DOCSLIB.ORG

Robert Watts Papers, 1883-1989, Bulk 1940-1988

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Robert Watts Papers, 1883-1989, Bulk 1940-1988 http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt7w1038pf Online items available Finding aid for the Robert Watts papers, 1883-1989, bulk 1940-1988 Annette Leddy Finding aid for the Robert Watts 2006.M.27 1 papers, 1883-1989, bulk 1940-1988 Descriptive Summary Title: Robert Watts papers Date (inclusive): 1883-1989 (bulk 1940-1988) Number: 2006.M.27 Creator/Collector: Watts, Robert Physical Description: 36.5 Linear Feet(76 boxes, 9 flat file folders) Repository: The Getty Research Institute Special Collections 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles 90049-1688 [email protected] URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref (310) 440-7390 Abstract: American artist of mixed media, sculpture, and assemblage, best known as a founding member of Fluxus. The archive consists of correspondence, manuscripts, personal documents, and many photographs and slides documenting Watts' work and affiliations with artists. Also included are three works of art. Request Materials: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy . Language: Collection material is in English Biographical / Historical Note Robert Watts, born in 1923, spent his childhood and adolescence in Iowa and Louisville, Kentucky. The son of a mechanical engineer, Watts also earned an engineering degree, but after serving in World War II, went on to study art history at Columbia University. His emphasis was the study of ancient art and architecture in the Americas and Australia; his Master's thesis was on the masks of the Alaskan Eskimo (M.A. 1951). For several years Watts worked as an abstract expressionist painter while teaching in the engineering department at Rutgers University. By the late 1950s he had moved to the art department and had also begun to employ his engineering training in his art, initially making boxes with electro-mechanical circuitry. Rutgers colleague Allan Kaprow, sculptor-chemist George Brecht, and Watts together wrote a proposal for an experimental laboratory for multi-media art entitled "Project in Multiple Dimensions" (1957-1958). Though never funded, this proposal articulated new assumptions about art in its relation to the everyday and to increasingly accessible media technologies, soon to find expression in the happenings, events, and installations of the 1960s, and eventually in the formation of Fluxus and Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). The everyday objects Watts reinvented as artifacts (cartons of eggs, stamps, floor mops) associated him with Pop Art, and his pieces appeared in the landmark 1963 Bianchini Supermarket Show. Philosophically, however, he was most allied with Fluxus, of which he was a founding and lifelong member. Persistently seeking ways to infiltrate commodity culture with art, Watts de-emphasized himself as creator while brilliantly illuminating infrastructural systems such as the U.S. postal service, mint, patent office or F.B.I. He worked in a wide range of novel media, including neon, laminates, Polaroid photography, video, film, sound, and light. While his studies in ancient art inform much of his work indirectly, they most distinctly appear in the African statues made of chrome. He collaborated with Fluxus associates on many events, workshops and festivals, including Yam Festival (1963) and FluxYear/Gemini (1974; 1978). In 1967, Watts and George Maciunas worked with Herman Fine to create a company called Implosions for producing and distributing ironic anti-commodities, such as disfiguring masks or transparent plastic dresses. As an art professor, Watts was equally ingenious, establishing an Experimental Workshop at Rutgers that he took to the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1968. Believing that approaches to teaching art had to be radically changed, Watts encouraged a collaborative and spontaneous approach to creating multi-media events, some featuring recurring characters in Watts' work, like the Fur Family. In 1970 he co-edited an anthology, Proposals for Art Education. Though most often exhibited in group shows, Watts had significant solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art and Rene Block Gallery in New York, the Ricke Gallery in Kassel, and at Multhipla and Francesco Conz Gallery in Milan. Since his