However, events made their point and the genre became well defined over
the years, through Fluxus concerts and individual performances and works
by, quite literally, hundreds of artists. In the sixties, when purely
formal explorations seemed essential to sweep away the overly personal
baggage of the 1960s, this was a positive thing. However, in the 1980s,
when personal expression has been minimized, and when art performances,
the heirs in some respect of happenings, often celebrate boredom and
almost always deal essentially with technical and formal concerns, it
seems more desirable to do pieces which are mainly minimal emotional
statements or narrative ones, complete with characterizations in most
cases. I had done a few such pieces previously, but not so consciously
as now. I call them "metadramas" because they must be dramatic in order
to satisfy the criterion, and, the "meta-" part suggests that they are
"next to" or "about" what they relate to-that is, some are dramas about
the drama, while others simply don't pretend to be dramas but do point
in that direction. I wrote about sixty of them in the summer of 1985,
destroyed most of them, and then noticed that they seemed to define a
genre to which the earlier events belong, though not vice versa.
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama in three parts
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
metadramas
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
a metadrama
Return to Light and
Dust Poets
Light and Dust Anthology of Poetry.
One of the main genres of Fluxus pieces of the 1960s is and was "events."
These were first done before Fluxus, and came to be conceptually framed
as a sort of cognate of happenings, which were new at the time-that is,
intermedial, free-form pieces which lay conceptually among the bounds of
music, theater and visual art. Events differed from happenings in that
they were always as compressed as possible, minimal statements that would
provide a mental or emotional impact. But, of course, they were highly
abstract. I did them, George Brecht did them, and others of the Fluxus
artists did them also though, for the most part, somewhat later than 1958
when George, I, AI Hansen and others studied with John Cage in his class
at the New School for Social Research in New York, a story which has been
told, more or less, to death.
Barrytown, New York
18 September, 1985
the artist
artist: "i'm hungry."
someone else: "here are twenty two ounces of honor."
artist: "i'm still hungry."
someone else: "here are twenty two more ounces of honor."
buddhism
buddhist monk: "peace!"
sound of gunfire.
couic!
enters in a suit of medieval armor.
trips.
falls.
erotic
she giggles then sighs.
she giggles then sighs.
ad lib a couple of minutes.
flexible lumbar
nude, profile to audince.
demonstrates flexible lumbars.
two minutes.
words: optional.
follow the leader
two people nude and smiling one leads other follows.
after a while follower no longer follows leader does not change roles.
they look at each other.
leader does something follower does something different.
follower does something
leader does that thing.
leader follows the other away.
hat show
enters carrying pillow.
puts pillow on head.
pause.
removes pillow.
goes away.
hers
She: "yes!"
offstage voice: "no!"
(may be repeated).
his
he: "no !"
offstage voice: "yes!"
(may be repeated).
how nemo got honored in his patria
i - solo
A bows to the audience stiffly and repeatedly for a minute.
ii - duo
A and B bow to each other stiffly and repeatedly for a minute.
iii - solo
B bows to the audience stiffly and repeatedly for a minute.
love story
two at a time.
"yes?" "no?" "no no?" "yes yes?"
grouping and regrouping
the philosopher
onstage:
"i think so--absolutely--no!"
portrait of a man eating an apple
man.
apple.
man eats apple.
a study in feet, or no second half
participants remove their right shoes and socks only.
they display their right feet to the audience and to each other.
they put their shoes and socks back on.
tenderly
blindfolded.
both enter from different places as silently as possible.
they find each other,
touch fingertips,
touch necks and hair,
kiss.
two hard core pornies
i - hers
standing female.
someone stands behind her, massaging her breasts with a delicate
clockwise motion.
duration: 46.3".
ii - his
standing male.
someone kneels in front of him, rubbing head in his crotch.
duration: 46.3".
variation on an old theme
naked man: "i have no wings."
clothed woman: "so i see."
variation on a theme by shiomi
look for the vanishing smile.
the way things are
a couple, A and B.
A falls into B's arms.
B shivers.
A goes away.
B looks after A.
zebra
someone enters dressed as a zebra.
says: "i am not a zebra."
someone else says: "i'm naht so sure about that, dahling!"
New York City
September-October, 1985
Copyright © 1995 by Richard C. Higgins. All rights reserved. Portions of
this text appeared in Malthus in 1987 and are copyright 1987.
For performance permissions, please write to Dick Higgins, P.O. Box 27,
Barrytown, NY 12507.