Attention Training Immanence and ontological participation in Kaprow, Deleuze and Bergson

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Notes

¹ Excerpt from the score of Meters, an unrealized Activity by Allan Kaprow from 1972 (Leddy and Meyer-Hermann 2008: 225).

² Excerpt from the score of Baggage, an Activity by Kaprow from 1972, sponsored by Rice University, which took place in various locations in Houston (Leddy and Meyer-Hermann 2008: 225).

³ Excerpt from the score of Satisfaction, an Activity by Kaprow from 1976, sponsored by the M.L.D'Arc Gallery New York (Leddy and Meyer-Hermann 2008: 261).

⁴ Here, Deleuze and Bergson represent another strand of thinking regarding the ‘metaphysical’ that is distinct from the Platonic tradition and other forms of transcendent thinking. That is, metaphysical reality does not connote a reality ‘beyond’ or otherwise ‘outside’ the physical, so much as one that is fundamental or final in the sense that it does not depend on anything outside of itself for its existence.

⁵ Of course, Kaprow was massively influenced by his teacher, John Cage, in this regard. While it is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the relationship between Cage and Kaprow in terms of the concept of attention, Iwill do so in my forthcoming monograph Theatres of immanence: Deleuze and the ethics of performance.

⁶ On 1 May 2011, Iheld an ‘attention-training’ workshop as part of GIFT – Gateshead International Festival of Theatre (see: www.giftfestival.co.uk). The workshop invited participants to take part in a series of exercises derived from Kaprow, but also from John Cage. I am hoping to develop this practice-based aspect of my research in the future.

⁷ See Zepke (2009) and Hallward (2006).

⁸ See, for example, Mullarkey (2006), Lawlor (2006), Kerslake (2009) and de Beistegui (2010).

⁹ Deleuze has a very inclusive definition of what counts as a ‘body’. For instance, in Spinoza, Practical Philosophy, he argues that ‘[a] body can be anything; it can be an animal, a body of sounds, a mind or an idea’ (Deleuze 1988: 127).

¹⁰ One might argue that the labelling of these events as ‘performer only’ Happenings was arguably aspirational rather than descriptive on Kaprow's part. In particular, we might note the large, if impromtu, audience that gathered to watch the aspects of Calling that took place in New York's Grand Central Station. Indeed, we might suggest that there is an attention-seeking, spectacular quality to Kaprow's decision to have the cloth-wrapped bodies of participants dropped offat Grand Central and propped up against an information booth. Looking like dead bodies or packages awaiting collection, the mummified participants call out to other volunteers, before unwrapping themselves and leaving the station.

¹¹ There is conflicting evidence as to exactly when Kaprow began to use the term ‘Activity’ and when the first Activity might be said to have taken place, but it seems to have been around 1968–9. For instance, there is terminological confusion over whether certain events such as Runner (1968) and Charity (1969) should be called ‘Activities’ or ‘Happenings’. Kaprow's own essay, ‘The education of the un-artist, part II’ (1972) provides a score for both works which categorizes them as Activities (Kaprow 2003: 115, 122). However, in Allan Kaprow: Art as life, both Runner and Charity are listed as Happenings (Leddy and MeyerHermann 2008: 197 and 207). The recent and very comprehensive catalogue Allan Kaprow: Art as life, which draws heavily on the Kaprow papers in the Getty Archive, suggests that several of Kaprow's early Activities remained unrealized, and that the first actually presented Activity was an event entitled Moon Sounds, realized in December 1969 at the wedding of Heidi and Richard Blau – son of the eminent performance theorist, Herbert Blau (2008: 210). In correspondence with the author, Herbert Blau has said of Moon Sounds: ‘It was a marvellous affair that started at our house in Silver Lake, went out onto the desert landscape between Cal Arts &the Livermore atomic energy research headquarters, and ended with a dinner back at the house’ (Blau 2008).

¹² According to the timelines published in Allan Kaprow: Art as life, the last, new Activity Kaprow created before his death was entitled Postal Regulations and was realized in June–July 2001 (Leddy and MeyerHermann 2008: 330).

¹⁴ The koan is a Zen form of study that involves the student being given a ‘problem with no logical solution’ such as a paradoxical statement or question. Kaprow wasn't interested in the koan because of the Rinzai school belief in it as a means to produce ‘instant enlightenment’. Rather, Kelley suggests, Kaprow appreciated Zen for its emphasis on practice, on ‘paying attention to what we are doing’ rather than trying, purely intellectually, to make sense of what we do from a transcendent point of view (Kelley 2004: 204).

¹³ Zepke himself quotes Kelley a number of times in his essay, recognizing his expertise on Kaprow's relationship to Zen. However, he still seems to associate Zen in general with mysticism and transcendence rather than immanence and the political.

¹⁵ Part of the problem, or limitation, with Duchamp's gesture for Kaprow, is that by insisting on using the gallery it excludes ‘most of life’ on account of size if nothing else. One might be able to put a urinal on show, but one cannot exhibit the LA freeway at rush hour, Kaprow complains (Kaprow 2003: 207). Kaprow sees Duchamp as taking nonart and setting it in a ‘conventional art context’ or what he also calls ‘an art-identifying frame’ which ‘confers “art value” or “art discourse” upon the nonart object, idea, or event’. Despite the forceful effect of Duchamp's initial gesture, Kaprow argues the Readymade strategy later became ‘trivialised, as more and more nonart was put on exhibit by other artists’ (219).