death in 1988, Watts' prescience as an artist has been increasingly recognized, most influentially in a 1990 show at Leo Castelli Gallery, in Experiments in the Everyday: Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts (1999) and in Off-Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-garde (1999). Finding aid for the Robert Watts 2006.M.27 2 papers, 1883-1989, bulk 1940-1988 Access Open for use by qualified researchers, with the exception of unreformatted audiovisual material. Access restricted for Boxes 2, 3, 4, and 7 pending the estate's further consideration. Publication Rights Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions . Preferred Citation Robert Watts papers, 1883-1989, bulk 1940-1988, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Accession no. 2006.M.27 http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2006m27 Acquisition Information Acquired in 2006 from the Robert Watts Estate. Processing History Lora Chin did the preliminary processing of the collection, and Annette Leddy further processed and arranged it. Processing History Processed by Lora Chin and Annette Leddy. Original inventory numbers assigned by the Estate have been retained. Digitized Audiovisual Material Online access to selected digitized audio and video recordings is available to on-site readers and Getty staff. Scope and Content of Collection The collection documents Robert Watts' development as an artist and art professor, with ample evidence of his relationship with Fluxus colleagues, dealers and friends. Watts' Iowa family background is presented in photographs, correspondence, family genealogies, health histories, legal and financial papers, and clippings dating back to the 1880s; together with report cards and yearbooks, these offer a relatively clear picture of the artist's midwestern roots. Photographs portray his subsequent years in the service and in New York while a student at Columbia, with summers on Monhegan Island, while graduate school term papers and his Master's thesis on Alaskan masks reveal his early interest in artifacts. Academic files convey Watts' career with nearly annual grant applications and project proposals. Professional correspondence is mainly between Watts and his dealers, including Francesco Conz and Rolfe Ricke, along with certain curators and collectors, such as Gilbert Silverman and Jean Brown. Personal correspondence, though containing photocopies of cards and letters from George Brecht and George Maciunas and originals from Dick Higgins, is relatively scant. Series IV, Work files is the core of the archive, containing hundreds of drawings for completed and unrealized projects, scripts or scores, and certain completed objects such as the stamps, letterheads, and laminations. FluxMed (1987), Watts' medical graphics based on 19th century French engravings, is present in various stages of its creation. The greater portion of this series consists of source material, including postcards, clippings, and brochures for various electronic or mechanical devices that inspired Watts and that are accompanied in some cases by drawings or calculations regarding their adaptation to Watts' projects. Series V, Photographs and slides contains fourteen photograph albums that Watts assembled. A unique record of the artist's intermingled life and art, they are arranged more thematically than chronologically. Some of these images also appear in the photograph files, including numerous images of Pamela Kraft, Watts' longtime partner and model. Series VII, Printed matter contains nine flat files, mostly of Fluxus posters with striking graphics and abundant information on events, artists, and ideas. Also included is a comprehensive collection of clippings containing reviews or articles about Watts or his associates. Series X, Audio visual contains all the films Watts made along with the sound tracks or music that accompanied them. Three art objects are included in the collection. Boxes 2, 3, 4, and 7 are sealed, pending the Estate's further consideration. Numbers in brackets within folder entries were assigned by the Estate. Arrangement note Arranged in eleven series: Series I. Personal, 1889-1989Series II. Academic files, 1949-1988Series III. Correspondence, 1960-1988Series IV. Work files, 1939-1988Series V. Photographs and slides, 1937-1988Series VI. Other artists' files, 1957-1989Series VII. Printed matter, 1883-1988Series VIII. Books, 