In this blog post, we will look at what message the art form called Happening, which breaks down the boundaries between life and art, is trying to convey to us.
One day in 1952, the contemporary musician John Cage gave a lecture at a university in the United States. John Cage is well known as a person who boldly broke the traditional framework of music and art of the time and pursued a new form of expression. His experimental approach led him to ask the fundamental question of “what is sound and what is music” by breaking away from traditional music composition methods. He gave the lecture at the top of a ladder, and the content was long silence and dance. This act turned the usual lecture format and content on its head, causing a huge response. His silence was not just any silence. Cage wanted to emphasize how thin the line between sound and silence is through this moment, and it reflected his philosophy that every moment can be music.
Another artist left 20 giant blocks of ice to melt on the street, showing the entire process of how things change from moment to moment. The artist’s intention was to visually express the passage of time and the power of nature through the changes in the ice and to convey to the audience the aesthetics of change, which is easily overlooked in everyday life. Other examples include works such as a lipstick the size of a building or an electrical plug. What is the essence of this artistic act that makes people embark on a distant journey of imagination by showing familiar things as unfamiliar and unfamiliar things as familiar?
These artistic attempts are not just for the sake of creating visual impact, but have the power to make us look at the objects and concepts we encounter in our daily lives in a new way. Through this, artists present a new framework of perception to the audience and encourage them to break free from fixed ways of thinking. Happening, as the genre name suggests, shows “what is happening here and now.” This is done spontaneously, and visual and auditory materials are used as important tools for expression rather than words. Improvisation is a key element of happening, which emphasizes the process of artists following their inspiration in the moment, away from a pre-planned framework. Through this process, the audience experiences art as a creative act that has meaning and value in itself, rather than a simple result.
The performances are not held in closed theaters, but in everyday spaces such as galleries, streets, parks, markets, and kitchens, so they are highly mobile. Also, the events and actions that are not logically connected are connected in fragments, which makes the performances strange and abstract. The dialogues are omitted or not present at all, and the words that sometimes pop up out of nowhere often do not have any special meaning. Through this, Happening asserts that the pain and hope of our lives can no longer be conveyed in logical words. This non-verbal method of expression induces an emotional and intuitive response from the audience rather than a direct message. Happening allows the audience to interpret the meaning through their own experience, which is a significant difference from the fixed interpretation provided by traditional works of art.
The idea of this happening is similar to the collage in art and the montage in film, and it is also connected to modern theater that reveals the absurdity of life, and popular music such as rap. Isn’t it the fact that our lives are one-off and not controlled by a consistent logic that shows the close relationship between happenings and life itself? After all, happenings break down the boundaries between art and life and show that life itself can become art. The message that art delivers to us is not just contained in the artwork, but it makes us realize that it is constantly happening in our daily lives.
The happening, which breaks down the walls between various arts, has changed the role of the audience in conventional art. The performers do not serve the audience, but instead provoke and tease the audience by shouting or throwing water at them. Performances are not held in one specific place, but in various places or simultaneously, and the audience moves around to see the sights and scenes from different perspectives. This can be said to be an attempt to involve the audience in the performance. By doing so, Happening aims to make life and art inseparable and ultimately to become a consciousness that intervenes in everyday life. Such participatory art makes the audience a part of the art creation process rather than a mere recipient, and the meaning of art is further expanded in the process. The audience is no longer a passive entity but an active agent in creating an artistic experience.
Furthermore, it rejects being traded among a few as a symbolic commodity in the art market. Happening also resists the conventional practice of exhibiting and preserving artworks as finished works in museums. This emphasizes that art is a form of free expression that is not confined to a specific place or format, but can be open to anyone, anytime, anywhere. It conveys the message that the essence of art is not in the permanence of the work, but in the experience and feeling of the moment.
This artistic phenomenon can be said to be the practice of the spiritual adventure of artists, rather than a simple movement. Happening criticized conformity to conventional social institutions and attempted to transform the fixed concept of art. Happening was criticized for emphasizing accidental events and individual consciousness, and for being something that cannot be understood. Despite such criticisms, Happening has played an important role in breaking the existing framework and promoting creative thinking as a pioneer of art that explores new possibilities. Nevertheless, this artistic adventure, which seeks to redefine the relationship between life and art while stirring up those of us who are numb to the comfort of modern society, will expand the horizons of art in more diverse ways.
