Kasseler Brock-Tage: Bazon Brock – 90 Jahre in Aktion

Bazon Brock celebrates his 90th birthday on June 2. As a champion of the Fluxus movement and a self-proclaimed “artist without a work,” as an art provocateur and the inventor of Action Teaching, Brock has made his mark on art history for more than seven decades. He has been inextricably linked to documenta since its inception, and soon also through his groundbreaking idea of visitor schools. In the 1960s, he began revolutionizing traditional tour formats in the art world by elevating “aesthetics as mediation” itself to an actionist practice.

What was tested in early actions at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts found its greatest resonance at documenta: With the visitor schools of documenta 4, 5, and 6, Brock created an educational program unprecedented at the time—the exhibition became a place of learning, the audience an actor, and the mediation itself an event.

The documenta archive honors the thinker in motion this June with the Kassel Brock Days: Films, lectures, and discussions will revolve around the concept, the relentless development, and the impact of the visitor schools; the legendary audiovisual preface to Harald Szeemann’s fifth documenta; the concept of Action Teaching; and the tireless art advocate Bazon Brock—and will explore what “action” as an attitude and method might mean today. 

Already on June 2, we will offer an insight into Bazon Brock’s extensive estate: theoretical objects, films, photographs, and written materials shed light on his intellectual universe throughout the history of documenta. The studio exhibition*Bazon Brock – 90 Years in Action* will be on view in the reading room of the documenta archive through September 11. 

Program: 

Thursday, June 11, 6:30 p.m. in the event hall of the Fridericianum:  

Welcome: Andreas Hoffmann 

Introduction and moderation: Birgitta Coers 

Greeting: Bazon Brock 

Film screening of the recording from the Renaissance Theater Berlin: On the occasion of his 90th birthday: An Evening with Angela Winkler, Fabian Hinrichs, Martin Wuttke, and Bazon Brock.  

Followed by a reception in the foyer of the Fridericianum.  

Friday, June 12, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. in the event hall of the Fridericianum. 

Program featuring films, lectures, and discussions by and with Bazon Brock.