The Powers that be Left me here to do the thinking

Marina Abramović (born 30 November 1946, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia) is a performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” This assertion has been neither disputed nor challenged.
Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.
Contents
[hide]
1 Early life
2 Selected early works
2.1 Rhythm 10, 1973
2.2 Rhythm 5, 1974
2.3 Rhythm 2, 1974
2.4 Rhythm 0, 1974
3 Works with Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen)
4 Recent solo works
4.1 Dream House, 2000
4.2 The House With the Ocean View, 2002
5 Seven Easy Pieces, November 2005
6 Prizes and awards
7 Bibliography
8 External links
[edit]Early life

Marina Abramović's grandfather was a patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox church. After his death he was proclaimed a saint, embalmed, and placed in St. Sava's Church in Belgrade. Both of her parents were partisans during the Second World War : her father Vojo was a commander who was acclaimed as a national hero after the War; her mother Danica was a major in the army, and in the mid-sixties was Director of the Museum of the Revolution and Art in Belgrade.
Abramović's father left the family in 1964. In an interview published in 1998, she described how her "mother took complete military-style control of me and my brother. I was not allowed to leave the house after 10 o'clock at night till I was 29 years old. ... [A]ll the performances in Yugoslavia I did before 10 o'clock in the evening because I had to be home then. It's completely insane, but all of my cutting myself, whipping myself, burning myself, almost losing my life in the firestar, everything was done before 10 in the evening." (Quoted in Thomas McEvilley, "Stages of Energy: Performance Art Ground Zero?" in Abramović, Artist Body, [Charta, 1998])
Abramović was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 1965-70. She completed her post-graduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia in 1972. From 1973 to 1975 she taught at the Academy of Fine Arts at Novi Sad, while implementing her first solo performances.
In 1976 Abramović left Yugoslavia and moved to Amsterdam.
[edit]Selected early works

[edit]Rhythm 10, 1973
In her first performance Abramović explored elements of ritual and gesture. Making use of twenty knives and two tape recorders, the artist played the Russian game in which rhythmic knife jabs are aimed between the splayed fingers of her hand. Each time she cut herself, she would pick up a new knife from the row of twenty she had set up, and recorded the operation.
After cutting herself twenty times, she replayed the tape, listened to the sounds, and tried to repeat the same movements, attempting to replicate the mistakes, merging together past and present. She set out to explore the physical and mental limitations of the body – the pain and the sounds of the stabbing, the double sounds from the history and from the replication. With this piece, Abramovic began to consider the state of consciousness of the performer. “Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.” (Kaplan, 9)
[edit]Rhythm 5, 1974
Abramović sought to re-evoke the energy of extreme body pain, in this case using a large petroleum-drenched star, which the artist lit at the start of the performance. Standing outside the star, Abramovic cut her nails, toenails, and hair. When finished with each, she threw the clippings into the flames, creating a burst of light each time. Burning the communist five-four rayed star represented a physical and mental purification, while addressing the political traditions of her past.
In the final act of purification, Abramović lept across the flames, propelling herself into center of the large star. Due to the light and smoke given off by the fire, the observing audience didn’t realize that, once inside the star, the artist had lost consciousness due to a lack of oxygen. Some members of the audienced realized what had occurred only when the flames came very near to her body and she remained inert. A doctor and several members of the audience intervened and extricated her from the star.
Abramović later commented upon this experience: “I was very angry because I understood there is a physical limit: when you lose consciousness you can’t be present; you can’t perform.” (Daneri, 29).
[edit]Rhythm 2, 1974
As an experiment testing whether a state of unconsciousness could be incorporated into a performance, Abramović devised a performance in two parts.
In the first part, she took a pill prescribed for catatonia, (a condition in which a person’s muscles are immobilized -- they remain in a single position for hours at a time). Being completely healthy, Abramović's body reacted violently to the drug, experiencing seizures and uncontrollable movements for the first half of the performance. While lacking any control over her body movements, her mind was lucid, and she observed what was occurring.
Ten minutes after the effects of that drug had worn off, Abramović ingested another pill--this time one prescribed for aggressive and depressed people--which resulted in general immobility. Bodily she was present, yet mentally she was completely removed. (In fact, she has no memory of the lapsed time.) This project was an early component of her explorations of the connections between body and mind, which later took her to Tibet and the Australian desert Following Rhythm 2, she set to develop the rest of the series of rhythm projects, continually testing her endurance.
[edit]Rhythm 0, 1974
To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her.
Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were scissors, a knife, a whip, and, most notoriously, a gun loaded with a single bullet. For six hours the artist sat immobile, allowing the audience members to entirely direct the action.
Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) several people began to act quite aggressively. As Abramović described it later:
“The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.” (Daneri, 29; and 30).
[edit]Works with Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen)

