Happening Day!

So – as a follow up to the Fluxus activities we discuss Kaprow’s rules of thumb for happenings. In the past I have set a Happening in motion with a set of instructions for students left in the room. I had deliberately taken my self out of the process but sort of hovered unseen at the edges to watch them complete the actions. I did not feel the timing was right to do that to this class at this point in the term. We are all kind of still getting to know each other. I suspect that is because it has really been hit or miss in terms of activities at the start of class. I need to make sure they have activities to do over the next three classes. So – instead of me mapping the Happening activities I broke the class into four groups – that became three groups due to absences. Their task was to create an activity using Kaprow’s rules. The class then would execute these activities one after another. I think it was less successful than one person mapping it out since there was very little structure between the elements. Not that they didn’t cohere in some way, but certainly more random. Since moving locals was part of the process this gave us a chance to interact with others on campus – which is always the fun part. Behavior is conditioned in interesting ways and then encounters something unique. My favorite part was us all standing on the bridge holding our hands in a tunnel as someone crossed through the space and we screamed. Definitely not the every day. So – to the list of terms we added ritual – which can be such a powerful performative tool, the everyday, and group dynamics. I keep trying to remind the students that the context of the course is being generated by these activities and documented in this growing list.

Underneath it all the one thing that is nagging at me is how I deal with setting this stuff in motion. The performance art class has a much different vibe from the other project classes largely because it works to obliterate the line between life and art. Gen Art did this also – but almost in a cool detached way. This one runs right out the door into the world shouting at the top of its lungs. An interesting dynamic, but one that is scary as hell to be responsible for. I’m glad that the group who decided to engage campus police changed its mind. Some times life and art collide, sometimes its really just life. I think on Baudrillard’s comment that a fake hold up looks a lot like a real one.  Teaching this as a seminar class last time none of this bothered me. Hmm. Gotta wonder about that for a bit. 

Day Five, Six and Seven:

As often happens – I get behind on this blog stuff and have to ram a bunch of days together – but in this case that makes sense. Cage to Fluxus to the Fluxus Project. The point with this string of material is to explore the idea of indeterminacy in a variety of ways. We started off with the Cage inspired piece we used for the Gen Art class – basically a grid with 10 second timed intervals and sounds that are loud, soft or silent. Each group fills in the sounds however they see fit. It always gets loud, which typically isn’t a problem, except, now there is a class directly below us. Been hoping to offer classes in that space for years, I just hadn’t thought through the consequences for those of us above. Bob, who is teaching there, is a good sport, so it all works out. The Cage conversation went well – good thoughtful comments by the students on 4’33” and on some of his ideas about sound. Cage, of course, sets the tone for LaMonte Young and the Fluxus folks. Since we had been discussing Trisha Brown’s Solo olos piece that was performed last year I showed a video of one of the rehearsals. It was nice to have a couple of dancers in the class to help answer questions about the piece. This was a nice lead in to discussing LaMonte Young’s essay and ideas. I like that he shifts the kind of aggression by the Futurists and Dadaists into something else. This lead to discussing the Fluxus material. Hard to assign the Fluxus project without some introduction. This took us into the Fluxus project – each student had to develop three Fluxus inspired pieces written out on index cards. The cards are shuffled and passed out and then one at a time students interpret them. This really has to be one of my favorite projects – it has evolved over years of teaching it until it took this form with the Dissonance class. It is always a fund day and everyone gets to share in that performance/audience space. What will be different about this time is that we will take that understanding into a discussion/presentation of Happenings. The Happenings bit will close out the “historical” section of the course. So far we have generated a nice list of terms and ideas that will become the foundation for moving into the performance art material. So far we have: Defamiliarization, recontextualize, juxtaposition, dynamism, simultaneity, play, liminal, chance, concept/idea, implied action, implied body, implication of spectator, ground/location/space. Not bad for a few weeks work.

Day Four - First Project Day

While I might not want to admit it, I have been a bit listless about the Performance Art class. I’m not sure why. It is a class I have been dying to teach again as a project-based class, but there has been something nagging me about it. It may be that I am starting to feel the project courses falling into a routine just the way the seminars do. This is something I need to think on because the moment they become routine is the moment they start to die. That said – today was the first project day – a project designed to get students to re-examine everyday objects, actions, or events and allow us to see them in a new way. I am always nervous about project days – what will happen? Will the students take the projects seriously? Will they bring in interesting things to share? Will we be able to sustain the presentations for the entire class? Will I have anything interesting to say? And as always – I am amazed at what the students bring in. The projects were thoughtful, thought provoking, daring, and far more complex than I had anticipated. While I really wanted to dig into each piece as we viewed it, I only posed a handful of questions before moving on to the next piece. I struggle with time and wanting to make sure everyone is able to present. I found this was something Bob was much more patient with in the Gen Art class – taking the time to discuss each piece. Left without a co-teacher I resort to managing time and moving things along. I have taken notes on each of the pieces and the intent is to digest and decompress between now and Thursday and speak about each one. As a strategy it doesn’t allow for the pieces to be right in front of us or in recent memory, but it does allow the residue to remain – which I think is more powerful. Looking forward to Thursday and I have gone from wondering how to fill the time to wondering if we will have enough.

Day Three

As often happens with subjects I like and seem to know a lot  about, or at least have thought about a great deal, I talk too much and say too little. Today was a sort of sample Dada day. Not a deep dive, but pulling a few key ideas out of the movement as exposition for the class. We did the same thing with the Futurists. As opposed to the Aesthetics of Dissonance class where the hope is that the students will begin to understand and process the ideological implications behind these movements, for the performance Art class they are really just context. But shifting to context allows us to mine these movements for specific ideas about audience interaction, technique, process, and goals. As foundational elements of the 20^th century Futurism, Dada, and Duchamp offer a nice snapshot of rejecting authority, including the standard notions of  arts and aesthetics. So, yea, exposition. I started them out with a quick dada poem exercise where they picked a couple of sentences, shopped them up into individual words and randomly arranged them. Always some interesting combinations com out of this. This enabled us to talk a bit about chance and about the devaluation of skill and technique. I’m delighted that a couple of the Solo olos dancers from last year are in the class as that gave us a bit more to talk about in terms of chance and indeterminacy. One of the things that I am trying to set up is the notion that “performance” may have those elements built into the framework. Duchamp was a nice addition to this conversation as his shifting frameworks with his readymades gave us a chance to discuss how we view works and the importance of the audience for definition and reception. The students will be presenting their first projects on Tuesday in which they have to help us see an everyday object, event, or action in a new way. Follows on Duchamp, but also has some interesting indeterminacy built into it.