Symposium E.A.T. : "Créer" avec Nancy Perloff, Francine Snyder et Christophe Leclercq

Julie Martin's insistence on the fact that the artist didn't have to be restricted to a self-contained role

but

have, quote, skills and abilities that could be put at the service of society, end of quote,

is

one of the core ideas that has guided our interest

in

organizing this symposium and one that will undoubtedly be enriched by the conversations to take place in this room today and tomorrow. It is now my pleasure

to

welcome our first panelist to the stage for a conversation to be moderated by my colleague Martin Guinard. Thank you all for being here.

Hi, everyone.

So,

of course, we're sad that Julie Martin cannot be with us, but it's so amazing that we have that testimony and, again, have to say how

grateful

we are to her generosity, notably by opening the world of her archives

to

us.

So,

in this panel that is going to be on the creation and the running of EAT, maybe we can start with

a

quote from Robert Rauschenberg, who wrote in one of his notes in 67, asked the question, what would happen if artists and engineers started to work together to produce work that

could

not exist otherwise? That's actually a very good way to describe what EAT was trying to do

because it's

very rare in art history that you can find an initiative of such massive scale. When we talk about massive scales, in 67, there was

already

300 artists and about 75 engineers that were registering as part of it. And it grew up only three years later to have something like 5,000 members at its peak in 1970.

So,

and yet, this is not an institution, and that's going to be a very interesting point to explore. For a fact, Kluver writes in 66 to the engineers who had participated in nine evenings, we are against making an institution.

And

that had a lot of consequences, and there I quote him again. This means that our headquarter will not take the form of a workshop or a laboratory.

It

will only serve as a triad place where things can be tested.

That

gives a very

good

way of understanding, like, the kind of energy that was going through EAT.

So,

if it's not an institution, one might ask if it's a collective. And actually, we will have people like Michel Kuo, who will speak tomorrow, about how EAT

did

this very interesting operation of, namely, transforming a collective into a network.

And

to talk about how you run such a network, how you operate into a network, which does come with

an

increased amount of complexity. It's our greatest pleasure here

to

be able to speak with art historian Christophe Leclerc, who will describe

how

EAT doesn't have a single point of origin.

It

will, of course, be interesting as well to talk about the role of Robert Rauschenberg, who

was,

you know, not the only artist, as we said, but had such an important role as a catalyst, and his presence and absence is very felt through EAT. And for that, we have the luck of having Francis Snyder with us, who is the director of archives and digital

at

the Robert Foundation, Rochechenberg Foundation.

And

we'll be able to dig in.

So,

in the myriad of projects that there is, Nancy Perloff, who is curator of modern art and country collections at

the

Getty Research Institute, you're trained as a musicologist and as an art historian, and you pursue scholarship on Russian and European modernism, and on avant-garde composers such as John Cage and David Tudor. Sorry.

Your

expertise in visual poetry and its sonic phenomena culminated in a monograph, Concrete Poetry, a 21st Century Anthology, that was published with Reaction Book in 2020.

And

you are also the curator of the exhibition Sensing the Future Experiments in Arts and Technology,

which

was accompanied by a catalogue co-edited with Michel Kuo, who will be with us tomorrow,

and

exhibition that we all invite you to see in its

second

version at Luma. So, please welcome

Nancy

Perloff.

Don't

worry. No, no, I will manage the time.

This

has been an incredible opportunity for all of us in different ways, and I just don't want to take too much time right now other than to thank the team at Luma for a meticulous and creative and imaginative work that they did with the exhibition at the Getty Research Institute. The installations you'll see in the current show at Luma, we did not have the space to do that. So take advantage of those parts of the show just to enjoy some of the very special opportunities. These are all quite unique and worth seeing. I'm sorry, yeah, and worth seeing.

So I just want to say that I'm thrilled the exhibition is up for a little bit longer, and I hope people go and see it, enjoy the Andy Warhol pillows, and all my thanks to the Luma team.

So

I am going to speak about a particular project, later lesser known project, part of this symposium theme, called Children and Communication. Decades before the internet, the EAT project called Children and Communication used 1960s technology

to

help children communicate with each other.

Let

me step back a minute now for context and talk briefly about projects outside art, and we got an introduction from Julie Martin already. In the early 1970s, Billy Kluver and Robert Whitman turned increasingly to projects involving a multidisciplinary team that addressed issues of social concern. We've begun to talk about that. The first such project was entitled Projects Outside Art,

and

it was tasked with organizing an exhibition, and this is Robert Whitman and Rauschenberg's words, an exhibition of five realizable projects in the environment, that's important, to demonstrate the possibilities for society of the collaboration between artists, engineers, and scientists, end quote.

Projects

for this exhibition ranged from

social

issues such as education, health, housing, environmental control, food production.

For

Kluver and Whitman, projects outside art meant an extension

of

previous EAT efforts to stretch the boundaries of technology.