In 1976, after moving to Amsterdam, Abramović met the West German performance artist Uwe Laysiepen, who went by the single name Ulay. They had both been born on the same day, though in completely different regimes: her birth certificate was marked by a five-rayed star, while his had a swastika.
When Abramović and Ulay began their collaboration, the main concepts they explored were the ego and artistic identity. This was the beginning of a decade of influential collaborative work. Each performer was interested in the traditions of their cultural heritages and the individual’s desire for ritual. Consequently, they decided to form a collective being called “the other,” and spoke of themselves as parts of a “two-headed body.” (Quoted in Green, 37). They dressed and behaved like twins, and created a relationship of complete trust. As they defined this phantom identity, their individual identities became less accessible. In an analysis of phantom artistic identities, Charles Green has noted that this allowed a deeper understanding of the artist as performer, for it revealed a way of “having the artistic self made available for self-scrutiny.” (41)
While some critics have explored the idea of a hermaphroditic state of being as a feminist statement, Abramović herself denies considering this as a conscious concept. Her body studies, she insists, have always been concerned primarily with the body as the unit of an individual, a tendency she traces to her parents' military pasts. Rather than concern themselves with gender ideologies, Abramović/Ulay explored extreme states of consciousness and their relationship to architectural space. They devised a series of works in which their bodies created additional spaces for audience interaction. In "Relation in Space" (1976) they ran around the room - two bodies like two planets, mixing male and female energy into a third component called “that self.” "Relation in Movement" had the pair drive their car inside of a museum for 365 laps; a black liquid oozed from the car, forming a kind of sculpture, each lap representing a year. (After 365 laps they entered the New Millennium.)
In discussing this phase of her performance history, Abramović has said: “The main problem in this relationship was what to do with the two artists’ egos. I had to find out how to put my ego down, as did he, to create something like a hermaphroditic state of being that we called the death self.” (Kaplan, 14)
To create this “Death self,” the two performers devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took in each other’s exhaled breaths until they had used up all of the available oxygen. Precisely seventeen minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide. This personal piece explored the idea of an individual's ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it.
In 1988, after several years of tense relations, Abramović and Ulay decided to make a spiritual journey which would end their relationship. Each of them walked the Great Wall of China, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. As Abramovic described it: “That walk became a complete personal drama. Ulay started from the Gobi desert and I from the Yellow Sea. After each of us walked 2500 km, we met in the middle and said good-bye.” (Daneri 35)
Abramović conceived this walk in a dream, and it provided what she thought was an appropriate, romantic ending to a relationship full of mysticism, energy and attraction. She later described the process: “We needed a certain form of ending, after this huge distance walking towards each other. It is very human. It is in a way more dramatic, more like a film ending … Because in the end you are really alone, whatever you do.” (Daneri, 35)
Abramović reported that during her walk she was reinterpreting her connection to the physical world and to nature. She felt that the metals in the ground influenced her mood and state of being; she also pondered the Chinese myths in which the great wall has been described as a “dragon of energy.”
[edit]Recent solo works

Abramović believes that in order to recharge the body and to teach a person to see with her other senses, the body (discussed also as a boat) needs to be emptied first. Borrowing heavily from Tibetan practices, Abramović embraced the concepts of allowing oneself to be connected to the energy of nature, accepting change, and letting go. “Transformation only matters," she remarked, "if you really go through something yourself. So I decided to build these transitory object. They’re objects that the public can perform, like props. When they trigger their own experience, the object can be removed.” (Kaplan, 8).
There are two very important issues that Abramović deals with, the place of the performer, and the place of the audience. In any art exhibition there are rules that establish a non-written code of conduct within the space. Abramović’s early projects demanded that the audience participate (trusting them even with her life). Her recent solo performances take a new direction. Instead of giving over control of her own body, she arranges objects in ways that could trigger new bodily experiences for each of the gallery visitors. In counterpart to her earlier works, the audience now gives over its body, succumbing to the sensations that the artist has prepared for them through her carefully-chosen objects. These objects are described and documented in her book Public Body: Installations and Objects 1965-2001, (Charta, 2001).
[edit]Dream House, 2000
A slightly different example expanding on the same concept is the Dream House in Matsunoyamamachi. Transforming a traditional Japanese house by adding her personal system of colors and shapes, Abramović attempts to create a public space of energy transmission. Visitors make a reservation and spend a night at the Dream House, sleeping in pajamas designed by the artist. In the morning they write their dreams into a journal which would later be published as a book. (Nagai).
[edit]The House With the Ocean View, 2002
On November 15, 2002 Abramović began a twelve-day public meditative performance in New York’s Sean Kelly Gallery titled The House With the Ocean View. She lived in three suspended half rooms, completely exposed to the public, without concealing any of her actions. She did not eat for the twelve days of the performance's duration, ingesting only water.
Three ladders were propped up as if inviting her to come down and join the audience, but the steps of the ladders were comprised of sharp kitchen knives, their razor edges facing upwards. This piece is a direct descendant of the seventies’ nomadic artists’ lives in galleries and museums, which tried to demystify art and bring it closer to life. This performance went a step further in exploring the possibility of a new form of communication between the artist and the public, one that exchanges and recharges the energy between performer and audience.
The choice for this setting was based on the Pali tradition of a vipassana retreat. In such a meditation the goal is to train the mind to stay focused on the present moment. This is done by concentrating on four particular states of the body – walking, standing, sitting and lying down. Abramović introduced an additional element, in order to bring this meditative ceremony to the public - gazing intently and engaging in a stare viewers at the gallery.
[edit]Seven Easy Pieces, November 2005