1940-1975Series IX. Serials, 1961-1979Series X. Audiovisual, 1957-1987Series XI. Additions, 1962-1987 Subjects - Names Kraft, Pamela Finding aid for the Robert Watts 2006.M.27 3 papers, 1883-1989, bulk 1940-1988 Maciunas, George Watts, Robert Subjects - Corporate Bodies Fluxus (Group of Artists) Implosions (Firm) Subjects - Topics Conceptual Art Happening (Art) Performance art Art and technology Art, American -- 20th century Art -- Study and teaching Subjects - Titles FluxMed Genres and Forms of Material Drawings (visual works) -- 20th century Mail art Photographic prints -- 20th century Mechanical drawings -- 20th century Motion pictures (visual works) -- 20th century DVDs -- 20th century Phonograph records -- 20th century Compact discs -- 20th century Photographs, Original Audiotapes -- 20th century Videocassettes -- 20th century Contributors Maciunas, George Ricke, Rolfe Silverman, Gilbert Watts, Robert Conz, Francesco
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Statement on Intermedia
    the Collaborative Reader: Part 3 Statement on Intermedia Dick Higgins Synaesthesia and Intersenses Dick Higgins Paragraphs on Conceptual Art/ Sentences on Conceptual Art Sol Lewitt The Serial Attitude Mel Bochner The Serial Attitude – Mel Bochner Tim Rupert Introduction to the Music of John Cage James Pritchett In the Logician's Voice David Berlinski But Is It Composing? Randall Neal The Database As a Genre of New Media Lev Manovich STATEMENT ON INTERMEDIA Art is one of the ways that people communicate. It is difficult for me to imagine a serious person attacking any means of communication per se. Our real enemies are the ones who send us to die in pointless wars or to live lives which are reduced to drudgery, not the people who use other means of communication from those which we find most appropriate to the present situation. When these are attacked, a diversion has been established which only serves the interests of our real enemies. However, due to the spread of mass literacy, to television and the transistor radio, our sensitivities have changed. The very complexity of this impact gives us a taste for simplicity, for an art which is based on the underlying images that an artist has always used to make his point. As with the cubists, we are asking for a new way of looking at things, but more totally, since we are more impatient and more anxious to go to the basic images. This explains the impact of Happenings, event pieces, mixed media films. We do not ask any more to speak magnificently of taking arms against a sea of troubles, we want to see it done.
    [Show full text]
  • Intermedia Dick Higgins, Hannah Higgins
    Intermedia Dick Higgins, Hannah Higgins 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 [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] 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 painting 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.
    [Show full text]
  • Mews Dealers
    Bernard Villersbq. Didier hb%ieu. For sukrscrlption (2 issues a >.ear) for French-English edition in November and May, 120 FF for Europe and 160 FF outside the MEWS European Union. Send to the above address in Saint- Urieix-la-Perche, France. Eric Gilt Conference $i Exhibitions, to be heEd in Sokember 2000, at the Gni\ersits of Notre Dame ~ith The Cotnambia College Chicago Ceates for Bwk & ,a conference on Eric Gill and the Guild of St. Pager Arts has moved to 1104 So. Wabash, Znd flr., Dominic. There uall also be: esltaibi~onsat the Sniae Chicago, EL 60605. Phone: (3 12)3446630, fax: L",.~seua?.,of Art and the Sfesbazrgh Libra3 Specid (3 i2(343-8082, e-snail: Coilections. Call for Papers due in Msch 2000, and BookdPir~er2~u~mail.coltlm.edu and website: ihe fo11ouing web site: Iktt~:/h~~w,coham.edu/cenPemh~ii I:t!p:i ?t\~$%i.,nd ed-LLJ-jsinem~anlgiiiJ Ann 3foore has been named director of the Center for Library and Archi~talExhibitierras are now on the Web Book Am in New Uork City. She formerly was at the at &ttg:lIwwu.siP.si.cduiSliLP~tbEicaQiunsi~n1inc- Alien Memorial Apt Museum Ga31ery of OberIin EsAibitions/onlia~c-exhibitions-titIeehtis the site %iiai"i Coiiege in Oberlin, Ohio. 3SO-c links, DEALERS Reparation da: Poesie Artist Book #I 1. Send 100 Paul-Uon Bisson-Millet has a new list, available Ifom originzl pages or multiple. a ~sualart. rnaiiB art. \ isud Saarserassc 62, D-=69 I5 f. Ncckargemund, Germany. poetq, postcards, computer art, cop) apt.
