Doing is Knowledge

Allan Kaprow explaining Household, a Happening prepared for
Cornell University, May 1964. He gave a lecture explaining the piece
the day before a Happening or Activity then followed it with
a workshop to discuss the results.

The artworld produces "stillborn art" wrote Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) in his "Happenings" in the New York Scene essay first published in 1961. He sought a venue more free for artists than "the white walls, the tasteful aluminum frames, the lovely lighting, fawn gray rugs, cocktails, polite conversation" of chic galleries and art museums. He wanted to blur art and life and coined the term Happenings ("Happenings are events that, put simply, happen") and came to realize that the world and everyday life should provide the backdrop for his Happenings. By the early 1960s, he located his "activities" in dumps, parking ramps, the street, courtyards, auditoriums, woods and orchestratraed them though a "score" mimeographed or handwritten. It was his pushing, his yearning to break down barriers between artist and audience that makes his work from some 50 years ago increasingly relevant today. In 2011 and the era of Web 2.0, artists design projects circumventing the art establislhment to involve online participants by providing instructions for what could more or less be described as performance-inflected works to be completed in the outside world. Many of these art projects such as Post Secret have been embraced by the mainstream. In 2005 artist Frank Warren began inviting people to participate by mailing him their secrets on a homemade postcard which he scanned and posted on blogspot. Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher's Learning to Love You More listed assignments, which participants could complete and until 2009submit for publication on their website. New York artist David Horvitz posted ideas"anyone can use without permission"on Tumblr suggesting activities such as making fake press passes to gain free admission to art museums. Even institutions, such as the Minneapolis Institute of Art has invited the public to post portraits of photographers into a group pool on Flickr to coincide with their current Facing the Lens: Portraits of Photographers exhibition. Though Kaprow spoke against museums as more or less dead zones and resisted displaying his work, numerous museums have recently "reinvented" or "reinterpreted/reinvented" his "scores" including Fluids  mounted by The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in 2008. Many of Kaprow's "scores" have been collected and published as documents from an archive in Allan Kaprow: Art as Life by Eva Meyer-Herman, Andrew Perchuk and Stephanie Rosenthal (Getty 2008). The coffee table volume makes his pieces accessible to a new generation such as our Digital Processes students who "reinterpreted" Kaprow's Routine piece one wintry Wisconsin afternoon.

Digital Processes students "reinterpret/reinvent"
Allan Kaprow's Routine
L to R:  Jinglei Xiao, Zenabu Abubakari,
Professor Elizabeth Carlson,  Kanesha Walker in
Lawrence University's Science Hall Atrium, 2.2.2011

Digital Processes students "reinterpret/reinvent"
Allan Kaprow's Routine
L to R:  Anam Shahid, Ali Scattergood,
Krissy Rhyme and Hillary Rogers in
Lawrence University's Science Hall Atrium, 2.2.2011

Digital Processes students "reinterpret/reinvent"
Allan Kaprow's Routine
L to R:  Tom Coben and Jordan Severson in
Lawrence University's Science Hall Atrium, 2.2.2011

Everyone is an Artist

Joseph Beuys planting one of 7000 Oaks.
A 4 foot high basalt stone was positioned next
to each tree to mirror the constantly changing
relationship between the tree and the stone.
Photos are posted to flickr showing their current state.

Nazi war trauma and abandoned plans to study medicine lead Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) to the Dusseldorf Academy of Art to pursue sculpture. He eventually gave up his early aspirations to emulate the work of British sculptor Henry Moore and created actions, multiples and installations instead. Through these works, he called for political reform and worked to engage the media and the public. Though some may perceive his art works (made of tallow, felt, honey and gold among other substances) as hard to "get", Beuys worked to draw in everyday people in hopes of breaking down boundries between art and life. Often associated with Fluxus, Beuys publicly denounced the movement. His works were his alone. His sculptures ran the gamut froms sweeping Karl-Marx-Platz in West Berlin on May Day 1972 to cooperating with the Guggenheim to install a major exhibition of his sculptures (as documented in John Halpern's Transformer video) to co-founding the Green Party to planting 7000 oak trees (7000 Eichen, 1982-7) to singing, with rock star swagger, his song Sonne Statt Reagan attacking American president Ronald Reagan's arms policy. Since his death, the faithful propagate his message via YouTube videos and a Museum Schloss Moyland which holds his early works. Contemporary artists and institutions also seem to be embracing the sorts of gestures that Beuys injected into the art discourse. Rirkrit Tiravanja prepared and served vegetarian curry daily to gallery-goes at David Zwiner in 2007) and part of his Untitled 1992 (Free) piece elevating cooking and eating to art.  Tino Sehgal made walking and engaging in conversation part of his art in This Progress staged in the empty Guggenheim in 2010 making human experience and thoughts a material for art.

