Page 60 - Studio International - October 1966

Happenings in Prague

A 'manifestation' by Czech artists and writers

The illustrations on this spread form part of a series sent smashed. Onlookers began to join in. Thousands of wet sheets
by a group of Czech artists to the symposium on destruc- of paper were strewn on the muddy street, and people picked
them up, screwed them into balls, and threw them at each
tion in art—DIAS—held recently in London. They were
other. At this point the police tried to intervene but were
placed on exhibition during the conference. Whereas the persuaded not to.
New York Happenings illustrated in the September The participants, about seventy all told, now crowded into
issue of Studio International seemed to have lost much of a 15ft.-by-13 ft. room, reached down a dark narrow corridor,
their spontaneity and to have become formalized into into which all the broken objects had been carried. A gramo-
phone played a scratched record. People made their own
sequences reminiscent of vaudeville, the Prague events,
music with whatever lay to hand-boards, bits of junk, pans.
arranged last year by artists, writers and others, were less The noise and the shouting became unbearable. The room
organized, more spontaneous, and took place in an infor- emptied, everyone went outside, back to the high wall.
mal environment. They also had evident, if ambiguous, Here a 'newspaper' was being produced—paints and paper
political overtones. In the Happening described below, for all; 'everyone is a creator', said one of the organizers. They
elected a 'beauty queen', and presented her with a bundle of
for example, it is unclear whether the participants were
wet, dirty paper. Then they trooped back to the house and went
responding to all nuclear tests equally—American, down into the cellar, carrying candles and making smoke pat-
Russian, British, French—or only to the Chinese tests (as terns on the ceiling. A girl distributed 'orders' : call such-and-
the demonstrative destruction of a book on the Renais- such a telephone number, discuss a particular aspect of art, etc.
sance might suggest). The candles were snuffed. Silence. The sound of shots. People
emerged from the house; outside were displayed photographs
This description of the sequence of events which com-
of the Terezin ghetto. Each person was given a hot baked
prised Manifestation of August 2nd is an edited and abridged potato to eat. But police officers were watching. To avoid being
version of a description given by some of the organizers: watched they dispersed, and re-assembled outside the Savoy
Hotel ten minutes later.
Participants assembled one Sunday morning on Novysvet
From the Savoy they marched in line to a park, where they
Street. Proceedings started with a talk on the second Chinese built a fire and were ordered to sing popular songs. A girl wear-
nuclear test and its effect on the arts. The speaker ripped pages ing a cloak and gold-coloured shoes began to strip-but only
from a book on the Renaissance and handed them round. On down to tights-and threw her clothes on the fire. The others
the ground were piles of books and pictures; these were passed were told to follow suit. They laughed with embarrassment.
through a window into a room. Revolver shots were heard. Someone threw on the fire a handkerchief, someone else a tie,
Everybody went down the street to a high wall from which hung some threw on money.
various articles— a bed, a table, a stove, trunks, utensils. The event continued at 6 p.m. that evening, at Tram No. 6
Clothes littered the ground. Things fell from the wall and
terminus ( Julda Fulda Park), where instructions, some sausages,
a loaf and a ball were attached to a tree. The ball was thrown
into the river that runs through the park, and then brought
into the bank by throwing stones. Everybody played football.
After the game they made a fire, roasted the sausages, and sang
songs.
At 9 p.m. they went home.

.. Soldiers' game-a self-
explanatory Happening
played out in a wood on the
outskirts of Prague