Dick Higgins

On March 24, 1979, The Kitchen presented a two-part program dedicated to the work of various Fluxus artists. The programming began with the premiere of Alison Knowles’s “Natural Assemblages and the True Crow.” For the piece, Knowles engaged in a dialogue with her own taped voice, which read aloud selections from various natural history books. Simultaneously, violinist Michael Goldstein provided an improvised score while dancer Jessie Higgins executed a number of one-movement phrases by following instructions on index cards. The second part of the night’s programming consisted of forty rapid performances—most sixty seconds or less—by various Fluxus members, including Yoko Ono, George Brecht, La Monte Young, and Nam June Paik. Ken Friedman and Larry Miller coordinated this portion of the event.

"INVOCATION is Higgins' Satie movie... the purest attempt to clear art from any or all historical, esthetic, thematic, ornamental claptrap to regain the lost-eye consciousness." - Jonas Mekas

A comprehensive documentation of new art movements from 1945 to the present day. Beginning with the "Internationale Situationniste," "Cobra," "Spur," and "Wiener Gruppe" groups in Europe, and moving on to the international Happening and Fluxus movements, including the Viennese Actionists, and from 1970 onward to international Body and Performance Art, which also encompassed media art—film and video—the documentary presents film and photographic material from these art movements.

The film portrays a group of artists who since the early 1960s have completely disrupted our ideas of what art can be. In large part filmed in Venice in 1990, when many of the original Fluxus artists met to hold a large exhibition almost 30 years after the first highly untraditional Fluxus' performances. Features Eric Andersen, Philip Corner, Dick Higgins, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Ben Vautier, and many others.

Feature-length compilation program presenting 37 out of 41 original fluxfilms produced and directed in the 1960s by Fluxus artists, including George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Robert Watts, Paul Sharits, et al.

"Face Smiling. Hammering a brick. CU of an ear (moving?). Face twitching. Dancing on one leg. Rolls, twitches on the floor. Boxes the wall."

Higgins’s only feature-length film, THE FLAMING CITY, explores the dichotomy between the lifestyle of Higgins and his artist friends in SoHo, which was viewed as a threat to middle class American values, and Higgins’s well-heeled upbringing. The film employs several photographic techniques Higgins learned at the Manhattan School of Printing, including filters, hand-drawn patterns, and alteration of color. - Anthology Film Archives

A satire on business. We see a distinguished business man speaking gibberish, telephone ploes being ripped down to make room for beautiful farmlands, prices tumbling. I hoped the end would justify the means. –D. H.

This film belongs to Higgins' 'hard series', meaning that the formal structure is relatively inflexible. The colors shift from the normal to their complements, producing extraordinary after-images, and this is done to a pulse by means of over 3000 splices to the films. The sound is from a tape recording of the Ray Gun Specs at the Judson Church in 1960, and in which Higgins was one of the featured Happenings artists. –D. H.

Featuring home movie footage shot by Higgins and other material derived from his father, MEN & WOMEN & BELLS includes the recurring sound of the bells of Rostov-on-Don in Russia, lending it a mournful quality. — Anthology Film Archives

A double murder is committed–presumably. A sleepwalker is unaware where she is going or what the consequences of her actions are–presumably. The law investigates–presumably. Nothing is solved, or is it? Is there a suicide at the end? More mysterious than narrative. –D. H.

The scenario for what might have been quite a beautiful films is projected as a text. In between the blocks of text, two small girls romp, as if from another movie altogether. –D. H.