It

was also an invitation to the contemporary artist to bring insight, intelligence, and energy to contribute to areas of society outside art. So this notion that artists' projects

could

stimulate the engineer in new ways of looking at technology.

After

a spate of proposal vetting, three projects emerged as demonstration projects. City agriculture, children and communication, and recreation and play.

On

this slide, you see examples from the first, city agriculture.

More

specifically, city agriculture was a proposal for a closed environment, nutrient-feeding vegetable greenhouse, intended for installation atop the automation house, which was EAT's upper Manhattan headquarters.

What

you see here are drawings, and I meant to say this at

the

very beginning. Everything you're seeing in this, in this talk comes from the experiments in art and technology archive.

And

this is a particularly beautiful point pen drawing on tracing paper. And the walls, these are environment control systems. The walls themselves are made of double skin, inflated plastic sheeting with climate control.

There

was a feasibility study that took place in 71. And this project, city agriculture, was supposed to be executed by EAT

in

collaboration with the environmental research laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

And

I will be honest in saying here,

and

we have many scholars and specialists who can help answer these questions, that I'm not aware of whether city agriculture actually got installed. I know Nina Wexelbad is in the audience. There are others who can answer that question. But I just wanted to lay it out as an example of one of these socially minded projects that EAT and, you know, help from,

you

know, a whole range of others developed as part of their lesser known but later important technical projects. Here, we see children sending messages on the telewriter and facsimile equipment.

So,

children and communication

was

active from February through early April 1971. And there's a fascinating timeline in the EAT archive that goes through weeks by weeks just explaining where they were in terms of equipment for the children, made available, what was being used. I mean, it's very, very detailed for that period. So, it's a relatively short period but one that was very important. This was a project in which children ages 6 through 14 worked together.

Two

EAT staff members, Riddie Birchfield and Barry Kaplan,

familiar

names to people at all?

Riddie

Birchfield maybe, yeah. They showed the children how to use the equipment

and

then they left the children free to explore. Marcia Newfield, a fellow at Bell Labs and a student at the Institute for Developmental Studies at NYU was invited to observe the children's activity.

Children

worked at one of two identical communications environments in Manhattan. One on the Upper West Side,

the

Automation House at 49 East 68th

and

one in Lower Manhattan, the EAT Loft at 9 East 16th Street. EAT took as its responsibility to fill each environment with equipment.

What

you're looking at now is a progress report. So, you can see the way it's moving. There's a lot of collecting of data and information and observation as this goes along. So, here we have a progress report which begins by introducing projects outside art.

The

first quote which I show you here

is

useful for clarifying the artist's role more broadly. Quote, inherent in each of the projects is the belief that the artist is a positive force in perceiving how technology can be translated into new situations to better serve the needs of people and to provide variety and enrichment to life.

So,

very important, it's called projects outside art but the artist continues to play a key role as indicated there.

Another

quote also from this progress report, 1971, says that the two work environments afford new possibilities for putting children of different backgrounds and geographic locations in contact with each other in a way that is interesting to the children themselves.

So,

I think that's actually a very interesting and result of the way children communication was set up. And from the pictures of the children, you get some sense of the diversity. This next slide

is

a document from the EAT archive. This is one called Children's Communication Center.

And

here, the different technologies are identified. So, if I pull out a couple of excerpts, it says, spaced around the perimeter of each environment are ten telephones, two teleprinters, two facsimile machines, two telewriters. And then, in finer print, there's an explanation of what each of those technologies or pieces of equipment do. Just as a couple of examples for you, the teleprinters allow for instantaneous two-way typewriter transmissions. The facsimile machines, using ordinary telephone connections, provide faithful black and white reproductions of printed, drawn or photographed material. And if you study the EAT archive, you'll find there are

hundreds,

possibly more drawings that the children

connected

each other with, created for one another to observe. And sometimes they have text and sometimes they're, you know, just independent. But that part is also really striking.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I'm just about to conclude. So, the quote you see at the top, the excerpt says,

the

equipment area, I'm sorry, yeah. The equipment area in each center is contained within an unusually shaped tent-like environment, designed by artist Robert Whitman.

The

space is lighted from above by multicolored broad beam spotlights. And my last slide really says it all in the picture. You can see the tent-like or really tent environment in which these children are working together with the technologies. And you can imagine colorful lights coming from above.

So,

I just have a quote I want to end with and then that'll be my close. In its democratic treatment of children who worked on site, responding to each other's drawings and writings through the application of new technologies, children and communication gave its young participants an early glimpse of the information age. Thank you.

