How to Make a Happening (CD)

Synopsis: “Simple in construction, yet profound in context, How to Make a Happening is Allan Kaprow delivering 11 rules on how, and how not, to make a Happening, an movement begun by Kaprow in the late fifties that is known for its unpredictability, open scores, and constantly-evolving form.

“On the first track, Kaprow speaks plainly into a microphone, delivering a private cut-to-the-chase style instruction on Happenings that is both informative and contradictory. Kaprow, known as a great teacher of the avant-garde (from Rutgers to Cal Arts to finally University of California, San Diego), delivers both a practical and theoretical how-to with an oftentimes dead-pan humor.

“On the second track, which is constructed like the first, Kaprow reads the program and notes of three recent Happenings (Soap, Calling, and Raining), which serve as loose instruction, as they involve improvisation and forces beyond human control, such as acts of nature and other uncontrolled environmental forces. These elucidations further provide a clear, if somewhat circumstantial, distinction of what does and does not constitute a Happening.”
–from the publisher

Primary Information’s How to Make a Happening is a reissue of an LP originally released by Mass Art in 1966, although due to the publisher’s ensuing bankruptcy, the album was not distributed until 1968 when Something Else Press put out a limited edition with a laminated and silk-screened cover by Alison Knowles. Each CD is packaged in a hand-silkscreened jewel case that replicates the edition by Alison Knowles and Something Else Press while preserving the original artwork carried out by Mass Art.

$ 45.00