..no, this Happening is not M Night Shyamalan's apocalyptic film about an infectious pandemic of a suicidal neurotoxin.
The Happenings I speak of is a type of performance art event that started sometime in the late 50's. What happens in a Happening (I enjoy being redundant. sort of) is that a crowd of people congregate at a specified location and perform either planned or improvised actions. The locations and actions always changes. Happenings were created to put an emphasis on action as art; According to the Museum of Contemporary Art website: "action is extracted from the environment, replacing the traditional art object with a performative gesture rooted in the movements of everyday life".
The really cool thing about a Happening is that many, many people participate so that at any given time, there is always an action taking place - even if someone needs to take a bathroom break. I really enjoy how interactive it is as the experience changes with each participant and their specified action and the viewer of the participant's action.
Just to give an example of how trendy a Happening was back in the 50's - Wikipedia stated that: "In the later sixties, perhaps due to the depiction in films of hippie culture, the term was used much less specifically to mean any gathering of interest, from a pool hall meetup or a jamming of a few young people to a beer blast or fancy formal party."
I'll think between the lines whenever I ask people, "What's Happening?".
2 comments:
Performance art, Happenings, Fluxus, etc... None of the art movements in that area have ever really been my thing, but I've always found interesting the idea of taking the emphasis away from the autonomous art object, and thus focusing on the actual process of art-marking. Another interesting aspect of such artworks is the absolute need for an audience--without audience participation, the art itself wouldn't exist, or at the very least, wouldn't be very successful.
Overall, I like the concept of your blog, with your focus specifically being on collaboration, interaction, and communication in art. The aspect of communication especially is an integral component of all forms of art and other creative projects, so it is a nice area to focus in on. I’ll be looking forward to your future posts!
I agree it is a great concept and one of interest to those who study digital culture. Many who study new media are looking back to Allan Kaprow's 1961 piece "'Happenings' in the New York Scene." There is also a lot of interest because of ARGs (or alternative reality games) by people like Jane McGonigal, who is very interested in improvisation, and the rise of political "smart mobs."
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