-one of the chief instigators of Dada
-wrote absurd theatre, as well as co-pioneering the contemporary, Western idea of spoken word/poetry performance
the gas heart (1921) (translated by Michael Benedikt)
Tzara's work is striking to me because he so heavily employs repetition ... he creates a sense of the ritualized nonsense of small talk throughout the play. He also seems to mock the other theatre of the time, which seemed to be mostly based on a blend of vaudeville and history plays, grand narratives and meaningless silliness.
LA MONTE YOUNG - COMPOSITIONS 1960
-experimental composer, contemporary of John Cage
-from Wikipedia:
His Compositions 1960 includes a number of unusual actions. Some of them are unperformable, but each deliberatively examines a certain presupposition about the nature of music and art and carries ideas to an extreme. One instructs: "draw a straight line and follow it" (a directive which he has said has guided his life and work since). Another instructs the performer to build a fire. Another states that "this piece is a little whirlpool out in the middle of the ocean." Another says the performer should release a butterfly into the room. Yet another challenges the performer to push a piano through a wall. Composition 1960 #7 proved especially pertinent to his future endeavors: it consisted of a B, an F#, a perfect fifth, and the instruction: "To be held for a long time."
I find Young's work compelling because, as a composer, he merely writes the instructions for a performance ... the performance itself can be carried out by other people, and therefore he isn't automatically implicated as the performer. In class I showed the exhibition catalogue for David Khang's recent work based around La Monte Young's Compositions 1960, proving that La Monte Young's work continues to be generative for a whole new generation.
COLETTE URBAN - CONSUMER CYCLONE
-from Colette Urban (exhibition catalogue) by Barbara Fisher & Colleen O'Neill
Consumer Cyclone 1993, 15 minutes
Consumer Cyclone is designed to be performed in a shopping mall. I am dressed in a black bodysuit -- attached to my front are articles of clothing and on my back a variety of small cosmetic and hand held mirrors. As I parade through the shopping mall I trail behind me an assortment of small beauty appliances and repeat over and over into a toy megaphone, "Regardez-moi. Regardez-toi. Look at me. Look at you."
This work seems to reference the tendency of consumerism to attempt to construct the illusion of identity through the purchase of items. By working in a public space designed for this very purpose, she confronts the people that are ostensibly in the space to consummate that lie with the possibility that they are also figuratively caught in this ritual of self-reflexive consumption.
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