Allan Kaprow Household, women licking jam off of a car, 1964
Happenings, a term coined by Allan Kaprow in the late 1950s, define an art form in which an action is extracted from the environment, replacing the traditional art object with a performative gesture rooted in the movements of everyday life. No spectators, only participants.
As Kaprow writes in his essay, '"Happenings" in the New York Scene', "Visitors to a Happening are now and then not sure what has taken place, when it has ended, even when things have gone 'wrong'. For when something goes 'wrong', something far more 'right,' more revelatory, has many times emerged"(New Media Reader, pg. 86).
The art defines itself by the fact that it is a unique, one-time experience that depends on audience response. While it includes everyone present in the making of the art, the form of the art depends on the engagement of the audience, for they are a key factor in where the performers' spontaneity leads
In my own performances I have been bringing different peoples together ie the audience which then become the performers & performance. Does this then mean that there is no audience once the performance starts as they are involved and engrossed and to some point unaware that they are the performance. Completely unrehearsed, improvised, only prompted to start a discussion about culture & self.
They are participating in a communal task & discussion and the aim is to realise an end communal based product, they have all contributed to, so the atmosphere is more relaxed and the audience feels I hope that they own part of the end product.
If the audience becomes the performance, is it still a performance or does it just become a work shop? Does the mere fact that I am filming it make it a performance the audience/perfomers are at first aware they are being filmed but once they are engrossed in the task they forget about the camera.
Is the camera and documentation the key point that validates it as a performance because without the eye of the camera does it just become a workshop? Or a documentation of a workshop?
The eye of the camera, the documentation of the happening, is that what is validating it is actually a performance, or once the documentation is viewed by another audience is that when it finally becomes a performance?
This art aspect to happenings eliminates the boundary between the artwork and its viewer. Henceforth, the interactions between the audience and the artwork makes the audience, in a sense, part of the art.
