The second performer is a musician who ‘plays’ the song on Acconci’s body.
Acconci writes : « I can lie still here, since the performance is in the order person’s hands (he chooses the music, Frank Zappa’s King Kong, played by Jean-Luc Ponty) — performance of the music is directed not at an audience but at me ; I should lie still here, relaxed, lulled, so he can freely massage my body with sound ; I’m forced to lie still here, since I’m sandwiched between instrument of sound ; I’m the end-point. »
« Musician rehearses — performance takes shape — I’m shaped by the performance (the piece could be less of a performance, more of a performance area — my body needs time to gain location as a pllace for music — there could be a small room, with space only for the musician and me — his activity could lull me into inertia, enclose me in th espace, make me part of it — couldn’t move, I’d stay there all day, longer, function as the performance area — he could perform me, take breaks, come back to perform me (again). »
- ACCONCI Vito, Trappings, 1971 (performance/installation). Münchengladbach.
A corridor of closet spaces in an industrial warehouse at the Städisches Museum Abteilung in Möchengladbach, Germany. In one of these closets, the artist crouches, naked, on a floor of toys and fabrics and plastics, detritus from a child’s room. He talks to his penis, addressing it as another person ; he dresses his penis in doll’s clothes.
- ACCONCI Vito, Two Tracks, 1971 (vidéo) 28:35 1971.
In Two Tracks, Acconci experiments with direct and peripheral perception of information in the context of communication and interaction. He sits with a man and a woman in front of a microphone. The man and woman each read a different text (a Mickey Spillane nove land a Raymond Chandler novel) simultaneously ; Acconci repeats everything the man says. Occasionnaly an off-screen voice interrupts to question Acconci on what the woman has read, and he tries to answer.
- ACCONCI Vito, Watch, 1971. 9 min, b&w, silent, Super 8 film.
Acconci’s face is seen in close-up. Hi seyes trace, in real time, the movement of the hands of an off-screen clock.
- ACCONCI Vito, Waterways: 4 Salivas Studies, 1971. 22:25 (video).
Waterways compromises four minimalist exercises in which Acconci explores the format, visual and dynamic properties of saliva in a controlled performance situation. Using extreme close-ups and amplified sound to force the viewer into th espace of his body, he experiments with his mouth as long as possible, trying to catch it in his hands. By using a bodily fluid as art-making material, Acconci pushes the anti-aesthetics of the body art to its radical extreme.
- ACCONCI Vito, Zone, 1971.
1971, 15:37 min, color, silent, Super 8 film.
Acconci walks in a circle around a cat, attempting to constantly keep the animal enclosed.
- ANTIN Eleanor, Representational Painting, 1971. 38 min. b&w. silent.
The artist explores make-up as a traditional mode of self-expression. As a woman, she uses make-up to find a representation of herself with which to face the world.
Dans cette vidéo-performance, l’artiste, en sous-vêtements, est assise de trois quart face à la caméra. Elle fume et observe son visage dans un miroir situé hors-champs. Elle débute sa performance en coiffant ses cheveux. Tous ses gestes sont délicats, lents et précis comme s’ils faisaient partie d’un rituel sacré, universel. Chaque geste a son importance et participe à la transformation du visage. Ils sont ceux que réalisent toutes les femmes depuis des siècles dans des sociétés qui prônent la beauté ; le maquillage et la coiffure devenant les artifices permettant de créer l’illusion.
Eleanor Antin choisit de maquiller ses yeux en premier en appliquant la matière directement avec les doigts. Ses gestes sont parfois maladroits malgré l’application qu’elle y met. Elle se retrouve par exemple avec des tâches noires sur le nez. Sa préparation est entrecoupée de longs moments qu’elle consacre à s’observer, amusée par ces imperceptibles changements. La mise en scène amplifie l’effet d’observation avec des plans qui s’enchainent par l’intermédiaire de fondus enchainés cinématographiques.
Eleanor Antin explore l’acte de se maquiller comme mode traditionnel de l’expression de soi, en tant que femme, elle utilise le maquillage pour composer une image d’elle-même avec laquelle elle se confronte au monde. Se maquiller est une façon de se créer une nouvelle apparence, un autre soi plus confiant car conforme à la société.
Dans les années 1970 le mouvement féministe remet en question la notion du féminin et les signes extérieurs de féminité, tels que les cosmétiques, les tenues propres aux femmes et la coiffure. Cette posture devient une réflexion esthétique. Le maquillage, accessoire de beauté qu’utilise Eleanor Antin dans sa vidéo devient de la peinture qu’elle applique sur sa peau. Au delà des questions féministes, elle remet en cause le caractère conventionnel de la peinture et en fait un langage universel et quotidien. (Priscilia Marques)
http://www.newmedia-arts.be/cgi-bin/show-oeu.asp?ID=150000000060566&lg=FRA
- ANSELMO Giovanni, Getting into the Work, 1971 (photo) Photograph taken with a timer.
- ASKEVOLD David, Concert C with Door, 1971, 35 mm film and audiocassette tape transferred to video. Color. Sound. 7:13min.
- BALDESSARI John, I Am Making Art, 1971 (vidéo), b/w.
— Elizabeth C. Baker, « Los Angeles, 1971 », Art News, v. 70. Summer 1971, pp. 27-29. Extensive overview of art activity, in the Los Angeles area. Baker describes the institutions/galleries and their support (or lack of support) of local artists and discusses the work of several Los Angeles artists. Excerpt on John Baldessari :
« Baldessari set up a situation to paint on a canvas not directly visible to him ; he could see his hand only on the TV screen ; a 4-second delay in the playback was arranged so that the correlation of action to result was neither directly visible nor immediately perceptible on the screen. Or, more recently, a maddering multiplication of mediums was the crux of a color videotape whose subject was previously shot color photos of the artist running, stopping the action. Muybridge-like, into a series of linked stills. These were then held up for the TV camera to « see », and then taken down in sequence ; the hand performing this action, along with the photos themselves, were videotaped. »
- BEAN Anne, Moody and the Menstruators, 1971-1974.