The Powers that be Left me here to do the thinking

Marina Abramović (born 30 November 1946, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia) is a performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” This assertion has been neither disputed nor challenged.
Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.
Contents
[hide]
1 Early life
2 Selected early works
2.1 Rhythm 10, 1973
2.2 Rhythm 5, 1974
2.3 Rhythm 2, 1974
2.4 Rhythm 0, 1974
3 Works with Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen)
4 Recent solo works
4.1 Dream House, 2000
4.2 The House With the Ocean View, 2002
5 Seven Easy Pieces, November 2005
6 Prizes and awards
7 Bibliography
8 External links
[edit]Early life

Marina Abramović's grandfather was a patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox church. After his death he was proclaimed a saint, embalmed, and placed in St. Sava's Church in Belgrade. Both of her parents were partisans during the Second World War : her father Vojo was a commander who was acclaimed as a national hero after the War; her mother Danica was a major in the army, and in the mid-sixties was Director of the Museum of the Revolution and Art in Belgrade.
Abramović's father left the family in 1964. In an interview published in 1998, she described how her "mother took complete military-style control of me and my brother. I was not allowed to leave the house after 10 o'clock at night till I was 29 years old. ... [A]ll the performances in Yugoslavia I did before 10 o'clock in the evening because I had to be home then. It's completely insane, but all of my cutting myself, whipping myself, burning myself, almost losing my life in the firestar, everything was done before 10 in the evening." (Quoted in Thomas McEvilley, "Stages of Energy: Performance Art Ground Zero?" in Abramović, Artist Body, [Charta, 1998])
Abramović was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 1965-70. She completed her post-graduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia in 1972. From 1973 to 1975 she taught at the Academy of Fine Arts at Novi Sad, while implementing her first solo performances.
In 1976 Abramović left Yugoslavia and moved to Amsterdam.
[edit]Selected early works

