'It all started a 17th of January, one million years ago.
a man took a dry sponge and dropped it into a bucket full of water.
who that man was is not important.
he is dead, but art is alive.
I mean, let's keep names out of this.
as I was saying, at about 10 o'clock, a 17th of January, one million years ago, a man sat alone by the side of a running stream.
he thought to himself :
where do streams run to, and why ?
meaning why do they run.
or why do they run where they run.
that sort of thing.
personally, once I observed a baker at work.
then a blacksmith and a shoemaker.
at work.
and I noticed that the use of water was essential to their work.
but perhaps what I have noticed is not important.
So opens Robert Filliou’s 1963 Whispered Art History, a poem made for twelve three-minute jukebox records, presumably to be played in a random order. Each record recounts events Filliou imagined occurring on 17 January one million years ago; 17 February one hundred thousand years ago; 17 March 10,000 years ago […] until 17 December one year ago. Filliou thus declared that in 1963, and on 17 January in particular (‘coincidentally’ his own birthday) Art was a million years old. In addition to ‘taking a dry sponge and dropping it into a bucket full of water’, other significant moments of art history according to Filliou include a man:
• bending to the ground, taking a handful of snow and pressing it to his ear,
• going into a butcher, buying a fresh bone and boiling it,
• walking into a park, pulling a coin from his pocket, pushing it into the ground to make a print in the earth,
• taking a rubber ball and throwing it into the waves,
• taking his temperature every morning until the end of the month and noting it on a chart,
• catching a frog, holding it in his hand, looking at it closely and wondering whether the frog can hear noises (Ibid.)
Filliou’s Whispered Art History elevates mundane but potentially marvellous and common experiences to the status of art. In the process, he gives art a birthday (L'anniversaire de l'art) celebrated annually on 17 January through a global network of artists and friends. This global event has become a context for developments in network art practice over the last fifty years. Local meetings of artists and friends across The Eternal Network connect each year through conceptual, performance, postal, fax, telecommunication and online art practice among other means. L'anniversaire de l'art is, in effect, La fête permanente – the constant celebration or feast. This, according to Estera Milman (2012), 'is a permanent celebration, not of artworks, but of actions and events [in which] the artist was but one player in a wider network of everyday events, doings, and sufferings ‘going on around him all the time in all parts of the world.’
Roddy Hunter, self-appointed curator of THE NEXT ART-OF-PEACE BIENNALE 2015-2017, has participated in Art's Birthday over many years. These include:
• The Ideal Hunter (After Robert Filliou), Art’s Birthday 2013
• 'What is Peace?': A Celebration of Art's 1.000.052nd Birthday, Art’s Birthday 2015
• The (unfinished) All Day Video Breakfast, Art’s Birthday 2016
• A Permanent Conversation About Peace, Art’s Birthday 2017
• The (Full) All Day Video Breakfast, Art’s Birthday 2018
Correspondence is welcomed and encouraged to hello [at] peacebiennale [dot] info or get in touch here.