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Leonardo, Volume 34, Number 1, February 2001, pp. 49-54 (Article)

Published by The MIT Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/19618

Accessed 7 May 2018 15:16 GMT S A Y N N D E S I Intermedia T N H T E E S R 8 S I E A N S Dick Higgins E with an Appendix by Hannah Higgins S

1965 an institution, however. It is absolutely natural to (and inevi- Much of the best work being produced today seems to fall be- table in) the concept of the pure medium, the or tween media. This is no accident. The concept of the separa- precious object of any kind. That is the way such objects are tion between media arose in the Renaissance. The idea that a marketed since that is the world to which they belong and to painting is made of paint on canvas or that a sculpture should which they relate. The sense of “I am the state,” however, will not be painted seems characteristic of the kind of social shortly be replaced by “After me the deluge,” and, in fact, if thought—categorizing and dividing society into nobility with the High Art world were better informed, it would realize that its various subdivisions, untitled gentry, artisans, serfs and land- the deluge has already begun. less workers—which we call the feudal conception of the Great Who knows when it began? There is no reason for us to go Chain of Being. This essentially mechanistic approach contin- into history in any detail. Part of the reason that Duchamp’s ued to be relevant throughout the first two industrial revolu- objects are fascinating while Picasso’s voice is fading is that the tions, just concluded, and into the present era of automation, Duchamp pieces are truly between media, between sculpture which constitutes, in fact, a third industrial revolution. and something else, while a Picasso is readily classifiable as a However, the social problems that characterize our time, as painted ornament. Similarly, by invading the land between col- opposed to the political ones, no longer allow a compartmen- lage and photography, the German John Heartfield produced talized approach. We are approaching the dawn of a classless what are probably the greatest graphics of our century, surely society, to which separation into rigid categories is absolutely the most powerful political art that has been done to date. irrelevant. This shift does not relate more to East than West or The ready-made or found object, in a sense an vice versa. Castro works in the cane fields. ’s Mayor intermedium since it was not intended to conform to the pure Lindsay walks to work during the subway strike. The million- medium, usually suggests this, and therefore suggests a loca- aires eat their lunches at Horn and Hardart’s. This sort of tion in the field between the general area of art media and populism is a growing tendency rather than a shrinking one. those of life media. However, at this time, the locations of this We sense this in viewing art which seems to belong unnec- sort are relatively unexplored, as compared with media be- essarily rigidly to one or another form. We view . tween the arts. I cannot, for example, name work which has What are they, after all? Expensive, handmade objects, in- consciously been placed in the intermedium between paint- tended to ornament the walls of the rich or, through their (or ing and shoes. The closest thing would seem to be the sculp- their government’s) munificence, to be shared with large ture of Claes Oldenburg, which falls between sculpture and numbers of people and give them a sense of grandeur. But hamburgers or Eskimo Pies, yet it is not the sources of these they do not allow of any sense of dialogue. images themselves. An Oldenburg Eskimo Pie may look some- Pop art? How could it play a part in the art of the future? It thing like an Eskimo Pie, yet is neither edible nor cold. There is bland. It is pure. It uses elements of common life without is still a great deal to be done in this direction in the way of comment, and so, by accepting the misery of this life and its opening up aesthetically rewarding possibilities. aridity so mutely, it condones them. Pop and op are both In the middle 1950s many painters began to realize the fun- dead, however, because they confine themselves, through the damental irrelevance of abstract expressionism, which was the media which they employ, to the older functions of art, of dominant mode at the time. Such painters as decorating and suggesting grandeur, whatever the detailed and Robert Rauschenberg in the United States and Wolf content of their artist’s intentions. None of the ingenious Vostell in Germany turned to or, in the latter’s case, theories of the Mr. Ivan Geldoway combine can prevent them dé-collage, in the sense of making work by adding or remov- from being colossally boring and irrelevant. Milord runs his ing, replacing and substituting or altering components of a Mad Avenue Gallery, in which he displays wares. He is pro- visual work. They began to include increasingly incongruous tected by a handful of rude footmen who seem to feel that this objects in their work. Rauschenberg called his constructions is the way Life will always be. At his beck and call is Sir Fretful “combines” and went so far as to place a stuffed goat—spat- Callous, a moderately well-informed high priest, who appar- tered with paint and with a rubber tire around its neck—onto ently despises the Flame he is supposed to tend and therefore one. Kaprow, more philosophical and restless, meditated on prefers anything which titillates him. However, Milord needs his services, since he, poor thing, hasn’t the time or the energy Dick Higgins (1938–1998) Hannah Higgins (educator), The University of at Chicago, Gallery 400, School to contribute more than his name and perhaps his dollars; of Art and Design (M/C 033), College of Architecture and the Arts, 400 South Peoria getting information and finding out what’s going on are sim- Street, Chicago, IL 60607-7034, U.S.A. ply toooooo exhausting. So, well protected and advised, he Originally published in Something Else Newsletter 1, No. 1 (, 1966). Also published as a chapter in Dick Higgins, Horizons, the Poetics and Theory of the goes blissfully through the streets in proper Louis XIV style. Intermedia (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1984). Reprinted by permis- This scene is not just characteristic of the painting world as sion of the Estate of Dick Higgins.