In 1968, Anne Bean (1950, Zambia, UK) arrived in Great Britain to study art. Since then, she has developed a body of works that cannot be sufficiently described using medial categories. Sound and music are important aspects. Bean can frequently be seen doing actions by herself and occasionally with others, often with a destructive impetus. In self-reflexive acts, the artists saws apart portable tape recorders or sings along with Captain Beefheart while another tape recorder suffers audibly from the soap water sprinkled onto it. Along with the voice, the female body is also a subject she is frequently interested in, without using it in an exhibitionist way. She draws the outlines of a live nude model while blindfolder or traces the silhouette of her own face using a slide projection to create a self-portrait. The female body becomes a metaphor for general human concern without any reference to the male counterpart whatsoever. Anne Bean’s works are regularly situated within broader political contexts: They concern women in Kurdistan, they take the form of a sit-in Apartheid-ridden South Africa or they are simply a performance in front of Helmut Schmidt and Henry Kissinger with The Kipper Kids.
Moody and the Menstruators was a successful cover band that was active in 1971-1974. They were lined up to support Pink Floyd, and Malcolm McLaren was interested in managing them, but Anne Bean, who was the mastermind behind the project, was not interested in venturing into pop music territory. In a conversation, she explained that she was concerned with testing the boundaries between art and music rather than participate in the music business. Other members besides Anne Bean were Suzy Adderley, Becky Bailey, Polly Eltes, Rod Melvin, Mary Anne Holliday and Annie Sloane. This video documents several segments of Moody and the Mentruators’ programme. The montage of moving and still imagery is accompanied by the band’s version of Wild Thing by The Troggs (1966).
- BRISLEY Stuart, Beneath Dignity, Bregenz. 1971.
- BROWN Trisha, Roof Piece, 1971.
- BURDEN Chris, « Body Sculpture Sky Paintings », Artweek, v. 2, April 3, 1971, p. 1.
Review of exhibition, Body Movements, at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. Participants included Bruce Nauman, Barry Le Va, Chris Burden, and Mowry Baden, among others. Excerpt on Chris Burden :
(On Burden) : Chris Burden, the third in the trio of conceptual artists, is currently completing his MFA requirements at U.C. Irvine. All of his pieces have a built-in level of achievement that requires the participant to use them in a certain way. For example, one piece requires two people to stand on a low bar and, leaning back, balance each other by means of a flexible handgrip, which each one holds. The effect of his piece is that using it one experiences his own physical determinants and, through dependence on the partner at the other end of the fulcrum, experiences the necessity of placing his trust in another individual. »
- BURDEN Chris, Five Day Locker Piece, 1971.
« Five Day Locker Piece, University of California, Irvine, APRIL 26-30, 1971 : I was locked in Locker Number 5 for five consecutive days and did not leave the locker during this time. The locker measured two feet high, two feet wide, and three feet deep. I stopped eating several days prior to entry. The locker directly above me contained five gallons of bottled water ; the locker below me contained an empty five gallon bottle. » (Theories and documents of Contemporary Art : A sourcebook on artists’ writings, Edited par Kristine Stiles et Peter Selz, 1re Ed. 1995, p. 768 (2nd Ed. 2012, p. 899-903)
- BURDEN Chris, Prelude to 220, or 110, 1971.
- BURDEN Chris, Shoot, 1971. Santa Ana. Californie.
(This may or may not have been in Venice) People showed up at a gallery, having received invitations for a reception. The place was empty. Then Burden and two friends came in. One filmed while the other shot Burden in the arm. This was during the Vietnam war, which probably had a lot to do with the conceptualization and meaning of the piece.)
— Art in America, v.66, September/October 1978, pp.70-94. Special issue on Southern California Art. Essays include: 1) Peter Plagens, ‘Plays It As It L.A.’s’, pp.70-74.; 2) Leo Rubinflin, ‘Through Western Eyes’, pp.75-83. Rubinflin interviews 7 artists (Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Billy Al Bengston, Chris Burden, Robert Cumming, Robert Graham, Alexis Smith) about life, art and the art scene in Southern California; 3) Peter Frank, ‘Unslick in L.A.’, pp.84-91; 4) Nancy Marmer, ‘Proposition 13: Hard Times for the Arts’, pp.92-94. Excerpt on Chris Burden:
« [Chris Burden]: The younger artists out here are not dealing with drawings and paintings anymore. They’re dealing with ideas. I mean here’s a media city, and the native language just isn’t painting and such; it’s television, films, the media. This place is about reality and illusion, sanity and insanity. There’s just total schizophrenia as to what is real and what isn’t, but it’s clear here that a lot of things are make-believe. So it becomes increasingly apparent that you can affect people with intangible ideas. You can make a little 16 mm film that’s, say, 30 seconds long, and by running it over and over you can sell a million Chevrolets a day. Suddenly it seems a little bit ridiculous to be making something like a 36 foot painting. Or take my getting shot in the arm, which is the big piece I’m famous for. I was able to do a piece of sculpture that didn’t any material except a riffle, that was over in a split second and that basically existed by word or mouth. And that’s, I think, what attracted me – not getting shot particularly, but the whole conciseness of the thing. In essence that’s giving the shaft to MGM, with their fancy sets and million dollar budgets. Phillip trotted across the room and shot me in the arm for one millisecond: big deal. But in terms of the media – and that includes word of mouth –it worked. »
- BURDEN Chris, You’ll Never See My Face in Kansas City, Morgan Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri.
November 6, 1971, Relic: ski mask, collection Gilbert & Lila Silverman., Southfield, Michigan.
- CHICAGO Judy, Love Story, 1971.
- CHICAGO Judy, Red Flag, 1971. (photo).
- COLETTE, Street Works, 1971-1979.
Colette has been living in New York since the 1970s. She is an artist who embodies the fusion of art and life. She plays with roles and changes identities in radical ways in order to transform art into a space for living and to alter life into a never-ending performance.
In the performance Street Works, Colette uses texts and coded systems of signs to mark roads and intersections in ritualistic actions. Her signature later appears on all of the places she has visited. Colette inhabits luxurious, treatrical environments draped in silk where she presents herself naked or in mannered, baroque costumes. Her work and life stand for the creation of a female identity, oscillating between affirmation and subversion. As an alternative to the traditional stereotype of the male genius, the artist actively turns her own biography into a myth. She creates tableaux vivants of legendary people such as Joan of Arc to subvert the culturally and historically standardised representations of women. She takes on new identities one after the other, celebrating the death and the birth of each persona, such as Justine, Mata Hari and Lumière, her current identity.
- DE COINTET Guy, Acrcit, 1971. (Artist book)
- EDELSON Mary Beth, Last Supper, 1971.