Thank

you so much, Nancy. Thank you. And it's quite beautiful to see the two examples that you take, like this sort of

little, you

know, shell where people take a refuge to experiment with other technology. And just as a note, I don't know what it's worth, but

when

Fujiko Nakaya came to visit the exhibition about the project of the roof garden, she told me that the aim was to

give

every New Yorker one tomato

per

and then she couldn't remember if it was day, month or year. So that remains in the note. But

thank

you so much. It's a pleasure now to

discuss

with Francine Snyder. Francine Snyder, who specializes in artists and museum archives, digital systems, and in fostering research and scholarship on contemporary cross

-disciplinary

creative practices. Since 2015, you serve as director of archives and digital at the Robert Rush Foundation.

And

you have been responsible for the Foundation Archive with goal of increasing access and use

of

archival material.

You

have written and presented widely on archives and technology. This fall, your publication, I Don't Think About Being Great, selected writing by Robert Rauschenberg published with the Foundation and Yale University Press, will be released

highlighting

Rauschenberg's loves of words.

Thank

you very much for being with us.

Thank

you very much.

So, I

want to first thank Luma for having this symposium.

I

want to thank the translators for putting my words into French so everyone can hear. And it was really great to see all the EAT archives that are at the Getty. It's really fabulous for us to see. It's an honor to be in a room with so many EAT experts, particularly because I am not an EAT expert. So, I'm really looking forward to learning from everyone that's here. I am an expert in Robert Rauschenberg, which is who I'm going to talk about today. How he was an artist that influenced the beginnings of EAT. We're going to talk very briefly about his art and technology works

and

how his love of collaboration and strong friendships

and

generosity to causes he cared about influenced the beginnings of EAT.

Okay,

so in 1966, Robert Rauschenberg was perfectly primed for a project like EAT.

And

to have an understanding of this, let's step back to 1964, the Venice Biennale, where he won the Golden Lion. And we see him here in the white suit next to Alan Solomon,

who

was a director. Buffalo II is next to us. This is an example of the works that were in the Venice Biennale. And this moved him into the international spotlight. And the anecdotes are is that this sort of startled him. He didn't realize what this honor was. And his response was to call his studio in New York and tell them to destroy all the silk screens so that he couldn't repeat his success. And this pushed him into performance, collaboration, and learning more about technology.

However,

this love for technology and performance and collaboration did start before the Venice Biennale.

And

here we have

the

origin story of Jean Tingley's Amish to New York

in

MoMA, New York's Stolzbjergarden. Rauschenberg participated in this. This is where he met Billy Kluver and we see Tingley

and

Kluver and Rauschenberg there in the park. Here is Money Thrower, Tingley's HTNY, which was a rare survivor of this event.

And

then I also wanted to show at the same time he's doing Dry Cell, which is in the exhibition downstairs, a rare work where it

absorbs

sound rather than having sound

come

out of it.

At

this time, Rauschenberg was also participating in Judson Dance Theatre.

And

this was a groundbreaking group of choreographers, visual artists, and composers who were experimenting with everyday movements in traditional forms.

And

this is where his roots of collaboration, building relationships came in. Many of the participants from the Judson Dance Theatre

were

involved in Nine Evenings. Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, and there's one of her performances, which Rauschenberg is in on the left. Julia Child, Alex Hay, one of his performances is seen in the contact sheets. Deborah Hay and Robert Whitman. Rauschenberg also began working more intensely with Billy Kluver, and one of the most ambitious technology works is Oracle. So ambitious that

two

of us are going to talk about it today.

His

notes

show

an interaction of collaboration, performance, and technology.

I

am not interested in doing this thing with a bunch of technical stuff, dolling it up.

It

has to be a collaboration rather than an exploitation.

Okay,

so

please

be generous with the translations on this because it was done with technology. Here's Rauschenberg. Oracle, the only major work Rauschenberg has shown in the past two years, is an ensemble of five pieces of mobile sculpture. One of them with a shower, all of them with radios controlled from a central console, each radio scanning the broadcast band independently.

The

result? A complicated collage of sound.

I

also wanted the sense of a sound surface, the way the painting was.

I

asked Billy Kluver to help me with

the

sound once it got that large.

Because

this wasn't anymore a matter of just taking a couple of portable radios and knocking off a few knobs and tying some strings and wires and things to control.

The

combination of performance, collaboration, technology, and friendship

was

a perfect place for Rauschenberg to be with the creation of EAT. So we

skipped

right over the press conference of nine evenings images, but that took place in his loft in 381 Lafayette Street. And you saw Courtney speak about this earlier.

He

created and designed the poster.

He

attended rehearsals, and this is the technical rehearsal at Berkeley School Gymnasium.

And

he provided studio and experimental space for participants. And this is Steve Paxton in his studio experimenting with the plastics. Rauschenberg's work, Open Score, is also well documented in the exhibition downstairs. And here we see additional archival

traces

of the tennis match.

As

well as his thoughts on the final sequence

and the

infrared performance right here. Mass movements touch someone

who

is not touching you.

