1970

Artist Book, 21 x 27 cm, 231 p.
Materials: ink, paper, metal

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. M00010).

This work consists of a long series of projects, artistic propositions presented in the book Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts. In this book, published in 1970, John Cage, Dieter Roth, Dorothy Iannone, George Brecht, Allan Kaprow and Joseph Beuys show how to resolve problems involving teaching and learning, through participation techniques developed in happenings as well as in action and visual poetry, film environment, street theatre, non-instrumental music, games, exchanges of letters, etc. With this "multi-book" (which would be called an interactive book nowadays) Robert Filliou creates a kind of dialogue with the reader – leaving as much space for the reader as he has used himself. He suggests that the reader should consider art as "participation in a collective dream" and the activity of artists as "creative use of leisure". This document follows the video Porta Filliou that was made two years before.

In the spring of 1966, Dorothy Iannone met Robert Filliou in the garden of the sculptor Albert Féraud. In Antibes Automatic, she sings about the beginning of their relationship:« Long ago in Antibes, in Cap d’Antibes, I met you and loved you and still do today. You captured my mind dear, I touched your French soul Now look where we find ourselves, in this German hole. Our lives touched and changed, dear, long ago in Antibes... »

In the spring of 1968, Dorothy Iannone and Dieter Roth went to live in Düsseldorf, where Dieter Roth was to be professor at the Kunst Akademie. They invited the Fillious to come to Düsseldorf. In 1970, Extase is published, a collection of drawings by Dorothy Iannone and a song by Robert Filliou. In the same year, Robert Filliou invited her to write an essay in Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts. 

« These days I am interested in ecstasy. That is, I think, I want it all the time. Never mind what they say about the nature of ecstasy, I’ve got a feeling one could limit oneself to such an extent that it would be possible half the time - and that’s like all the time. »