- EXPORT Valie, Eros/ion, 1971. Vienne.
« An action in which the body is employed as carrier as transmitter of signs/traces for a semantic analysis by means of a body demonstration. Eros/ion investigate the relationship between social signs and body, the relationship between culture and body. First I roll about in broken glass, body cutting by screen, and then on the glass plate, finally on a paper screen. The marks produced on my skin-screen, and then on the glass plate, finally on a paper screen. The marks produced on my skin-screen by the splinters of glass leave informal, painterly traces on the paper screen. The splinters are transformed into signs by this reduction into traces of an aesthetic process on the body. Identity of signs ans carrier material. The art context as a condition of reality. The socially prescribed significance of the material – meaning and image as material – is transformed and overcome. »
« Eine semantische Analyse durch eine Körperdemonstration. Der nackte Körper rollt zuerst in zerbrochenem Glas und dann auf einer Glasplatte. » (V.E. zit. Nach Filmographie in « Körpersprache-Bodylanguage, pfirsich 9/10, Steiricher Herbst, Graz, 1973) « Ich wälze mich zuerst in zerbrochenem glas un dann auf einer glasplatte. Gleiches material evoziert gleiche bedeutung. Zustandsänderungen des materials ändern auch die bedeutung des materials. Glas als schreibe bedeutet : transparenz. Glas als scherben bedeutet : läsion. Dieser minimalen varianz entspringt auch der kunstcharakter, der erkenntnischarakter ist. » (V.E., Archiv)
- EXPORT Valie, Facing a family, 1971. Photograph: ORF/Valie Export | ©
Categories: Action | Television Keywords: Interaction
Relevant passages: Dieter Daniels « Television-Art or anti-art ? Conflict and cooperation between the avant-garde and the mass media in the 1960s and 1970s » Rudolf Frieling « Reality/Mediality Hybrid Processes Between Art and Life »
- FOX Terry, ACCONCI Vito & OPPENHEIM Dennis, Environmental Surfaces : Three Simultaneous Situational Enclosures, 1971, Reese Palley Gallery, NYC.
— « A discussion with Terry Fox, Vito Acconci, and Dennis Oppenheim », Avalanche, no. 2, Winter 1971, pp. 86-89. An interview with the three artists on the occasion of Environmental Surfaces : Three Simultaneous Situationnal Enclosures, Reese Palley Gallery, New York, January 16, 1971. For Fox’s one man show, he invited Acconci and Oppenheim to participate in an event in which the three presented performances related to the body. Extrait :
« At the far end of the 20’ by 80’ room, the floor of which was covered with white paper, Fox had set up a tent-like environment with a square piece of canvas, hung five feet from the floor, under which he performed a series of actions involving different elements : a bar of white soap, a pan of water, two flashlights, two bags of flour, a strainer, a box of Fab, a small bench, a piece of bent wire, smoke from a cigarette, and a scratched mirror attached to a wooden spool of twine. The amplified sound of his breathing during the performance was counterpointed by a tape of himself breathing…
« (T. Fox) : My artistic concerns are very old-fashioned and romantic. What I am involved in is creating certain kinds of spatial situations. I am dealing with objects in a space and their relationships to each other, and with how my mood alters them. The way I move a flashlight is going to affect not only the quality of the light but also my relation to it. Two flashlights aimed at a bar of soap mean much more to me than anything the spectator could imagine. They create a certain translucence, a modification of materials that I find very interesting, like a idea of two flashlights eventually melting the soap. »
- FOX Terry, Clutch, 1971, Artist’s studio, 16 Rose Street, San Francisco. Video, 50 mins., b/w.
- FOX Terry, Counter (for Dorothy Reid), 1971, Artist’s Studio, San Francisco.
- FOX Terry, Hefe (For Ute Klauphaus), 1971, 43 Martingerstrasse, Mönchengladbach.
- FOX Terry, Hospital, Reese Palley Gallery, San Francisco, 1971.
— Peter Plagens, « Terry Fox : the Impartial Nightmare ; San Francisco », Artforum, v. 10, February 1972, pp. 76-77. Discussion of Fox’s Hospital piece at the Reese Palley Gallery, San Francisco, 1971. Extrait : « (Fox) : « I don’t know exactly why the things are the shapes they are and look the way they do. They work to convey the claustrophobia of marrow in the bone. The corridor is a section of vessel. The water bowl and soap are ritual, the stretcher is claustrophobia. The action of the state of mind on the physical state. The drawings show the surface of the bread which is my wound. The breath is not self-sustaining, it relies on a system and attendants to the system in order to function. So does the chant. The wires = arterial system, the membrane, ear drum. The walls are pious and charitable ; the bases are isolated from the energy of the floor and walls by electrical tapes. »…
Hospital works on many levels : elegant drawing (the wires, poles, and walls), grand sculpture (a la Serra, Andre, and Sonnier), and teatro povero staging. But finally and best, it’s gristly poetic narration : Fox’s struggle with his imperfect body, which is the artist’s struggle with the world, which is our struggle with our treacherous selves. Fox says of it : « the absolute impartiality of the object and its function, the total partiality of the context, the ‘drone’ of experience like a recurring nightmare or dream, the base of operation. »
— Cecile N. McCann, « Hospital as Art Environment », Artweek, v. 2, November 13, 1971, p. 1. Review of Fox’s hospital piece at Reese Palley Gallery, San Francisco. Extrait :
« At one side of the gallery a large blackboard lifted high on black tape-wrapped two-by-fours bears all the hospital charges inscribed on it – wiped out so that theyy are barely reaadable – gone but still there. On the other side a vertical blackboard rests on the floor…
Between the two boards, two tape recorders play continuous loops which include intervals of silence. One is a stereo recording of Fox’s breathing, the other a chant in which his voice intones « needles pierced my arm (etc. naming parts of the body) » and in counterpoint on the other track, « many times ». Wires snake out from the recorders to speakers near either wall, « carrying the breath of my heart to both sides ». »
- FOX Terry, Lever (For Dan Beal), 1971, 93 Grand Street, NYC.
- FOX Terry, Pisces, De Saisset Art Gallery, University of Santa Clara, Santa Clara, Ca., 1971.
