Compressionisme

by Leonard Horowitz, New York, 1989

I first experienced ‘compressionisme’ in the Spring of 1985, where I was suddenly engulfed by a “Total Theatre” environmental spectacular Opera called “Goya Time,” a byand extremely compressed dramatization of three paintings by Francisco Goya: “The Nude Maja,” “The Royal Family,” and “The Eight of May.”  This avant garde “Co-opera” was conceived, produced and directed by Dr. Sandro Dernini, an accomplished biologist from the island of Sardinia, in collaboration with Gretta Sarfaty and Lawrence “Butch” Morris.  By dramatizing these three Goya painting and having this cast of Goya costumed artists literally run through the audience, it destroyed the normal sense of separation of staged theatre, since all at once you were not only the observer, but a participant. In order to really catch the total and unexpected actions taking place, one had to constantly shift one’s view from the Royal family on the balcony and further physically follow their descent through the amazed milling crowd below. The Royal Family pushed their way through the packed gymnasium, past thirty artists doing their simultaneous versions of the Nude Maja, and brushed past me, almost knocking me down. The whole spectacle was tied together and totally reified by modular music created and conducted and orchestrated by Butch Morris and further amplified by the dancing of Gloria McLean and company. The whole Opera lasted an hour chronologically ....but...psychologically seemed to be over in ten minutes. So we can say that because of the concept and the simulsensuous presentation, that there was an intense compression of time, of events, of experience, of total unexpectedness.  If one agrees with the theory that art should contain elements of surprise, then this plexus process and operas by Robert Wilson, by Meredith Monk and the Ontological-Hysterical process of Richard Forman is that Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk and Richard Forman tend to suspend time, to Surrealize it, and certainly in Robert Wilson work, to stretch time into a suspended “Dream State,” a psychedelicate state. If we have been subconsciously influenced by the motion picture (and now television), as I believe we all are, then the obvious differences between the plexus process and especially any of Wilsons masterpieces (Einstein on the Beach) is that Robert Wilsons oeuvre has a strong sense of slowed motion and Plexus has the quality of Pixillation, of jump cut, of extreme compression. A Polish mathematician, Klaus Wyborny, working in Hamburg, Germany, a number of years ago (and using a timing devise on his camera), automatically pixillated frames from Citizen Kane and compressed this famous film into three minutes!  The result is a very short film that compresses the images to the extent that the people disappear and the images are transformed into an atomic type mushroom cloud with a peculiar black dot that seems like an insect flying in and out of the cloud. This is a transformation of the original classic into a totally abstract process and sculptural vision. And that has been the Plexus Process, whether we have dealt with the theme of Dante’s Purgatorio, with the symbolic universal Serpent and with Eve in the Garden of Eden. The very idea of “Modern Art” has to do with this ‘compressionistic’ process, since time certainly speeded up psychologically and physically for the French Impressionists, who invented modern art by:  Improvising, by having a speeded-up moment to moment interaction with the last brush stroke and with the reified overall effect.  They did it to the extent that the real subject matter of all modern art becomes the process itself, and any visual subject matter really becomes a vehicle employed in this amazing compressionistic process.  (The tail wags the dog). No painter who has been sensitive and aware of “Whats been going on” has failed to be positively influenced by this direct improvised process. If we draw a line from the cubist space of Cezanne, we can extend this modern compass through Picasso and into the New York School of “Action-Painting,” the so called Abstract Expressionism, especially early DeKooning.  We can draw another line from Gaugin through Matisse and into Colour Field painting, into more interactive colour-shapes in space.  This flattening out of the picture plane not only compresses space, but... returns it to a universal ‘primitive’ sense as envisioned by Gaugin and even Mark Rothko.

(If you have a guest and a host, then you have a GHOST... Marcel Duchamp)

Plexus Compressionism Process is “a quick shorthand, is jazz compressed in a magic music art form, is no time to move, is a nanosecond, is one plus one equals three, is speed up time, is creative process, is Plexus process, is computer chip, is critical mass, is yang no ying. 

PLEXUS CURVILINEAR GEOMETRY OF CONSCIOUNESS

BY GEORGE CHAIKIN

George Chaikin and Sandro Dernini in front to Albert Einstein's Home,  Princeton, 1989

"1992 Christopher Columbus Viaggio nel Pianeta Arte", Rome, 1989

Over the years Plexus events have built one upon the other.  Each event takes place in its own present but it is made up of past concepts and activities while it projects its own various parts into its future activities.