Every sphere of human activity, even peeling a potato can be a work of art as long as it is a conscious act -- Joseph Beuys

Beuys at the peak of his career from a 1987 BBC documentary

Animal Magnetism

Bruno S. watching his mobile home repossessed in the barren
Wisconsin winter landscape in Werner Herzog's Strozek (1977).

The relationship of Bruno Schleinstein and Werner Herzog came to mind while reading a passage from Herzog's 2009 book Conquest of the Useless: Reflections on Making Fitzcarraldo:

A fairly young, intelligent looking man with long hair asked me whether filming or being filmed could do harm, whether it could destroy a person. In my heart the answer was yes, but I said no. (19)

Watching Bruno S. perform for Herzog's camera in spaces like a prison cell, his own apartment in Berlin and later in a mobile home set in the cold beige and brown landscape of central Wisconsin in November, we ponder the potential psychic residue for both men after Stroszek. Drawn together perhaps through the fateful pull of the flux of the fluid described by the German Physician Franz Mesmer, the two men worked together on two films The Enigma of Kasper Hauser (1974) and Strosek (1977) and never again. In Bruno's obituary dated August 14, 2010, The New York Times quoted his reflection on his post-Herzog celebrity status: "Everybody threw him away." But he did not necessarily feel exploited. "I have my pride, and I can think, and my thinking is very clever," the Times quotes him saying. His flashback performances on camera are cruel and compelling as he appears to relive his childhood experiences in orphanages and at the hands of Nazi tormentors. Bruno and his struggles become integral to Herzog's metaphoric closing scene. A lingering shot of a chicken doomed to dance against a cheerful yellow backdrop for viewers willing to insert a quarter in the slot. The chicken exits and the scene fades to black all the while an ecstatic Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee tune (Hootin' the Blues) plays as the chicken prances leaving viewers to search for meaning in the pained emotions and bleak landscapes that pervaded the film.


Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee performing Hootin' the Blues (circa 1959)


Infamous dancing chicken scene from Stroszek (1977). Herzog states in the voice over commentary that it seemed to him to be among the most important moments of cinema.

Dreams and Nightmares

Werner Herzog (b. 1942) on location for Fitzcarraldo (1982) set in Peru

Werner Herzog's fascination with characters living an extreme existence or landscapes providing an extreme shooting environment pervades his search for ecstatic truth. From the Amazon jungle to central Wisconsin in November, the self-taught German filmmaker has crafted his films around his desire to leave behind a record of the state of the human soul. In a text Herzog wrote for wife Lena Herzog's photographs documenting the pilgrimage site Bodh Gaya in Western Tibet (published in 2002 as Pilgrims: Becoming the Path Itself), he wrote of  Mount Kailash:

The mountain itself is not only a very impressive pyramid of black rock with a cap of ice and snow on its top, it immediately strikes the voyager as something much deeper - an inner landscape, an apparition of something existing only in the soul of man. (9)

Plainfield, Wisconsin (infamous for the crimes of the oft-satirized bachelor farmer/killer Ed Gein), says Herzog in Herzog on Herzog, "is one of those places that are focal points where every thread converges and is tied into a knot...where dreams and nightmares all come together." (146)  In his film Stroszek (filmed in Berlin, Manhattan, Plainfield and Cherokee, North Carolina), Herzog blurs documentary and narrative form to articulate his vision and over-arching concept. Starting with a script based on a real man named Bruno Schleinstein, the film evolved during the process of shooting which has long been a part of Herzog's film making practice. Improvising and collaborating with places, landscapes, animals, pimps, doctors, truckers, deer hunters, auctioneers and waitresses he happens upon, Herzog intuits truths about the "universal theme of shattered hopes" (144) and ends up with a film that questions what it means to be human.

Excerpt from Les Blank's 1982 documentary Burden of Dreams

Do Everything

e

Andy Warhol "painting" pop singer Debbie Harry
with his Commodore Amiga 1000 in 1985.

As the 20th-century began winding down, artist Andy Warhol's (1928-1987) art practice vociferously encompassed emerging media. His mantra: Do Everything. From 16 mm Bolexes (1960s) and Sony Portapaks (1970) to founding Interview magazine, shooting Polaroids with his Big Shot camera, tape recording every conversation, talking on the phone, shooting MTV videos, producing a cable TV interview show, staging multi-media light shows with Velvet Underground his practice eventually included the Commodore Amiga 1000 computer--just months before his death. Warhol exploited the speed, ease of use and newness with each successive technology. The social and collaborative quality of his art practice made his working methods miles away from the individual artist genius toiling alone in their artelier producing small easel paintings.  Bridget Berlin once said "He just wishes it was all easier" presaging Warhol's foray into digital technology by a couple decades. Warhol perceived his Amiga computers as a faster way to work and try out colors on his portraits. He stated in an interview with Amiga World magazine that the imagery the Amigas produced looked a lot like what he was doing with his silkscreens. He found using a mouse awkward and hoped for a pen tool for ease of use and a printer so he could make prints to send to the subjects of his portraits.

