A Great Bear Pamphlet Series
The Art Of Noise (Book)
** 2024 Stock ** The Art of Noise presents the 1913 Futurist manifesto “L’arte dei Rumori” as translated by Robert Filliou. Luigi Russolo calls for an infinite expansion of musical vocabulary and sensibility in coordination with that of industrial ma…
Popular Entertainments (Book)
** 2024 Stock ** This collection of musical works is as visually and poetically striking as any of the Great Bears, with the individual pieces flowing together in a sprawling collage. Philip Corner’s Popular Entertainments incorporate pop music as a …
Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued Part Three (Book)
** 2024 Stock ** The third in John Cage’s series of “Diary” essays (the other parts were published in different contexts), defined broadly as “collections of thoughts that develop out of working and being alive.” The text is formally and discursively…
Untitled Essay and Other Works (Book)
** 2024 Stock ** This pamphlet presents scenarios for three narratively elaborate Happenings—“Mushroom” (1962), “Paper” (1964), and “Interruption” (1967)—and a key early statement, which originally accompanied the first published Happening in 1958. T…
A Filliou Sampler (Book)
** 2024 Stock ** The centerpiece of this collection of short works by Robert Filliou is “Yes (An Action Poem),” a performance work involving an extended anatomical analysis of the “adult male poet” (originally performed in collaboration with Alison K…
A Look Into The Blue Tide: Part 2 (Book)
** 2024 Stock ** The Blue Tide is a vast, multi-part work that developed out of a diary Diter Roth kept while teaching in the United States between 1964 and 1966 (which Edition Hansjörg Mayer had published in a full-color edition earlier in 1967). Th…
The Last French-Fried Potato and Other Poems (Book)
A short but potent collection of poems by Emmett Williams, a central player in Fluxus and the Concrete poetry movement and one of the editors of the Great Bear series. The titular work—subtitled “the ultimate poem”and improvised around the eating of …
The Cursive Scandinavian Salve (Book)
Poet and anthropologist Klintberg was one of the earliest Scandinavian participants in Happenings and Fluxus. The Cursive Scandinavian Salve collects a number of event scores and scenarios that maintain a lyrical dialogue with Sweden’s oral tradition…
The Twin Plays: Port-au-Prince & Adams County Illinois (Book)
** 2021 Stock ** This pamphlet is comprised of a pair of structurally identical plays, each composed by means of chance operations around the time of the editing and publication of An Anthology of Chance Operations by Mac Low with La Monte Young. Eac…
Berlin and Phenomena (Book)
** 2021 Stock ** This pamphlet records Vostell’s two titular large-scale performance pieces “Berlin” and “Phenomena,” both carried out in mid-60s Berlin alongside a host of accomplices. “Berlin” consisted of 100 timed events—performed in both public …
Ritual: A Book of Primitive Rites and Events (Book)
** 2021 Stock ** This collection of event scores and descriptions adapted from a range of ethnographic sources also implicitly functions as an examination of the Happenings movement in an expanded historical and anthropological context. Rothenberg’s …
Incomplete Requiem for W. C. Fields (Book)
** 2021 Stock ** Though the title indicates an “incomplete” piece, this pamphlet presents the complete poem originally performed by Al Hansen in New York in 1958, at the intersection of the “backwash from the San Francisco Poetry Revolution” and the …
Injun & Other Histories -1960 (Book)
** 2021 Stock ** This breezy and acerbic collection of early writings and illustrations by Oldenburg presents gnomic visions of an earlier America. Claes Oldenburg’s hand shines through in the loose, vivid prose and in the overall presentation. The p…
A Book About Love & War & Death: Canto One (Book)
** 2021 Stock ** This first section of Higgins’ major work, A Book About Love & War & Death, a sprawling prose poem meant to be read aloud. The text evolves modally, cycling through language games and experiments, oblique autobiography, and vocabular…
By Alison Knowles
** 2021 Stock ** This collection of scores presents a comprehensive overview of Knowles’ seminal early performance/event pieces from 1961 to 1965. These scores range from well-known directives (“Make a salad” and “Tie up the audience”) to more elabor…