THE SOMETHING ELSE GALLERY

April 16th - April 27th, 1966. Opening: April 15th, 8:00 - 10:00 PM

In the past, paintings and sculptures which had specifically poetic literary implications were considered, rightly, to belong to impure media, but unlike today there was a negative connotation to this. Similarly, poems which had strong visual characteristics were thought, at least in Western civilization, to be somehow not quite serious. 

Today the situations has become quite different. The poet and the visual artist alike are interested in exploiting all the resources needed for the realization of a particular idea. The object poem is an embodiment of the work of poets in forms and materials traditionally associated with the plastic and visual arts, of the work of artists in forms and materials associated with poetry. Ideas from one medium no longer merely accompany ideas from the other, but have become deeply fused, establishing what be called an Intermedium. 

This exhibition is a sampling of a huge body of work. It is not an attempt at definitiveness: for example, there is only one musical composer, Philip Corner, represented. But it is a presentation of ideas and materials from a vital field of activity previously unavailable. 

Featuring: 

George Brecht, Philip Corner, Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim, Robert Filiou, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Peter Green, Al Hansen, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Jackson Mac Low, Diter Rot, Carolee Schneemann, Gertrude Stein, Wolf Vostell, Emmett Williams, and others

“Intermedia” 

April 30th - May 11th, 1966; Opening April 29th 8:00 - 10:00 PM

The idea of intermedia is the idea of work that falls between established norms. Some of these intermedia can, themselves, establish new norms, for example, the happening (between music, theater and painting or collage) or the object poem.

Alison Knowles, best-known for her silk screen paintings of the late fifties and early sixties and her Bean Rolls, in her Performance Piece #8 has explored the intermedium between performance, graphic art and photography, using materials from her “T” Dictionary. This realization, incidentally, is printed in The Four Suits. 

George Brecht, author of the definitive essay, Chance-Imagery, has moved from painting through collage and art-games into an investigation of the limits of art. His intermedium, which might be called “Non-Art” is that between the arts and philosophy. Joe Jones, trained as both a composer and an electronic engineer, has applied the techniques of his trade to his art more thoroughly than anyone else, resulting in an aesthetic synthesis that is far more than merely automated music. Lulu is one of his earliest constructions, For Fats is one of his most recent. In both the nature of his intermedium is clear, that it lies between music, sculpture and technology.  - Dick Higgins 

Featuring:

Alison Knowles, The ’T’ Dictionary a realization of Performance Piece #8

George Brecht, Objects from the archives 

Joe Jones, Lulu and For Fats

The Arts in Fusion 

May 14th - May 25th, 1966; Opening May 13th, 8:00 - 10:00 PM 

“Only the objects are stable; they are islands, we are the sea.” (Garnier) It is in this context, perhaps, that the rationale for a fusion of the arts can be most easily understood. The object is separated from its illusory image thrown in our mental screen by our own cerebral motion picture projector. The word becomes a compound, the letters its elements. The note is a digit, a concrete symbol. The line is a dot in motion. Color is wave length perceived, sound is another, heat a third. We are the computer, the environment is the information fed into it. 

A new language is in the process of being created. We used to listen in to the other’s mind. “Language was like clicks - we listen to the noise and guessed what went on inside…(Houédard). Wittgenstein’s word no longer “has meaning if it stands for an idea” but “to have an idea is to know the meaning of the word.” The art object exist as a trinity consisting of observer, the creator an anarchist, and the object itself. There is a little doubt that a fusion of the arts, such as Lettrism, Concrete Poetry, Kinkon, La Musique Conrcrète, Spatialism, Concept-art, and other classifications, has as its forerunners. Abraham Abulafia (13th cent.); Christopher Smart (18th cent.); Mallarmé, Carroll (19th cent.); Schwitters, Apollinaire, Stein, cummings, Klee (20th cent.); the Dada movement. In 1938 Moholy-Nagy predicted that poetry would move from “mass to motion from syntax/grammar to relations of single words.”  In 1954 Eugen Gomringer fulfilled this prophecy with his first concrete poem: avenidas/avenidas y flores/flores y mujeres/averidas y flores y mujeres y/un admirador1955 Diter Rot reduced relations of letters to mirror images: 

