Bojana Cvejić, Goran Sergej Pristaš (eds.): Parallel Slalom: A Lexicon of Non-aligned Poetics (2013)

“What does it take to create one’s own concepts? What does it mean to own a concept? Parallel Slalom is an edited collection of essays that attempt to address these questions from the viewpoint of artistic and theoretical practices that have been developing since the 1960s, especially in the period after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. Artists, dramaturges, theorists, editors, writers or ‘cultural workers’ who write or are written about in this volume don’t always belong to the same historical, geopolitical and cultural framework that the curator Ješa Denegri called, the ‘common Yugoslav cultural space’ also because a considerable number of writers come from contexts other than those in Eastern Europe. Yet they share a kind of thought that arises from within, or close to, artistic practice as a poetical instrument of looking past art into the production of political, social and aesthetic realms.”

“Among the concepts developed are: Americanism; artivisim; acting without publicizing; Chaplinism; cinema clubs; cinematic modes of action; contextual art; delay; delayed audience; digitality; East Dance Academy; generations; group sex; laziness; operation; politics of affection and uneasiness; proceduralism; protocol; radical amateurism; reconstruction, second-hand-knowledge; slideshow; temporary zones, shelters, and project spaces; tiger’s leap into history; unburdened, aesthetically; unlearned, terminally.”

Contributions by Ric Allsopp, Jonathan Beller, Ivana Bago, Bojana Cvejić, Isabel de Naveran, Tomislav Gotovac, Owen Hatherley, Ana Janevski, Janez Janša, Marko Kostanić, Bojana Kunst, Antonia Majača, Aldo Milohnić, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Mårten Spångberg, Mladen Stilinović, Miško Šuvaković, Terminally Unschooled, Terms study group, and Ana Vujanović.

Publisher Walking Theory ‒ TkH, Belgrade, and CDU – Centre for Drama Art, Zagreb, 2013
ISBN 8690589961, 9788690589968
411 pages
via Academia.edu

Publisher (TkH)
Publisher (CDU)
WorldCat

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Tadeusz Kantor: Panoramic Sea Happening (1967) [PL/EN]

The Panoramic Sea Happening was the most spectacular and complex of all of Kantor’s happenings. It took place on 23 August 1967, during the 5th Koszalin Plein-Air convention in Łazy, a small seaside town near Osiek. Prepared for only a couple of participants (mostly for members and friends of the Foksal Gallery), it had an enormous audience among the plein-air’s guests and tourists on the beach. The happening consisted of four parts: ‘Sea Concert’ [Koncert morski], ‘Medusa Raft’ [Tratwa Meduzy], ‘Erotic Barbuyage’ [Barbujaż erotyczny] and ‘Agrarian Culture on the Sand’ [Kultura agrarna na piasku]. (Source)

Simultaneously with the happening, Submergence took place – an event organized by artists and critics associated with the Foksal Gallery. It lasted for two hours. The overall number of participants was 1600 (the actors and the audience). (Source)

On the fifth page of a booklet that followed the event, Eustachy Kossakowski‘s photograph of the ‘Sea Concert’ is reproduced. In this image, the painter Edward Krasiński stands on a platform a few yards into the surf, ‘conducting’ the sea while a group of people sitting in beach chairs in the foreground constitute an audience. This image has become iconic documentation of the artists, scholars, and performers surrounding the Foksal Gallery. (Source)

Page 14/15 of the booklet contains written reflections by Tadeusz Kantor, Wieslaw Borowski, and Hanna Ptaszkowska, in both Polish and English.

Publisher Koszalińskie Towarzystwo Społeczno-Kulturalne, [1967]
[16] pages, 16 x 58 cm
via Digitizing Ideas

Commentary: Karolina Czerska (Culture.pl, 2014, EN/PL/RU), Jerzy Hanusek (Estetyka i Krytyka, 2014, PL), Post/MoMA (David Senior, 2015, EN), Wikipedia (PL).
Worldcat

Booklet (PL/EN, PDF, 2 MB)
Script (PL/EN, PDF, 10 MB)
JPGs

131 photographs from the event, by Eustachy Kossakowski (at ArtMuseum.pl), some in higher resolution (Digitizing Ideas), some in color (#8-13, Culture.pl).

Film Culture, 43: Expanded Arts (1966)

This special issue of 1960s New York’s avant-garde film quarterly is an all Fluxus tabloid newsprint issue featuring George Maciunas, Jonas Mekas, Henry Flynt, Ken Dewey, Gerd Stern, Stan VanDerBeek, Robert Whitman, et al.

From the Introduction: “The purpose of this Special Issue of Film Culture, EXPANDED ARTS, is twofold: a) to give to our readers and idea about what’s going on in the avantgarde arts today, and b) to serve as a sort of catalogue or index to the work of some of the artists involved.

This issue started as an index to the artists working in the area of Expanded Cinema. Only as we went along, our original conception changed and we decided to include all the other arts. EXPANDED ARTS – we intend to come out with other issues–will eventually include all areas of expanded performing arts. This issue, however, is dominated by the Expanded Cinema, Expanded Music, Expanded Gags and Readymades, and some Happenings. And not all of the artists working in those areas are represented. Some of them were simply too bnusy to get the necessary information in time. Many are missing; such as Lucinda Childs, Merce Cunningham, Ken Dewey, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Al Hansen, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Ben Van Meter, Robert Whitman etc.”

Contents:
Introduction … 1
Expanded Cinema: A Symposium N.Y. Film Festival 1966, panel members: Ken Dewey, Henry Geldzahler, John Gruen, Stan VanDerBeek & Robert Whitman” … 1
Interview with Ken Dewey by Fred Wellington … 2
USCO. Interview with Gerd Stern by Jonas Mekas … 3
The Blue Mouse and the Movie Experience by Sheldon Renan … 4
To Be Alive! and the Multi-Screen Film by Maxine Haleff … 4
Notions on a New Dance Program by Gregory Battcock … 4
Triptape: An Interview with Richard Aldcroft by Gordon Ball … 4
Mock Risk Games – A Psychological Exploration (June 1961-1966) by Henry Flynt … 5
The Images of Robert Whitman by Toby Mussman … 5
Expanded Arts Bourse … 5
Fluxfest … 6
Expanded Arts Diagram by George Maciunas … 7
Movie Journals by Jonas Mekas … 10

Edited by Jonas Mekas
Publisher Film Culture, New York, Winter 1966
Design George Maciunas
ISSN 0015-1211
12 pages, 56 x 43 cm
via Walker Art Center

WorldCat

PDF (24 MB)
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