And

then this is where he's

carrying

Simone Forte in the bag

and

his notes on that. Rauschenberg participated by showing up every night, running errands, and relaying messages when he was not busy directing Open Score or taking

part

in other pieces.

His

generosity in EAT continued after it was established. In December 1966, there was a benefit

event

at Leo Castelli Gallery, and people paid money, donned an outfit that he fashioned consisting of a coat.

So

Kluver founded the Salvation Army.

He

had them put their foot in a sneaker, on a pillow, and photographed them as an artwork. And one of 75 is Billy Kluver over here.

In

June 1967, there was a giant model airplane benefit auction for EAT,

and

the exhibition took place in Rauschenberg's studio.

And

then in October 1967, the press conference at 381 Lafayette as well. This is a statement that we've seen in the exhibition. And previously, clouds were the theme, Rauschenberg's silkscreened paper dresses to wear during the festivities. Julie Martin has said, the dresses were made of paper, were seen as innovative in those days, so we too were part of the new technology.

Can

I go back? Yes.

Anyways.

Before that, you saw some of his edits, and I just want to say as chairman and vice president, Rauschenberg also participated in administrative work.

However,

he continued to work in technology all throughout this in a 1967 postcard from Billy Kluver checking on him,

likely

for the revolver series,

which

we saw earlier. These were plexiglass discs with silkscreen images the viewer could spin.

And

here's a little... The chassis has just been delivered from the fabricator.

This

is the first time Rauschenberg and his assistant have seen the five discs revolving.

I

really love that reaction to the technology working. In addition, Rauschenberg went on to complete three monumental technology works with engineers. Here we see Solstice,

which

was designed to exhibit in the automation house. And we see this spot right there.

This

is just a really quick

illustration

of how it works. Soundings, which is a responsive sound-activated installation. And this is actually on view right now

at

the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. And Mud Muse, a room-sized vat of mud that is bubbling with an internal feedback loop. In 1970, Rauschenberg resigned from the EAT board. He writes to Billy Kluver,

I

will continue my interest in your projects and can be less complicated about being your friend.

So,

friends, they remained. I end this presentation with a photo of both of them in Rauschenberg's loft in 1989. And they did continue to collaborate on technology and works throughout their lifetime.

Thank

you.

Thank

you, Francine. It's indeed quite amazing to see the reaction that Rauschenberg has with those sliding doors that look uncannily like some works that you can see at LUMAS, as Christophe were

noticing

by Castanella. There's one actually quote that I like a lot that Robert Rauschenberg said to Barbara Rose one day, which was like Kluver gave me the suggestion that possibilities in technology were endless. Of course, it was right.

Its

possibility was like being handed a ghost bouquet of promises. And I think like you really gave us like a hint of this ghost bouquet of promises that

technology

was offering to

him.

Thank you.

We

now have the pleasure of

listening

to Christophe Leclin. Christophe Leclin, who's a teacher, a critic, and a researcher in contemporary art history. Christophe, your research focuses on social and environmental history of art, and more specifically on the life of artworks.

You've

worked on the conception and study of archives linked to contemporary creation, such as Experimental in Art and Technology, to which you dedicated your doctoral thesis. And you collaborate with the Anarchives Association, that is directed by Anne-Marie Duguin, notably on publication devoted to the artist Fujiko Nakaya, who was shown here at LUMAS.

You

also directed the ERC AIM project, An Anquiry into the Modes of Existence, that was led by Bruno Latour from 2011 and 2015.

And

we have the immense pleasure of working together on the exhibition

Reset

Modernity, that was at Karlsruhe ZKM 2016, where you also

co

-edited the catalogue.

Thank

you, Christophe,

for

being here with us.

Thank

you, Martin. It's working, yes. So Julie spoiled a bit of my presentation, but I will do it. Thank you, Julie. You may see us, and I miss you. Experiments in Art and Technology is not an easy organization to understand from an artistry perspective. Its innovations, and in particular the use of new technologies, fostered a recognition of collaborative working methods

that

ran counter the glorification of individual artists, which was

and

remains prevalent

in

the contemporary art world.

To

this context, a further chronological difficulty, according to me, may be added. When did EAT really begin? Various accounts may be given of its beginnings, depending on whether one refers to the official creation of EAT that Julie was mentioning in 66,

or

to the development of its philosophy, its spirit, so to speak. A good while earlier.

This

question, among others, led me to create this EAT Datascape with my colleague, Paul Girard and Daniele Guido. Starting with multiple activities mentioned by Billy Kluver with Julie Martin in the story of EAT, the Datascape was an attempt to better understand collaborations between artists and engineers

through

the study of the life of their collective work.

So

let us first consider the most widely recognized date,

that

of the official creation of the organization on September 26, 1966, in the context of the Nine Evenings

Theatre

and Engineering Festival in New York. As Norma Lewin reminds us in her seminal thesis, yes, I will provide a few historical documents, I think, that are important to the history of EAT. This creation certainly responded to the necessity for a formal organization to bail out the debt from the Nine Evenings,

but

was also a reaction to a shared interest to further the kind of experimentation and dialogue.

