"Happenings" in the New York Scene - Allan Kaprow

"Happenings" in the New York Scene"

Allan Kaprow

The "Happenings" sound pretty cool.  It would probably be exciting to be a part of one.  I don't think I would contribute much at first, but if I saw some creative stuff "happening" I would probably want to contribute.  It's too bad they don't "happen" any more.  Maybe they outlived their function.  Did their original initiators really think that they would still be popping up  40-50 years later?  I doubt it.  Although the idea of the "happening" is a timeless concept concerning spontaneity, discovery, and social participation, the happenings were very much of the moment, just like a Jackson Pollack painting is cherished today, but not often replicated in its technique.  Or maybe the environment, which Kaprov described as critical, was snatched up from undernear (or above) it.  Just like Kaprov says:

" I think that today this organic connection between art and its environment is so meaningful and necessary that removing own from the other results in abortion.  Yet the artists who have made us aware of this lifeline deny it; for the flattery of being "on show" blinds them to every insensitivity heaped upn their suddenly weakened offerings.  There seems no end to the white walls, the tasteful alluminum frames, the lovely lighting, fawn gray rugs, cocktails, polite conversation.  The attitude, I mean the worldview, conveyed by such fluorescent reception is in itself not "bad".  It is unaware.  And being unaware, it can hardly be responsive to the art it promotes and professes to admire.

 Happenings invite us to cast aside for a moment these proper manners and partake wholly in the real nature of the art and (one hopes) life.  Thus a Happening is rough and sudden and often feels "dirty."  Dirt, we might begin to realize, is also organic and fertile, and everything, including the vistors, can grow a little in such circumstances.

 Now anything can "happen" anywhere.  And according to Kaprov they did, "...Osaka, San Francisco, Chicago, Cologne, Paris, Milan...", but I think the "dirt" or more accurately fertile soil he was talking about, could only come from one place at that time, downtown NewYork, where you not only had a gathering of intellectually aspiring people but also  the cross-currents of money, information, talent, and global participants in the blocks above and below it. These things in concert indirectly or directly helped support the movement or at least propelled it in the opposite direction .  Today that downtown is not just surrounded by those currents, but is in fact drowning in them, displacing the dirt, the seeds, and to a certain extent the record. The question is where will the runoff be deposited ?  ?  ?   

But maybe they're not gone forever, maybe they have simple shifted somewhere where they could find temporary space until it could set up at a more permanent location on terrestrial ground.  Recently we've seen to the closest thing resembling a revival of the happenings in quite a while.  Maybe its a sign of a shell-shocked society peeking out of their shells.  Time will tell if new media ever provides the bridge back to the spirit that inspired original happenings.... despite some peoples' best efforts...