ABSTRACT
In 1959, Robert Wilson enrolled in a business administration course at the University of Texas, probably to please his lawyer father who wanted conventional success for his son. Graduation from Pratt was followed by Wilson’s short apprenticeship to the anything-but-conventional architect Paolo Soleri in Arizona and, in 1967, by Poles, his first commissioned architectural work: In a broad flat field he erected 576 vertical telephone poles in a square array resembling an amphitheatre. Wilson’s voice could be heard reading fragments of a text he had written, and was complemented by a soundscore by Hans Peter Kuhn who, by then, had become one of his regular collaborators. Julia Kristeva stresses that Wilson’s abolition of established artistic categories obliges viewers to cross perceptual boundaries, which is a double-edged experience – both ‘loss of sense of self’ and ‘jubilation’. Wilson’s voice frequently rose in a crescendo, engaging Knowles in comedian-style repartee accompanied by vaudeville gestures.