Some

felt had begun to have something more developed from Nine Evenings.

Quoting

the lawyer, Franklin Konigsberg, who went to Albany to register the organization, Lawen writes, Konigsberg recalled the group thought it a good name to defy bourgeois values.

The

story would seem to be more complex than Konigsberg recollection, however, so Julie told the story. Earlier in her thesis, Lawen notes that the choices of title for the Nine Evenings Theatre and Engineering was the result of a desire not to refer to the event as art and technology.

She

quotes Cluver,

The

name came out of long arguments about what we were doing. The day art and technology was left behind was a day of relief for everyone.

Curious.

Cluver provides further details on the story behind the organization's name in his article, Working with Rauschenberg.

A

very

interesting

article. So you can read it with me. The origin of the name as its own story. We wanted something mundane, like foundation for artists and engineers.

When

our lawyer Frank Konigsberg came back from Albany, he informed the group that our preferences were either illegal or had been taken already,

and

that he had come up with and registered the name Experiments in Art and Technology.

And

that was that. Everybody, there must have been at least 20 of us, gasped at the word experiments.

And

we have the explanation. As we saw it, an artwork is either finished or it isn't. And the public

should

not be subjected to incomprehensible scientific or technical experiments.

But

anyway, the name has stuck.

So

why then do Cluver with Martin date the history of EAT, not to 66 but to 60, with Jean-Tingeli's performance, Homage to New York, that you quickly presented and I will quickly present

as

well,

in

their story of EAT? During this performance,

a

machine programmed to self-destruct in 27 minutes was presented in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The

machine was created in collaboration with the engineers Billy Cluver and Harold Hodge, with the help of the artist Robert Brie and the contribution of Robert Rauschenberg, you mentioned, the money thrower machine. And Rauschenberg was deeply impressed by the results. This performance, which is

one

of the most important of the 20th century in my mind,

because

it already evokes our consumer society and

articulate

chaos and order of programming and

uncertainty

in a way which

will

really be worked by Bob Rauschenberg, was featured, this work was featured extensively in the exhibition in EAT in Seoul, for instance, unless here as I see.

Here are

photographs from the exhibition in Seoul.

And

Cluver, who is not even mentioned in the description of Homage to New York in the current exhibition devoted to Pontius Sulten, Jean-Tingue Gullier and Niquet-Saint-Phal

at

the Grand Palais,

wrote

a particularly detailed account of the MoMA performance, the Garden Party,

which

leads us to the conclusion that

without

the engineers, there could have been no machine of the complexity or on the scale of that displayed in 60.

The

origins of EAT could therefore be found here too.

Let

us now turn to a third and final proposal,

which

I submit to you here. We might place EAT's

true

date of birth in the long collaboration between Rauschenberg and Cluver

on

the work entitled Oracle, presented by Francine.

Now

part of the French public collection at Centre Pompidou.

I

personally would have loved to see it in this exhibition given the central place it has in EAT ethos and oeuvre.

It

was originally conceived, created and exhibited as an interactive sound environment composed of five gifts from the streets, as Rauschenberg mentioned.

And

this work questioned the infiltration of technology in our daily life, and more specifically here, the relation between seeing and hearing, what the critic William Bergson described, for instance, as a laboratory for testing perception.

It

was this work as described by Cluver, I will conclude,

in

his article Working with Rauschenberg, that convinced the two future co-founders of EAT

to

propose to other artists and engineers the principle of a one-to-one collaboration,

which

might take various forms naturally, precisely on the occasion of the nine evenings we start with.

This

kind of collaboration recognizes a more active role played by the artist and the engineers alike,

in

shaping the environment,

which

is a very core idea of this group, as you mentioned, Nancy.

Of

course, in this case, it would be necessary to refine, as I began to do in my doctoral thesis, the typology of the different ways artists and engineers are collaborating or working together, ranging from the simple communication of information or materials,

in

the case of Andy Warhol,

I

think, or to the delegation of action and the genuine collaboration that was both theorized and promoted by EAT,

and

exemplified by Rauschenberg and Cluver's collaborative work on Oracle,

which

led the former to invite the latter to co-sign the work,

which

did what he did as a sound engineer, if I'm not wrong. Thank you.

Thank

you, Christophe.

So,

as we know, the origins is a myth, and here you offer us a pluralization of

when

EAT actually starts, and actually it's a very

compulsive

argument, the idea that Oracle might have been an excellent way of

describing

how, one of the very serious propositions for defining the beginning of EAT. I do appreciate that when you talk about the artists and engineers collaborating or working together, you put a little nuance there,

and

it gives me the wish to actually ask you a little bit to the three of you actually, maybe more to Christophe and Nancy, like how

did the

collaboration got set into place in such a vast organization?