© 2001 The Estate of Dick Higgins LEONARDO, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 49–54, 2001 49 S A Y N N D E ments with change. Lack of change S I T N would cause my pieces to stop. In 1958 I H T E E wrote a piece, Stacked Deck, in which any S R 8 S event can take place at any time, as long I E A N as its cue appears. The cues are produced S by colored lights. Since the colored lights E S could be used wherever they were put and audience reactions were also cuing situations, the performance-audience separation was removed and a situation was established, though less vi- sually oriented in its use of its environ- ment and imagery. At the same time, moved into the area from graphic notation experiments, and and Benjamin Patterson (both in Germany at the time) moved in from varieties of music in which specifically musical events were frequently replaced by nonmusical actions. Thus the happening developed as an Fig. 1. Intermedia Chart, 1995. (© Estate of Dick Higgins) The chart shows concentric and intermedium, an uncharted land that lies overlapping circles that appear to expand and contract in relationship to the “Intermedia” between collage, music and the theater. framework that encompasses them. It is not governed by rules; each work determines its own medium and form according to its needs. The concept itself the relationship of the spectator and the belongs more properly to Beckett). Every is better understood by what it is not, work. He put mirrors into his things so year fewer attend the professional Broad- rather than what it is. Approaching it, we the spectator could feel included in way theaters. The shows get sillier and sil- are pioneers again, and shall continue to them. That wasn’t physical enough, so lier, showing the producers’ estimate of be so as long as there’s plenty of elbow he made enveloping which sur- our mentality (or is it their own that is room and no neighbors around for a few rounded the spectator. These he called revealed?). Even the best of the tradi- miles. Of course, a concept like this is “environments.” Finally, in the spring of tional theater is no longer found on very disturbing to those whose mentality 1958, he began to include live people as Broadway but at the Judson Memorial is compartmentalized. Time, Life, and the part of the collage, and this he called a Church, some miles away. Yet our theater High Priests have been announcing the “happening.” schools grind out thousands on thou- death of regularly since the The proscenium theater is the out- sands of performing and production per- form gained momentum in the late fif- growth of seventeenth-century ideals of sonnel, for whom jobs will simply not ex- ties, but this says more about the accu- social order. Yet there is remarkably little ist in 20 years. Can we blame the unions? racy of their information than about the structural difference between the dramas Or rents and real estate taxes? Of course liveliness of the form. of Davenant and those of Edward Albee, not. The subsidized productions, spon- We have noted the intermedia in the certainly nothing comparable to the dif- sored at such museums as New York’s theater and in the visual arts, the happen- ference in pump construction or means Lincoln Center, are not building up a ing, and certain varieties of physical con- of mass transportation. It would seem new audience so much as recultivating an structions. For reasons of space we cannot that the technological and social implica- old one, since the medium of such take up here the intermedia between tions of the first two industrial revolu- drama seems weird and artificial in our other areas. However, I would like to sug- tions have been evaded completely. The new social milieu. We need more port- gest that the use of intermedia is more or drama is still mechanistically divided: ability and flexibility, and this the tradi- less universal throughout the fine arts, there are performers, production tional theater cannot provide. It was since continuity rather than categoriza- people, a separate audience and an ex- made for Versailles and for the sedentary tion is the hallmark of our new mentality. plicit script. Once started, like Franken- Milords, not for motorized life-demons There are parallels to the happening in stein’s monster, the course of affairs is who travel 600 miles a week. Versailles no music, for example in the work of such unalterable, perhaps damned by its in- longer speaks very loudly to us, since we composers as and John ability to reflect its surroundings. With think at 85 miles an hour. Cage, who explore the intermedia be- our populistic mentality today, it is diffi- In the other direction, starting from tween music and philosophy, or Joe Jones, cult to attach importance—other than the idea of theater itself, others such as whose self-playing musical instruments what we have been taught to attach—to myself declared war on the script as a set fall into the intermedium between music this traditional theater. Nor do minor in- of sequential events. Improvisation was and sculpture. The constructed poems of novations do more than provide dinner no help; performers merely acted in imi- and cer- conversation: this theater is round in- tation of a script. So I began to work as if tainly constitute an intermedium between stead of square, in that one the stage re- time and sequence could be utterly sus- poetry and sculpture. Is it possible to volves, here the play is relatively senseless pended, not by ignoring them (which speak of the use of intermedia as a huge and whimsical (Pinter is, after all, our would simply be illogical) but by system- and inclusive movement of which dada, modern J.M. Barrie—unless the honor atically replacing them as structural ele- futurism and surrealism are early phases

