the poetry of the blurring of art and life (or, what's happening...)

some quick snaps from last nights performance of 18/6 in all its blurriness.

the poetry of a three ring circus (or, one more kaprow post)...

"my next public happening was at the rueben gallery, which was called 18 happenings in six parts. i simply had there the basic image or structure of a three-ring circus. i remember cage was also enthralled with this, because he mentioned some of our traditions of overlapping and signal confusing as traditions like three-ring circuses. three-ring circuses are set up in such a way that people who are at one end of the tent can't see what's going on at the other end. they give you a whole show at both ends, and one in the middle as well - all of them discordant except in terms of the relative starts and stops. you can't really put them together in any kind of meaningful way. they aren't organized that way. so, i set up a three-ring circus space, which there were three rooms... where, of course, you could hear what was going on in all rooms, no matter where you were, but you could only blurrily see what was going on in the room adjacent to you. events would pass from one room to another, as well as overlap in some kind of random way. sounds in the three spaces overlapped to.

cage went to this. a week or so later we discussed it. i saw him on the street, and as my teacher, he said something like "maybe you'd be interested to hear what i thought." i said, "yes." he said, "well, i thought it was a little romantic."

allan kaprow, interview, 1995

the poetry of DIY...

sunday evening, after a day of production and rehearsal at LACE, i spent about 3 hours and covering a 20 foot by 30 foot plastic tarp with kaprow's text as prop for our performance of 18 happenings in 6 parts. i'd spent a ton of time in the space with others, but sunday night i was working alone, in total silence. as night arrived, it began to feel a bit like the numerous photos i'd seen in the getty's archives of kaprow working on 18/6 - images of him alone, painting, building, writing, etc.

i am constantly complaining to my students about the lack of DIY spirit, particularly in the artworld and this overwhelmingly fabricated moment.

so much of doing a kaprow work, is getting inside of his words as well as the spirit of the piece; and this piece literally had his hands all over it. i think that a strength we didn't see during the doing, is that we have done so much ourselves. this whole project has had much of the spirit of collaboration, and perhaps the handmade quality of things will help it resonate.

after months of research, weeks of production, and days of rehearsal, tonight is our first performance.(i should note the top picture is of a shirtless kaprow, not me... and the bottom two were taken with my phone.)

the poetry of arrivals...

unused airstrip
tarring cracks in airstrip
painting guidelines on airstrip
cutting grass at airstrip's edge
placing mirrors on airstrip
watching the reflections of planes.

allan kaprow, score for arrivals, 1968

kaprow has been on my mind a lot over the past few months as i have been working on a recreation of his seminal performance 18 happenings in 6 parts in conjunction with the current moca retrospective. i've spent the last few months going through his notes for 18/6 in the getty's archives towards trying to put together a complete score. once in a while - to get outside of the specifics of the piece and more towards his overall intentions, i'll wander into other files, searching for inspirational nuggets.

the score for arrivals, comes from a small poster for the event. when talking about kaprow's work, people seldom mention the poetry that is always present. i'll probably post a bit more of my findings over time...

for anyone in the LA area, the performances of 18/6 are happening at LACE at 8 pm april 22 - 26. reservations are required.

image: random airstrip web search result...