a room, a body, a set of instructions: the birth of the happening

Allan Kaprow dissolves the art object in the late 1950s, replacing it with an event, a room, a body, a set of instructions, and the irreducible friction between them. His ‘happening,’ first staged in 1959 at New York’s Reuben Gallery as 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, divides the space into three rooms separated by semi-transparent plastic sheets, where painters, performers, and slide projections operate at the same time, and where participants receive instruction cards telling them when to move, sit, or applaud.…