Episode 6: ‘Dream Piece’ (1976) by John Armleder

Dream Piece (1976) is a performance by John Armleder, conceived and enacted within the expansive context of the Ecart Group, an artistic collective that thrived in Geneva during the 1970s. Ecart’s approach to art bore a strong imprint of Fluxus influence, a fact made evident by the numerous characteristics that situated the group firmly within the broader Fluxus network. These included a critical stance towards traditional notions of authorship, a shift away from finished artworks in favour of processes, an embrace of chance, indeterminacy, and play, an interactive relationship with viewers, and a central focus on printed matter and multiples. The group garnered recognition primarily as a host and orchestrator of art events, ranging from performance festivals to exhibitions, as well as publisher and distributor of artist books and magazines. True to the avant-garde spirit of integrating art into daily life, Ecart rejected strict boundaries between organizational activities and collective or individual artistic practices. Much like the early Fluxus movement, Ecart consciously opted to position their activities outside the conventional realm of institutions by establishing their own physical and operational space. Ecart’s headquarters in Geneva was multifunctional, serving as a gallery, a concert venue, a bookshop, a library, a publishing house, and a distribution centre for art by Ecart’s extended network. Furthermore, invested in experimenting with alternative models of distribution and dissemination, Ecart became a key node and facilitator in the international mail art network.

The Ecart Group dissolved during the early 1980s as its members pursued their individual artistic and non-artistic ventures. Armleder, whose artistic career flourished internationally in the decades that followed, took on the preservation of Ecart’s legacy. Thanks to his efforts, a notable wealth of evidence chronicling the collective’s undertakings endured to the present day. This assortment of materials, now organized and accessible at the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO) in Geneva under the designation Ecart Archives, houses the handwritten score of Dream Piece which is the foundation for the narrative presented in this episode of Radio Fluxus.

The handwritten instructions for the piece specifies that to perform it, one needs “an Indian headdress, a candle (tealight), matches, a duck on wheels, a cassette (on which a Beethoven Lied is recorded), a cassette player (for) playback, a chair, and a small table.” The audience is invited to stand in front of the table, on which all the elements are arranged. Then, “the performer enters, sits down, puts on the Indian headdress, prepares the player, lights the candle and places the duck on the player. Then he turns on the player. He listens to the lied while looking quite calm and contemplative at the duck. When the Lied is finished, he puts the duck away (flat), takes off the headdress, places it on the table, and extinguishes the candle. He gets up and leaves. The piece is finished.” The score ends with a series of technical instructions for the proper formal execution of the entire piece. No information is provided about the potential “content” of the work, as indicated by its title, namely, the dream to which it refers. [1]

According to Armleder “the objects had been chosen at random. These were objects that belonged to me, which were simply there: the Indian headdress, the little toy, the candle, the music, for no apparent reason. They have no other link between them than the fact of having belonged to me and, like in most of our other performances, they were there, around us, and we had arranged them randomly, certainly by drawing lots.”[2]

The inaugural presentation of Dream Piece took place within the context of a two-day event called “Capuut Mortum,” which was hosted at the Ecart Gallery in February 1976. This event featured a series of concerts that were conceptualized and performed by the Ecart Performance Group, an outgrowth of Ecart that was originally formed in conjunction with Ken Friedman’s exhibition in 1974. As a document published by Ecart in 1977 states, “[Ecart Performance Group] function is to assist artists who are presenting their actions, and to organize performances in which works by the group or its members no longer appear exclusively on the program”.[1] The Ecart Performance Group & Guest functioned as an overarching designation for collaborations involving diverse artists temporarily affiliated with the collective, who would come together to perform on various occasions. In addition to Armleder’s Dream Piece, “Caput mortuum” program encompassed works by the Ecart group’s other founding members, Patrick Rychner and Carlos Lucchini, alongside contributions from friends and associates such as Carlos Garcia, Gérald Minkoff, and Muriel Olesen.

In May 1976, the Palais de l’Athénée in Geneva staged an event as part of the “Six artistes genevois contemporains” (Fr: Six contemporary Genevan artists) exhibition series. On this occasion, John Armleder teamed with Canadian artist David Zack to to present a series of performances titled “Dream Piece & Related Pieces.” This event marked the second public presentation of Dream Piece. Notably, the exhibition was documented through film for a program produced by Tevision Suisse Romande (TSR) as a part of the “Les Cles du regard” series.[2] The sole surviving photographs of the historical enactments of Dream Piece were shot on this occasion, with some of them showing the camera team as they captured Armleder’s presence on stage.