I

just,

okay,

good.

Yeah,

yeah, there we go. Thank you. Yeah, I do want to hear more from Christophe and Francine about this idea of collaboration, but one thing I found fascinating about children and communication, you know, as relatively small a project as it was, the word collaborate is not used in any of the documents that I looked at.

I

mean, there may be instances. It's they're working together. They're not playing together. They're working together. And that seemed to me a very interesting omission that tells us a lot about this later period. One other quick point I wanted to make is that children and communication was not supposed to be like a school.

They

really did everything they could to generate working together with technologies. But it was not modeled after a school and they emphasized that.

But

maybe you want to go back to the collaboration part.

Yeah. So

you were asking how these... No, but how did the process of collaboration work? And again, like, it's so versatile. It's such a huge network and you have sets of skills that are

so

diverse and hard to, you know, bring together on the around the table. So I'm asking like, what were the ways? What were the methods? What were the dispositives that allowed to create those kinds of collaborations?

Maybe

I can find a video on that, on this matching system.

Can

I have the image

of... It

will come

later.

This is a great thing with an interactive site is that... No, it's just because I was interested in this matching system that Julie was talking about.

And

it has its own history as well.

So

it started with, if I'm not wrong, Sue Arnett and Fred Wildauer till 68.

They

were sending forms to

engineers.

They could fill in and then later on it changed with a second system

with this

edge-notched card, if I'm not wrong. The yellow one. Can you describe

a little bit

that card system that we can see here?

As

you can see, you have

the

name... If I'm not

wrong, I

have to turn

on

my computer. You have specific field of technology

that

can be... That correspond to one engineers. And then in this second and third system,

which

is the blue edge-notched card, they were using needles. Needles.

Is

it still needles, yeah? Needles to select the cards. So the positive answer are the cards that are staying on the table.

Oh,

wow. See? Okay, so you could lift it up and like the other ones would like... Yes.

So

you can combine two different criteria, not only one of course.

Okay. So

one is for instance the technology that the artist is looking for, let's say radio.

And

the second information is about location. Are you close to New York? Are you living in New York or

further?

And this kind of information, you see?

So

it was...

I

like this system. I wrote an article on that because it's a combination of, I don't know, handmade system and already the beginning of

the

informatics. The

ancestor of the matching

app, pretty much. Maybe you can...

I

mean, it also has an element of the ready-made in it because they're using knitting needles. So they're taking elements that they have there to kind of create this technology and I love that.

Yeah,

that's true actually. I mean, because it was a lot about available technologies, but it was also a lot about creating technologies that had never been existed, that didn't exist before. And that's one of the great

aspects

of EAT.

I

see. Actually, still talking about like that way it was organized, Francine, like

there

was... So there was this

very

astute matching card system, but there was another person that was really like important in this matching system. That was Robert Rauschenberg. Can you talk to us a little bit about

how

did he involve himself? I mean, you know, like not only for his own artwork, but also for

other

artists coming to Bell Labs.

Yeah.

I mean, Rauschenberg was an artist throughout his whole life that really was like collaboration was almost his middle name. He...

And

part of that reason it was so successful is because

he

had a respect for everybody that he worked with

and

everybody had an equal part. And he really supported making sure that

fellow

creatives or engineers had the same sort of billing that he would have. He used his position

to

bring people up with him into a circle.

So

he wanted everybody involved in everything he was doing. And that's... You could see that evidence in

with

the Judson Dance Theater bringing them into Nine Evenings, bringing that performance in, making that just as important. And he did that throughout his career.

He

always wanted, you know, he and Billy Kluver

spoke

throughout their lives. He continued to bring him in to ask him about technology and continued to support them in

other

ways. That photo of them

at

the very end was actually at a book signing for Billy Kluver's book. So, you know, just sort of making sure that

everybody

was successful around him.

That's

quite

beautiful. But

actually like this one important piece where he shines by his absence, that is the Pepsi Pavilion in Osaka. And so why is that?

Why

did...

Well,

we don't have exact evidence.

He

didn't... We

have a hypothesis.

He was busy.

He's busy.

You know, and that's the evidence that we saw in that letter where he resigned. And he resigned shortly after. So, Julie has mentioned that he did attend a few of the first planning meetings. But 1970 is when he moved down to Captiva, Florida, changed where his studio was.

He

shifted into other modes of art making. And we can theorize that he just didn't have the time commitment that he needed to have

to

have something like that happen. He did at the 1997 retrospective in Guggenheim Bilbao bring some of that technology back. He had the fog, commissioned the fog outside of that. So, he always kept

that

as part of his work, you know, the connections.

But I

think he was busy. I mean, coming on this, actually, this notion of... We're talking about Rosenberg, then of course there's so many... Kestav, do

you

want to add something? No, because we were discussing these quotes.

We

found...

Ah,

oui. I don't know if I can show it, but...