Performance presented for the exhibition, Fish, Fox, Kos (Fish, Fox, Kos. Santa Clara, California : De Saisset Art Gallery, University of Santa Clara, 1971. Catalogue for an exhibition, February 2-28, 1971, includes visual, verbal and recorded material.) Fox attached string between two fish and the hair on his head and his teeth. He slept in a attempt to dream about the killing of the fish.
— Cecile McCann, « Three Concepts », Artweek, v. 2, February 13, 1971, p. 2. Review of Fish, Fox, Kos, a three person exhibition at the De Saisset Art Gallery, University of Santa Clara. Includes description of Fox’s performance, Pisces, Kos’ video documentation rEVOLUTION, and Allan Fish (Tom Marioni’s) performance with his son and a hen. Extrait :
« Below the shelter of the parachute Fox, barefooted and wearing white pants and shirt, lay asleep on a floor covered with white canvas. Tied to a tuft of his hair a cord ran out across the floor to the tail of a fat grey fish, a carp perhaps, about a foot long, that lay on a patch of white cloth surimposed on the floor covering. A second fish nearby was tied by a cord that ran to Fox’s mouth. Close to the fish a grey pan of water held something that looked like soap. Near the barred doorway where viewers stood, two large flashlights were almost buried in a pile of soap powder, the light of one just visible, burning feebly in competition with the big bulb above. »
- FOX Terry, Prospect 71 : Projections, Düsseldorf : Kunsthalle, 1971.
- FOX Terry, Turgescent Sex, San Francisco, 1971. Vidéo, 40 mins., b/w.
« Rumbles ; Terry Fox », Avalanche, no.3, Fall 1971, p. 7. Brief description of « the ‘Elements, Actions, and Condition’ of Terry Fox’s Turgescent Sex, a 40-minutes black/white kinescope, shot by George Bolling on June 13 at the San Francisco Rose Street studio. » Excerpt :
« ELEMENTS :
Cloth Bandage
Cigarette
Match
Fish
Rope
Bowl of Water
Bar of Soap
Despair
ACTIONS :
Sit crosslegged surrounded by the elements/wash hands/wash fish bound by the rope in many knots/blindfold with the blood of the fish/release the fish from bondage/form a nest with the bindings/wrap the fish with the bandage/cover the fish with smoke.
CONDITIONS :
The rite was performed in a state of despair caused by prolonged viewing of a photograph of the victims of My Lai. »
- FOX Terry, Zyklus (for Tomas Schmit), 1971, MOCA, San Francisco, California.
- FRIED Howard, 40 Winks (The Journey), University Art Museum, Berkeley, Ca., 1971 (second part).
Fried leads his audience on an extended journey through the city streets from Berkeley to Hayward expecting his audience to free themselves and go home to their respective promised land.
- FRIED Howard, 40 Winks (The Message). University Art Museum, Berkeley, Ca., 1971 (first part).
— Howard Fried, « Synchromatic Baseball, » Arts Magazine, v.47, April 1973, pp.60-63. In this lengthy article, Fried describes his works, Synchromatic Baseball [1971], Indian War Dance, and Indian Rope Trick [1972], and 40 Winks [1971]. Include photos. Excerpt on 40 Winks:
« On December 10, 1971 I staged a piece called 40 Winks for a show of free live performances at the Berkeley Museum. The piece had two parts. The first was a long involved message which was posed as a riddle and delivered by me. It began as I destroyed a candled birthday cake by eating it or kneading it with my hands. Among those topics dealt with in riddled form were the Biblical use of the number “40“ and the history of corporate and communal abuse of the individual in the name of larger social configurations. At the message’s conclusion I posed the riddle’s specific directive, “Who is they?“ At this point I cut the tablet I was reading from in half and walked out of the museum. A narrator told the audience that the second part of 40 Winks, “The Journey“ was about to begin. it would progressively add information possibly leading to the comprehension of the riddle. Those who wished to participate were asked to follow me. I began walking. A crowd followed. I answered no questions. The large group gradually dissipated. After about six hours of walking everyone had left except one person, Robin Winters. At about 2:00 A.M. we were stopped by the police in Hayward, California. They made me tell them the answer to the riddle. We went into a parking lot so Robin couldn’t hear.
The number “40“ was used twice by Executive decree to wipe out specific generation of people. Agent Moses presided over one job for 40 years while agent Noah presided over another for 40 days. I based my strategy on Agent Moses’s performance…
I planned to walk until everyone had freed themselves and gone home to their respective promised lands. »
- FRIED Howard, Cheschire Cat II., 1971. Film.
- FRIED Howard, Chronometric Depth Perception, 1971.
— (See « Howard Fried », Flash Art, nos. 28/29, December 1971/January 1972, p. 8. Documentation for Chronometric Depth Perception (1971), and a photo from Inside the Harlequin : Approach Avoidance III (film, 1971)
— Grace Glueck, « New York: Big Thump in the Bass Drum, » Art in America, v.59, May/June 1971, pp.132-133. Excerpt on Howard Fried’s Chronometric Depth Perception:
« Fried wrestles with a professionnal wrestler. But while the latter wrestles on a scale of time that’s all in the present, Fried wrestles on a time scale that’s correlated with his projected life span (he’s twenty four). Having distributed his allotted seventy-two-and-then-some years over the regulation wrestling-match time of nine minutes, he has found that the present occurs at a point of two minutes and fifty-two seconds. But Fried can wrestle normally only while he has chronometric depth perception – i.e., when he can ‘see’ his life in time in the same way that two eyes are necessary to perceive depth in space. So, at the instant when the artist’s projected time scale correlates with the ‘real’ one of the wrestler, the artist freeze, incapable of action. The professional wrestler pins him to the mat.
