George Brecht — Event Scores

1963

Artists: George Brecht · Year: 1963 · Medium: Instruction-based artworks — text cards specifying actions rather than objects · Substrate: Printed cards with short text instructions; the artwork is the instruction, not any particular realization of it · Place: New York / Cologne · Institution: Independent; Fluxus affiliation (from 1961) George Brecht's Event Scores, developed from 1959 and refined through the Fluxus period, are short printed cards containing instructions for actions. Drip Music (1959) reads "For a container to be filled with water. For the water to fall on empty, sounding objects." Word Event (1961) reads simply "Exit." The artwork is the instruction; any particular realization — anyone pouring water, anyone leaving a room — is one possible performance of the score. The scores were distributed as small printed cards, reproduced and circulated through Fluxus networks. Event Scores are included in this archive because they are the clearest pre-computational example of what computational art would later formalize: an artwork whose primary substance is the procedure that produces realizations, rather than any particular realization. Sol LeWitt's wall-drawing instructions, Yoko Ono's Grapefruit (1964), Nees's Schotter (1968), Molnár's machine imaginaire, Reas's Process (2004), and every subsequent algorithmic-art work is in dialogue with the Event Score framework. The difference between a Brecht Event Score and a Nees plotter drawing is substrate (paper-and-performer vs. paper-and-plotter), not conceptual structure. Brecht's subsequent career extended the Event Score logic into multiple media. He collaborated extensively with Robert Filliou and with other Fluxus figures. He died in Cologne in 2008. Lore Brecht's Event Scores were circulated in small editions — frequently fewer than 500 copies of a given card — through Fluxus mail-order distribution. Their influence has been enormous despite modest original circulation. His published collection Water Yam (1963) is the canonical compilation of the early scores; it has been reissued multiple times. Brecht had trained as a chemist before his turn to art; the specificity of his instructions reflects that training. Sources • Brecht, George — Water Yam (Fluxus, 1963) • Williams, Emmett; Noel, Ann — Mr. Fluxus: A Collective Portrait of George Maciunas (Thames & Hudson, 1997) • MoMA — Brecht collection