EXPERIMENTS IN ART AND TECHNOLOGY (E.A.T.) from US presents "9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering" (1966, NY), documentary about the performances by John Cage, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg and Öyvind Fahlström
The history of the 9 Evenings began when Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver organized a group of artists to work together with engineers on a series of performances involving new technology. The group included John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, and Robert Whitman. During the summer of 1966 more than 30 engineers, most of whom were from Bell Laboratories, worked in one-to-one collaboration with individual artists, depending on the artist’s project and engineer’s area of expertise.
9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering opened on October 13, 1966, at the 69th Regiment Armory, a huge space on Lexington Avenue at 25th Street in NYC. The art community in New York became involved in the project: artists, dancers, musicians, and performers worked as volunteers and later took part in the performances. Afterwards, the E.A.T. Foundation was established to promote the collaboration between artists and engineers. The performances were recorded and filmed both in color and in black &white. In the mid 90’s Billy Klüver and Julie Martin (E.A.T. Foundation) accompanied these films by interviews of the participants.
Screenings will be presented by Maria Punina, art and theatre historian, interdisciplinary programs department of NCCA, Moscow. Films produced by E.A.T. in collaboration with Artpix. Distributed by Microcinema International.
For more information: www.9evenings.org
Supported by E.A.T. Foundation (USA), National ?entre for contemporary arts (Russia).