Art as Social Practice: Notes on Happenings

• Allan Kaprow first coined the term “Happening” in 1957 in an attempt to describe the art pieces that were being created around (and by) him. He then wrote about it in his famous “Legacy of Jackson Pollock” essay.
• “Happenings” are very difficult to describe, in part because each one is unique and completely different from one another.
• One definition comes from Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort in The New Media Reader: “The term ‘Happening’ has been used to describe many performances and events, organized by Allan Kaprow and others during the 50s and 60s, including a number of theatrical productions that were traditionally scripted and invited only limited audience interaction.”
• A “Happening” of the same performance will have different outcomes it always depends on the reactions of the audience.
• “Happenings” can be a form of participatory art, emphasizing an interaction between the performer and the audience. Breaking the distinction between “performer” and “spectator”, it replaces criticism with support. For some happenings, everyone present is included in the making of the art and even the form of the art depends on audience engagement.
• When chance determines the path the performance will follow, there is a sense that ‘failure’ is not possible in the typical sense. Kaprow writes:
• “Visitors to a Happening are now and then not sure what has taken place, when it has ended, even when things have gone 'wrong'. For when something goes 'wrong', something far more 'right,' more revelatory, has many times emerged” (New Media Reader, 86).
• An example of one of the very first Happenings is the 1952 performance of Theater Piece No. 1 by John Cage (one of Kaprow's teachers): Cage stood reading from a ladder, Charles Olson read from another ladder, Robert Rauschenberg showed some of his paintings and played scratched phonograph records, David Tudor performed on a prepared piano and Merce Cunningham danced. All these things took place at the same time, among the audience rather than on a stage.
• Happenings flourished in New York City in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Key contributors to the form included Carolee Schneemann, Red Grooms, Robert Whitman, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Delford Brown, Lucas Samaras, and Robert Rauschenberg. Some of their work is documented in Michael Kirby's book Happenings (1966).
• Happenings emphasize the organic connection between art and its environment.
• “Happenings invite us to cast aside for a moment these proper manners and partake wholly in the real nature of the art and life. It is a rough and sudden act, where one often feels ‘dirty’, and dirt, we might begin to realize, is also organic and fertile, and everything including the visitors can grow a little into such circumstances.” – Kaprow
• Happenings have no plot or philosophy, but are improvisatory and unpredictable.
• A happening is fresh while it lasts and cannot be reproduced (Wardrip-Fruin, 86).
• “I had the sense that I knew it was something. I knew it was something because I didn't know what it was. I think that's when you're at your best point. When you're really doing something, you're doing it all out, but you don't know what it is.” – Red Grooms
• The lack of plot as well as the expected audience participation can be likened to Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed, which also claims that “spectator is a bad word."
• Allan Kaprow's and other artists of the 50s and 60s that performed can be seen as having helped put “new media technology developments into context.”
• The influence of “happenings” can be seen in multimedia and mixed media work, contemporary performance, social networking projects, and public and environmental art.
• Happenings changed the rules for what is and is not art.
• Happenings were part of a movement to challenge the role of the artist, the gallery, the commodification of art, and the interactivity in art.

Some artists who are associated with "Happenings"

• US artists in the 60’s: Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Allan Kaprow, John Cage, Yoko Ono, Daniel Spoerri
• The Yellow House Artist Collective (Sydney, Australia) housed 24-hour happenings throughout the early 1970s.
• Orange Alternative: a student-based happening movement founded by Major Waldemar Fydrych became known for its much attended happenings (10, 000+ participants at one time!) aimed against the military regime led by General Jaruzelski and the imposition of Martial Law in 1981.