when alternative culture came to school...
1967-1968 was a good time to be a student at the university of illinois, particularly because of their tremendous series of lectures under the rubric of "the university in motion".
here are some images of a recently acquired lot of cardboard posters used to advertise the talks. there is no designer mentioned, but they seem to have been designed by one person. they run the gamut of iconic humans in various endeavors of action and thought, including the premier of john cage's seminal work - musicircus, and a talk by bucky fuller.
the events, many of them part of a symposium in november of 1967 included such academic rock stars as: saul bellow, leo lionni, harold rosenberg, merce cunningham dance company and john cage, gunther schuller, charles wuorinen, buckminster fuller, stan vanderbeek, and others. topics ranged from avant garde music to the vietnam war.
cage's musicircus featured " lajaren hiller, herbert brun, kenneth gaburo, david tudor, gordon mumma, toshi ichiyanagi, and a ton of other people, including "others present in spirit". in the recent past, musicircus was recreated at the tate, as well as the mca chicago, using 300 - 500 musicians.
Labels: buckminster fuller, john cage, poster design, stan vanderbeek, timothy leary
3 Comments:
A buncha really boring and self absorbed white folks, when the music of its time was almost completely of african descent, jazz, latin musics, and dance. These are eggheads, those who want to Appear to be intelligent, when that truly involved unifying mind, body and soul as one, Weakness predominates here, and used to seperate into a false intelligentsia, hubris of the worst kind, and leading to our current downfall of Mesim and Excess. individuals dont matter. Humanity does. Tehre is no bonding here, its all about identifying with a "great" to make one feel better about oneself, not contributing to Our world.
art collegia delenda est
I showed up at the University of Illinois in 1969 and you could still feel the presence of John Cage. There was quite a lot of experimental music and art and the whole campus was alive with an attitude that students and faculty were exploring education and the arts together. It was a very exciting time and place to be learning and to eliminate boundaries between disciplines - including those that traditionally separated the arts and the sciences. I once went to see Buckminster Fuller speak and had to leave after several hours, but he kept on for lecturing even longer.
i have heard stories of fuller talking endlessly but never knew anyone that was present for one of those... fantastic!!!!! must've been a great time to be in such a place. i wish the crossing of disciplines was still of interest to people, i can't tell you how disappointing it has been to teach at universities where the art dept. and the music and/or science dept. has no interest whatsoever in collaboration, shared resources, etc. at one point i was teaching fine arts grad and the music department brought in luc ferari to do a sound installation and never told us!!!
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