50 Higgins, Intermedia S A Y N N D E S I T N H T E E S R 8 S I E A N S E S

Fig. 2. Glasslass, modular poem, 1974. A modular poem is one in which the principal structural factor is the repetition, usually in different contexts, of one or more elements of the text. Each element becomes a module that may be expanded, compressed or otherwise altered. Or not. (© Estate of Dick Higgins. Originally published in Dick Higgins, Modular Poems [Barton, Vermont: Unpublished Editions, 1974].)

Higgins, Intermedia 51 S A Y N N D E preceding the huge ground swell that is time, since one wanted to hear one’s Something Else Newsletter and sent to our S I T N taking place now? Or is it more reason- own voice or self at work, without the in- customers, to all the people on our mail- H T E E able to regard the use of intermedia as terventions of history and historical ing list, to people to whom I felt the idea S R 8 S an irreversible historical innovation, judgements; this was art whose horizons would be useful (for example, to artists I E A N more comparable, for example, to the would closely match one’s own. doing what seemed to me to be S development of instrumental music The vehicle I chose, the word “inter- intermedial work and to critics who might E S than, for example, to the development media,” appears in the writings of Samuel be in a position to discuss such work). All of romanticism? Taylor Coleridge in 1812 in exactly its in all, I gave away some 10,000 copies of contemporary sense—to define works the essay, as many as I could afford; and I which fall conceptually between media encouraged its republication by anyone 1981 that are already known, and I had been who asked for permission to do so. It was In 1965, when the above words were writ- using the term for several years in lectures reprinted seven or eight times that I knew ten, the intention was simply to offer a and discussions before my little essay was of, and it still lives on in print in various means of ingress into works which al- written. Furthermore, as part of my cam- books, not just of mine, but where it has ready existed, the unfamiliarity of whose paign to popularize what was known as been anthologized along with other texts forms was such that many potential view- “avant-garde: for specialists only,” to of the time or as part of surveys. ers, hearers, or readers were “turned off” demystify it if you will, I had become a The term shortly acquired a life of its by them. The world was filled at that publisher of a small press, Something Else own, as I had hoped. In no way was it my time with concrete poems, happenings, Press (1964–1974), which brought out private property. It was picked up; used sound poetry, environments, and other editions of many primary sources and and misused, often by confusion with the more or less novel developments; unless materials in the new arts (as well as reissu- term “.” This last is a vener- the public had a way of seeing into the ing works of the past which seemed to able term from art criticism, which cov- work by causing it to stand still for a mo- merit new attention—works by Gertrude ers works executed in more than one ment and be classified, the work was Stein, the dadaists, the composer Henry medium, such as oil color and guache. likely to be dismissed as “avant-garde: for Cowell, etc.). It seemed foolish simply to But by extension it is also appropriate to specialists only.” To any dedicated non- publish my little essay in some existing such forms as the opera, where the mu- specialist this could be frustrating—one magazine, where it could be shelved or sic, the libretto, and the mise-en-scene wanted to know well the art of one’s forgotten. So it was printed as the first are quite separate: at no time is the operagoer in doubt as to whether he is seeing the mise-en-scene, the stage spec- Fig. 3. Piece for Meredith Monk’s Apartment, intermedia theater piece, 1968. (© Estate of tacle, hearing the music, etc. Many fine Dick Higgins. Originally published in Dick Higgins, some recent snowflakes (and other things) works are being done in mixed media: [New York: Printed Editions, 1979].) paintings which incorporate poems within their visual fields, for instance. But one knows which is which. In intermedia, on the other hand, the visual element (painting) is fused con- ceptually with the words. We may have abstract calligraphy, concrete poetry, “vi- sual poetry” (not any poem with a strong visual element, but the term is some- times used to cover visual works in which some poem appears, often as a photogra- phy, or in which the photographed visual material is presented as a sequence with a grammar of its own, as if each visual element were a word of a sentence, as in certain works by Jean-François Bory or Duane Michaels). Again, the term is not prescriptive; it does not praise itself or present a model for doing either new or great works. It says only that intermedial works exist. Failure to understand this would lead to the kind of error of thinking that intermedia are necessarily dated in time by their nature, something rooted in the 1960s, like an art movement of the pe- riod. There was and could be no intermedial movement. Intermediality has always been a possibility since the most ancient times, and though some well-meaning commissar might try to legislate it away as formalistic and there-

