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Gillian Sneed
The work of Allan Kaprow, the performance art pioneer who died in 2006, was presented at Deitch Studios in New York as a part of PERFORMA07 in November 2007.
Sebastian Calderón-Bentin performing in Allan Kaprowââ¬â¢s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (Re-doing), 2007. Photo copyright Paula Court. Courtesy of PERFORMA, Allan Kaprow Estate, and Hauser & Wirth Zurich / London.The second installment of the New York-based biennial of performance art, PERFORMA, took place this past November at various locations throughout the city. The brainchild of the eminent performance art scholar and curator, RoseLee Goldberg, PERFORMA boasted a tremendous program of performances, exhibitions, films, lectures, and symposia. In addition to presenting ten new commissioned works, PERFORMA07 added to its programming by also taking a look at the past through the reconstruction of historic performance artworks. In particular, it presented a series of events related to the works of Allan Kaprow, a pioneer in the development of performance art in the late 50s and early 60s, and the progenitor of the legendary first happening.
The recreation of this work, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (Re-doing), was presented each night for a week at Deitch Studios, a warehouse space in Long Island City that serves as an annex to the Deitch Projects gallery located in SoHo. Originally performed in 1959 at the Reuben Gallery in New York, it was never shown again until 2006, when Kaprow authorized the re-doing of the work just a few weeks before his death. Based on the many drafts of his original notes, drawings, and sound and movement scores produced in the summer and fall of 1959, the re-doing was originally presented at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, as part of a retrospective on him. PERFORMA07 brought the piece back to New York for the first time in almost 50 years.
Located along the waterfront on the outskirts of Long Island City, Deitch Studios feels isolated from the impressive Manhattan skyline looming on the other side of the East River. The 15-minute walk from the subway to the hinterlands of industrial Queens prepared me for an experience removed from the realm of my daily interactions. A small door on the building’s massive exterior opened onto a spacious interior, in the middle of which stood an odd structure constructed of wood beams and clear plastic walls. Staff members promptly greeted us and gave us each a sheet of paper with printed program notes and a set of deliberate instructions.
“The performance is divided into six parts,” the instructions read. “Each part contains three happenings, which occur at once. The beginning and end of each will be signaled by a bell…. You have been given three cards. Be seated as they instruct you…. be sure to change your place for set three and for set five…” Some tedious additional instructions regarding the exact timing of seating and room changes, how long breaks lasted, and when to applaud, were also included in the statement.
The wooden structure, illuminated by light bulbs lining the walls, was divided into three adjoining rooms bordered by a long hall that also served as a passageway to each room. After a period of waiting for the performance to begin, we were invited to enter. We were given cards instructing us which room to sit in for each two-set “act” of the performance. I was assigned the second room for the first two sets, the third room for the next two, and the first room for the last two. Other audience members were assigned different room orders, so that for each room change, we were randomly seated with diverse audience members.
The sounding of a gong indicated the beginning of the set. The performers marched down the hall and entered their assigned rooms to perform simultaneous actions. In one room two men recited absurdist staccato texts, in another a performer bounced a rubber ball on the floor. A woman mechanically performed a sequence of dance-like poses. A slide show of images of clocks was projected on a screen. The gong rang and the actors exited, marching back down the hall in tight formation. This sequencing ordered each set. The sets were repeated six times, each one presenting a different medley of incongruous actions occurring simultaneously in each room. Between each pair of sets, the audience was given a 15-minute break to exit the structure, mingle, and chatßproceedings that I believe should be considered as integral elements of the happening.
During the sets, depending on where I was seated, I could look through the plastic walls to get a sense of what was happening in the adjoining rooms. Sometimes my view was obscured or fragmentary. Yet, I could always hear the sounds being produced, and see the reactions of audience members in other rooms. Moments of raucous cacophony–people talking at the same time, the playing of miniature instruments, a recorded soundtrack of circus music–were punctuated with poignant moments of silence.
The most significant aspect of my experience was the unexpected, yet pleasurable aromatic combinations stimulating my sense of smell. In one starkly poetic performance, an actor successively lit a series of matches, and immediately extinguished each one in a glass of water. The phosphoric odor of the matches permeating the air was then countered by the smell of Lysol, as the same performer proceeded to spray the foamy cleaning substance onto the wall. Later, a woman squeezed oranges to make juice while a man painted on a canvas in long sweeping strokes. The sweet, sunny perfume of the fruit mingled disjunctively with the chemical vapors of latex. By drawing our attention to rarely stimulated sensations, the experience of the totality of the work was heightened.
The free-form physicality of some actions was emphasized by the contrasting calculation and tight-choreography of others. Performers in the 1959 original included Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Alfred Leslie, and Lester Johnson. The performers in this iteration of the work were all young dancers and actors. I wonder how their interpretations differed–if at all–from the original performances. Though the piece was strictly structured, it was originally perceived as very spontaneous, which perhaps it was in contrast to classic theater with which audiences of the 50s were much more accustomed.
It is ironic then, that I found this performance to be too mired in traditional theatrical conventions. I had always envisioned happenings as these chaotic, liberated, interactive events between performers and viewers, in which the boundaries between performer and audience were dissolved. Not so here. Customary theatricality was emphasized by the arrangement of the chairs facing the “stage,” and by the audience members’ unwillingness to make noises or move around during the performance. I was the only audience member who came in late after a break, disrupting the line of entering performers. “Isn’t that the kind of thing audience members are supposed to do at happenings?” I thought. The instructions told us to clap only at the end of the entire piece, and everyone did so right on cue. “Why are we clapping at all?” I had to wonder. If art is life, as Kaprow famously pronounced, then why didn’t the “art” feel more integrated into the “experience?”
Perhaps it is too easy to criticize an artwork created almost 50 years ago as not being “cutting edge” enough. Unlike painting and sculpture, performance art can be brought to life in a way that other media cannot. The possibility of reviving an art form that because of its ephemeral nature was considered to no longer exist, confuses where it really exists on a timeline running from “history” to “contemporaneity.” It also raises questions about how to interpret it. Like Seven Easy Pieces, Marina AbramoviÃâ¡’s 2005 resurrection of several scantily documented, yet renowned performance art works from the 60s and 70s, this Kaprow re-doing questions the very difference between “archive” and “living history.”
André Lepecki, co-curator and director of this new version, responds to this issue in a statement printed in the program notes. “This re-doing of 18 Happenings in 6 Parts is not attached to notions of bringing to life ‘the past as it really was’….” he writes. “[It] can only be re-done once we embrace it as an always moving, always provisional, always renewed set of dynamic propositions….” The performers wanted to stay faithful to Kaprow’s notes, he explains, but nonetheless considered them as “open invitations for rethinking performance’s relationship to its own temporality–and for rediscovering the absolute contemporaneity of Kaprow’s work.”
In the end then, this re-doing was intended to give the piece a renewed relevance. An archive is brought back from the dead, implanted into the now, and transformed not into living history, but into living performance art. It is for this reason that a contemporary audience cannot help but be informed by its modern sensibilities and sophisticated critical outlook. As we experience the work anew we form interpretations of it within the context of contemporary performance practice. Perhaps it is here that the re-doing fails. Unlike Seven Easy Pieces, in which AbramoviÃâ¡ re-interpreted historic works through the lens of her own artistic vision, and in doing so was able to breath new life into them and render them relevant, 18 Happenings in 6 Parts is too heavy on the “re-doing” and too light on the “re-interpretation.” Kaprow can be credited for the parts of the work that still feel fresh and au courant. Its new producers, however, can be credited for making it feel dated.
