Feigned Spontaneity: Funk Night and the Happening
Claes Oldenburg – “Snapshots from the City” (1960)
“There is a prevalent mythology about Happenings. It has been said, for example, that they are theatrical performances in which there is no script and “things just happen.” It has been said that there is little or no planning, control, or purpose. It has been said that there are no rehearsals. Titillating to some, the object of easy scorn to others, provocative and mysterious to a few, these myths are widely known and believed. But they are entirely false.” (Kirby 9)
Happenings are intrinsically misunderstood as they are consistently associated with what might be considered the spontaneous gesture. It has been argued, that this is what seems to attribute the happening a certain import. Such is the greater irony of these festivities. It becomes quite evident when one carefully considers artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine, that the element of planning is intimate to the happening. Behind and beside the spectacle, there exists a certain coordinating structure; a framework that, seemingly, is invisible to audience members. Those that participate chose a particular place, the time, duration, and number of audience members allowed (artists often intended that such happenings be extremely intimate. Thus, audience attendance was intentionally limited). Thematic elements are addressed, while leaving room for subtle variances. Perhaps a performer will ride a bike around the perimeter of the room three additional times. Quite simply, these are variations within a larger organizational matrix; within a greater structural framework:
“Happenings might be described as a purposefully composed form of theatre in which diverse alogical elements, including nonmatrixed performing, are organized in a compartmented structure”
Similarly, Funk Night, an event that has grown in proportion over the past few years, operates by a similar paradoxical logic. The event occurs the last Friday of every month at two prominent locations; the Bohemian National Home and the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, located on Rosa Parks, near Warren. Yet, despite the extensive planning, the event is usually attributed an aura of spontaneity. It is in seeming spontaneous that the event is attributed a certain significance.
It is in the tradition of social and cultural discourse that events are continually associated with some form of spontaneous action. This discourse is recalled in much of the conversation concerning the social movements occurring in Detroit in the late 1960s. Here the events that occurred at 12th and Clairmont in 1967 are explained in the context of a certain suddeness (which is to say, no context at all). Similarly, some mistakenly denote this very same year as the point of Detroit’s fall; a decline in population, employment, capital, etc. Ink has often been spilt on the immediacy of cultural and social movements. Such is the fate of much cliche discourse on the death and rebirth of Detroit. Such logic is the phasode by which Funk night operates.
The body provides more suitable examples by which one can understand the perceived spontaneity of such issues.
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