2016 saw the start of the project The Legacy of Allan Kaprow as part of the course in Tecniche Extramediali at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Frosinone, on the occasion of a double anniversary: sixty years after Jackson Pollock’s death and ten years after that of Allan Kaprow, visionary artist, creator of the term “happening” and pioneer of participatory art. The Legacy of Allan Kaprow was launched with the staging of an electronic happening: a hypertext site with the starting point of Kaprow’s essay The Legacy of Jackson Pollock, written in 1958 as a tribute to Jackson Pollock and destined to become the theoretical reference point of the happening. The website thelegacyofallankaprow.org is based on the final section of this essay. More than 50 words lead the user to works by artists invited to contribute with electronic actions, sounds, photographs, videos, text or links.
Furthermore, the prepositions in Kaprow’s text are animated by a series of sounds specially composed by Michele Sganga for the piano, turning the text into a genuine musical instrument capable of generating infinite random sound sequences.
After a second phase of the project – an exhibition at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Frosinone featuring the first presentation of the website and the construction of a replica of Kaprow’s Sweet Wall (1970), made of bricks, bread and strawberry jam whose building was the concrete expression of individual participation in a collective project – the third phase is now taking place at Rome’s AOCF58 gallery, where the project will be presented in its entirety through two videos, sixty images taken from the website and printed on paper, a text by Loredana Rea, a display of perishable materials from the reconstruction of the wall in Frosinone and the production of a special multiple exhibit: 100 numbered bricks used in the completed work.
The project includes contributions by Jiaxin Chen, Gabriele Cippitelli, Asia Dib, Laura Di Manno, Giovanna Fiacco, Iacopo Spaziani, Giuseppe Vinella and Pasquale Polidori. To date, the website has benefited from the collaboration of: Elisa Allegretti, artisti§innocenti, Luigi Battisti, Valeriana Berchicci, Patrizia Bonanzinga, Silvia Bordini, Diletta Borromeo, Carlo Caloro, Primarosa Cesarini Sforza, Jiaxin Brina Chen, claudioadami, Mila Dau, Daniela De Berardinis, Iginio De Luca, Cuono De Prosperis, Mary Desmond, Asia Dib, Laura Di Manno, Gabriella Fasanino, Giovanna Fiacco, Mauro Folci, Francesca Gallo, Jan Bernard Gijsman, Marinella Grasso, Frank Hornung, Paola Iannarilli, Francesco Impellizzeri, Michele Imperio, Rita Mandolini, Stefan Nestoroski, Paola Passarani, Beatrice Peria, Fabio Pistillo, Pasquale Polidori, Maria Grazia Pontorno, Francesco Proia, Irene Ranzato, Valerio Ricci Montani, Rossella Russo, Marco Santarelli, Federica Santoro, Giuseppe Sarra, Michele Sganga, Naoya Takahara, Annamaria Tanzi, Chiara Trivelli, Alberto Vannetti, Daniele Villa, Giuseppe Vinella, Alberto Zanazzo and Rosaria Zirri.
The Legacy of Allan Kaprow, curated by Pasquale Polidori, AOCF58, Associazione Operatori Culturali Flaminia 58, Rome, 10-21.04.2017
Immagini: (cover 1, 4) http://thelegacyofallankaprow.org, snap shot from website (2) The Legacy of Allan Kaprow, 2a fase del progetto, Accademia di Frosinone, 2016 (3) The Legacy of Allan Kaprow, 3a fase del progetto, AOCF58 – ASSOCIAZIONE OPERATORI CULTURALI FLAMINIA 58, 2017
