Friday 2/13: PANEL ~ DISCUSSION ~ Presentations

  • Allan Kaprow - "Untitled Occurences"
  • David Antin - Panel and Moderator
  • John Bowlt - "Actionist Russia"
  • Michael Kobialka - "Tadeusz Kantor"
  • Carolee Schneemann - Panel
  • Emmett Williams - "Growing up in the Cellar"



    Allan Kaprow "Untitled Occurences" (independently done)
    It's been customary since 1957 for me to arrange events without audiences, stages or repetition (they've been called Happenings, Activities, Doings). The plan for this occasion is the same: a cluster of doings spread over the 5 days of "Beyond the Pink" for a few participants. On the panel meeting of February 13th, what took place will be summarized and some reflections offered.


    John Bowlt "Actionist Russia"
    The focus of my presentation will be on the Russian underground of the 1960s-80s. Artists such as the Gerlovins, Infante, Kuzminsky, Komar and Melamid and Tolsty perpetrated actions involving performance land art, body painting, collective gesture and poetry declamation. Often the results were interpreted as political manifestos and the artists were the target of official retribution. I shall be talking about this tension between aesthtic action and ideological imposition Ñ and also about the interaction of the new radicalism with the Russian avant-garde of the 1910s-20s. I shall be illustrating my talk with slides of works. John Bowlt, is the professor of Russian studies at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, where he is also Directorr of the Institute of Modern Russian Culture. He has taught at many campuses in the US and abroad, has lived in Russia for extended periods and has published widely on the subject of modern Russian art, especially the avant-garde. He has also organized many exhibitions of Russian art for public museums and galleries.


    Michal Kobialka "Presentation and discussion of Tadeusz Kantor"
    Michal Kobialka's presentation will focus on the notion of the object as defined by and used in the theatre of Tadeusz Kantor, a Polish visual artist. It could be suggested that Kantor's substitution of the real object for the artistic object in his 1944 production of Wyspianski's "Return of Odysseus" was not a manifestation of nonart/anti-art attitude or an experiment in literalization, such as those conducted by cubism, dada, or constructivism, but part of the process of the devaluation and rejection of imitation, illusion, and fiction in art. Instead, by breaking the structures of interdependence between and art, Kantor focused on that "other" reality which could no longer be altered by any traditional and existing artistic modes of presentation/representation. In Kantor's art, this reality, referred to as the Reality of the Lowest Rank, exposed the weakness of the traditional theatrical apparatus:

    "THERE IS NO WORK OF ART [...]
THERE IS NO 'HOLY' ILLUSION
THERE IS NO 'HOLY' PERFORMANCE
THERE IS ONLY AN OBJECT THAT IS TORN OUT OF LIFE AND REALITY [...]
THERE IS NO ARTISTIC SPACE [...]
THERE IS ONLY REAL SPACE [...]
SUBLIME AESTHETIC VALUES ARE REPLACED WITH POVERTY!
POOR OBJECT"  
	- Tadeusz Kantor "The Milano Lessons" Lesson 12.


    In order to substantiate this point, I will briefly discuss Kantor's treatment of the object in The Return of Odysseus, The Cuttlefish (1956), The Country House (1961, 1966, 1969), The Water Hen (1967); in the Happenings as well as in his Emballages and Informel paintings. Michal Kobialka is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Minnesota. His articles and reviews have been published in Assaph (Israel), Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Journal of Theater and Drama (Israel), Theatre History Studies, Medieval Perspectives, The Drama Review, Theatre Journal, Performing Arts Journal, Theatre Annual, Theatre Nordic Studies (Sweden), Theatre Research International (England), Yearbook of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Fine Arts, Slavic and East European Journal, and Soviet and East European Performance. he has presented papers on medieval, contemporary European theatre, and theatre historiography at various regional, national, and international conferences. His book on Tadeusz Kantor's Theatre "A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos 1944-1990" was published by the University of California Press in August 1993. He is an editor of "Of Borders and Thresholds: Theatre History, Practice, and Theory" (to be published by University of Minnesota Press in 1998) and co-editor (with Barbara Hanawalt) of Medieval Practics of Space (to be published by University of Minnesota Press in 1999). His book on the early medieval drama and theatre, "This Is My Body: Representational Practices in the Early Middle Ages", will be published by University of Michigan Press in 1999.


    David Antin
    Writer, performance artist and critic internationally known for his "talk pieces" -- improvisational blends of comedy, story and social commentary that critics have described as "a cross between Lenny Bruce and Ludwig Wittgenstein" or alternately as "a blend of Mark Twain and Gertrude Stein". New Directions has published three books of these "talk pieces" -- TALKING AT THE BOUNDARIES (1976), TUNING (1984), and WHAT ITMEANS TO BE AVANT-GARDE (1993). TUNING was awarded the prize for poetry for 1984 by the PEN Center of Los Angeles. His SELECTED POEMS 1963-1973 was published by Sun and Moon Press in 1991, and he has performed in a wide range of venues in the U.S. and abroad, including the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Getty Center in the U.S. and at the Centre Pompidou and the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris. He has designed SKYPOEMS, short texts he describes as "commercials that aren't selling anything", which have been skytyped over Los Angeles and San Diego, designed WORD WALKS for urban parks, an ongoing electronic poem for an airport and performed both improvised and scripted verbal works for radio and television. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEH and he was awarded the PEN Los Angeles Award for Poetry in 1984. He has published literary and art criticism in most major art and literary journals, and his work has been written about in THE POETICS OF INDETERMINACY, Marjorie Perloff (Princeton, 1981); THE OBJECT OF PERFORMANCE, Henry Sayre (Chicago, 1989); THE JAZZ TEXT, Charles O. Hartman (Princeton, 1991). Major essays on his work have appeared in two new books -- PICTURING CULTURAL VALUES IN POSTMODERN AMERICA, ed. William G. Doty, U. of Alabama, 1995, and REPOSITIONINGS: READINGS OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY, PHOTOGRAPHY AND PERFORMANCE ART, Frederick Garber, Penn State Press, 1995. A recent interview with him has been published in SOME OTHER FREQUENCY: INTERVIEWS WITH INNOVATIVEAMERICAN AUTHORS, ed. Larry McCaffery, U. of Pennsylvania, 1996. His SELECTED ESSAYS are being prepared for publication by the University of Chicago Press. He and his wife, the artist Eleanor Antin, have just completed a 46 minute narrative film, MUSIC LESSONS, written by both of them, produced by David Antin and directed by Eleanor Antin.