p q

b d

Poetry has become highly manipulatory; it is developing a new set of principles (ex. Houédard, Garnier, Finlay, Pignatari etc.). It has become spatially oriented, structured unto canvas, made three dimensional (ex. Claus, Fernbach-Flarsheim, Furnival, Kriwet). In the meantime composers began structuring scores with strong spatial relationships of their musical symbols, or denoting activities seemingly outside the realm of “music.” John Cage was one of the first to become aware of the possibilities that lie in this type of structuring. Sounds now have become concrete elements surrounded by silences in the midst of other objects and their activities. Canvases and sculptures have become performable, scores can be fed into computers and become sound (ex. Fernbach-Flarsheim, Mac Low, Brown, Higgins, Ichiyanagi, Young etc.) Probably one of the greatest implications which all this activity holds is that in its core may lie the seeds for an eventual full fusion of the arts and sciences. Already such works as Flarsheim’s conceptual clouds, Rot’s ideograms, and Flynt’s concept-art point the way. What shall be the impact historically, if any? Perhaps a statement attributed to Moholy-Nagy may serve as answer here, “If I succeed I shall have travelled a road, which others shall not have to travel again. If I fail? I shall be long dead and I shall never know it.” - Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim 

Featuring: Roberto Altmann (France), David Antin (USA), Ronaldo Azeredo (Brazil), Leonard Belasco (USA), Edgar Braga (Brazil), George Brecht (USA), Earle Brown (USA), John Cage (USA), Augusto de Campos (Brazil), Haroldo de Campos (Brazil), Henri Chopin (France), Carlfriedrich Claus (East Germany), Robert De Voe (USA), Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim (USA), Mildred Fink (USA), Ian Hamilton Finlay (Scotland), John Furnival (England), Heinz Gappmayr (Austria), Ilse and Pierre Garnier (France), Eugen Gomringer (Switzerland), José Lino Grunewald (Brazil), Bernard Heidsieck (France), Dick Higgins (USA), Dom Sylvester Houédard (England), Toshi Ichiyanagi (Japan), Ernst Jandl (Austria), Reiner Jochum (West Germany), Kitasono Katue (Japan), Alison Knowles (USA), Ferdinand Kriwet (West Germany), Iris Lezak (USA) Jackson Mac Low (USA), Allain Arias Misson (Spain), Franz Mon (West Germany), Ladislav Novák (Czechoslovakia), Décio Pignatari (Brazil), Terry Riley (USA), John J. Sharkey (England), Wolf Vostell (West Germany), Emmett Williams (USA) and others

 May 28th - June 8th, 1966; Opening May 27th, 1966

Dé-coll/age Happening at 9:00 PM, May 21, 1966

Ten years ago I was just as conscious as today that the time in which I live has its own, never-to-be-repeated characteristics and emanations that demand new methods of treatment. People need a new revolution of vision and of experiencing their time.  Proceeding from self-dissolving, self-destroying and self-exhausting factors I experience (for example, plane crashes and automobile accidents) I coined the term dé-coll/age. For me, this was the beginning of a change of taste and the inclusion of the environment in the forms of experiences in my work. 

Duchamp discovered readymades and the futurists claimed noise as art. A primary characteristic of my work and that of my colleagues is that the Happening includes whatever noise, movement, object, color or psychology enters into the total work of art. Because of this I assert that life and people are art. The public connects the appearances of contradictions, quotations and chaotic situations with erasures of the visual consciousness and acoustic environment. The contents and the intentions must be made orderly by each participant and observer. But even when the events cannot be made orderly, they lead to the recognition that such things cannot be resolved. Happenings and events are frames of references for experience of the present - a do-it-yourself reality. The observer can or must differentiate between form and content. Concerted actions which are repulsive and frightening in life often have fascinating aesthetic emanations although the contents or the consequences of the occurrences are to be rejected. Happenings make such a nightmare conscious and sharpen the consciousness for the inexplicable and for chance. Important characteristics of the Happening are often changed by the public. If a Happening is thematically concerned with the destructive phenomena of our epoch, this does not mean that the Happening form is, in itself, destructive. My pictures are scores of my performances. The present exhibition of them is dedicated to a theme of a happening: Dogs and Chinese Not Allowed. All the ideas and suggestions are written down and combined with archetypal pictures which put the actions in context and indicate the locale in which I have been staying for the past three months. These scores cannot, however, be repeated or even interpreted by someone else. They are erasures of the fields of ideas which make the imagination fo the viewer come to life. 

-Wolf Vostell