    [Show full text]
  • Modernism 1 Modernism
    Modernism 1 Modernism Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modernism was a revolt against the conservative values of realism.[2] [3] [4] Arguably the most paradigmatic motive of modernism is the rejection of tradition and its reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms.[5] [6] [7] Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking and also rejected the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator God.[8] [9] In general, the term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of an Hans Hofmann, "The Gate", 1959–1960, emerging fully industrialized world. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 collection: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. injunction to "Make it new!" was paradigmatic of the movement's Hofmann was renowned not only as an artist but approach towards the obsolete. Another paradigmatic exhortation was also as a teacher of art, and a modernist theorist articulated by philosopher and composer Theodor Adorno, who, in the both in his native Germany and later in the U.S. During the 1930s in New York and California he 1940s, challenged conventional surface coherence and appearance of introduced modernism and modernist theories to [10] harmony typical of the rationality of Enlightenment thinking.
    [Show full text]
  • Intermedia Dick Higgins, Hannah Higgins
    Intermedia Dick Higgins, Hannah Higgins 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 painting 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.
    [Show full text]
  • “The Lunatics Are on the Loose...” NIKOLAJ KUNSTHAL November 3 - November 25 2012
    “THE LUNATICS ARE ON THE LOOSE...” NIKOLAJ KUNSTHAL November 3 - November 25 2012 50 years ago, Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, provided the setting for some of the very first Fluxus concerts. To celebrate this occasion, a three-week Fluxus mini festival will take place, built around an interactive archive of more than 480 performances. The Lunatics Are on the Loose... presents 480 performances by 120 different artists, taking place at European Fluxus concerts 1962-1977. The archive features a multitude of sources from scores and photos to sound recordings and film clips to contemporary eyewitness reports. At the Nikolaj-exhibition, guests enter an interactive forest of Fluxus-performances. Each perfor- mance is presented on a separate card, hanging in a string from the ceiling. With this as the point of entry, one can embark on a journey in time and place and seek out artists grouped according to where each particular event took place during the particular year. Each card offers additional infor- mation about artists, score (if known) photos and/or description (if known) along with a digital code. Using an iPad to scan the code, one can move deeper down into the archive, getting more informa- tion on the performance in question and learn what else took place at the concert as well as more about the artist(s). Mini festival Apart from the interactive archive, there will be Fluxus film screenings, the opportunity to listen to avant-garde composed music of the 1960s and earlier, as well as a curator talk on Fluxus and its importance for today’s contemporary art.
    [Show full text]
  • Dick Higgins Papers, 1960-1994 (Bulk 1972-1993)
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf1d5n981n No online items Finding aid for the Dick Higgins papers, 1960-1994 (bulk 1972-1993) Finding aid prepared by Lynda Bunting. Finding aid for the Dick Higgins 870613 1 papers, 1960-1994 (bulk 1972-1993) ... Descriptive Summary Title: Dick Higgins papers Date (inclusive): 1960-1994 (bulk 1972-1993) Number: 870613 Creator/Collector: Higgins, Dick, 1938-1998 Physical Description: 108.0 linear feet(81 boxes) Repository: The Getty Research Institute Special Collections 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles, California, 90049-1688 (310) 440-7390 Abstract: American artist, poet, writer, publisher, composer, and educator. The archive contains papers collected or generated by Higgins, documenting his involvement with Fluxus and happenings, pattern and concrete poetry, new music, and small press publishing from 1972 to 1994, with some letters dated as early as 1960. Request Materials: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy . Language: Collection material is in English Biographical/Historical Note Dick Higgins is known for his extensive literary, artistic and theoretical activities. Along with his writings in poetry, theory and scholarship, Higgins published the well-known Something Else Press and was a cooperative member of Unpublished/Printed Editions; co-founded Fluxus and Happenings; wrote performance and graphic notations for theatre, music, and non-plays; and produced and created paintings, sculpture, films and the large graphics series 7.7.73. Higgins received numerous grants and prizes in support of his many endeavors. Born Richard Carter Higgins in Cambridge, England, March 15, 1938, Higgins studied at Columbia University, New York (where he received a bachelors degree in English, 1960), the Manhattan School of Printing, New York, and the New School of Social Research, 1958-59, with John Cage and Henry Cowell.