52 Higgins, Intermedia S A Y N N D fore antipopular, it remains a possibility this or that visual novel is about and how create a sort of academicism, good for E S I wherever the desire to fuse two or more it works, and the intermediality is no providing examples to a class (“Okay, T N H T existing media exists. One can avoid it; longer needed to see these things. Same class, now this week I want each of you to E E S R one can be like Rosalind Krauss, a much with visual poetry and sound poetry (or do a pop art painting”), perhaps useful 8 S I E respected critic who said in a lecture at “text-sound,” if one prefers that term). for heuristic purposes but not likely to A N S Iowa City in 1981, “I am devoted to the In the performance arts, once there was open up new horizons for the artist or E idea of trying to bury the avant-garde,” the happening which was close to his viewers, listeners, or readers. S which she does by attacking it, ignoring “events”; some happenings artists did And with this I would leave the matter it and its implications, or, even worse, , and some did not. At least one of intermedia. It is today, as it was in presenting theory as such an end in itself fluxus artist, , evolved in 1965, a useful way to approach some new that any sort of artwork becomes, at best, her work until she found herself doing work; one asks oneself, “what that I know an unimportant appendage to the what other new artists—many of whom does this new work lie between?” But it is theory. But there is always an avant- took great pains to distinguish what they more useful at the outset of a critical garde, in the sense that someone, some- were doing from happenings, events, process than at the later stages of it. Per- where is always trying to do something and fluxus—were calling, variously, “art haps I did not see that at the time, but it which adds to the possibilities for every- performance” or “.” is clear to me now. Perhaps, in all the body, and that that large everybody will Where do we look for to find the conti- excitement of what was, for me, a discov- some day follow this somebody and use nuity of these? To their intermediality: ery, I overvalued it. I do not wish to com- whatever innovations were made as part they are all the same intermedium, a pensate with a second error of judgment of their workaday craft. “Avant-garde” is conceptual fusion of scenario, visuality and to undervalue it now. But it would merely a conventional metaphor drawn and, often enough, audio elements. But seem that to proceed further in the un- (in the mid-nineteenth century) from will the intermediality explain the derstanding of any given work, one must the military, in which an avant-garde uniqueness or value of the very best of look elsewhere—to all the aspects of a moves in advance of the main body of art performance (or performance art)? I work and not just to its formal origins, troops. “Avant-garde” is relative, not ab- think not. Some works will become land- and at the horizons which the work im- solute. A conservative poet can be at marks and will define their genre, while plies, to find an appropriate hermeneu- least morally avant-garde by moving in the others will be forgotten. At best the tic process for seeing the whole of the the direction of ever-greater integrity intermediality was needed to suggest work in my own relation to it. and purity, of vividness or metaphor and their historical trajectory, to see their excellence of line. Others seek to follow, sometimes obscure pedigree (as one Note even when they cannot; and thus the might use it, with happenings, to point 1. In 1965 I would have challenged this. But re- metaphor retains its relevance. toward the heritage of happenings from searches into the history of visual poetry and But when one is thinking of the avant- dada or futurist manifestations). But if sound poetry have suggested to me that virtually all possible fusions have been made or at least implied garde of forms and media, one is often the work is ever to become truly impor- at some time or other, and that the surfacing of thinking of artists who, for whatever rea- tant to large numbers of people, it will some volume of such fusions has more to do with son, question those forms and media. be because the new medium allows for the economics or the fashions of a time rather than with its actual Zeitgeist. They can reject some (e.g., André great significance, not simply because its Breton’s predecessors in French dada re- formal nature assures it of relevance. jected the novel, and they were avant- This, then, is the caveat inherent in APPENDIX BY garde, while André Breton chose to move using the term intermedia: it allows for HANNAH HIGGINS toward some kind of novel as a possibility, an ingress to a work which otherwise thus provoking a break between his seems opaque and impenetrable, but Intermedia Chart group, which in due course became the once that ingress has been made it is no Higgins’ “Intermedia Chart” (Fig. 1) surrealists, and the other—and the new longer useful to harp upon the resonates with temporally dynamic group, too, was avant-garde). They can intermediality of a work. No reputable sociograms, where human interactions create others. And often this creation of artist could be an intermedial artist for are highly differentiated and radically new media is done by the fusion of old long—it would seem like an impedi- decentralized and based primarily on ones; this was very common in the late ment, holding the artist back from fulfill- the specific needs of a given body, in this 1950s and early 1960s, with the formal ing the needs of the work at hand, of cre- case artists. According to a model like fusions I have already mentioned. No ating horizons in the new era for the this, historic and contemporary experi- work was ever good because of its next generation of listeners and readers ence is diverse, causally flexible and per- intermediality [1]. The intermediality and beholders to match their own hori- missive of the as-yet-unknown. was merely a part of how a work was and zons too. What was helpful as a begin- The chart depicts intersections be- is; recognizing it makes the work easier ning would, if maintained, become an tween fluxus and related work and to classify, so that one can understand the obsession which braked the flow into the makes no attempt at linear chronology. work and its significances. work and its needs and potentials. One Fluid in form, the chart shows concen- Further, there is a tendency for often regrets the adherence of an artist tric and overlapping circles that appear intermedia to become media with famil- to a set of dogma: the “movement artist” to expand and contract in relationship iarity. The visual novel is a pretty much is a case in point—he adheres to the to the “Intermedia” framework that en- recognizable form to us now. We have teachings of his or her movement, long compasses them. It is an open frame- had many of them in the last 20 years. It after these have passed their relevance. work that invites play. Its bubbles hover is harping on an irrelevance to point to There is the “late” futurist, the “late” ab- in space as opposed to being historically its older intermedial status between vi- stract expressionist, the “late” pop artist. framed in the linear and specialized sual art and text; we want to know what To be late in that sense is somehow to art/anti-art framework of the typical

