ABSTRACT
In Avant-Garde Performance and the Limits of Criticism, the scholar Mike Sell refers to Happenings as an avant-garde subculture. The term subculture is strongly linked to the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in Birmingham during the 1970s when subcultures were seen as a tight and coherent social group. However, Sell's description of Happenings is valid within contemporary descriptions of subcultures since the term has "acquired plurality in meaning in sociological discourse". In this chapter, author use the term subculture to refer to a wide range of historical and contemporary cultural practices that deviate from mainstream culture. He study Happenings as artistic practices, in accordance with Clecak's definition of counterculture as an "umbrella term" that "enabled a wide range of different groups, including college students, musicians, mystics, environmentalists, the Human Potential Movement, peace and anti-war movements, to find symbolic shapes for their social and spiritual discontents and hopes".
