Scattered Light: Ephemeral Action, Protest, and Circulating Imagery
Allan Kaprow, Fluids, as recreated at the Neue Nationalgalerie on September 16, 2015 with support from the Allan Kaprow Estate and Hauser & Wirth. Photo copyright of Thomas Bruns.
Left: light projection of the Snowden monument by the Illuminator Art Collective, April 7, 2015. http://theilluminator.org/edward-snowden-hologram/; Right: original sculptural intervention Prison Ship Martyrs Monument 2.0 by Jeff Greenspan, Andrew Tider, and Doyle Trankina, as seen the previous day. https://jeffgreenspan.com/snowden/. Both images accessed publicly on the artists' websites.
Prison Ship Martyrs Monument 2.0 being covered with a tarp by New York City Park officers on April 6, 2015.
Image from the collection of the Allan Kaprow Estate and Hauser & Wirth. Photo copyright of Julian Wasser.
"It follows that audiences should be eliminated entirely."
– Allan Kaprow, “Untitled Guidelines for Happenings,” 1965
Spread from the publication Allan Kaprow: Fluids (Cologne: Walter König, 2007). Book design by P. Hermann and FLAG, Zurich.
Happenings should be performed once only.
– Kaprow, “Untitled Guidelines for Happenings”
Allan Kaprow: Fluids, 1967, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063). from the collection of the Allan Kaprow Estate and Hauser & Wirth. Photo copyright of Julian Wasser.
"Time, which follows closely on space considerations, should be variable and discontinuous."
– Kaprow, “Untitled Guidelines for Happenings”
Allan Kaprow placing an ice block during the creation of Fluids (1967). Image from the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Photo copyright of Dennis Hopper.
"The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible."
– Kaprow, “Untitled Guidelines for Happenings”
Christopher Squier is an artist, writer, and curator living in San Francisco. He is an editor for Dissolve, exhibits with R/SF Projects, and currently works on the Exhibitions team at the San Francisco Art Institute. His research-based practice uses interdisciplinary media to investigate the artifacts of optics, the materiality of light, and the overlapping spaces of design, culture, and violence.