In February 1981, Dream Piece was performed once again, this time during the Fluxconcert organized by Ecart at the Hochschule and the Kunstverein in St. Gallen [3]. The event, titled “Mostly Silent Music,” showcased a collection of nineteen pieces categorized into four sections: piano pieces, phonetic poems, violin pieces, and other works. The concert featured a convergence of creations by notable figures such as George Brecht, La Monte Young, and Terry Riley. The opening piece was John Cage’s 4’33, setting the stage for a diverse range of performances. Dream Piece was presented within the “other pieces” segment. Its presentation within a Cagean tradition, alludes to a longstanding intellectual and artistic bond that John Armleder cultivated with the oeuvre of the American composer [4].

In January 2011, Dream Piece was interpreted by Yann Chateigné as a part of an exhibition at Forde, the Geneva independent art space. The intent behind the event, titled “Ecart, chronologie en cinq jours” (Fr: Ecart, chronology in five days), was to showcase Ecart’s oeuvre beyond its remaining archival evidence. Instead, its aim was to stage historical performances through enactment and to present the accumulation of the remnants of the live events as an actual ‘art exhibition’.

In this episode of Radio Fluxus, Yann Chateigné narrates his multifaceted interactions with Dream Piece, assuming roles as an art historian, curator, writer, and performer. This poetic story can be augmented by his exquisite essay in French published in “Almanach Ecart”[5]—a beautiful book delving into Ecart and its archives—and conveniently accessible on Yann’s website.

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Feathers and face paint hold significant spiritual and cultural importance in Native cultures, with their meaning varying based on tribal customs and personal interpretations. They are typically earned through honorable actions that bring honor to tribes and nations. We are aware that wearing a headdress reinforces stereotypes about Native peoples, appropriates their culture with little or no regard for their traditions. We decided, however, to publish these images as a documentary evidence of artistic practice, rather than a display of our believes.

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John Armleder is visual artist, critic, writer and curator. A singular figure in European postwar art, he is one of the most influential Swiss artists of his generation. Since his formative stages associated with Ecart, when he continued the trajectory of John Cage and Fluxus, Armleder has made substantial contributions across the spectrum of painting, sculpture, installation, design, and performance. Armleder’s remarkable ability to navigate diverse artistic domains is evident as he draws inspiration from seemingly disparate movements like Dada and abstract expressionism. His ongoing exploration of the essence of art, its potentialities, and its capacity to challenge conventions remains as relevant today as it has been throughout his career. The artist continues to live and work in Geneva, Switzerland. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Kunstmuseum Basel, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, among others.

Yann Chateigné Tytelman is is a French born, Brussels based curator, editor and writer. His work focuses on the study of minor histories and countercultures, inner explorations and the politics of obscurity. Often working collaboratively, his projects intersect curating, publishing, performance and education. He is currently researching the disappearance of the night and how an exhibition can take the form of a novel. Between 2017 and 2019 he co-led practice-based research project “Ecart. Une archive collective, 1969-1982” (September 2017 – April 2019) hosted by HEAD-Geneva in collaboration with Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO) in Geneva and financed by the strategic fund of the HES-SO. As a critic, he has contributed to numerous thematic books, catalogs and periodicals, including Conceptual Fine Arts, Mousse, Spike and Frieze. He has taught at several schools and universities, including the Ecole du Louvre in Paris, HEAD – Genève and erg in Brussels.

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[1] Yann Chateigné 2020. Generated translation.

[2] Fragments of interview with John Armleder conducted by Yann Chateigné on October 6, 2019, quoted in Yann Chateigné 2020. Generated translation.

[3] Yann Chateigné 2020.

[2] Yann Chateigné 2020.

[3] This was a color film lasting 56’36”, produced by Franqois Jaquenod and directed by Diana de Rham, in which Jean-Christophe Ammann, then director of the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne, presented various Swiss artists, including Franz Gertsch, Urs Liithi, Markus Raetz and Armleder. Dream Piece by Armleder and the Ecart print shop were also featured in this program which was broadcasted on Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR) in October 6, 1976 (Bovier and Cherix 2019).

[4] Bovier and Cherix 2019, 61.

[5] Jobin and Chateigné 2020.

BIBLIOGRAPHY and references

• Bovier, Lionel, and Christophe Cherix, eds. 2019. Ecart Geneva, 1969-1982. London: Koenig Books.
• Jobin, Elisabeth, and Yann Chateigné, eds. 2020. Almanach Ecart. Une Archive Collective, 1969–2019. Genève and Lausanne: HEAD-Genève and Art&fiction.
• Yann Chateigné. 2020. “Dream Piece.” In Almanach Ecart. Une Archive Collective, 1969–2019, edited by Elisabeth Jobin and Yann Chateigné, 17–26. Genève and Lausanne: HEAD-Genève and Art&fiction.