ARTIFICIAL HELLS

notes to pages 86– 9
its emphasis on play as a free and meaningful activity carried out for its
own sake.
42 Unsigned, ‘Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation’, Internationale
Situationniste, 1, 1958, pp. 11– 12, translated in Knabb (ed.),
Situationist International Anthology, p. 44.
43 Ibid.
44 For a full account of the installation and the reasons for its cancellation,
see the unsigned report ‘Die Welt als Labyrinth’, Internationale Situationniste,
4, pp. 5– 7.
45 Unsigned, ‘L’avant- garde de la Presence’, Internationale Situationniste, 8,
1963, p. 16. The article was a response to a recent essay by Lucien Goldmann
on the ‘avant- garde of absence’ (nihilist work by Beckett, Ionesco,
Duras, etc.) published in Médiations 4. Umberto Eco theorised these new
forms in The Open Work (1962), translated into French in 1965.
46 The signatories of the first manifesto of the group (1960) were Hugo
Demarco, François Morellet, Moyano, Servanes, Francisco Sobrino, Joël
Stein and Jean- Pierre Yvaral.
47 GRAV, ‘Propositions générales du GRAV’, 25 October 1961, signed by
Rossi, Le Parc, Morellet, Sobrino, Stein and Yvaral, reproduced in Luciano
Caramel (ed.), Groupe de recherche d’art visuel 1960– 1968, Milan:
Electa, 1975, p. 25, my translation.
48 ‘Manifeste du GRAV’, in Abstract Art, Vol. 2 of Art Since Mid- Century:
The New Internationalism, Greenwich, CT: NY Graphic Society, 1971, p.
296.
49 Stein, in Douze ans d’art contemporain en France, p. 386.
50 A critic in Studio International observed that: ‘the initial impression may
be one of pleasant triviality. . . . the dominant works are “gags”, which
the visitor is invited to manipulate and play with: distorting spectacles
and mirrors, ping- pong balls, a board with lights which spell out a mildly
blue poem. Sophisticated toys? Toys perhaps, but not very sophisticated.
Many hardly rise above the level of pooh- sticks.’ (Cyril Barrett, ‘Mystification
and the Groupe de Recherche’, Studio International, 172: 880,
August 1966, pp. 93.)
51 See ‘L’instabilità: Il labyrinto groupe recherche d’art visuel’, in Caramel
(ed.), Groupe de recherche d’art visuel 1960– 1968, p. 32, my translation.
The group also produced a second, smaller Labyrinth for the exhibition
‘Nouvelle Tendence’ at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (1964), and
a third in New York, at 992 Madison Avenue, in 1965.
52 GRAV, ‘Assez des mystifications’, in Caramel (ed.), Groupe de recherche
d’art visuel 1960– 1968, p. 36, my translation and emphasis. An English
variation of this manifesto can be found in the same publication under the
title ‘Stop Art!’ (1965), p. 41.
53 Richard Schechner, ‘Happenings’, Tulane Drama Review, 10:2, Winter
1965, pp. 230– 1.
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