    [Show full text]
  • Object/Poems: Alison Knowles's Feminist Archite(X)
    JAMES FUENTES 55 Delancey Street New York, NY 10002 (212) 577-1201 [email protected] Nicole L. Woods Some visits later I arrived at his door with eleven color swatches…[Duchamp] chose one and set it aside on the buffet. After lunch, his wife Teeny picked up Object/Poems: the swatch and said, “Oh Marcel, when did you do this?” He smiled, took a pen- Alison Knowles’s cil and signed the swatch. The following year Marcel died. Arturo Schwarz wrote Feminist me suggesting I had the last readymade. Teeny and Richard Hamilton assured me Archite(x)ture that I did not, but that I had a piece of interesting memorabilia.4 You see you have to get right into it, as This brief experience with one of the most you do with any good book, and you must prolific and influential artists of the twen- become involved and experience it your- tieth century was but one of many chance self. Then you will know something and encounters that would characterize Knowles’s feel something. Let us say that it provides artistic practice for more than four decades. a milieu for your experience but what you The experience of seeing the readymade pro- bring to it is the biggest ingredient, far cess up close served to reaffirm her sense of more important than what is there. the exquisite possibilities of unintentional —Alison Knowles 1 choices, artistic and otherwise. Indeed, Knowles’s chance-derived practice throughout the 1960s and 1970s consistently sought to The world of objects is a kind of book, in frame a collection of sensorial data in vari- which each thing speaks metaphorically ous manifestations: from language-based of all others…and is read with the whole notational scores and performances to objet body, in and through the movements and trouvé experiments within her lived spaces, displacements which define the space of computer-generated poems, and large-scale objects as much as they are defined by it.
    [Show full text]
  • Checklist of the Exhibition
    Checklist of the Exhibition Silverman numbers. The numbering system for works in the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection is explained in Fluxus Codex, edited by Jon Hendricks (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988), p. 29.ln the present checklist, the Silverman number appears at the end of each item. Dates: Dating of Fluxus works is an inexact science. The system used here employs two, and sometimes three, dates for each work. The first is the probable date the work was initially produced, or when production of the work began. based on information compiled in Fluxus Codex. If it is known that initial production took a specific period, then a second date, following a dash, is MoMAExh_1502_MasterChecklist used. A date following a slash is the known or probable date that a particular object was made. Titles. In this list, the established titles of Fluxus works and the titles of publications, events, and concerts are printed in italics. The titles of scores and texts not issued as independent publications appear in quotation marks. The capitalization of the titles of Fluxus newspapers follows the originals. Brackets indicate editorial additions to the information printed on the original publication or object. Facsimiles. This exhibition presents reprints (Milan: Flash Art/King Kong International, n.d.) of the Fluxus newspapers (CATS.14- 16, 19,21,22,26,28,44) so that the public may handle them. and Marian Zazeela Collection of The preliminary program for the Fluxus Gilbert and lila Silverman Fluxus Collective Works and movement). [Edited by George Maciunas. Wiesbaden, West Germany: Collection Documentation of Events Fluxus, ca.
    [Show full text]
  • Major Exhibition Poses Tough Questions and Reasserts Fluxus Attitude
    Contact: Alyson Cluck 212/998-6782 or [email protected] Major Exhibition Poses Tough Questions And Reasserts Fluxus Attitude Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life and Fluxus at NYU: Before and Beyond open at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery on September 9, 2011 New York City (July 21, 2011)—On view from September 9 through December 3, 2011, at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life features over 100 works dating primarily from the 1960s and ’70s by artists such as George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Ken Friedman, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, and La Monte Young. Curated by art historian Jacquelynn Baas and organized by Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art, the exhibition draws heavily on the Hood’s George Maciunas Memorial Collection, and includes art objects, documents, videos, event scores, and Fluxkits. Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life is accompanied by a second installation, Fluxus at NYU: Before and Beyond, in the Grey’s Lower Level Gallery. Fluxus—which began in the 1960s as an international network of artists, composers, and designers―resists categorization as an art movement, collective, or group. It also defies traditional geographical, chronological, and medium-based approaches. Instead, Fluxus participants employ a “do-it-yourself” attitude, relating their activities to everyday life and to viewers’ experiences, often blurring the boundaries between art and life. Offering a fresh look at Fluxus, the show and its installation are George Maciunas, Burglary Fluxkit, 1971. Hood designed to spark multiple interpretations, exploring Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, George Maciunas Memorial Collection: Gift of the Friedman Family; the works’ relationships to key themes of human GM.986.80.164.
