Marta Minujín, Carlos Gardel de fuego, 1981
Marta Minujín
Untitled documentation (Algunas instalaciones en movimiento en distintos paises del mundo)

Marta Minujín (*1941, Argentina) played a key role in the avantgarde in Argentina in the 1960s and 70s. In 1963, she staged her first joint happening in Paris, "La Destrucción", in which she and fellow artists burned the sculptures they had made during their stay in Paris in an impressive action. Since then, she has performed numerous, large–scale happenings and actions, sometimes spanning various continents, and has broken new ground working with new telecommunication media. She uses soft, impermanent materials and focuses on the participation of the audience and the release of collective energy. “The work of art is the instant, in which the individual lives, not the thing. The advent of development, and not of forms, which end up relegated to the level of accessories. A society’s art in constant change cannot be by any means a static image.” (Marta Minujín)

The film features several works from the early 1980s that feature large-scale actions in public urban spaces, such as La torre de James Joyce en pan (1980), Carlos Gardel de fuego (1981) and El Partenón de libros (1983).

Document media
Video, colour, sound, English subtitles, 5:00 min

Issue date
1980, 1981, 1983

Tags
extended body, happening, participation, pleasure, public space, state oppression