Sara Estan
November 28, 2010
Foundation Seminar
Professor Steck
A response to “Happenings” and “Happenings: An Art of Radical Juxtaposition”
Happenings mess with the human psyche. It is a statement with no reason, and will never provide an answer to the question. It puts a wrench in the gears of our minds, laughing as we’re thrown face first into the gravel then motioning us indulgently to come and try again. We are infuriated and infatuated with that which loves us and stabs us in the back, giving us the sex appeal without the sex, always maintaining itself a few inches out of our reach. It is mentioned that “some happenings are more sparse, others more crowded with incident; some are violent, others are witty; some are like haiku, others are epic; some are vignettes, others more theatrical.” Happenings feed us but never fully satisfy, playing with our need to make sense of and categorize everything we process. They squeeze the small details out of life, everything that confuses, appalls or intrigues us, and mold it into art.
Happenings have stained my mind with the reality of my own discipline to art and the world around me. Art is something so untouchable and beautiful, yet it is captured in such simple ways. There is nothing wrong with galleries, “the white walls, the tasteful aluminum frames, the lovely lighting, fawn gray rugs, cocktails, [and] polite conversation…” But those blinding gallery lights bring to focus the flaws in what we once thought to be ideal, and you can only shrivel into the corner of the room with shaky palms while the audience reads every drop of sweat like a page out of your diary. But in this loaded essay, describing the idealist dream of white walls and cocktails as being “unaware” hit me hard.
What am I unaware of? Am I unaware, or am I becoming aware with every word I take in? Are the artists who pursue the Happenings aware? Can I become one of those artists, or did I have to be born that way?
The next generation is full of young hearts that thrive on breaking the molds of society. It is my own, and a handful of my fellow classmates’ dream to break reality into tiny shards of glass and reconstruct it into something that more properly describes the idiotic yet ingenious customs of life and emotion in the 21st century. This desire is what continues to inspire us to want something like the Happenings, because it is “rough and sudden and often feels ‘dirty,’” the author articulates, and “Dirt, we might begin to realize, is also organic and fertile, and everything, including the visitors, can grow a little in such circumstances.” This will allow the artists of the Happening to flourish in the discretion of only a few audience members, rather than an ocean of bright eyes staring at you up on stage. They “may achieve a beautiful privacy, famed for something purely imaginary while free to explore something no body will notice.” I believe that the Happening’s of the past and the future will continue to reshape young artists’ minds as they bring the art of life back into life itself.