    [Show full text]
  • Chelsea Space for IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    PRESS RELEASE Chelsea Space FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ORGASMIC STREAMING ORGANIC GARDENING ELECTROCULTURE Beatrice Gibson, Alison Knowles, Ghislaine Leung, Annea Lockwood, Claire Potter, Charlotte Prodger, Carolee Schneemann, Tai Shani, Mieko Shiomi Private view: Tuesday 24 April, 6-8.30pm Exhibition continues: 25 April – 25 May 2018 Touching, performance with microphone and script fragments, 2016. Claire Potter. Image courtesy of the artist. ORGASMIC STREAMING ORGANIC GARDENING ELECTROCULTURE is a group exhibition looking at practices that emerge between text and performance, the page and the body, combining a display and events programme of historical and contemporary works. Newly commissioned and existing works will intersect with an array of archival material located in Carolee Schneemann's Parts of a Body House [1968-1972], from which the exhibition title derives, and Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood's score anthology Womens Work [1975- 8]. ORGASMIC STREAMING ORGANIC GARDENING ELECTROCULTURE seeks an alternative framework to look at the influence of conceptual procedures as well as experimental writing within contemporary feminist performance practices across visual art, sound and text. The exhibition seeks to highlight these significant trans- historical sensibilities, whilst acknowledging their disjuncts. Each artist brings a particular method, procedure or interrogation to the act of writing or performing text, blurring descriptions such as text, score, work, performance, version and iteration. ORGASMIC STREAMING ORGANIC GARDENING ELECTROCULTURE’s exhibition display is accompanied by a day of live performance, a workshop, a publication and an affiliated symposium to take place in May 2018. Curated by Karen Di Franco and Irene Revell. Chelsea Space Chelsea College of Arts 16 John Islip Street, London, SW1P 4JU www.chelseaspace.org PRESS RELEASE Chelsea Space FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Parts of a Body House is a score, a document and a piece of speculative fiction, written by Carolee Schneemann between 1957-68.
    [Show full text]
  • International Indeterminacy George Maciunas and the Mail
    ARTICLE internationaL indeterminaCy george maCiUnas and tHe maiL ColbY Chamberlain Post CHart “The main thing I wanted to talk about is the chart,” says Larry Miller.1 So begins George Maciunas’s last interview, in March 1978, two months before his death from pancreatic cancer. The video recording shows Maciunas supine on a couch, cocooned in a cardigan, noticeably weak. Miller speaks off camera, asking about “the chart,” otherwise known as Maciunas’s Diagram of Historical Development of Fluxus and Other 4 Dimentional, [sic] Aural, Optic, Olfactory, Epithelial and Tactile Art Forms, published in 1973. “Maybe I ought to describe the general construction,” Maciunas says.2 The chart tracks time as it moves downward, he explains. From left to right it registers what Maciunas calls “style,” with happenings at one extreme and Henry Flynt’s concept art at the other. “I chose style rather than location because the style is so unlocalised [sic], and mainly because of the travels of John Cage. So you could call the whole chart like ‘Travels of John Cage’ like you could say ‘Travels of St. Paul,’ you know?”3 According to Maciunas, Cage’s peripatetic concerts and 1 Larry Miller, “Transcript of the Videotaped Interview with George Maciunas, 24 March 1978,” in The Fluxus Reader, ed. Ken Friedman (Chichester, UK: Academy Editions, 1998), 183. 2 Miller, “Interview with George Maciunas,” 183. 3 Miller, “Interview with George Maciunas,” 183. © 2018 ARTMargins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi:10.1162/ARTM_a_00218 57 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/artm_a_00218 by guest on 23 September 2021 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/artm_a_00218 by guest on23 September 2021 George Maciunas.
    [Show full text]