maandag 18 juli 2011

Fluxus and the forest



After the urban cryptoforest revolt of 2020 forestry will become art and art will be on the dump heap of history, until then we need to do with the mediocre. Bengt Af Klinktberg's (born 1938) Fluxus pieces from the 1960/70ties used:
"The forest as a marionette theatre. I read in my encyclopaedia: a theatre with jointed puppets which by means of threads can be made to imitate the movements of human beings. The marionette is generally around 50 centimetres tall and appears in a theatre reduced to the same scale. Why not, for once, a really large and airy stage? Perched in two treetops my brother-in-law Olle and I pull and release ropes. Between us is the forest diver, performing a slow dance with grave and waving movements, like a huge, reluctant jumping-jack, insulted by our proceedings but still not quite negative... "
As quoted from 'The Forest Diver' included in a 1974 issue of Alcheringa while the Fluxus Performance Workbook  (PDF-link) includes Seven Forest Events from his hand. 
Seven Forest Events (1966)

Forest Event Number One [Winter]
Walk out into a forest when it is winter and decorate all the spruces with burning candles, flags, apples, glass balls, tinsel strings.

Forest Event Number Two
Walk out into a forest and wrap some drab trees, or yourself, in tinsel.

Forest Event Number Three
Climb up a treetop with a saw. Saw through the tree-trunk from the top right down to the root.

Forest Event Number Four [Danger Music for Henning Christiansen]
Climb up into a tree. Saw off the branch you sit upon.

Forest Event Number Five [The Lumberjack' and Piker's Union]
Charlotte Moorman exchanged the sand-paper for a saw, but using that sawing technique she would have been sacked Lumberjack' and Piker's Union.

Forest Event Number Six
Walk out of your house. Walk to the forest. Walk into the forest.

Forest Event Number Seven
When you walk into a forest, don't forget to knock.

1 opmerking:

  1. When you walk into a forest, don't forget to knock.

    Great. Now I'll have another disturbing habit to freak out the neighbours.

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