« ‘The model of this phenomenon happens in every area of life,’ explains Fried. ‘You have to have two vantage points to understand anything other than that small increment that corresponds to the present. There’s a psychological need to see things from more than one space. »
— Brenda Richardson, « Howard Fried: The Paradox of Approach-Avoidance, » Arts Magazine, v.45, Summer 1971, pp.30-33. Excerpt:
« Fried has intellectualized his life to a point almost inconceivable to most people. Because of this, his daily activity (and the multiplicity of decisions that go into the process of each activity) bears little relationship to any common norm of daily human activity. For this reason his activities ‘look’ more like art than do my activities, for example. His artistic and studio life is ascetic and highly intellectual, belying the appearance of a childish and haphazard personality. He frequently spends long periods of time in his studio (not eating, sleeping, or seeing people), totally enveloped in a structure completely of his own contrivance. There is not one inch of the studio that manifeste any other personality or any arbitrary state of being not of his own making: « This particular phase of my life (and therefore my work) started when I moved into this place about a year ago. I was immediately aware of a kind of paranoia or insecurity in myself at walking into a place – a pretty big place – that had no feeling of me, but only it. Like a foreign place. So ever since then I’ve been covering progressively every surface of it. Because I’ve conceived it. I know what every inch of it is about. I can use the analogy of a caterpillar weaving a cocoon: he makes an environment about which he can feel completely secure, because it surrounds him and, even more important, he made every bit of it. There’s no room for the hazards or insecurities of the unknown or the arbitrary. What happens with me, though, when I formulate this kind of structure is that I start feeling self-conscious about the form it’s taking, because it’s a contrived form and therefore artificial. This relates to the approach-avoidance sequence – the closer I get to completing the form, the more necessity I feel to decimate it. »
- FRIED Howard, Fuck You Perdue, San Francisco, 1971. Video.
The work refers to Fried’s brother, Billy, and his Marine Corps drill instructors, Purdue and Ward.
‘‘Rumbles : Howard Fried’’, Avalanche, no. 4, Spring 1972, p. 4. Brief description of two of Fried’s videotapes, Fuck You Perdue, a 25 mins. Tape shown in The San Francisco/Performance, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Sea Sell Sea Sick at Saw/Sea Soar, a 55 mins. Tape shown at the Reese Palley Gallery, San Francisco, San Francisco. Extrait : « Fuck You Perdue is a dialogue between two confined people whose life spaces overlap, and refers to Fried’s brother Billy, whose drill instructors in the Marines were called Purdue and Ward ; their sole verbal exchanges when off-duty were restricted to the words in the title. »
- FRIED Howard, Inside the Harlequin: Approach Avoidance III, 1971. Film.
- FRIED Howard, Sea Sell Sea Sick at Saw/Sea Sea Soar, 1971, videotape.
Fried acting as a restaurant patron while waiters Alec Lambie and Barney Bailey try to get an order out of him. The video camera and the set are mounted on platforms swinging in opposite directions.
- FRIED Howard, Synchromatic Baseball, 1971. San Francisco, Ca.
Performed at night with friends on the roof of Fried’s studio at 16 Rose St. Game is interrupted when Fried falls through the skylight.
– Alec Lambie. « 16 Rose Street », Artweek, v. 3, January 1, 1972, p. 1. Photos and text on the history of 16 Rose Street, a building in San Francisco leased by Reese Palley Gallery and given over as studio space to artists such as Sam Richardson, Terry Fox, James Pennuto, Howard Fried, Barney Bailey, and Alec Lambie. Extrait :
« (A description of Howard Fried’s Synchomatic Baseball) : One of Howard Fried’s studio pieces was a baseball game, using over-ripe tomatoes as balls, played on the roof at 16 Rose Street during August (1971). Artists and visiting friendss were divided into 2 teams, one made up of people Fried considered apt to behave dominantly in their relationship to him (though not necessarily so in other situations) and the other made up people he throught not apt to behave dominantly toward him. As a wild game progressed, Fried found that the dominant group took charge and the non-dominant stood around and very little.
Before the evening was over Fried fell through a skylight, cut his arms and made a hurried trip to the nearest hospital emergency room. Content with the strength of the situation and not in the least distressed by this end to the evening, he considers the baseball game one of his more interesting and successful works. »
— 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 Howard Fried:
‘‘…Howard Fried replied, ‘‘Art is life out of context by declaration. Definitions are fun because they’re so easy to alter’’, [16] In a work by Fried, Synchromatic Baseball (1971), a baseball game which contained many extraordinary circumstances, was declared Art. The game originally was to be played on the street, but when the 20 or so players arrived they were confronted by Fried who, like an ‘‘authoritarian brutal tyrant’’ screamed commands and changed the game’s location to the peaked roof of his studio to be played at night under blinding illumination, using rotten tomatoes instead of a ball.
It was very dangerous. I hadn’t actually planned on that. The game was full of oversights. I think what was also upsetting or puzzling to some players was the structure of the two teams. I divided the players into teams… One team was made of people who took a dominant role in some relationship that affected my life. It was called the ‘Dommy Team.’ The other team, ‘Indo,’ was made up of people who took an indominant role in a relationship that affected my life. I took the part of coach and permanent catcher for both teams. As a coach I played the authoritarian brutal tyrant. I worked myself into a frenzy screaming commands. I think many people found that particularly upsetting because it violated the mental sets with which they were accustomed to approaching me. It alos set the tone for the game. One thing I was interested in was how each team would function as a unit… It was complete chaos. It seemed a bit violent. The game was interrupted when I fell through a skylight chasing a foul ball. I was in a blind frenzy at the time. I called an intermission and went (to the hospital) for stitches. It wasn’t serious. When I returned, the game continued but was less manic in tone. it eventually settled to a state that was about as boring as a normal baseball game. [17]
Much of Fried’s Work is concerned with speculative inquiries into problems dealing with behavior. Synchromatic Baseball was ‘‘dangerous’’ and ‘‘upsetting to the players,’’ but as a performance it involved a confrontation which allowed for the study of group behavior and predictability.’’
[16] Howard Fried, ‘‘Howard Fried in Conversation with Joel Hopkins, Marsha Fox and David Sherk,’’ Art and Artists, January, 1973, p.32.
[17] Ibid., p.34.
- HENDERSON Mel
— Maitland Zane, « A New Communer Image », San Francisco Chronicle, February 22, 1973, p. 3.
Review of Henderson’s project which took place February 21, 1973 ; cutout cardboard cows were placed over Instate 280 and other thoroughfares near Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
- GREAT GEORGES PROJECT, Gifts to the City: Six Memorials, 1971.
- HORN Rebecca, Unicorn,1971.
- KAPROW Allan, Calendar, 1971. California Arts. Valencia. Californie.
- KAPROW Allan, City Works, 1971. Galerie Baeker. Bochum.
- KAPROW Allan, Print-Out, 1971. Cultural Affairs Comm. Milan. Italie.
- KAPROW Allan, Scales, 1971. California Arts. Valencia. Californie.
- KAPROW Allan, Tag, 1971. Aspen Design Conference. Aspen Colorado.