But

I think it's important too.

Sure.

Well,

he

said...

So,

it's an interview which happened later on.

And what

happened? Everything seems possible, asked Barbara Rose.

And

he answered, we frightened everyone.

It

wasn't economics. You are talking about a company that could be sued

by

the government for several billions of dollars

and

never even blink.

It

was fear. Fear of creation. Insecurity about change.

The

whole thing just collapsed.

People

were suing Billy Cluver because of EAT and I

had

to sell more paintings to keep Billy from going to jail.

Something

like 19 brand new patents that were direct results of events in nine evenings of theater and engineering

went

to the credit of the engineers

of

the respective companies. For example, how I painted my shoes with the product

that

showed up,

etc.

And what he did for soundings contributed to a cure for deafness that is almost perfect now, which is super interesting. Because we have a second example of

Fujiko

Nakaya's frog.

Of

something which was developed in the field of art and which is then used outside art. Outside art to become like...

Yeah.

That's actually very interesting. Although I'm surprised by the gravitas of this quote.

I

mean, it's quite intense. That being said,

I

mean, Rauschenberg is, of course, very important in this project, but he's

only

one of the many artists that they are, contributors that they are. And actually, it's a question I'd like to ask to you, Nancy. Like, what's the notion of authorship?

The

way it got ventilated between artists and engineers, like,

was

the notion of authorship important, you think, in

the

project that you've studied? And, you know, especially when you're

looking

at a project with young children and

communication. I

think that's a wonderful question, actually.

Because Nine

Evenings was clearly about authorship.

There

was no question about who the engineer was and particularly who the artist was, but whether a dancer, a composer, a visual artist. We knew and everybody there knew who had done what. However, when you get to the Pepsi Pavilion, it's not as clear. It's not broadcasted or communicated in such a strong way as for something like Nine Evenings. So there are composers and engineers working behind the scenes. But that doesn't mean those who attended the Pepsi Pavilion actually knew that David Tudor was responsible. Or another engineer was responsible. So this authorship thing, I think, is actually a fascinating question that would merit really a longer study.

But certainly, children and communication. In the documents that I've reviewed, I have not read a single reference to an individual child. This was Gary or this, I mean, there's no reference. It's all the children. And that's how it's written about. So it's a very good question for future work, I think, on EAT. How

would

you answer to the question

of authorship? Now, this question

of authorship is really interesting because, as I mentioned, this idea of Rosenberg to propose to Kluver to co-sign the work, not as an artist. So you can co-sign a work and not be considered that the artist is signed as sound engineer. It's really interesting. And I think

I

was presenting my work in a seminar and

Franck

Lebovici, you know him,

he's

really interested in this kind of social artistry. And he was saying, yes, why we don't have this kind of credits we have in the cinema? I see Verena who knows what is cinema. So you have the director,

you

have people in charge of the

light,

blah. Why don't we have this? He's the artist, no problem. There's a list of people that are just embedded

in

the story.

I

don't know.

I

mean, actually, I'm going to quote from memory here. But I think that Kluver had a very interesting way of describing these collaborations where he's saying that

a

true collaboration between artist and engineer could only develop when both sides understand each other.

but

in the meantime, attitude should be toward engineers working on the artist's initiatives

and

on his directions. On the one hand, we're not interested in artists,

and

there are many, who will comment something, do this for me, without interaction,

back

and forth, of ideas between him and the engineer. The relationship must be constructive and inventive of both sides.

That's

a quite beautiful

way,

actually, to like feed into like the sort of,

in

French,

you

say generic colophon ideas. Credits. Credits, thank you. Credits. To the crediting. Credits.

But

which also like leads to like, like the elephant in the room sort of question maybe to conclude, which is that

EAT

gathers so many

incredible

figures, extremely like superstars, Rauschenberg, Warhol was not part of EAT, but he was so close to Kluver. Famous, you know, like we can talk about Deborah Hay, about like a whole set of really well-known choreographers, and yet it seems to be a fairly,

I

wouldn't say an unknown movement, but it's almost like one that is in the footnotes of like major books as a side thing. How come do you think it's not, it didn't get like a more central

piece

of attention within the way we write,

you

know, about that period?

Well,

I first want to say,

I

think a really great example of that was down in the exhibition where you saw the artists' submissions and it was Eva Hess

and

Capro and like all of these people that

were

there. Like Donald Judd, I think was there, I mean, I think that is pretty fantastic.

I

don't have a good answer for that, but I would be curious on

a

theory that I'm going to throw out right now. We like those theories there.

Yes,

I think

they can,

yeah.

I

wonder if it's about the time, it's the idea of what technology was in the 60s.

And

if you look at art history and you look at when photography started and it was sort of

not

seen as art.

It

was not seen as important and it wasn't really talked about until

you

get much later in art history. And

perhaps

it's that technology is getting its own right in the theory of art history.

