A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered as art. Happenings lack a narrative, are often multi-disciplinary and frequently seek to involve the audience in the performance in some way. Elements of them may be planned while retaining room for improvisation. They can take place anywhere. Resources ArtLex. ... Improvisation is the act of making something up as it is performed. ...

The term originated with Allan Kaprow's piece 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959), although the first happening is sometimes considered to be a 1952 performance of Theater Piece No. 1 by John Cage (a teacher of Kaprow in the mid-50s) at Black Mountain College. Accounts of exactly what this performance involved differ, but most agree that Cage recited poetry and read lectures, M. C. Richards read her poetry, David Tudor performed on a prepared piano, Robert Rauschenberg showed some of his paintings and Merce Cunningham danced. All these things took place at the same time, and among the audience, rather than on a stage. Allan Kaprow helped to develop the Environment and Happening in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. ... John Cage John Milton Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American experimental music composer and writer. ... From the time of its founding by John Rice in 1933, Black Mountain College, located near Asheville, North Carolina, was known as one of the leading progressive schools of art in the United States. ... David Eugene Tudor (January 20, 1926 - August 13, 1996) was a pianist and composer of experimental music. ... A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects (preparations) between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers. ... Robert Rauschenberg is a painter, sculptor, and graphic artist known for helping to redefine American art in the 1950s and 60s, providing an alternative to the then-dominant aesthetic of Abstract Expressionism. ... Merce Cunningham is a choreography born April 16 1919, Centralia Washington, United States. ...

In Britain, the first happenings were organised in Liverpool by the poet and painter Adrian Henri. However, the most important event was the Albert Hall "Poetry Incarnation" on June 11, 1965, when an audience of 7,000 people witnessed and participated in performances by some of the leading avant-garde young British and American poets of the day. One of the participants, Jeff Nuttall, went on to organise a number of further happenings, often working with his friend, the sound and performance poet Bob Cobbing. Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Northwest England. ... Adrian Henri (April 10, 1932 – December 21, 2000) was a British poet and painter. ... June 11 is the 162nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (163rd in leap years), with 203 days remaining. ... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link goes to calendar). ... The British Poetry Revival is the general name given to a loose poetic movement in Britain that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. ... Jeff Nuttall (July 8, 1933 - January 4, 2004) was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist sympathiser and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. ... Sound poetry is a form of literary or musical composition in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded at the expense of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; verse without words. By definition, sound poetry is intended primarily for performance. ... Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during performance before an audience. ... Bob Cobbing (July 30, 1920 - September 29, 2002) was a British sound, visual, concrete and performance poet who was a central figure in the British Poetry Revival. ...

In Belgium, the first happenings were organised by the artists Hugo Heyrman and Panamarenko, in Antwerp, Brussels and Ostend (1965—1968). Hugo Heyrman, more commonly Dr. Hugo Heyrman, (born December 20, 1942), is a Belgian painter, multimedia artist and a theorist of new media. ... Rugzaktoerist (backpack tourist) Panamarenko (pseudonym of Henri Van Herwegen, born in Antwerp, 1940) is a prominent assemblagist in Flemish sculpture. ... The Cathedral of our Lady (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal, Antwerp) in the Handschoenmarkt, in the old quarter of Antwerp is the largest cathedral in the Low Countries and home to a number of triptychs by Renaissance Belgian painter Rubens. ... Emblem of the Brussels-Capital Region Flag of The City of Brussels Brussels (Dutch: Brussel, French: Bruxelles, German: Brüssel) is the capital of Belgium, the French community of Belgium, the Flemish community and of the European Union. ... Ostend (Dutch: Oostende, French: Ostende) is a municipality located in Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium, and in the Flemish province of West Flanders. ...

In Australia The Yellow House Artist Collective in Sydney housed 24 hour happenings throughout the early 1970s. The Yellow House was an artists collective in Australia started by Sydney artist Martin Sharp. ... Sydney is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian state of New South Wales, as well as Australias largest and oldest city (founded in 1788). ...

See also

• Fluxus (art movement)
• Performance art
• Situationism
• Flashmob

Fluxus (from to flow) is an art movement noted for the blending of different artistic disciplines, primarily visual art but also music and literature. ... Performance art is art where the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time, constitute the work. ... The Situationist International (SI), an international political and artistic movement, originated in the Italian village of Cosio dArroscia on 28 July 1957 with the fusion of several extremely small artistic tendencies: the Lettrist International, the International movement for an imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psychogeographical Association. ... Starting in the United States in the summer of 2003 and then spreading around the world, flash mobbing is when a crowd converges at a specific time and place, usually organised through the Internet, to participate in apparent random acts and then dissipate once complete. ...

External link

• Abstract Happenings The pieces based on Conceptual Art by well-known artists.
• Happenings in Belgium