[edit]Rhythm 10, 1973
In her first performance Abramović explored elements of ritual and gesture. Making use of twenty knives and two tape recorders, the artist played the Russian game in which rhythmic knife jabs are aimed between the splayed fingers of her hand. Each time she cut herself, she would pick up a new knife from the row of twenty she had set up, and recorded the operation.
After cutting herself twenty times, she replayed the tape, listened to the sounds, and tried to repeat the same movements, attempting to replicate the mistakes, merging together past and present. She set out to explore the physical and mental limitations of the body – the pain and the sounds of the stabbing, the double sounds from the history and from the replication. With this piece, Abramovic began to consider the state of consciousness of the performer. “Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.” (Kaplan, 9)
[edit]Rhythm 5, 1974
Abramović sought to re-evoke the energy of extreme body pain, in this case using a large petroleum-drenched star, which the artist lit at the start of the performance. Standing outside the star, Abramovic cut her nails, toenails, and hair. When finished with each, she threw the clippings into the flames, creating a burst of light each time. Burning the communist five-four rayed star represented a physical and mental purification, while addressing the political traditions of her past.
In the final act of purification, Abramović lept across the flames, propelling herself into center of the large star. Due to the light and smoke given off by the fire, the observing audience didn’t realize that, once inside the star, the artist had lost consciousness due to a lack of oxygen. Some members of the audienced realized what had occurred only when the flames came very near to her body and she remained inert. A doctor and several members of the audience intervened and extricated her from the star.
Abramović later commented upon this experience: “I was very angry because I understood there is a physical limit: when you lose consciousness you can’t be present; you can’t perform.” (Daneri, 29).
[edit]Rhythm 2, 1974
As an experiment testing whether a state of unconsciousness could be incorporated into a performance, Abramović devised a performance in two parts.
In the first part, she took a pill prescribed for catatonia, (a condition in which a person’s muscles are immobilized -- they remain in a single position for hours at a time). Being completely healthy, Abramović's body reacted violently to the drug, experiencing seizures and uncontrollable movements for the first half of the performance. While lacking any control over her body movements, her mind was lucid, and she observed what was occurring.
Ten minutes after the effects of that drug had worn off, Abramović ingested another pill--this time one prescribed for aggressive and depressed people--which resulted in general immobility. Bodily she was present, yet mentally she was completely removed. (In fact, she has no memory of the lapsed time.) This project was an early component of her explorations of the connections between body and mind, which later took her to Tibet and the Australian desert Following Rhythm 2, she set to develop the rest of the series of rhythm projects, continually testing her endurance.
[edit]Rhythm 0, 1974
To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her.
Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were scissors, a knife, a whip, and, most notoriously, a gun loaded with a single bullet. For six hours the artist sat immobile, allowing the audience members to entirely direct the action.
Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) several people began to act quite aggressively. As Abramović described it later:
“The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.” (Daneri, 29; and 30).
[edit]Works with Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen)

In 1976, after moving to Amsterdam, Abramović met the West German performance artist Uwe Laysiepen, who went by the single name Ulay. They had both been born on the same day, though in completely different regimes: her birth certificate was marked by a five-rayed star, while his had a swastika.
When Abramović and Ulay began their collaboration, the main concepts they explored were the ego and artistic identity. This was the beginning of a decade of influential collaborative work. Each performer was interested in the traditions of their cultural heritages and the individual’s desire for ritual. Consequently, they decided to form a collective being called “the other,” and spoke of themselves as parts of a “two-headed body.” (Quoted in Green, 37). They dressed and behaved like twins, and created a relationship of complete trust. As they defined this phantom identity, their individual identities became less accessible. In an analysis of phantom artistic identities, Charles Green has noted that this allowed a deeper understanding of the artist as performer, for it revealed a way of “having the artistic self made available for self-scrutiny.” (41)
While some critics have explored the idea of a hermaphroditic state of being as a feminist statement, Abramović herself denies considering this as a conscious concept. Her body studies, she insists, have always been concerned primarily with the body as the unit of an individual, a tendency she traces to her parents' military pasts. Rather than concern themselves with gender ideologies, Abramović/Ulay explored extreme states of consciousness and their relationship to architectural space. They devised a series of works in which their bodies created additional spaces for audience interaction. In "Relation in Space" (1976) they ran around the room - two bodies like two planets, mixing male and female energy into a third component called “that self.” "Relation in Movement" had the pair drive their car inside of a museum for 365 laps; a black liquid oozed from the car, forming a kind of sculpture, each lap representing a year. (After 365 laps they entered the New Millennium.)
In discussing this phase of her performance history, Abramović has said: “The main problem in this relationship was what to do with the two artists’ egos. I had to find out how to put my ego down, as did he, to create something like a hermaphroditic state of being that we called the death self.” (Kaplan, 14)
To create this “Death self,” the two performers devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took in each other’s exhaled breaths until they had used up all of the available oxygen. Precisely seventeen minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide. This personal piece explored the idea of an individual's ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it.
In 1988, after several years of tense relations, Abramović and Ulay decided to make a spiritual journey which would end their relationship. Each of them walked the Great Wall of China, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. As Abramovic described it: “That walk became a complete personal drama. Ulay started from the Gobi desert and I from the Yellow Sea. After each of us walked 2500 km, we met in the middle and said good-bye.” (Daneri 35)
Abramović conceived this walk in a dream, and it provided what she thought was an appropriate, romantic ending to a relationship full of mysticism, energy and attraction. She later described the process: “We needed a certain form of ending, after this huge distance walking towards each other. It is very human. It is in a way more dramatic, more like a film ending … Because in the end you are really alone, whatever you do.” (Daneri, 35)
Abramović reported that during her walk she was reinterpreting her connection to the physical world and to nature. She felt that the metals in the ground influenced her mood and state of being; she also pondered the Chinese myths in which the great wall has been described as a “dragon of energy.”
[edit]Recent solo works

