Happenings
FROM THE ROUTINE TO THE SURREAL
To witness Wolf Vostell’s exhibit, spectators are led through an expanse of forest, following a meandering path in and out of the trees. They emerge into a clearing to find a swimming pool and tennis courts. Performers are hurling smoke bombs back and forth; some wear gas masks. Further down the path, the observers see an assemblage of television sets lying in beds.
This is a “happening.”
During the Fluxus movement of the 1950s, artists such as Vostell began to create participatory scenes for observers to experience. In the above-mentioned 1964 happening, entitled simply “You,” the German artist created an unnerving sequence of surreal scenes in Long Island, New York.2
Allan Kaprow produced equally bizarre happenings, many of which were mapped out ahead of time in handwritten blueprints, or “scores.” Women licked jam from the hood of a car; a group of people walked through city streets, each of them dragging a single shoe by a string. The 1962 happening entitled “A Service for the Dead II” involved three men buried up to their necks in sand, their heads covered with plastic bags.3
Not all of Kaprow’s happenings incorporated such peculiar elements, however; the American artist was especially partial to events involving quotidian, prosaically routine activities. Women repetitively squeezed oranges; men laboriously built a wall from large stones. “Labor Day” consisted of nothing but the tedious actions of changing car tires and shoveling sand; the happening has been recreated on college campuses well into the 21st century. —DJS