Like

it's finally coming into

a

place where it's discussed not just in small forums that are interested in technology, but integrated into art historical discourse as a whole. More so than, you know, in the 60s it was seen as fringe, right?

So

a difficulty to recognize. Recognize the importance. The importance, but also like to

name

what was happening. Yeah.

And

the importance outside of specialized audiences.

The

importance in general audiences. And it was panned at the time as well. So

it

wasn't seen as

an

event of importance at the time.

Right?

It's only later historically that we're seeing that. I see.

Do

you have, do you want to propose another theory? No, I think it's, I think it's very interesting and I think it helps us try to, I mean it's, it's puzzled me for a long time why so many fellow art historians, fellow musicologists, colleagues have never heard of EAT.

It

just always seems so surprising. But I would just argue in part it's because Billy Kluver used language in maybe intentionally, maybe not, slippery ways. So if you try to investigate what projects outside art really means, it's not so easy.

And

similarly if we go back to 1966 when we had the exhibitions, the machine as seen at the end of the mechanical

age. And

you also have some more beginnings. Billy Kluver wanted the awards to go to engineers. He didn't want those awards to go to artists per se. It was artists but choosing engineers. So what I'm trying to argue is that there was a little bit of a slippery back and forth going on in the communication that Billy Kluver himself gave

to

the outside world. And that may have exacerbated or kind of enhanced this whole issue difficulty. Yeah.

Well

that's quite interesting. So like it would have pushed maybe more on the engineer side community than on the artistic one. And Christophe,

like as we need to conclude.

If I'm not wrong, the idea of

giving

the benefits to the engineer was

because

there were not enough engineers in EAT

collective.

So they wanted to attract more engineers. Yes. I read that.

I don't know if

it was a privilege. It was more a practical reason to attract more engineers. But what I would like to say, I mean working on this topic for 20 years, I saw this kind of increase of interest. And I would say that now it's part of history. Maybe it's

not

taught in art school. I don't know. I'm doing that.

You're doing it.

But given the difficulty you mentioned, I mean

it's

collaboration. So you have two engineer artists. You are working with

new

kind of piece called environment. You don't even know how to name them.

It's

highly difficult to preserve them. So there's

layers

of difficulties. But you see MoMA and Pompidou, they just bought the Nine Evenings films. So

I

witnessed all this increase of interest and now it's more and more known. And for me, according to me, now they are in art history. Even if

it's...

And the biggest difficulty, you know,

as

a

professor

in art history, you know, we love categories. So minimalist art, pop art. And as you said, during the Nine Evenings, John Giorno was behind the camera.

Yes.

Karl-André was providing props for Robert Morris and Yvonne Rainer. Simon

Forty is

in the burlap sack. And actually that's something that we'll be able to like discuss about later on with artist Karl-Chiang, who's here. I mean this is

especially

interesting when you think that, I mean there was a crisis of the objects in the 60s and the 70s, artists wanted to be out of

object

that like had contained form. And Christoph, you've written extensively about these artists who tried to create an environment rather than like a contained

self

-sustained structure, autonomous, so-called autonomous structure. And so it's just very interesting that in EAT that

was

doing so many takes, so many experiments on like trying to get out of the object hood

in

parallel to other movements that got the message easier, that it took, you know, like it took maybe more time to learn. And it's interesting as well to see that

very

often that crisis of the object was connected to certain Marxist critique, right, of being against like a consumption society or sort of fetishization of the community. that cannot really be argued for EAT in the sense that it's as part of a huge

corporation

that has the means of like a big tech, a big science company. And therefore like, you know, like that,

it

takes on a very different tangents toward like that kind of crisis of the object. But it is gaining recognition, notably to the work that you're doing.

And

we want to thank you again for this wonderful conversation. Thank you.

Thank

you.

We

have time to take one or two questions from the audience.

Does

anybody want to ask a question?

Yes,

Val? Okay.

Yes,

you do. I'll bring it to you.

So

about the crisis of the object.

I'm

just going to put it out here as I'm just thinking about it that even those movements somehow managed to produce things that were collectible by museums. Even, you know, despite the critique, Marxian or purely artistic as it may be. And so museums found a way to collect those objects and therefore they became historicized earlier. Whereas with

the

kind of works that EAT produced, that was much harder. You got like fragments and bits and pieces of non-functioning machines. But there was little that was actually collectible. And that contributed to

the

fact that it was harder for museums to historicize and contextualize those works.

A

piece of the puzzle maybe.

Thank

you. Thank you very much.

I'm just going to

add that the EAT product, it just doesn't fit in that box. Like that art historical box with all those things. It's a lot of remnants and

pieces

left. So I think that's a really great comment. Super.

So

we're going to take a break and we'll be back in 10 minutes

to

move forward with our evening. Again, thank you Nancy, Christophe, Francine.

Thank you. �