Abramović believes that in order to recharge the body and to teach a person to see with her other senses, the body (discussed also as a boat) needs to be emptied first. Borrowing heavily from Tibetan practices, Abramović embraced the concepts of allowing oneself to be connected to the energy of nature, accepting change, and letting go. “Transformation only matters," she remarked, "if you really go through something yourself. So I decided to build these transitory object. They’re objects that the public can perform, like props. When they trigger their own experience, the object can be removed.” (Kaplan, 8).
There are two very important issues that Abramović deals with, the place of the performer, and the place of the audience. In any art exhibition there are rules that establish a non-written code of conduct within the space. Abramović’s early projects demanded that the audience participate (trusting them even with her life). Her recent solo performances take a new direction. Instead of giving over control of her own body, she arranges objects in ways that could trigger new bodily experiences for each of the gallery visitors. In counterpart to her earlier works, the audience now gives over its body, succumbing to the sensations that the artist has prepared for them through her carefully-chosen objects. These objects are described and documented in her book Public Body: Installations and Objects 1965-2001, (Charta, 2001).
[edit]Dream House, 2000
A slightly different example expanding on the same concept is the Dream House in Matsunoyamamachi. Transforming a traditional Japanese house by adding her personal system of colors and shapes, Abramović attempts to create a public space of energy transmission. Visitors make a reservation and spend a night at the Dream House, sleeping in pajamas designed by the artist. In the morning they write their dreams into a journal which would later be published as a book. (Nagai).
[edit]The House With the Ocean View, 2002
On November 15, 2002 Abramović began a twelve-day public meditative performance in New York’s Sean Kelly Gallery titled The House With the Ocean View. She lived in three suspended half rooms, completely exposed to the public, without concealing any of her actions. She did not eat for the twelve days of the performance's duration, ingesting only water.
Three ladders were propped up as if inviting her to come down and join the audience, but the steps of the ladders were comprised of sharp kitchen knives, their razor edges facing upwards. This piece is a direct descendant of the seventies’ nomadic artists’ lives in galleries and museums, which tried to demystify art and bring it closer to life. This performance went a step further in exploring the possibility of a new form of communication between the artist and the public, one that exchanges and recharges the energy between performer and audience.
The choice for this setting was based on the Pali tradition of a vipassana retreat. In such a meditation the goal is to train the mind to stay focused on the present moment. This is done by concentrating on four particular states of the body – walking, standing, sitting and lying down. Abramović introduced an additional element, in order to bring this meditative ceremony to the public - gazing intently and engaging in a stare viewers at the gallery.
[edit]Seven Easy Pieces, November 2005

in the days of old when we dug up the gold, in the days of 49

The Thing? is an Arizona roadside attraction hyped by signs along Interstate 10 between El Paso, Texas and Tucson, Arizona. Teaser ads, such as The Thing? What is it?, entice travelers along this sparse stretch of desert highway to pull in just to find out what the mysterious Thing? might be. Such billboards are similar to the signage seen in the South as drivers approach the South of the Border near Dillon, South Carolina and Rock City near Chattanooga, Tennessee).
The Thing? is located just off I-10 at Exit 318 on a hilltop between Benson and Willcox, near Texas Canyon, at 2631 North Johnson Road in Dragoon. On the south side of the highway, the attraction is part of a large gas station and gift shop complex painted red, yellow and blue. Amid the bows and arrows, moccasins, baseball caps, velvet paintings and turquoise jewelry, the gift shop also sells The Thing? shot glasses, bumper stickers and T-shirts.
The Thing? rates an entry in Doug Kirby's New Roadside America (1992), and it once was featured in a Jane Pauley television special on NBC. For a one dollar fee, paid at the shop's cash register, one can enter a small outside courtyard leading to three prefab corrugated steel sheds. Inside are a variety of exhibits, including odd wood carvings of tortured souls (by "Ralph Gallagher, artist"), the "wooden fantasy" of painted driftwood (from an Alamogordo collector), framed lithographs, saddles, rifles, a covered wagon and several vintage automobiles. A sign by a 1937 Rolls-Royce makes the claim that it once belonged to Adolf Hitler. Winding corridors and exhibit halls eventually lead to The Thing?, a mummified mother-and-child tableau encased in a glass-covered coffin.
The concept of the exhibit references the 1950 novelty song, "The Thing", recorded by Phil Harris, and the 1951 science fiction film, The Thing from Another World, later remade by John Carpenter as The Thing (1982).
The roadside area was the creation of attorney Thomas Binkley Prince, who was born in Texas in 1913. He grew up in California, studied at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona College of Law, entered law practice in Phoenix and briefly served as a prosecutor for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. During World War II, while he was working for a Seattle law firm, Prince also ran a pool hall. In the 1950s, Prince and his wife Janet opened their first Thing? roadside attraction and curio shop on Highway 91 between Barstow and Baker, until the expansion of the road into an interstate brought about the loss of the building. In 1965 the Prince family packed up The Thing? and moved to the current location. A heart condition and several strokes led to Prince's death in 1969 at the age of 56.
Syndicated columnist Stan Delaplane traced The Thing? back to 1950. Janet Prince, who later moved to Baltimore, was interviewed by Delaplane in 1956 and told him, "Man came through here about six years ago. He had three of them he got somewhere. He was selling them for $50." Today, the attraction is operated by an Albuquerque-based company, Bowlins, Inc., which owns several roadside trading posts throughout the Southwest.

