Report on the 1975 Public-Celebration Workshop at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, M.I.T.

Laon~nfo, Vol. 9, pp. 58-60. Pergamon Press 1976. Printed in Great Britain REPORT ON THE 1975 PUBLICCELEBRATION WORKSHOP AT THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED VISUAL STUDIES, M.I.T. Robert Steele* At the concluding meeting of the Workshop on the Theory, History and Practice of Public Celebration, held from 23 June to 4 July 1975, offered by the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (C.A.V.S.) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A., Paul Earls, a fellow at C.A.V.S., said: ‘It was an arrogant stance to announce a Workshop on Celebration.’ He was not being derogatory, but was expressing the feelings of participants that celebration is a vast and amorphous concept and that it is hard, if not impossible, to pin down what is meant and not meant by celebration. Probably no group anywhere has sought so intensely in over 23 four-hour sessions to explore the virtuosity, importance and necessity of celebrations. Among topics covered by the teaching staff were visual-form inventions; kinetic, sky and environmental art; television ; national and religious holidays; funerals and memorial services; the history of celebrations from the earliest to present times; architecture; astrophysics; planning and designing costumes and sound events; light and reflections; and relationships of celebrations to audiences. Co-directed by Otto Piene, Director of C.A.V.S. and teacher of environmental art in the Department of Architecture, M.I.T., and Robert 0.Preusser, Director of Education at the Center and teacher of visual design in the Department of Architecture, M.I.T., the special summer program attracted a diverse group: six designers ; two photographers; four directors and administrators ; nine teachers; four students and two persons from theater. Some of the registrants showed slides and reported on their observations of or involvement with celebrations; i.e., The Royal Canadian Aerial Theater; Japanese, Mexican and Peruvian festivals; a Grand Rapids, Michigan, festival and Boston bi-centennial celebrations of the Declaration of Independence and American Revolution. It was concluded that many unplanned events might and should have a celebratory spirit and that some planned celebrations might fail if a celebratory spirit is missing. Some celebrations succeed becuase of their tight controls, while others may succeed because of their slight planning and control. The affirming of life by way of art objects, happenings, events, holidays, etc. has a great deal to do with the rationale for a celebration. * Filmmaker and teacher, Schoolof PublicCommunication , Boston University,640 CommonwealthAve., Boston, MA 02215, U.S.A. Early in the Workshop, Piene said: ‘People celebrate because they are striving for a higher sense of existence. The work of artists is to make private emotions public.’ Karin Bacon, special-events consultant and producer, New York, N.Y., said: ‘There are lots of things to celebrate which make public or people’s art. Celebration can be taken as a form to create communal relationships that meet a need. We need to experience in common and to give ideas power. We ought not to be afraid of transformations which may be altered states of consciousness. When people experience the ordinary in a nonordinary way, we have altered states of minding which can bring persons together. Celebration is an emotional transformation that welds persons together around powerful ideas.’ Preusser dazzled Workshop members with the beauty of the slides that he presented surveying the history of light in past and present celebrations. He talked about the Sun and Moon as objects of celebrations, the use of light in the Middle Ages, Elizabethan theater, early theater in the U.S.A., and the transformation of events that took place with the advent of electric lighting. He showed and talked about developments from the Paris Exposition of 1889to Expo ’70, Osaka, Japan, the uses of light in world fairs and expositions. At a later session, he showed slides of light-and-reflection designs made by his students. They, too, were astonishingly beautiful. This led him to an analysis of light used in industries, cities, homes and the ways people are manipulated by light. Preusser believes that innovative uses of light can transform present architecture, celebrations and ways of life. Four lectures with...