- KAPROW Allan, Tracts, 1971. California Arts. Burbank. Californie.
- KLAUKE Jürgen, Self-Performance. Automatenfotos, 1971. Paris.
- KOS Paul, A Trophy/Atrophy (Two-Headed Cow Self), Videotape, 1971/72.
- KOS Paul, — see Margaret Crawford. « Paul Kos Sculptures », Artweek, v. 2, April 24, 1971, p. 3.
— Review of Kos’ exhibition at the Reese Palley cellar, San Francisco. Extrait :
« (One work) is a process piece involving sand. It begins with a smooth mound of fine, white sand, shaped like a volcano, with a cone-shaped indentation in the center, placed in the middle of the first-floor gallery. The indentation is created by a small hole in the floor, directly underneath the center of the mound, which allows a steady stream of sand to fall through a funnel into the cellar gallery below, where it slowly forms a second mound. The whole thing works on the same principle as an hourglass. …When the spectator first notices the mound on the upper floor, it has no particular significance. Only after going down into the cellar, seeing the falling sand, and then returning upstairs, can be finally understand the whole process. »
- KOS Paul, rEVOLUTION, Winery Lake, Napa, Ca., 1971.
Kos discharged 375 rounds of Winchester rifle ammunition into a plywood target suspended from a metal scale effect a « ninety minute invisible weight exchange ». Documented from the ground and the air.
— « Rumbles : Exhibitions, Paul Kos », Avalanche, no. 2, Winter 1971, p. 6. Brief description of three works by Kos, including rEVOLUTION, documentation included Fish, Fox, Kos, a three person exhibition at the De Saisset Art Gallery, University of Santa Clara.
— Cf. Cecile McCann, « Three Concepts », Artweek, v. 2, February 13, 1971, p. 2. Review of Fish, Fox, Kos, a three person exhibition at the De Saisset Art Gallery, University of Santa Clara. Includes description of Fox’s performance, Pisces, Kos’ video documentation rEVOLUTION, and Allan Fish (Tom Marioni’s) performance with his son and a hen.
- KUTTNER Peter, Edible Rainbow, 1971.
- LANG Caty, GREEN Carolyne, ATLANTIS Dori et BOUD Sue, Cunt Cheerleaders, 1971.
- MATTA-CLARK Gordon, Program 2. Tree Dance, 1971.
- MARIONI Tom, « Letter to (Willoughby Sharp) », Artweek, v.2, June 26, 1971, p.2.
— Reprint of a letter sent to Willoughby Sharp, published of Avalanche, New York, from Tom Marioni, Director of the Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco. Includes discussion of San Francisco art activity. Excerpt:
« ABOUT the piece i did in the berkeley gallery in san francisco (thats the place that did the slant step show a few years ago). Richard Beggs taped my heart beat – put it on a loop and with an oscillating machine speeded it up to a 4/4 tempo equil. to a heart beat at its fastest. the piece was 34 min. long. first 15 min. was the heart beat slowing down gradually to a Dead stop. while this was going on I was siting in a chair facing people siting on the floor. i was wearing the fish disguise and old clothes. on the tv monitor was my face as Marioni, Hanging on the wall was a change of clothes. at end of fifteen min. heart beat was a constant hum and image on tv put on fake glases, nose, msutache and hat while I (Fish) took off same disguise. that image was switched to stop frame. everything was frozen and i changed clothes, piled old clothes in a pile on the floor, went from orange to blue underwear, dressed in undertaker coat and cowboy shirt, heart beat started slowly and monitor started. the next 15 min. was reverse of first 15 except last 5 min. i mixed two 1/2 pint bottles of white and chocolate milk into 1 pint bottle that i dug up in my back yard. i drank the 50-50 mix while image on tv drank white milk. it was a reward for myself. when i was a kid my grandfather had a dairy in syracuse n.y. and i drank milk from those little glass bottles. the video tape was an element in the piece and means nothing by itself. it was destroyed…
i did a piece at san jose state college may 25. it was in a mud brick house that tony May and his students built on a lot that the school owns about a mile from the campus. I sent you an announcement that read come prepared to EAT with a piece of bread in it. the school payed me to do the piece. i presented it as a fish piece as part of a 3 lecture series i did there. it was very plastic just like san jose. Layed out all orange food on straw floor of hut enough for at least 50 people, passed out and ate one item at a time. american cheese, 1/2 slice, orange soda, potato chip dipped in mustard, carrots and candy corn eaten in three sections white tip first. »
- MCLEAN Bruce, Pose Work for Plinths 3, 1971. (see 1970)
Originally conceived as a performance at the Situation Gallery in 1971, McLean’s poses are an ironic and humorous commentary on what he considered to be the pompous monumentality of Henry Moore’s large plinth-based sculptures. The artist later had himself photographed, repeating the poses, to create three permanent works.
- MEIER Dieter, Two Words, 1971. NYC.
- MONTANO Linda, Dead Chicken/Live Angel, Rochester, NYC, 1971.
- MORRIS Robert, Installation Tate Gallery Bodyspacemotionthings, 1971.
- NAUMAN Bruce, « Body Sculpture Sky Paintings », Artweek, v. 2, April 3, 1971, p. 1.
— Review of exhibition, Body Movements, at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. Participants included Bruce Nauman, Barry Le Va, Chris Burden, and Mowry Baden, among others. Excerpt on Bruce Nauman :
« (On Nauman) : For his piece in the exhibition at La Jolla, Nauman uses a corridor 40 feet long and only 12 inches wide. A participant must go through sidewise, physically in contact with the wall along its entire length. It is not recommended for people with claustrophobia. The interior of the corridor is lit with bright green flurorescent light, which seems to change to dazzling white after a few seconds. At the end of the corridor, normal light is seen on a spectrum of pink to purple. »
- NAUMAN Bruce, « Bruce Nauman, » Avalanche, no.2, Winter 1971, pp.22-35.
— Major interview with Bruce Nauman, also includes photographs of the artist by Gianfranco Gorgoni ans stills from 8 videotapes: Slow L Walk (1968), Bouncing in a Corner (1968), Stamping in the Studio (1968), Violin Tuned D.E.A.D. (1968), Bouncing in a Corner (1969), Walking in Contraposto (1969), Lip Sinc (1969), Wall/Floor Positions (1968). Extrait :
(Avalanche) : Some of the works must be stimulated by a desire to experience particular kinds of situations. Just to see how they feel. Are you doing the work basically for yourself ?
