Difference between revisions of "Milan Knížák"
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| − | In 1965 Knížák began creating broken music by | + | In 1965 Knížák began creating broken music by damaging gramophone records, scraping them, sticking tape on them, applying paint, burning, breaking them, gluing fragments of different records together, playing them and recording the results. New recordings created in this manner were issued as vinyl records as early as the 1970s, in several editions of ''Broken Music''. |
; Fluxus | ; Fluxus | ||
Revision as of 01:48, 17 February 2013
 Milan Knížák working on Lenin for the Fluxus pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 1990. Photo: Marie Knížáková | |
| Born |
April 19, 1940 Plzeň, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia |
|---|---|
| Lives in | Prague, Czech Republic |
Artist and musician associated with Fluxus, organiser of the first Happenings in Czechoslovakia. Born 1940 in Plzeň.
- Aktual
He commenced his career as an artist in 1957. In the early 1960s he began creating what he called Ceremonies and Demonstrations, Happening-like events that were often performed in the streets. Knížák founded a social organisation in Prague between 1963 and 1971 called Aktuální umění [Actual Art] ("Aktual" from 1966 on), with Jan Mach, Vít Mach, Sonia Švecová, Jan Trtílek and Robert Wittmann, which also had a branch in West Bohemia. Aktual staged numerous participatory actions, e.g. A Walk Around Nový Svět (A Demonstration for All the Senses) and the Demonstration of One (both 1964). The group also explored music, samizdat publishing, mail art and other "necessary activities" not always framed as art. Aktual sought a complete fusion of art and life, aiming to awake awareness of the people. Knížák later described Aktual as a group of self-elected people who desired to be different, and that this was the sole criterion for joining: its basic aspiration was to find a more vivid, all-encompassing experience of everyday life. His primary concerns were aesthetic rather than political: to change one’s life into art, rather than changing the system under which one lives.
- Broken Music
In 1965 Knížák began creating broken music by damaging gramophone records, scraping them, sticking tape on them, applying paint, burning, breaking them, gluing fragments of different records together, playing them and recording the results. New recordings created in this manner were issued as vinyl records as early as the 1970s, in several editions of Broken Music.
- Fluxus
Through the critic Jindřich Chalupecký, Knížák was in contact with Allan Kaprow and Jean-Jacques Lebel, and in 1965 was nominated as "Director of Fluxus East" by George Brecht. Yet Knížák rejected both Fluxus and the Happenings: Fluxus for the contrived slightness of its events (which remained tied to the format of conventional stage performance) and the Happenings for their excessive theatricality. He felt that his own work was more 'natural', and closer to the reality of human life. As such, he preferred the term 'actions'. In October 1966, Knížák organised the Fluxus concert in Prague, in which he appeared together with Ben Vautier, Jeff Berner, Serge Oldenbourg, Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles. Maciunas already invited Knížák to the USA in 1965, but it was not until 1968 that he managed to obtain a visa. In New York, he participated in the Fluxus events taking place there; in New Brunswick he realised his Lying Ceremony (1967-68) and in New York the Difficult Ceremony (1966-69). Maciunas prepared the publication of Knížák's collected works as a Fluxus Edition, but it was never published.
- 1970s-80s
In 1970 he returned to Prague. Always under police surveillance, he was also arrested on occasion. He received a fellowship from the DAAD Artists’ Programme and came to Berlin in 1979, after which he was frequently represented at exhibitions in Germany.
- After the Revolution
Since 1990, Knížák has been teaching intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, was Chancellor of the Academy (1990-97), and director of the National Gallery in Prague (1999-2011), and today is viewed today as a right-wing, nationalist figure of the establishment.
Contents
Works
Broken Music
Knížák: "In 1963-64 I used to play records both too slowly and too fast and thus changed the quality of the music, thereby, creating new compositions. In 1965 I started to destroy records: scratch them, punch holes in them, break them. By playing them over and over again (which destroyed the needle and often the record player too) an entirely new music was created - unexpected, nerve-racking and aggressive. Compositions lasting one second or almost infinitely long (as when the needle got stuck in a deep groove and played the same phrase over and over). I developed this system further. I began sticking tape on top of records, painting over them, burning them, cutting them up and gluing different parts of records back together, etc. to achieve the widest possible variety of sounds. A glued joint created a rhythmic element separating contrasting melodic phrases... Since music that results from playing ruined gramophone records cannot be transcribed to notes or to another language (or if so, only with great difficulty), the records themselves may be considered as notations at the same time." more (in Czech)
Broken Music (1979)
Composition No. 1, 18'56" OGG
Composition No. 2, 3'27" OGG
Composition No. 3, 4'25" OGG
Composition No. 4, 10'23" OGG
Composition No. 5, 13'52" OGG
Originally released in 1979 on Multhipla Records.
Reissue released on Ampersand – ampere12, CD, 2002
Curated and Assembled By – Walter Marchetti
Reissue Direction – Dawson Prater
Edited at Harpo's Bazaar (Bologna, Italy)
via Direct Waves blog
Broken Music (1983)
Untitled (Side A), 28'35" OGG
Untitled (Side B), 32'04" OGG
Label – Edition Hundertmark, 1983
Format – Carton box including a C-60 cassette of Knizak's Destroyed Music, signed and hand-numbered 1 to 40, a partially melted, hand-painted and signed 7" record, and 2 sheets of information text.
Cassette was also released separately in an edition of 60, signed but unnumbered copies.
via Continuo blog
Broken Music (1989)
Details, 28'35" OGG
Label – Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, 1989
Format – Flexi-disc, Single Sided, 33 ⅓ RPM
via Continuo blog
Literature
- Knížák's Fluxus event scores in The Fluxus Performance Workbook, edited by Ken Friedman, Owen Smith and Lauren Sawchyn, 1990/2002, pp 63-68.
- Milan Knížák, Actions For Which at Least Some Documentation Remains, Prague: Gallery, 2000.
- Tomáš Pospiszyl, Srovnávací Studie, Prague: Agite/Fra, 2005, pp 80-95. (Czech)
- Caleb Kelly, "Milan Knížák's Broken Music", in Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, The MIT Press, 2009, pp 140-149.
- Claire Bishop, "I. Prague: From Actions to Ceremonies", in Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, Verso Books, 2012, pp 131-140.