Tago Gaol

Can was a musical group formed in West Germany in 1968, working within the scene that music critics dubbed "krautrock", with a style grounded in the garage rock of bands such as The Velvet Underground and world music as studied by professionals in ethnomusicology. Described by keyboard player Irmin Schmidt as an "anarchist community" [1] and constructing their music largely through free improvisation and editing, which bassist Holger Czukay has referred to as "instant compositions" [2], they had only occasional commercial success, with singles such as "Spoon" and "I Want More" reaching national singles charts, but through albums such as Tago Mago (1971) and Ege Bamyasi (1972), Can exerted a considerable influence on avant-garde, experimental, underground, ambient, New Wave and electronic music.[3]
Contents
[hide]
1 History
1.1 Early years: 1968-1970
1.2 Classic years: 1971-1973
1.3 Later years: 1974-1979
1.4 After the split and reunion: 1980 onwards
2 Music
2.1 Influences
2.2 Subsequent influence
2.3 Improvisation, recording and live shows
3 Band members
3.1 Core
3.2 Other members
3.3 Additional collaborators
4 Discography
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links
[edit]History

[edit]Early years: 1968-1970


Monster Movie (1969)
Can formed in Cologne in 1968 comprising bass guitarist Holger Czukay, keyboard player Irmin Schmidt, guitarist Michael Karoli, and drummer Jaki Liebezeit, along with original member David Johnson, an American musicologist who left shortly after the band's founding when it began taking a rock direction. They used the names "Inner Space" and "The Can" before finally settling on Can. Liebezeit subsequently suggested the backronym "communism, anarchism, nihilism" for the band's name. [4]
In the autumn of 1968, they enlisted the creative, highly rhythmic, but often confrontational American vocalist Malcolm Mooney, with whom they recorded the material for an album, Prepared to Meet Thy Pnoom (which did not get released until 1981, under the name Delay 1968, as their record company rejected it[5]). The band then decided to record another album of original material from scratch, which later became Monster Movie, released in 1969. Mooney's bizarre and (often apparently psychotic) ranting stood in contrast to the stark minimalism of the music, which was influenced particularly by garage rock, funk and psychedelic rock. Repetition was stressed on bass and drums, particularly on the epic "Yoo Doo Right" which had been edited down from a six-hour improvisation to take up a mere single side of vinyl.
Mooney returned to America soon afterwards on the advice of a psychiatrist after being told that getting away from the chaotic music of Can would be better for his mental health[6]. He was replaced by the less overtly challenging Damo Suzuki, a young Japanese traveller found busking outside a cafe by Czukay and Liebezeit. The band's first record with Suzuki was Soundtracks, released in 1970, which also contained two tracks recorded with Mooney.
[edit]Classic years: 1971-1973


Tago Mago (1971)
The next few years saw Can release their most acclaimed works, which arguably did as much to define the krautrock genre as those of any other group. While their earlier recordings tended to be loosely based on traditional song structures, on their mid-career albums the band reverted to an extremely fluid improvisational style. The double album Tago Mago (1971) is often seen as a groundbreaking, influential and deeply unconventional record, based on intensely rhythmic jazz-inspired drumming, improvised guitar and keyboard soloing (frequently intertwining each other), extensive tape edits, and Suzuki's idiosyncratic vocalisms.
Tago Mago was followed by Ege Bamyasi (1972), a more accessible but still avant-garde record which featured the catchy "Vitamin C" and the Top 40 German hit "Spoon." Next was Future Days (1973), an unassuming but quietly complex record which represents an early example of ambient music and is perhaps the band's most critically successful record. Also included on this album was the refreshingly unexpected pop song "Moonshake".
Suzuki left soon after the recording of Future Days to marry his German wife and become a Jehovah's Witness, and the vocals were taken over by Karoli and Schmidt[7]. Both were competent but not especially memorable singers, especially when compared to Mooney's demented energy or Suzuki's freewheeling charm. However, in 1973 and 1974 in particular, the vocals became much less important than the overall sound as Can found themselves experimenting with ambient music for the first time.
[edit]Later years: 1974-1979


