ABSTRACT
Later-May or June-at a Judson Church concert in which half the evening was devoted to individual improvisations, I invited Bob Morris to help me do some “moving.” We moved all the furniture in the lounge into the sanctuary (which was the playing area), including the filthy dusty carpet. Thoroughly irritated everybody by interfering with their activities, broke a leg off the couch, spilled ashes and sand inadvertently all over my black dress. This situation was definitely not satisfying. Was the difficulty in the nature of the materials? Could it be that a living room couch is not as “plastic” as a mattress? Hard materials versus soft-or more flexible-materials? (An absurd area of speculation?—like comparing the virtues of plastic or wood toilet seats?) Having completed the job I found myself with no ideas. In exasperation Bob left and in desperation I fell back on some of my more eccentric improvisatory techniques. (At that time I had not yet made the decision to abandon the loony bin and the NY subways as sources of inspiration.)
Decided to stick to mattresses. Began thinking about a sextet, six people plus a stack of single mattresses the height of a man. Meanwhile, was working on a duet with Bob Morris. Material for a man and woman, mildly gymnastic, explicitly sexual, that when condensed could be a duet (there was a performance opportunity coming up at which I
wanted to present something new) or when broken up could go into a pot for six people. Duet was called Part of a Sextet. (By the time it was finished, the larger projected piece had expanded to ten people, but I liked the corny pun on sex.)
August-Went to Stockholm with Bob. Shared a concert at the Moderna Museet in which I did solos and the duet; he did-among other things-Check, a piece for forty Swedes. I was very excited by that piece, never having experienced those exact circumstances before: A huge room 300 feet long by about 100 feet across-the center filled with chairs, most of them empty; on the periphery and also in the sea of chairs standing and sitting, the audience-about 800 strong; simple activities alternating in different parts of the room; Bob and I getting in and out of a box with a dozen faces looming over us; twelve people out of 800 knew what we were doing; the forty performers assembling at a signal into two groups marching determinedly thru the audience; darkness: a man running back and forth on a wooden platform at one end while I moved slowly in front of an image with vertical lines thrown by a slide projector at the opposite end of the space from where the man was running. Simple, undistinctive activities made momentous thru their inaccessibility. A “cheap trick” to play on an audience in excluding them from the action? Or rather another device designed to counter the venerable convention of serving it all up on a platter?
