Copyrighted Material Property of University of Nebraska Press Not for Redistribution Events and the Exquisite Corpse ken friedman 3 Th e twentieth century gave birth to two artistic traditions that re- main visible as ways for groups of artists, composers, and writers to generate and realize collaborative works. Th e fi rst tradition was that of the cadavre exquis, a Surrealist game tracing its origins to the French parlor game known as petits papiers. Developed around 1925, the title “Exquisite Corpse” comes from one of the earliest historical examples of the game. Th e Exquisite Corpse allows three or more players to create works of visual art and writing by joining together individual sections through a collage-like meet- ing of words, lines, or images at the edges of each individual con- tribution. Artists and writers used the Exquisite Corpse to generate collaborative artworks by exploiting the possibilities of communal process and chance operations. Th e second was the tradition of the event, an idea that emerged from the musical philosophy of composer Henry Cowell as an ap- proach to composing based on sound-creation activities broken into minimal, basic elements. John Cage introduced this term to the com- posers and artists who took his courses in new musical composition at the New School for Social Research in the late 1950s. In the early 1960s, this circle of artists and composers adapted the idea of the event to describe the terse, minimal instructions that typifi ed pioneering ap- KOCHHAR FM.indd 49 9/23/2009 9:03:25 AM Copyrighted Material Property of University of Nebraska Press Not for Redistribution 7. Ken Friedman. The History of Fluxus. 1993. Sugar, salt and shoes used by Ken Friedman in performance at the Seoul-nymax Mediale Festival organized by Nam June Paik and Jonas Mekas at Anthology Film Archives in New York, 1994. Photo © Lisa Kahane, nyc. Two Elimination Events proaches to intermedia in the international laboratory of art, empty vessel music, and design known as Fluxus. empty vessel Events began as a way to explore music composition and | George Brecht, 1961 performative works. Th e musical origin of events gave rise to the custom of using the term “score” for the concise, verbal instructions used to notate events. Scores transmit instructions Open and Shut Case that allow a performer to realize an event work in the same way Make a box. On the outside, that a music score transmits instructions allowing performers print the word “Open.” On the inside, print the words to realize a musical work. While the concept of events began “Shut quick.” in music, it soon migrated to visual art and intermedia, devel- | Ken Friedman, 1965 oping as a signifi cant intermedia form in its own right. Two major distinctions separate the Exquisite Corpse from event scores. First, the Corpse is a simple yet powerful algo- rithm for creating individual works of art or literature. An event score is a way to transmit, generate, and realize works of many kinds. Th e scoring process is a method similar in 50 the ludic KOCHHAR FM.indd 50 9/23/2009 9:03:25 AM Copyrighted Material Property of University of Nebraska Press Not for Redistribution purpose to music notation while each individual score is an How Nemo Got Honored algorithm for generating works. Second, while the Exquisite in His Patria Corpse survives in selected and often well-known examples, a metadrama in three parts the method itself remains a parlor game or a teaching tool. i - solo In contrast, the events tradition survived and grew beyond A bows to the audience its originators to enliven a rich spectrum of intermedia art stiffl y and repeatedly for a minute. forms. While historical examples remain visible, much as ii - duo famous music works do, artists and composers continue A and B bow to each other to work with event scores, both as a way to realize earlier stiffl y and repeatedly for scored work and as a way to generate new work. a minute. iii - solo Events B bows to the audience stiffl y and repeatedly for While the term “events” entered the world of music with a minute. Henry Cowell, it blossomed through the activities of John | Dick Higgins, 1985 Cage, a Cowell student who probably heard it from him, as did intermedia artist Dick Higgins, when he studied with Choice 1 Cowell many years later. Both Cage and Th eodore Adorno frequently use the term “events,” speaking of musical events The performer enters the stage with a tied parcel, ontologically as a form of work—labor — performed in time places it on a table, and and realized through time’s unfolding. opens it to take out a Th e concept of the event in art, music, and intermedia whipped cream cake