Film Preservation and Presentation

In October 1966, Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) presented a series of artists' performances 9 EVENINGS: THEATRE & ENGINEERING, at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City. 9 EVENINGS is now recognized as a major event of the 1960s, and there is increasing demand for information about the performances. Raw documentary film and sound material from 9 EVENINGS has been in the E.A.T. archives for more than thirty years. E.A.T. has initiated a project to preserve this material and use it to make films on video that reconstruct each of the ten artists' performances as faithfully as the material permits. The entire series of 9 EVENINGS films will be made available for sale or rental to museums, libraries, and universities and for broadcast on cultural television channels.

The films of Öyvind Fahlström's "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" was and Robert Rauschenberg's "Open Score" have been completed. The film on John Cage's performance, "Variations VII", and David Tudor's "Bandoneon !" are in production.

Exhibitions:

We have just completed a documentary exhibition for an exhibition in Rome, Tribu' dell'arte, "The Story of Experiments in Art and Technology by Billy Klüver, 50 panels 40 x 50 cm each with a photograph and explanatory text on the history of the foundation from Klüver's first collaboration with Jean Tinguely in 1960 to the present.
This exhibition will travel to other venues in the future

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STATEMENT ON ART AND SCIENCE
by
Billy Klüver

Art and science have developed as separate, orthogonal disciplines ever since the beginning of the human race. Science relies on a whole set of mathematical conventions which explain and prove the existence of certain phenomena. The scientist may invent new theoretical language, but only as an extension of previous knowledge, well within accepted conventions of proof and explanation. His work is always an extension of a body of universal scientific knowledge. The artist has the freedom to take his work in any direction without being loaded down with any prior theory that he has to incorporate into the work. Creative ideas in art are not bounded by the previous history of art.

To try to build a bridge, whatever that can mean, is an impossibility. I have yet to meet a scientist who takes an interest in contemporary art, or an artist whose interest in science goes beyond the "ooh and ah" stage. Artists can use in their work some version of the findings of science -- for instance Rebecca Howland's interest in modeling the nuclear transport system of a cell; or James Rosenquist's use of Einstein's observation on the relative speed of objects. But I have never seen an artist who showed more than cursory interest in physical problems that concern scientists, like collisions of protons or the behavior of electrons in electromagnetic fields. Other considerations aside, there is not enough time in one lifetime to seriously pursue both disciplines.

I myself have advocated that artists work with engineers to include engineering in their palette. But when artists make use of engineering, only practical problems are addressed, not scientific ones.

No bridge can be built between art and science if that implies fusion of certain areas of activity or thought. The gap between art and science is here to stay. Only intellectual pollution can result by misguided attempts "to bridge the gap." This is not a moral or wishful question but a factual one.

Billy Klüver
Berkeley Heights, NJ
June 18, 2001
Text Copyright Billy Klüver 2001