Higgins, Intermedia 53 S A Y N N D E chronologies of avant-garde and mod- of what he explored through the inter- work and occasionally performed to- S I T N ern art. disciplinary and exhaustive sequence of gether in the middle and late 1960s. As H T E E paintings that include The Opaque and the a child I remember taking lessons at S R 8 S “Glasslass” Transparent (see Color Plate A No. 2). In Meredith’s studio. I include Piece for I E Meredith Monk’s Apartment here (Fig. 3) A N “Glasslass” (Fig. 2) is a poem about slith- one catalog, Daniel Charles called this S the “logical and coherent” outcome of because, when they saw each other at the E ering assonance and the naked page. S The sounds of the esses slither, seem- Higgins’ work. As intermedia objects, Walker in 1998, there was so much love ingly seamlessly surrounding the inside these paintings belong equally to the between them that they just sat and of the readers’ mouths. Esses spill sexily graphic arts, poetry, music and perfor- smiled at each other for some minutes. across the page’s soft skin, savoring the mance. In this image, looking at and That is, I think, a big part of why artists fancy glass lass. looking through are juxtaposed as a re- dedicate works to each other. flective resonance that constitutes a frag- The Opaque and the Transparent ment and a whole simultaneously. Typi- For the last 20 years of his life, Higgins cal of his work generally, this image Editor’s Note: A traveling retrospective exhibi- was, primarily, a scholar/painter. He ex- reforms its seemingly iconoclastic aims tion entitled “Betwixt and Between: The Life tended his understanding of intermedia by reconstituting fragments as produc- and Work of Dick Higgins” will originate at toward the past in the form of historic tive of a humanistic sense of the unity of the Columbia College Center for the Book and writings on George Herbert’s pattern every time, place and modality. the Printed Word on 10 November 2000 and poems (1977), a translation of Novalis make several stops at university galleries in (1978, 1984), a history of Pattern Poetry Piece for Meredith Monk’s the United States over the course of the next (1987) and a book on Giordano Bruno Apartment two years. The show is co-curated by Hannah (with Charles Doria, 1991). These schol- My father and Meredith Monk were dear Higgins and Simon Anderson of The School arly pursuits constitute the historic basis friends who greatly admired each other’s of the Art Institute of Chicago.

54 Higgins, Intermedia