(BN): Yes. It is going into the studio and doing whatever I’m interested in doing, and then trying to find a way to present it so that other people could do it too without having too much explanation.
(A): The concern for the body seems stronger now…
(BN): Well, the first time I really talked to anybody about body awareness was in the summer of 1968. Meredith Monk was in San Francisco. She had thought about or seen some of my work and recognized it. An awareness of yourself comes from a certain amount of activity and you can’t get it from just thinking about yourself. You do exercises, you have certain kinds of awarenesses that you don’t have if you read books. So the films and some of pieces that I did after that for videotapes were specifically about doing exercises in balance. I thought of them as dance problems without being a dancer, being interested in the kinds of tension that arise when you try to balance and can’t. Or do something for a long time and get tired. In one of those first films, the violin film, I played the violin as long as I could. I don’t know how to play the violin, so it was hard, playing on all four strings as fast as I could for as long I could. I had ten minutes of film and ran about seven minutes of it before I got tired and had to stop and rest a little bit and then finish it.
(A): But you could have gone on longer than the ten minutes?
(BN): I would have had to stop and rest more often. My fingers got very tired and I couldn’t hold the violin any more.
(A): What you are saying in effects is that in 1968 the idea of working with calistenics and body movements seemed far removed from sculptural concerns. Would you say that those boundaries and the distance between them has dissolved to a certain extent?
(BN): Yes, it seems to have gotten a lot smaller.
- NAUMAN Bruce, Art Make Up, 1971 (action-vidéo).
- NAUMAN Bruce, Studio Problem No. 1, 1971. Video.
- NAUMAN Bruce, Studio Problem No. 2, 1971. Video.
- OPPENHEIM Dennis, A Feedback Situation, 1971. Vidéo.
- OPPENHEIM Dennis, Air Pressure, 1971. Vidéo.
- OPPENHEIM Dennis, Forming Sounds, 1971. Vidéo.
- OPPENHEIM Dennis, Two Stage Transfer Drawing, 1971.
- OTH Jean, TV Perturbations, 1971.
« The Limits. (Interrogation on “realities“ of the image.)
The “limit“ is a theme on which I have been working for the past two years. It is an extremely simple operation in which the primary gesture, consisting in the separation of two forms, is essential for me; at the origins, it is one of creation’s first acts.
By breaking the dialogue into two surfaces, the “parasite“ which I insert, signals or even signifies an image.
Being an element of a dialectics between an outline which isolates and a passage which “opens,“ the limit in itself an exciting problem which was suffocated by a seeming banality.
To fix a limit graphically in the actions and the videotapes belonging to this series becomes, paradoxically, a pretext for an interrogation on the modalities of the “realities“ of an image. In a strip like Limit A, I intervene on the image of my shadow, with white chalk on a blackboard.
The interest of this experience rests on the level of magnetoscopic documentation on the simultaneous presentation of three types of reality; my shadow, its graphic fixing, and the back of my image. Curiously enough, the highest degree of reality moves incessantly from one to the other modality of the subject. These are different readings of the very video image which will give rise to the problems of “reality“. Pursuing this work, I made a certain number of magnetocospic action, in which I no longer intervene on my shadow but on my own image, both diapositive and cinematographic. This ambiguous dialectic, by disturbing our perception habits, should incite us to an interrogation on the various statures of iconic “reality.“ (see Lea Vergine, p. 188-189)
- PANE Gina, Escalade non-anesthésiée, (body-art).
- PANE Gina, Hommage à un jeune drogué, 1971, Galerie du Fleuve, Bordeaux.
- PARTUM Ewa, Aktive Poesie, 1971-73.
Ewa Partum (1945-Poland, Germany) was one of the pioneers of conceptual art in Poland and an important influence on the development of feminist performance art from the beginning. According to her motto ‘‘an act of throught is an act of art’’, her public actions and works on paper focus on the power of signs, the materialisation and the realightment of language, representation and mental images. Partum has been living and working in Berlin since 1983.
In the poetical actions of Aktive Poesie, Partum challenges conventional literary methods and the artistic and political use of language. She uses letters cut of white paper as symbols of a desintegrated text that exists only in her head. Her active poetry took place in many locations in Poland, both in urban settings and in nature, where she scattered letters on the ocean, or on a hill.
- PICARD Lil, Messages (Personal Realism), 1971. NYC University.
Performance of ‘‘Messages (Personal Realism)’’ at New York University, November 23, 1971, photo Jan van Raay.
- PICARD Lil, Messages (Working in Bed) 1971 & 1972. Performance
Working in Bed, one of a series of Messages performances took place at the 8th Avant Garde Festival on November 19, 1971, and in Hamburg in November 1972. Another Messages Performance titled Personal Realism took place at New York University on November 23, 1971. A series of slides of Picard working in bed was projected as part of the performance. photo: Jan van Raay.
- PIPER Adrian, Food For The Spirit, 1971.
- RAINER Yvonne, Journeys from Berlin, 1971-79.
- RINKE Klaus, Pacific I & II, 1971-72.
- RUPPERSBERG Allan, Al’s Grand Hotel, Los Angeles, Ca., 1971.
— Allen Ruppersberg, Al’s Grand Hotel. Hollywood : Self-published, 1971. 12 page artist catalogue of Ruppersberg’s hotel-show at Al’s Grand Hotel, 7175 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, California, May 7-June 12 1971. Includes photo documentation of rooms in the hotel that one could visit or rent during the 6 week show. Photo captions include a pricelist of objects seen in the photographs.
— M. Terbell, « Los Angeles : Al Ruppersberg’s Grand Hotel », Arts Magazine, v. 46, September 1971, p. 53. Review.
- SAMARAS Lucas, Autopolaroid, 1971 (et 1973).
« Other than being an autobiographic postulate of some of my present attitudes or a complicated gift to others, the photographs are a way of studying my polaroided self as an abstraction or translation of aesthetic speculation, psychological perspicacity, sensual subtlety and a warm embarrassement.
Or they are a method for declassifying hush-hushed feelings. Or they are a stylized pretension of emotion-acting. Or they are a reworking of the form of self-portrait. Or if was a matter of one thing leading to another and piling up into an elaborated accomplishment.