Soon Over Babaluma (1974)
Soon Over Babaluma from 1974 continued in the ambient style of Future Days, though regaining some of the abrasive edge of Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi. In 1975 Can signed to Virgin Records in the UK and EMI/Harvest in Germany. The albums Landed (1975) and Flow Motion (1976) saw Can moving towards a somewhat more conventional style as their recording technology improved. Accordingly, the disco single "I Want More" from Flow Motion became their only hit record outside of Germany.
In 1977 Can were joined by former Traffic bassist Rosko Gee and percussionist Reebop Kwaku Baah, both of whom provided vocals to Can's music, appearing on the albums Saw Delight (1977), Out of Reach (1978) and Can (1979). During this period Holger Czukay was pushed to the fringes of the group's activity; in fact he just made sounds using shortwave radios, morse code keys, tape recorders and other sundry objects. He left Can in late 1977 and did not appear on the albums Out Of Reach or Can, although he did do some production work on the latter album. Can disbanded shortly afterwards, but reunions have taken place on several occasions since.
[edit]After the split and reunion: 1980 onwards


Rite Time (1989)
Since the split, all the former members have been involved in musical projects, often as session musicians for other artists. In 1986 they briefly reformed, with Mooney but without Suzuki, to record Rite Time (released in 1989). There was a further reunion in 1991 to record a track for the Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World, and Can have since been the subject of numerous compilations, live albums and samples.
In 1999 the four core members of Can, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, performed live at the same show, although playing seperately with their current solo projects (Sofortkontakt, Club Off Chaos, Kumo and U-She respectively). Michael Karoli died on 17 November 2001 after a long battle with cancer. In 2004, the band began an ongoing series of Super Audio CD remasters of its back catalog, which were finished in 2006.
Holger Czukay has recorded several ambient albums and collaborated with David Sylvian among others, Jaki Liebezeit has played in a drum ensemble called Drums of Chaos and in 2005 with the Artist Datenverarbeiter the online-album Givt[8]. Michael Karoli recorded a reggae album with Polly Eltes before his passing, and Irmin Schmidt has begun working with the acclaimed drummer Martin Atkins, producing a remix for the industrial band The Damage Manual, and a cover of Banging the Door for a Public Image Ltd tribute album, both released on Atkins' label, Invisible Records.
Damo Suzuki returned to music in 1983, and since then he has been playing live improvisational shows around the world with local musicians and members of touring bands at various points, sometimes issuing live albums. Malcolm Mooney recorded an album as singer for the band Tenth Planet in 1998. Rosko Gee has been the bassist in the live band on Harald Schmidt's TV show in Germany since 1995. The Can DVD claims that Reebop died in 1982, although many other sources suggest that he is still alive and performing music under the name Remi Kabaka [9] and has worked in 2004 with Gorillaz[10].
[edit]Music

