Drama 360 FALL & WINTER 2009/10/Tuesday November 10: The Neo-Avant-Garde 1952-1969 (Fluxus, Happenings, Situationists) *** FOR BONUS POINTS!!!

'''1.	Goldberg, Roselee. “American and European Performance from c. 1933: The Live Art.” Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated, 1979. [PAGES: 79-96''']

In Roselee’s article I loved hearing about John Cage and his views on music. He took everyday “noise” and harnessed it into “music”, and let common appliances become instruments. Through composition and declaration Cage made it possible for any sound to become art. In events like this you can definitely see the Dada influence. Sound poems (composed of calculated noises with little apparent reason) seem very familiar to the music that Cage was creating in the States. Although, far more successful. Perhaps more significant to the article is the creation of event scores. Every performer has a “score”, a task or series of tasks which should be carried out throughout the duration of the performance. The first performance f such art was well received and “purposeless”. -SHELBY

I find Cunningham’s way of chance choreography very interesting. The steps are still structured, but the order in which they are done is different every time the piece is performed. This emphasizes his idea that every small movement is as significant as the next one. A move isn't more important because it's at the beginning or the end of a dance, because it could have been placed anywhere. Cunningham also had ordinary everyday movements in his pieces, and had performers that may or may not have had any formal training.

I loved the article, and I was amazed that Manzoni sold his shit by the can for their weight in gold. The running theme of refusing to seperate art activities from everyday life was interesting, and it inspired a definition of art for me: Art is when life happens, and you take the time to see it. This is linked to the discussion we had in class along the lines of art functioning as democratic. Or as it was stated on p.82 of the article, "Art should not be differentiated from life but an action in life. But from this, could you say there are different sub-classes of art? And if so, how does one differentiate one from another? What constitutes the boundaries of each art?--Cody.thompson 05:32, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

In the article we once again return to the idea that every thing is linked or connected in someway; as mentioned above life is art and art is life. This includes the sciences, normally not thought of as 'art' but incorporated in Xanti Schawinsky's curriculum of 'Stage Studies.' To be an artist in today's world it is rare that you are expected to know just one type of art. Schawinsky perhaps started this with his 'Stage Studies' that was more of a general study of 'fundamental phenomena.' This of course makes us better artists who are more open to new work and more knowledgable people. Another common image I have noticed throughout performance creation is relating a performance to a working object; such as an organism, creature or laboratory.

Black Mountain College: As soon as I started reading this article it jumped out at me. In this section they are talking about a bunch of people coming together from a variety of different disciplines including: Artists, Writers, Playwrights, Musicians, Dancers, ect to create a type of training school. The article mentions an artist by the name of Xanti Schawinsky. His focus on performance was based around the elements of: Space, Form, Colour, Light, Sound, Music, Time, ect. I think this mainly stood out to me because it sounds VERY familiar to the work we have been doing in class, and it’s interesting to note that it was happening way back in the 1930s as well.

'''2.	Klein, Yves. "Anthropometries of the Blue Period and Fire Paintings: Two Performances." 1960. (8 Minutes) http://www.ubu.com/film/klein.html '''

In Yoko Ono’s piece she was (among other things) attempting to destroy the male gaze. In this video the male gaze is alive and thriving. The women’s nude bodies were being painted, and put onto canvas in different manners. Although the end result was something very striking one has to wonder if art like this would have the same impact and audience if the performers/living canvases were men. -SHELBY

I rather agree. I think if it was men who were rolling around in the nude people would be much more shocked. For no reason that I can fathom most people seem to be more offended by male nudity than female. Honestly, I think it would be interesting to see if reactions vary depending on gender. I was actually a little surprised that this didn't happen in the piece. Imagine if the women all got up and left and a group of nude men came on and started doing the same thing the women had been doing previously. I think it would be interesting to see how people would take it as opposed to the previous.

Who says nude people need to be "shocking" or "offensive"? I think that nudity can be evocative of many emotions or feelings and it is the nature of those feelings that this piece is trying to grasp. Is it because we cover ourselves with clothing every day and feel judged when we uncover ourselves that we might be shocked by seeing the nude form? Is it the mass-media ideal of the "perfect body" that makes us hide our own for fear of being rejected? And on the note of seeing a male body as opposed to a female one, I believe that from an aesthetic stand point that the female form is simply more beautiful no matter which gender you ask, composed of curves rather than angles. If you really want to see the male form in all its splendor I recommend you watch this performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hPvtuu9CbM

'''3.	Vautier, Ben. "Some Ideas for Fluxus." ubu.com, 1989. http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/fluxus_anthology/Fluxus-Anthology_04_Ben-Vautier.mp3'''

The recording is vautier’s suggestion on how to create Fulxis music. I loved it. I think it’s really representative of an art form which, like Dada, encouraged anti-art. Also like Dada, Fluxis sought to democratize art and make creativity accessable to whomever should deem anything to be art. If throwing a record out the window can be music, anything can! (these suggestions can also be viewed as event scores) - SHELBY

Even after reading all of this, I’m still a little confused as to what a ‘happening’ is defined as. They talk about it quite a bit in the article but I wonder what makes up a ‘happening.’ From what I can garner, it is a performance of random and odd events put together to a specific time or pattern but it cannot be repeated. Is this repetitions merely referring to the fact that ANY performance will not be identical as the performance before it? After all, is is a different audience for one. If you want to get really, technical, I doubt the world was in the same alignment as the night before. But, baring those circumstances, if the performance is set to certain timing or pattern, wouldn’t it then be repeatable? Or is this a ‘spect-actor’ thing. Each person will come away with something different? I still confused. Can we talk about this more?

I find that fluxus was like Dadaism in the sense that it was a movement that was all about anti-art. It was trying to democratize art so that everyone was able to perform art. I also really like this idea of noise music, where anything can be considered music. Like banging pots. It doesn’t have to be melodic or thoughtfully composed. I also really enjoy the fluxus exercise where someone has to write an instruction that doesn’t have to be feasible. Like in class, we develop these ideas that are not necessarily doable, however they are still ideas that manifest and can be formed into a wild collaborative creation. - AZIZ

You can really see that this was all incredibly related to dadaism and the influences it had were phenomenal. With the creation of sound poems it opened up a world that allowed anyone to make music. Like what we saw with Cage, the ability to take pots and pans and bang them together and it allows a performance to take place anywhere at anytime. As we always say in 360, anything can be a performance. Which I am beginning to think is wonderful. That we don't have to work and choreograph something to it's utmost perfection. It can be spontaneous but I also think that the sound poems and banging pots and pans together and performing something at random can take away from a thoughtfully choreographed performance. I think they have to be divided into very different categories. Courtney Keen

I also loved how you could tell that this was related to Dadaism. The audience almost never knew what was coming. It was almost as if it was controlled chaos. Like the dadaist's, everything was calculated but sometimes the way that the happenings went they intermingled and created something different every time. Of course, it was all about anti-art, but the calculations that these people put in to their work was phenomenal. They were incredibly spontaneous and very imaginative to be able to come up with some of the things they were performing. I would love to talk about this connection in class even further. It really interests me because Dada and fluxus have been my favourite things to date.