Allan Kaprows Activities

Allan Kaprow is regarded as a key figure of the 1960s happening scene. Little known, however, are the 'activities' that he developed in California during the 1970s - exercises for couples, realised without an audience on the basis of a written score. They constitute an attempt to create a participatory art form intended to enable participants to engage actively in the shaping of interpersonal relationships. For the first time, the activities are explored with all their formal and thematic complexity, and discussed in detail. Examined in conjunction with the procedures and concerns of the social sciences and psycho-disciplines in the 1970s, they emerge as an independent, exciting contribution to a new discourse on intimacy.

• On Allan Kaprow's work after the Happenings
• New art- and cultural-historical perspectives on the participatory art of the 1970s

Clara Wörsdörfer, wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Kunstgeschichte und Musikwissenschaft der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz