Soft is fast: Simone Forti in the 1960s and after

269 Pages·2016·3.884 MB·English

by  Forti, Simone;Morse, Meredith

S O F T IS FAS T

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S O F T I S F A S T
SIMONE FORTI IN THE 1960S AND AFTER
MEREDITH MORSE
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
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© 2016 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including
photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Warnock Pro and Leitura Sans by the MIT
Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Frontispiece: Simone Forti, close-up of page of letter to Anna
Halprin, unpublished manuscript, c. 1960–1961. The Anna Hal-
prin Papers, Museum of Performance + Design, San Francisco.
Courtesy Museum of Performance + Design. © Simone Forti.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-0-262-03397-8
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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To Yuji Sone
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
PART I THE 1960S
1 The Natural and the Neutral: Simone Forti, Ann Halprin, and Margaret H’Doubler 15
2 Simone Forti in New York: John Cage and Robert Whitman 37
3 Scale: Simone Forti’s Text Works in An Anthology of Chance Operations 63
4 The Dance Constructions, La Monte Young’s Performance, and Slow Time 81
5 The Problem of the Personal 103
PART II THE 1960S AND AFTER
6 Huddle: Inhabitation and Sociality 125
7 Disoriented Perception: Simone Forti in the 1970s and Process Art 149
8 News Animations and Improvisations: Movement-Feeling-Form 171
Epilogue: Performing Then as Now 191
Notes 199
Index 243
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book began as a doctoral thesis completed in 2012 in the University of Sydney’s ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Department of Art History and Film Studies, through the Power Institute, Founda-
tion for Art and Visual Culture. I am most grateful for the astute guidance and criti-
cal insights of Laleen Jayamanne throughout that process, and since. She has been
an invaluable sounding board for me, both professionally and personally. I have
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
benefited from her comments, and those of Susan Best, on sections of the material
in this book. I am grateful to Diane Cole Ahl, Susan Best, John Clark, Charles Green,
Ed Kerns, Robert S. Mattison, Mary Roberts, and Ann Stephen for their willingness
to offer advice and provide support on a number of occasions, and, more generally,
for their encouragement and generosity as senior colleagues in the field of art and
art history. I thank Roger Benjamin of the Department of Art History and Film
Studies, the University of Sydney; Norie Neumark, Theo van Leeuwen, and Ross
Gibson; and John Potts and Macquarie University’s Scan: Journal of Media Arts
Culture for opportunities to publish and speak on 1960s art in ways that have con-
tributed to this book.
I am grateful to a number of other art historians, curators, artists, facilita-
tors, and other specialists for their assistance at key times in the development of
this project: Fae Brauer, University of East London; Sabine Breitwieser, Museum der
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