[edit]Influences
The diversity of the music of Can owes a lot to its equally eclectic influences. Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt were both pupils of Karlheinz Stockhausen. This meant that the early Can inherited a strong grounding in his musical theory, with the latter being trained as a classical pianist. Michael Karoli, in turn, was a pupil of Holger Czukay, and brought the influence of gypsy music through his esoteric studies. Drummer Jaki Liebezeit had strong jazz leanings.
Another important early influence was ethnomusicology: the band's sound was originally intended to be based more on the sound of ethnic music, so when the band decided to pick up the garage rock sound, original member David Johnson left the band. This world music trend was later more clearly exemplified on albums such as Ege Bamyasi (the name meaning "Aegean okra"), Future Days and Saw Delight, and by incorporating new band members with different nationalities. A series of tracks on Can albums, known as "Ethnological Forgery Series", abbreviated to "E.F.S", demonstrated the band's ability to successfully recreate ethnic-sounding music.
The band's early influences in rock included The Beatles and The Velvet Underground [11] as well as Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and Frank Zappa [12]. The band have admitted that the beginning of Can's "Father Cannot Yell" was inspired by the end of The Velvet Underground's "European Son". Malcolm Mooney's voice has been compared to that of James Brown and their early style, rooted in psychedelic music, drew comparisons with Pink Floyd. Along with their peers in the krautrock scene, they were under the influence of the wider progressive rock movement taking place in England and elsewhere during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Damo Suzuki was a very different sort of singer from Mooney: his multi-lingual (he claimed to sing in "the language of the Stone Age"), often inscrutable vocal style added the missing ingredient to a set of playful pop songs. With Suzuki, the band made their most well known albums, and the rhythm section's work on Tago Mago has been especially praised: one critic writes that much of the album is based on "long improvisations built around hypnotic rhythm patterns" [13]; another writes that "Halleluhwah" finds them "pounding out a monster trance/funk beat" [14].
The band's post-Damo Suzuki period is often criticised for not being groundbreaking and genre-defining like the earlier albums: although critics had praised Can's sound in the early 1970s as being ahead of its time, the band just used a two track recorder until the release of Landed in 1975. However, they do try out styles they hadn't done before: Landed sees them influenced by glam rock, Flow Motion by reggae, Saw Delight and Out of Reach by world music again, and the guitar of Carlos Santana.
[edit]Subsequent influence
Major artists such as The Fall, Public Image Ltd., The Mars Volta, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Joy Division and The Stone Roses have cited Can as an influence. Brian Eno made a short film in tribute to Can, while John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers appeared at the Echo Awards ceremony, at which Can were awarded the most prestigious music award in Germany,[15] to pay tribute to guitarist Michael Karoli.
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), formerly of the Sex Pistols, formed Public Image Limited patterned after Can's early 1970s five member lineup. Lydon wanted to join Can in 1979 as the group decided to disband. During their Kid A tour, Radiohead performed a cover of the song "Thief" from Delay 1968. Mark E. Smith of The Fall pays tribute to Damo Suzuki with the track "I Am Damo Suzuki" on the 1985 album This Nation's Saving Grace. Three notable bands have named themselves in tribute to Can; The Mooney Suzuki for Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki; the indie rock band Spoon after the hit "Spoon"; the electronic band Egebamyasi, formed by Scottish musician Mr Egg in 1984, after Can's album Ege Bamyasi. The Scottish writer Alan Warner, born in Oban in 1964, has written two novels in tribute to two different Can members (Morvern Callar to Holger Czukay and The Man Who Walks to Michael Karoli respectively).
The Sacrelige remix album features remixes of Can tracks by artists who were influenced by Can, including Sonic Youth and U.N.K.L.E..[16]
Their ethnomusicological tendencies pre-date the craze for world music in the 1980s. While not nearly as influential on electronic music as Kraftwerk, they were important early pioneers of ambient music, along with Tangerine Dream and the aforementioned band. Many groups working in the post-rock genre can look to Can as an influence as part of the larger krautrock scene.
[edit]Improvisation, recording and live shows
Much of Can's music was based on free improvisation and then edited into a palatable format for the studio albums. For example, when preparing a soundtrack, only Irmin Schmidt would view the film and then give the rest of the band a general description of the scenes they would be scoring. This assisted in the improvised soundtrack being successful both inside and outside the film's context. [17] Also, the epic track "Cutaway" from Unlimited Edition demonstrates how tape editing and extensive jamming could be used to create a sound collage that doesn't gel perfectly, and that the flashes of genius in the improvisation needed to be cut from long, unconsolidated recordings.
Can's live shows often melded spontaneous improvisation of this kind with songs appearing on their albums. The track "Colchester Finale", appearing on the Can Live album, incorporates portions of "Halleluhwah" into a composition lasting over half an hour. Early concerts found Mooney and Suzuki often able to shock audiences with their unusual vocal styles, as different as they were from one another: Suzuki's debut performance with Can in 1970 nearly frightened an audience to the point of rioting due to his odd style of vocalizing. David Niven, of Pink Panther fame, was amongst the crowd who remained to hear what Can and Damo would do next. There is a legend that during live shows, the band could focus their energy on playing to the extent that it could make certain members of the audience vomit. After the departure of the Suzuki, the music grew in intensity without a vocal center, and the band maintained their ability to collectively improvise with or without central themes for hours at a time (their longest performance was in Berlin that lasted over six hours), resulting in a large archive of performances.
Can made attempts to find a new vocalist after the departure of Damo Suzuki, although no one quite fit the position. In 1975, folk singer Tim Hardin took the lead vocal spot with Can for one song, performing his own "The Lady Came From Baltimore". Malaysian Thaiga Raj Raja Ratnam played three dates with the band in March of 1976, only one of which was recorded. Another such vocalist, Englishman Michael Cousins, toured with Can in April, 1976. Audience members disapproved of his presence and literally spat at him while on stage. There are only three recordings of Cousins performing with the band, all from April of 1976.