with has many meanings and nuances. An event can exist in at ten candles. He lights the candles, then blows them least four forms: as idea, as score, as process, and as artifact. out. He picks up the cake, Th e realized event is typically visible in fi ve kinds of artifact: shows it to the audience, behavioral artifacts of enactment or performance, physical then fl ings it into his own face. artifacts as environment or installation, physical artifacts | as intermedia, physical artifacts as object, or aural artifacts Robert Bozzi, 1966 as sound. In many cases, an event may exist in more than one form, leaving a wake with several kinds of artifacts. Th e musical origin of events means that realizing or per- forming the score brings the event into fi nal, embodied ex- istence. As with music, anyone may perform the score. One need not be an artist, composer, or musician to do so, and not even a professional practitioner of the arts. Th is quality of events is “musicality,” the fact that any- one may realize work from a score. Th is distinguishes events from performance art, some forms of improvisational mu- events and the exquisite corpse 51 KOCHHAR FM.indd 51 9/23/2009 9:03:25 AM Copyrighted Material Property of University of Nebraska Press Not for Redistribution Zyklus sic, most painting, or other art forms that are only seen as Water pails or bottles authentic when an author-creator realizes them. Nam June are placed around the Paik defi ned this aspect of events in a 1962 score titled “Read perimeter of a circle. Only Music: Do It Yourself.” Th is came to defi ne the nature of one is fi lled with water. Performer inside the circle events and many aspects of artistic and musical practice in picks the fi lled vessel and the Fluxus community. pours it into the one on the In visual art, collage is a common ancestor to events and right, then picks the one on to the Exquisite Corpse. Higgins described an evolution the right and pours it into the next one on the right, of art forms that moved from collage through environ- etc., till all the water is ments and happenings toward the event structure, describ- spilled or evaporated. ing events as happenings broken into their smallest possible | Tomas Schmit, 1962 elements. Despite the fact that many events take physical rather than behavioral or aural form, however, music is the Shuffl e key evolutionary infl uence on events. Th e musical origin of The performer or the term anchors the concept in action rather than in ar- performers shuffl e into the tifacts. In this sense, Higgins once described music in the performance area and away most general and abstract way as something that “takes place from it, above, behind, in time,” adding that “anything that just breaks up time by around, or through the audience. They perform as happening in it, is musical.” a group or solo, but quietly. From a musical origin, events moved into performance, | Alison Knowles, 1961 intermedia, and other domains. Some of us who worked with events developed a form of artistic practice in which events constituted instructions for the realization of social Lessons situations and even physical artifacts. List the difference, in cubic inches, between your bed Whatever form of realization events may take, event scores and your tub. tend to be compressed and minimal, engaging such key List the difference, in Fluxus ideas as intermedia, playfulness, simplicity, implica- square inches, between tiveness, exemplativism, specifi city, and presence in time, as your porch and bathroom well as musicality. Many event scores emerge from life situa- fl oors. tions. Th ey can be realized in everyday situations as well as in | Davi det Hompson, 1969 performance, emphasizing the unity of art and life. Higgins discussed these ideas in his nine criteria of Fluxus. Among the key ideas that relate to events were minimalism (as a syn- onym for concentration), resolution of the dichotomy be- tween art and life, implicativeness, play or gags, ephemeral- ity (or presence in time), specifi city, and musicality. Th e fi rst well-known event scores emerged among art- 52 the ludic KOCHHAR FM.indd 52 9/23/2009 9:03:25 AM Copyrighted Material Property of University of Nebraska Press Not for Redistribution ists and composers in John Cage’s course in experimental Canto 1 music composition at the New School for Social Research. (If You Catch Sight of a Th e event off ered a way to score the new musical composi- Friend in the Distance) tions of such students as George Brecht, Dick Higgins, and If you catch sight of a friend in the distance: go Al Hansen. toward him, calling out Th e artists and composers who created the Fluxus net- loudly.