This event demands not only a series of repetitions across years, but insinuates by including the date included, that a huge and elastic group has repeated this event year after year. Events repeat on a more fundamental level as well allowing performers to produce “events” (in quotation marks) because it is a different structure now: I am following — following instructions; I am mimicking as a form of event-making. I did not invent the constraints in 1966, but I am acting it out now as if quoting the events of, say, Dick Higgins, Ken Friedman, Yoko Ono, or others. Peter Frank’s definition of seven different types of events already identifies internal structures, but the issues of signature, and time, of events gets little if any attention. The structure of repetition relates to the geographic distance (as opposed to the immediacy and presence) and musicality (of works waiting to be performed by others). Still, these issues do not completely express the inherent “event-ness” (in quotation marks) of the event structure. It does not exist as an original that one can recover like art historians recover the Mona Lisa, or even trace its provenance. Events become events as “events,” and that has significant implications for the meaning, signature, and social function.

Events are, at least in part, about the context and structure of art, performance, events, and everyday life. The event corrodes the neat structure that opposes the mundane repetitions to the originality and special-ness of art and performance. The event resists reducing its essence, its event-ness, down to a structural opposition between the real original thing (let’s call it art) and the repeated constraints of instructions. As Ina Blom explains,

Now, the event seemed to name nothing but a series of disappearances: instances of boredom so intense they undermined all traditional concepts of aesthetic “attention” and “appreciation”, indications so minimal or insignificant they could hardly count as artistic creation, a radical and continual erasure of the very frameworks of artistic situations and a general refusal of “dedication”, “seriousness” and “professionalism” in the name of art.

 Events parody the profound, challenge the supposed privilege of the sublime, and, in spite of that mockery of sincerity, play a game with structures. They move the play to a meta-structural level. Playing with our habituated notions of time, space, life, death, and even the structure of events, events play with infrastructure and convention.

Shortly before the poet, publisher, musician, and event-performer Dick Higgins’ death, he visited the school where I taught. I had brought all of his books and pamphlets, which I owned, in a large bag thinking that I would like him to sign my copies or draw a little picture in each of them. A curator (friend of mine) saw the books, and scoffed, “Are you going to have him sign those?” I felt so ashamed that I was reducing Higgins’ work to a commercial exchange with monetary value, instead of the more profound poetic value of the event instructions and poetic events contained in these works. I said, “No,” lying], and put the books back in the bag. Dick Higgins left Philadelphia and went to Toronto where he did a performance of an event by following the instructions to “yell as loud as you can for as long as you can.” He performed the event, went back to his room, and passed away. Signing a book seemed at the time a habituated, mechanical, and disingenuous form of respect for the author of the events; it was in retrospect, precisely the mechanical and repetitive aspect of the signing that I should have had Higgins perform as an “event” or “signature.”

The atmosphere of the poem-event I have chosen involves boredom, regret, and lack of poetic value in its conjuring of feeling. 

In one year and out the other

From the point of view of 2006. We start off in INT. 2006’s apartment. 2006 items: various different bumper stickers, magazines, Meals, books, and other things from 2006. In the room there is a very, very white television in the center, and 2 very, very white telephones to either side. Other then that, everything in a cluttered mess there in the middle of this mess is someone in a costume that at first just looks like a very large pile of the same mess that clutters up the room. 2006 stands up and turns on the T.V. JOHN and JAMES and EMILY, the newscasters, are standing stage left, middle, and right, respectively.

EXT. new years ball.
JAMES: and we’re back at channel 3.14159265, with the New Year’s countdown!
JOHN: YEAH!
EMILY: and, as I see by the clock, we have 3 minutes 24 seconds till the New Year is here!
JOHN: YEAH!
JAMES: just enough time for a live performance of “Mr. John brown likes to feed dinosaurs baked potatoes at 2:48 p.m.” performed bythe “pre-revolutions”
JOHN: YEAH!

Cut to:
INT. large concert hall. In it are the PRE-REVOULUTIONS, WOMAN, MAN,and AUDIENCE.
WOMAN: …so, without further ado, the pre-revolutions!
(As we zoom closer, we see that MAN is john)
MAN: YEAH!
PRE-REVOULUTIONS: (a very loud rock band) I am a pig! You are a pig! Ilike figs! You like figs! I have a nose! I strike a pose! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! NOW, HERE IS OUR SONG! YEAH!!!!!
Summer come passed innocent never wake up September like fathers to seven has so wake up September here the again falling the Drenched my again who are my rests never what lost me when ends!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cut to:
EXT. new years ball EMILY
EMILY: and here we are and in 2 minutes we will have our new yea-(T.V. clicks off)
INT. 2006’s apartment.
(2006 picks up both phones, and dials some numbers)
(Triple split screen- on one side)
INT. 2006’s apartment (And on the other)
INT. 2007’s apartment (And on the other)
INT. 2005’s apartment.
(All three are cluttered messes- and, all 3 have a white T.V. and 2 white telephones. The only difference is that the 2005 one has 2005 things, the 2006 one has 2006 things, and the 2007 one has 2007 things in it.)
2006: hi guys!
2007: well, a new year was about an hour ago, here!
2005: and it’s an hour till new years, here!
2006: and here they are just about to count down from ten!(The following 3 lines are simultaneous)
2006:10, 9, 8, 7,6,5,4,3,2,1…
2005:1:10, 1:09, 1:08, 1:07, 1:06, 1:05, 1:04,1:03,1:02,1:01,1:00…
2007:-1:10, -1:09, -1:08, -1:07, -1:06, -1:05, -1:04,-1:03,-1:02,-1:01,-1:00…
2006: HAPPY NEW YEARS!
2005: HAPPY ONE HOUR UNTIL NEW YEARS!
2007: HAPPY ONE HOUR AFTER NEW YEARS!
2005: bye.
2007: bye (Go off split screen)
EXT. 2006

White swirly things fill up room, then leave. Room is now filled with 2007 things. 2006 (now 2007) leaves the room. Fade out. Credits. The end.

“ In One Year and Out the Other

On New Year’s Eve, make a telephone call from one time zone to another to conduct a conversation between people located in two years. After midnight, call the other way.

Ken Friedman

1975”