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Abstract
In 1972, Willoughby Sharp participated in the international Encuentros de Pamplona festival in Spain with a video show entitled This is your Roof, a highly representative selection of videos by sixteen New York artists from SoHo’s dynamic alternative scene. All but five of the videotapes have since disappeared. Drawing upon the existing documentation, this paper reconstructs their history and context while also offering certain lines of interpretation.
Acknowledgment
The article is linked to the research project: La modernidad paradójica: Experiencia artística y turística en la España desarrollista (1959–1975), PGC2018-093422-B-I00, (MCI/AEI/FEDER, UE).
Notes
1 These artworks were held in the Electronic Arts Intermix collection, on a half-inch open reel tape on which the title is mistakenly referred to as “The Roof Show”. It is not clear whether this is the final edition. I would like to thank the whole team at EAI for their assistance in locating and cataloging these pieces correctly.
2 Walter Benjamin, “Thesis on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 253–264.
3 This historiographical neglect has affected the Encuentros de Pamplona and Intermedia Art tendencies in general in Spain. See: José Díaz Cuyás, “Literalismo y carnavalización en la última vanguardia,” in Encuentros de Pamplona 1972: fin de fiesta del arte experimental ed. José Díaz Cuyás (Madrid: MNCARS, 2009). Also see the Museo Reina Sofia’s publishing project Desacuerdos https://www.museoreinasofia.es/publicaciones/desacuerdos
4 Various authors, Encuentros 1972 Pamplona (Madrid: ALEA, 1972), Introducción, s.l.
5 See: Díaz Cuyas, ed. Encuentros.
6 Dennis Oppenheim, interview with José Díaz Cuyás & Chema González, Madrid, 2010. Available online from: Archivo Oral. Encuentros de Pamplona, MNCARS, https://www.museoreinasofia.es/archivo-oral/encuentros-pamplona/dennis-oppenheim (accessed April 28, 2023).
7 Both Antoni Muntadas, who participated in the video exhibition, and José Luis Alexanco, co-director of the Encuentros de Pamplona, were artists represented by Galería Vandrés.
We do not know if Willoughby Sharp was consulted for this second run of the video show, but his private archive does contain the invitation card for the Vandrés exhibition. Willoughby Sharp Papers, Getty Research Institute, Box 13, Folder: “This is your Roof”.
8 Muntadas also contributed an individual project to the Encuentros: a precursor to his “media landscape” works entitled Polución audiovisual. Eugeni Bonet, “Television, Front and Side Views,” in Muntadas. The Construction of Fear and the Loss of Public Space, eds. Yolanda Romero & Mar Villaespesa (Granada: Centro José Guerrero, 2008), 199.
9 Willoughby Sharp Papers, Getty Research Institute, Box 13, Folder: “This is your Roof”.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Barbara Kremer was referred to as a curator together with Sharp in all the documents. Kremer states that she was a signatory but that she was not part of the organization (conversation on 20 July, 2022). “In addition to assisting with some of the equipment, I was responsible for transporting the tapes from New York to Pamplona, as Willoughby was committed to attending Documenta 5.” (E-mail, 14 July 2022).
13 Willoughby Sharp Papers, Getty Research Institute, Box 13, Folder: “This is your Roof”.
14 “Willoughby attended Documenta 5, where he made the acquaintance of Braco Dmitrijevic. That resulted in an invitation to participate in a couple of lecture or round table events with students in the former Yugoslavia. We traveled by train from Pamplona to Barcelona, where Antoni Muntadas graciously hosted us. From there we went on to Zagreb, for a lecture event, and then to Belgrade, for another.” (Barbara Kremer, e-mail 14 July, 2022).
15 Oppenheim did not recall having collaborated on this project. He did, however, remember Sharp using his roof to film certain performances, albeit not such an extensive program. “Dennis Oppenheim, en conversación con Eugeni Bonet,” El cine en los Encuentros, MNCARS, 14 January, 2010. https://www.museoreinasofia.es/multimedia/dennis-oppenheim-conversacion-eugeni-bonet (accessed April 28, 2023).
16 Fernando Huici & Javier Ruiz, La Comedia del Arte. En torno a los Encuentros de Pamplona (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1974), 147.
17 Ibid. The videos were supposed to be shown in the “cúpulas hinchables”, pneumatic domes designed by the architect José Miguel Prada Poole. However, the organizers decided to deflate the domes to prevent any unprogrammed discussions taking place inside them. Díaz Cuyas, ed. Encuentros, 330, 350.
On Projections, see: Vito Acconci, Diary of a Body. 1969–1973 (Milan: Charta, 2006), 295. A footnote here contains the basic details, “Projections, videotape, fifteen minutes; May 1972” along with two stills and a brief synopsis. There is no mention of This is Your Roof.
18 Liza Béar and Willoughby Sharp, “The Early History of Avalanche,” exhibition brochure (London: Chelsea Space, 2005), 1.
19 Avalanche, no. 5, summer 1972, 6.
20 The surviving videos and photographs were shot at 85 Franklyn Street, but Oppenheim denied that they had all been taken on his rooftop (endnote 12). Barbara Kremer recalls some material being filmed at 93 Grand Street (conversation on 20 July 2022).
21 The list of artists is not exactly the same as the list for the shows in Pamplona and Madrid. Phyllis Jalbert and Van Schley are missing from Sharp’s subsequent list from 10 August 1972, as well as from the Galería Vandrés brochure from June 1973; furthermore, the name Bill Beirne replaces Bill Burns (possibly a transcription error).
22 Gwen Allen, “In on the Ground Floor: Avalanche and the SoHo Art Scene, 1970–1976,” Artforum International 44, no. 3 (November, 2005): 239.
23 Exhibition catalogue, Encuentros, 1972, Introducción, s.l.
24 Allen, “In on the Ground Floor”, 241.
25 Gwen Allen, “Against Criticism: The Artist Interview in ‘Avalanche’ Magazine, 1970–76,” Art Journal 64, no. 3 (2005): 52.
26 Béar and Sharp, “The Early History of Avalanche”, 10.
27 Willoughby Sharp Papers, Getty Research Institute, Box 13, Folder: “This is your Roof.”
28 Willoughby Sharp & Paul Maenz, Program/Statement (New York: Kineticism Press, 1966). I would like to thank Pamela Seymour Smith for bringing this to my attention. She believes that this statement applies to all of Sharp’s activities (interview on 8 September, 2022). Projects: Pier 18 and This is your Roof were both initially conceived of as traveling exhibitions, easy to relocate and ready to be taken on an art “tour”.
29 Stacey Allan, “Role Refusal: On Louise Lawler’s Birdcalls,” in Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 20 (2009): 109.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
José Díaz Cuyás