Fall Term 2010 Video Showcase

 Digital Processes and Independent Study students presented their projects in Lawrence University's Warch Campus Center Cinema, Tuesday, November 23, 3-5:30 pm:

Tom Coben (IS): Cave Bat Chronicle – A documentary video on the threats facing Phillippine cave bats. (5 mins).

Lawton Hall (IS): Song for Last Autumn – Reflection on the passing of time, the ending of things, the closing of a chapter, etc. using squares, leaves, sandpaper, cassette tape and primary colors (6 mins).

Emily Owens: Video Diary - Whispered inner thoughts and skin.

Maki Miura: GARBEAT - By combining the simple beats improvised on the spot using the found objects around them, the people in this video create a complex rhythm. 

Caitlyn Genovese: Mastication - An exploration of the disturbing and disgusting aspects of eating alluding to the intertwined  idea of love and eroticism 

Kanesha Walker: Back to Natural - A video addressing the issues African-American women encompass with their hair choices.
Evan Tracy: Untitled - A woman, played by Rachelle Krivichi, experiences a bleak anxiety-filled reality and a distanced sense of self.
Jinglei Xiao: A Schizophrenic Man - An experimental video explores what happens when a  schizophrenic man gets super powers and fights evil after taking PCP.

Kate Duncan-Welke: BP Oil Spill Deepwater Horizon Disaster - Video mashup creating a feeling of urgency as the impact of the April 20, 2010 spill continues despite minimal news coverage.

Byte Phichaphop: Mr. Dot - Interactions between objects in the 2nd and 3rd dimensions accessed through a strange hole that opens Mr. Dot's eyes to a new world.

Anam Shahid: Nature versus Technology - A video about society's reliance on technology and how it distracts from the tangible tranquility of nature. 

Kevin Mason: Technology and Identity - An examination of how technology alters our sense of self by enabling us to  create alternate identities or extensions of ourselves existing in a non physical plane.

Alaina Albaugh:Future of our Fears - Digital painting projection about a frightening world in which technology, not us, possesses the power.

Hillary Rogers: Portraiture and Propaganda - Ancient portraits recreated with contemporary people and symbolic props reduced to irrelevant substitutes.
Marvana Avery-Cash: Behind the Scenes - A photographic memoir of a play production.

Deliver us from Evel

Evel Knievel promotional photograph

Evel Knievel's (1938-2007) highly-publicized seven-second motorcycle stunts inspired a generation to embrace risk and value fearlessness as if self-inflicted danger would lead to redemption. "He puts his life on the line with every death defying jump," chant the carnies.  The visual culture of strength and bravery in the face of pain goes back to biblical portrayals of Jesus Christ's crucifixion. The stations of the cross document each step of JC's suffering until his death. The pop culture embrace of EK's televised stunts and press conferences galvanized the mass appetite for such spectacles. Like performance art works such as Marina Abramovic's Rhythm 10 (1973) and Chris Burden's Trans-Fixed (4.23.74) contemporary with EK's work, possible harm to the artist became integral to artistic practice. EK's legendary jump over the Caesar's Palace fountains in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve 1967--where he crashed crushing his pelvis and femur, fractures his hip, wrist and both ankles and sustained a concussion--as documented on film shows a slo-mo ballet of out of control skidding body and machine (see below clip). EK's official website lists his successes and his crashes along with a laundry list of broken bones and a notation that he was born again and baptized by a famous TV preacher. Knievel's "work" has been documented in myriad feature films including Evel Knievel (1971) with George Hamilton playing EK reflecting on his life in a series of reenactments interspersed with archival footage, Viva Knievel (1977) featuring Evel playing himself while delivering anti-drug speeches, The Last of the Gladiators (1988) produced by and narrated by Knievel himself, Evel Knievel The Rock Opera with a myspace page (2007) and most recently a Jackass tribute (2008) which aired after Knievel's death. With the duration of Knievel's works so brief and his hope for infamy and riches so vast, Knievel incorporated a statement of purpose and extensive documentation as part of his routine. "I am the last gladiator in the new Rome. I go into the arena and I compete against destruction and I win. And next week, I go out there and I do it again." He spoke such phrases perhaps mirroring a mass culture hunger for modern day martyrs.