Also they are evidence of an enjoyment. Most of them were done late night or early morning. Uninterrupted times. I rediscovered a number of techniques already available to students of photography and had a funny feeling of re-experiencing history. It wasn’t all regurgitation. I allowed satire of my art education to enter into the composition.
Polaroid, nevertheless, has a feel, a look, a dialect of its own. It is programmed to give you acceptable flesh colors, but it is possible to cross its normality with colored sheets of plastic either in front of the lens or in front of the lights. Moreover the speed with which a result is obtained without outside help and the complete privacy afforded me an opportunity of doing something impossible with regular photography. I could tone up or tone down my emotion. I could move a little to the left or shift this or that and be my own critic, my own exciter, my own director, my own audience.
I did these things between December 1969 and May 1971. I had wanted to photographically explore my body for years and was going to have a professional photographer do it. But I have never been able to work well with others, and I was not going to go to a photography school and learn photography. Polaroid came in handily. » (see Lea Vergine, p. 228-229)
- SAPIEN Darryl, Synthetic Ritual, San Francisco Art Institute. 1971. Performed with Michael Hinton.
« Opposing forces, represented by two performers painted opposite colors, emerge from walls at either end of a room. Blindfolded and connected to ropes extending from the walls they meet at the center of the room inside a circle of steer manure where they begin a physical interaction. Gradually the encounter escalates from blind exploration to a contest of strength. Soon the performers begin to wrestle and as they struggle on the ground the opposite colors of their bodies blend into a uniform gray. »
- SCHNEEMANN Carolee, Electronic Activations Room, 1971.
- SCHNEEMANN Carolee, Rainbow Blaze, 1971.
- SCHNEEMANN Carolee, Schlaget Auf, 1971.
- SERRA Richard, Color-Aid, 1971.
- SHERK Bonnie, Grosgrain : A Book Served on a Silver Platter, Artist book, 1971.
A book served on a silver platter, photo by Larry Fox.
Self-published.
- SHERK Bonnie, Pig Sonata, Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, Ca., 1971.
- SHERK Bonnie, Public Lunch, 1971 (action) Lion House. San Francisco Zoo.
Sherk sat alone in a cage at feeding time at the Lion House and ate a formal public lunch from Vanessi’s Restaurant. « Untitled », Unpublished documentation for Public Lunch, written February 20, 1971, in the Lion House, San Francisco Zoo, on Waldorf Astoria stationary, during Sherk’s performance/event.
— 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:
‘‘Public Lunch (1971), had had by far the most impact of all of her confrontational works. For this piece Sherk gained access to the Lion House at the San Francisco Zoo where, situated inside the cage, she ‘‘performed lunch’’ amid the actual lunch performance of growling lions and tigers. The public audience watched incredulously as Sherk dined with all of the accoutrements of refined elegance.’’
- SHERK Bonnie, Response, San Diego, 1971 (video)
— Alec Lambie, « Things Are Not As They Seem, » Artweek, v.3, March 25, 1972, p.3. An interview with Bonnie Sherk. Includes text and photos of her performances at U.C. San Diego, San Francisco Zoo, and Museum of Conceptual Art. Excerpt:
« ‘Include yourself,’ Bonnie Sherk, environmental artist, maintains. ‘Mix up media, deal with alternative events, environments, materials or anything else you may have in mind. As a matter of fact, ‘Bonnie Sherk said in her studio, ‘one has the choice to do anything and everything or nothing.’…
« Bonnie Sherk’s piece in San Diego, titled ‘Response’ described her own response to the space, the audience response to her actions in the space and the viewers response to themselves. Descriptively, her actions amounted to boiling an egg and planting a small pine tree within an enclosed area in one of the newly completed library buildings. At ground level, where she stood, her action was viewed by a video camera and then transferred to a monitor in a separately enclosed area. It was been described mathematically by David Baxter of the physics department. Simultaneously her action was observed from a promenade directly above Chuck Hankins of the biology department who related what was taking place to a group of viewers. Neither Hankins or Baxter was able to see the other. »
- SMITH Barbara, The Celebration of the Holy Squash, 1971.
- SPACE STRUCTURE WORKSHOP, Blow-Up, 1971.
- SPACE STRUCTURE WORKSHOP, Colour Village, 1971.
- TEPPER Irv, Lin Roger and Me on a Sunday Morning, November 1971.
Artist book. Oakland : Self-published, n. d., book includes six photographs of the artist, Lin, and Roger (Cat) in bed, taken with Polaroid Land Process.
- THE CYCLAMEN CYCLITS, Swansea Docks, 1971.
- TRANS-PARENT TEACHER’S INK, Cotton Paul, Betrayal of ‘The Prince of Peace’, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 1971
(TRANS-PARENT TEACHER’S INK, Cotton Paul, Medium : Arthur Kukin. « Art Museum Throws Art Out, » Los Angeles Free Press, v. 8, May 14-20, 1971, pp. 1-5.).
- WEIBEL Peter, Imaginary Water Sculpture, 1971 (action-vidéo).
- WEIBEL Peter, Initiation. Experimentation 4, 1971. Francfort.
- WEIBEL Peter, Intervals, 1971 (action-vidéo).
- WEIBEL Peter, Sozialmatrix: Wo sie mich verlezt haben, 1971. Francfort.
- WILDING Faith, Waiting, 1971. California Institute of the Arts. Los Angeles.
- WILEY William T., Man’s Nature. San Francisco. 1971 (film) (1972 ?).
— Brenda Richardson, William T. Wiley, Berkeley : University Art Museum, University of California, 1971. Catalogue for a one man exhibition. Includes an introduction by curator, Brenda Richardson, and notes by William Wiley : « Sub Standard Test », 1968 ; « Hides Log – How to Chart A Course », 1971 ; thoughts on Marcel Duchamp, 1970. Also includes biographical notes, a list of selected exhibitions, bibliography, and catalogue documentation of the exhibition. Extrait :
« If you accept Duchamp’s example as an ultimate limit or universe you miss a facet of his existence I deem essential. His universe is ultimate only in relation to him. We must use his example of mobility and flexibility as an imperfect but well intentioned model of existence. If you do not agree with his model you do not have to dissipate your energy by belaboring the point he made – an endless unresolvable rhetoric. His life and death in conventional terms make disproving or discrediting his achievement a moot point. However, that phenomenon of his existence was such that i twill sustain almost any point of agreement or disagreement. The puzzle of man or a man’s life should be enjoyed not feared. »